Incredible shipwreck discovered off Africa could finally solve 500-year-old mystery

A mysterious found off the coast of may be a lost galleon taken by famed explorer Vasco da Gama on his final voyage to India.

The Portuguese noble, who was the first European to reach India by sea, sailed there for the last time in 1524, taking with him a fleet of ships.

But not all of the fleet reached India, and now it seems that the final resting place of one galleon, the São Jorge, may have been found.

Underwater Caesar Bita identified the wreck off Malindi, Kenya, as Portuguese and dated it to the 16th century.

His colleague, Filipe Castro of at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, said Malindi was a known stopping point for Vasco da Gama.

He said: “My Kenyan colleague Caesar invited me to come see it in 2014. He knew it was a Portuguese shipwreck from the 16th century and that it could be Vasco da Gama’s galleon São Jorge.

“Vasco da Gama stopped at Malindi – it was something Portuguese fleets did.

“The Portuguese had good relations with the local powers throughout the 15th century, and Malindi was a very important port in the Indian Ocean.”

Castro described the wreck as “extensive, although very degraded”.

It’s thought that the galleon hit the Ngomeni reef and sank 500 metres from the shore, coming to rest at a depth of just seven metres.

Castro said: “After that it is likely that the local population used the timber, the nails, and the artifacts they could find.“This shipwreck is in a shallow area and it is normal around the world that the local population goes to shipwreck sites to salvage artifacts.

“But the density of the artifacts around the site is still enormous – these ships were loaded.

“There is a very interesting collection of ceramics, and we would love to find funds to seriously study the iron concretions in detail.”

Today the wreck site is protected as a community archaeology project. And while the São Jorge isn’t the only Portuguese ship known to have been lost in the area, one tantalising artifact from the wreck site suggests it is the lost galleon.

Castro said: “There are eight Portuguese shipwrecks we know about along that coast, but the two best candidates are São Jorge, from 1524, and Nossa Senhora da Graça, from 1554.

“The artifacts have not been studied by a specialist, but a porcelain shard was dated from the late 15th to the very early 16th century. It is the only artifact with a date.”

Castro and his colleagues now hope to prove the connection between the wreck and one of Portugal’s most famous sons.

He said: “The association with Vasco da Gama is not a trivial thing – he is an important historical figure, and his personal history is amazing.

“The history of the Portuguese discoveries done so far is rather sad, inspired by a tacky and primary nationalism, which grew in fascist Portugal during the dictatorship of Salazar.

“But this amazing historical character, together with the people that created the environment where his 1497 trip to India was planned and executed, is worth a serious and wide study.”

He continued: “We are planning to survey the area. My colleague Caesar has already done a survey, with the late colleague of ours Sebastiano Tusa, and we plan to do more.”

With backing from the Portuguese crown, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in 1497 and found a sea route to India.

His efforts secured Portugal unrivalled access to the Indian spice trade, giving her an advantage over her European rivals for several decades.

The explorer was dispatched on his final journey to India in 1524, with a mandate to clean up corruption among the Portuguese authorities there.

He replaced the old officials with new appointees but contracted malaria and died on Christmas Eve 1524 in Cochin, now known as Kochi, on India’s southwest coast.

Castro, Bita, and their colleagues José Pissarra and Beatrice Frabetti published their study in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology.