Imagine a hole in time that would allow us to embark in the 16th century and discover what and how the sailors of the Spanish Navy ate. That portent exists. It is in the Ribadeo estuary, in Lugo, four meters deep. It is the galleon San Giacomo di Galizia, also called the Santiago, in the service of Philip II. The ship was discovered when the dock channel was being dredged in 2011. Since then, the finds have not stopped.
According to the Higher Center for Scientific Research (CSIC), which leads the investigations, this underwater site “offers a window to the past” that has allowed us to find out, among other things, “from the meat consumed by sailors to the type of ceramic used to store water and preserve food.” These are discoveries of exceptional singularity for several reasons.
First of all, we must highlight the extraordinary state of conservation of the galleon, which has remained safe from plunderers for centuries. Terrible war machines like this helped the Spanish empire reach its peak under Philip II. The one in Ribadeo measured 33 meters in length and 11 meters in width. Her hull was made of oak wood, twelve centimeters thick, reinforced with lead, which gives an idea of her strength.
The only example in the world of such a 16th-century galleon is the flagship of Henry VIII's Navy, the Mary Rose, built between 1509 and 1511. It was named after one of the monarch's two sisters, Mary, Queen. consort of France, and the emblem of the Tudor dynasty, the rose. In 1982, much of the hull could be rescued and is now displayed in a museum near the shipyards where she was born, in Portsmouth.
Why hasn't the same been done with the galleon submerged in the Ribadeo estuary? It is sad to summarize it like this, but because Spain does not have the economic power of Great Britain. The rescue operation of the Mary Rose, of which the right part of the hull was preserved, was extremely expensive. The remains of the ship were placed in a dry dock and the wood was carefully restored to prevent its degradation once out of the water.
There are more examples of such ambitious industrial goldsmithing. A very striking one is that of the United States to recover the CSS Hunley, a Confederate war submarine that managed to sink a Union ship before suffering a fatal shipwreck. She remained under the Atlantic Ocean for 136 years until she was refloated and restored to prevent the corrosion process from advancing. Back in the day we explained her story here.
But Spain does not have funds at the moment to undertake a similar undertaking. For this reason, and in order not to endanger the wreck, each campaign requires digging at the bottom of the estuary to access the galleon and then covering everything again so that nature continues to guard the ship as it has done until now. The ideal would be that in the not too distant future, there would be budgets, dry docks and infrastructure capable of housing the galleon.
While that happens, scientists and history lovers will have to make do with the materials that are periodically carefully extracted from the ship's hull and that provide unusual details about life on board. Among the artifacts recovered by CSIC researchers are even wooden nit traps (combs with fine and thick spikes to remove lice larvae).
When a campaign ends, the excavations are buried again until the next time (contrary to what it seems, wood is well preserved among the mineral elements of the seabed, sand, silt and mud). The latest results have appeared in Heritage, an open access online scientific journal that publishes articles in English on the conservation and management of natural and cultural heritage.
The text (this link gives access to the full version) highlights the discovery of 78 animal bones, which allow us to get a complete idea of what the sailors' ranch was like. The work has been led by scientists Ana Crespo, Marta Moreno and Sagrario Martínez. They all work in CSIC institutions: the first two belong to the Institute of History and the third, to the Institute of Structure of Matter.
The analysis carried out by the archaeobiology laboratory of the state agency for scientific research and technological development has established that the bone remains correspond “to different meat portions” of cows, lambs, pigs and a goose. Not all of them were farm animals. Hake bones have also been discovered, suggesting that fishing was a residual source of food for sailors.
The “primary source of protein,” however, was beef. Professor Marta Moreno maintains “that the greater number of cow waste” compared to other species suggests the predominant role of beef in the Navy's pantries. Salting was the main preservation method at the time, but there was another, more effective way to keep food in good condition: transporting live cattle to slaughter.
In addition to a pantry, the galleon had cages with birds and small stable-like rooms with stabled animals. This hypothesis is confirmed by the identification “of parts of animals of little meat value, such as skulls and hooves.” Furthermore, “the frequency and location of chopping marks into small, manageable portions” indicate “that the most common preparation methods were cooking and stewing.”
The discovery of a goose tasometatarsus, a bone from the lower part of the bird's leg, with no nutritional value, would reaffirm the presence of live animals for human consumption on board. Finally, hake vertebrae are related to the supply of dried fish. Although copper kettles and wooden plates have been rescued, others are the most common pieces of tableware from the San Giacomo di Galizia...
Numerous vessels have already been recovered, especially those of Portuguese manufacture. They did not fulfill a strictly culinary function, but rather "water storage and food preservation during long journeys." Thanks to the almost detective work of archivists and historians, it has been possible to confirm that the ship left Naples, where it was launched, and passed through Cádiz and Lisbon before sinking.
The underwater archaeologist Miguel San Claudio, protagonist of the video above and a code name of the site, remembers other components of the trousseau of this warship: stone and iron ammunition for the cannons, as well as gun carriages and wheels for the artillery. There are still countless vestiges of the 16th century Navy down there. They have been under the sea for 426 years, waiting for one day all their secrets to be revealed.
