Builders dig up 17th-century galleon in Argentina
Archaeologists raise Spanish vessel found while building apartment block
Archaeologist Marcelo Norman Waissell holds a cannonball near two cannon of a Spanish galleon found while excavating a Buenos Aires building site. Photograph: Marcos Brindicci/REUTERS
Construction workers excavating the foundations of a luxury apartment block overlooking the river Plate in Buenos Aires may have dug up something far more valuable than what they are building.
The workmen uncovered the well-preserved remains of a 17th-century Spanish galleon, one of thousands that carried goods across the Atlantic when Argentina was a Spanish colony.
Eight metres of silt had covered and conserved the galleon in the 300 years since it sank or was abandoned by colonists.
At that time the exclusive Puerto Madero neighbourhood of the Argentinian capital was just a beach on the shores of the Plate. "The galleon was buried under Puerto Madero, in the sedimentation of a beach where many ships used to arrive centuries ago," explained city hall officials.