Latest / In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson / 1559 Spanish Shipwreck in Pensacola Bay - TPR's In Focus - Oct. 14, 2026

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1559 Spanish Shipwreck in Pensacola Bay - TPR's In Focus - Oct. 14, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from Troy University's Trojan Cafe,
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  offering handcrafted Starbucks beverages and a wide assortment of meal and
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  snack options, located on Troy University's Montgomery campus
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  across from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus,
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  and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson. Hurricanes are a fact
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  in the Southeast, and today Robbie Elmore,
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  collections curator at the Alabama Department of Archives
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  and History, brings you the story of a storm-caused shipwrecked
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  1559 Spanish expedition led
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  by Tristan de Luna. Some of the artifacts left
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  underwater from the wreckage were analyzed by Robbie, who documented them
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  for his master's thesis. He joins us today for our
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  History in Your Hands series.
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  Robbie, welcome to Troy Public Radio.
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  Thank you so much for having me on. Robbie, you had the opportunity
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  to work on some Florida shipwrecks. What did you find? When I
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  was a graduate student at the University of West Florida—
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  this is 2017 and 2021— I was interested in underwater archaeology.
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  And there are some archaeological sites within Pensacola
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  Bay that date to the 16th century that are a part of the Tristan de
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  Luna expedition. Spain attempted to colonize Florida
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  several times before they succeeded with St. Augustine in 1565.
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  One of those previous attempts was in 1559. They tried
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  colonizing what is now Pensacola. They landed around August
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  of 1559, but then about 5 weeks later, a big hurricane
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  came through and it sank several of the ships and it kind of ruined Spain's
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  attempt to colonize the area at the time. 3 ships
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  associated with that expedition have been found so far. One of
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  them, called the Emanuel Point II shipwreck, has seen some pretty extensive excavations,
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  and many different objects have been recovered and have been studied by archaeologists
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  and grad students. I was asked to analyze and interpret
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  barrel components, pieces of wooden barrels, pieces of wooden casks that
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  were excavated from that shipwreck, to see whether or not we could figure out the
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  different sizes of these casks that were on board the ship and what
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  was stored in them. So that was the larger goal of my thesis research.
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  When did you find out about the casks or barrels?
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  Well, we found out that the Luna expedition was really
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  using standard cask sizes that were common during the 16th
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  century. We were able to confirm that the types of casks
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  that were on board the wreck were common casks known as pipas,
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  which were these large 450-liter casks,
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  as well as barricas, which held roughly,
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  I believe, 225 liters. So what were these casks
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  actually used for? By Tristan de Luna and his entourage?
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  Pipas primarily held either liquids or finer solids—
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  wine, water, vinegar, tallow and grog,
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  salt, as well as oil, maize, and flour.
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  The other types of casks, like the botéricas, they would
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  have held more solid goods like horseshoes, olives, capers,
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  hardtack, almonds, things like that. Were there any traces
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  of these left in the casks? We did not have the means
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  to be able to see whether or not there were traces. There were certain components
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  that did either have some kind of concretion on it, as if maybe
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  there had been something metal that had been in the cask and it had stuck
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  to the component after all that time in the bay. We didn't
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  go down that far, though, to see if there were traces of these different
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  types of commodities. We found all of that through documentation
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  affiliated with the lunar expedition. So did you find these casks
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  on land or underwater? I wasn't working with
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  any complete cask. I was only working with pieces of
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  different casks. So barrels, casks, you're going to hear me use those 2
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  terms interchangeably. But barrels, casks, they're made up of different components: staves,
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  heads, and hoops, and bungs. Now, they had already been excavated by
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  the time that I was analyzing them, and they were being stored in one of
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  the labs there at the University of West Florida. So they had been excavated from
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  the wreck, and I was doing all of the work on them. Land, but in
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  a controlled environment within a laboratory. Could you tell how big
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  these casks originally were? Based on
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  my calculations, as well as archaeological
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  sources, the pipas that were on board the Emmanuel Point
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  II, an average pipa held about 450 liters of
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  liquid. The primary stave I used, it was incomplete, but it was
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  about anywhere between 130 to 140 centimeters
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  is how long a pipa likely was. How do you spell that?
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  Pipa is just P-I-P-A. Pipa translates to
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  pipe, and again, it just refers to a specific cask.
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  It's the name that was given to this particular size of cask that could
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  hold 450 liters of liquid. Where were
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  these casks or barrels built? Some of them did
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  come from Spain. There's also the thought that maybe some of them were constructed
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  in what is now Mexico. They would have had to have been constructed to last
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  quite a while. What was Tristan de Luna's actual route?
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  So he actually left from, I believe it was Veracruz.
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  The expedition began in Mexico, and he did end
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  up landing in what is now Pensacola. He landed in August
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  of 1559. I believe he set sail in June of
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  1559. What was Tristan de Luna's
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  historical significance? Tristan de Luna being the leader
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  of this expedition was significant because many attempts to
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  colonize what is now southeastern United States at the time time.
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  Many of them beforehand had been privately funded, but the Luna Expedition
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  was funded by the Spanish Crown. And so it was significant in that this was
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  one of Spain's first attempts to actually put money into creating a permanent
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  presence in what is now the southeastern United States. Ultimately,
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  it failed because of hurricanes and natural disasters,
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  but that is one of the larger significant ventures
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  put together by the Spanish Crown at that time. You were talking about
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  the wood that these casks were made of earlier.
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  Could you tell where the wood came from? We don't
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  know exactly where, but there was the potential to
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  do strontium analysis where we could go in and pull strontium
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  from the wood to figure out where these strontium isotopes
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  may have originated from. Through that, it was believed to have come from regions
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  of Spain, but we did conduct wood analysis on the different
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  staves and the different headpieces, and we found that they were made of
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  white oak. White oak is very good for watertight casks because
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  they have these little blockages in the cell walls that help prevent leakage.
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  But everything that we had seen, everything we read, did argue that at
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  least the white oak components likely came from the Iberian Peninsula.
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  After you studied this wood, what were your conclusions?
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  Our largest final conclusions was that constructing casks,
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  the types of casks used, the commodities stored in them, everything within
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  the context of the Luna Expedition, Everything that was being used was
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  very common at the time. It seems clear that the Spanish Crown was
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  essentially sticking to what they'd been doing for quite some time. Wood,
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  primarily white oak, but other components may have used either willow
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  or alders. Are there any wood artifacts that people can see
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  today from those shipwrecks? Yes. The Florida Public Archaeology
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  Network has a temporary exhibit on display at their
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  northwestern headquarters in Pensacola. It's actually all about my
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  thesis research. 2 cases show many of the components that
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  I was working with, along with different panels that discussed the research a bit more
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  in depth with a bit more of an overview. Do you remember
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  the depth of the water the artifacts came from? I don't remember
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  the exact depth. As far as how far off, you could always
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  see the mainland. We never pulled up any of the actual
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  ship's architecture or anything along those lines. We would document it once we've uncovered
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  it, but it was left in situ for sure. How delicate
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  are these timbers after all these centuries? So cast
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  components can be pretty delicate, you can bring an object to
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  the surface in a safe manner. And were the shipwrecks
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  from the lunar expedition definitely the result of a hurricane?
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  Yeah, so these shipwrecks were the result of a hurricane.
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  In fact, Dr. John Worth at the University of West Florida, he's put together an
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  article actually attempting to track the hurricane
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  that actually hit the colony. I believe that it had actually hit the island of
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  Cuba Robbie, thank you so much for sharing the story of
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  a shipwreck from the 1500s that
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  happened off the Florida Panhandle in a hurricane.
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  Thank you so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed it. That was archaeologist
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  Robbie Elmore. More information can be found at the
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  flpublicarchaeology.org website.
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  And as a reminder, the Abandoned Shipwreck Act
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  of 1987 protects historic shipwrecks in
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  the United States from treasure hunters and unauthorized
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  salvagers. Thanks for joining us today for In Focus,
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  which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and feel
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  free to get in touch at infocus@troy.edu.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported
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  Troy Public Radio.