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Rediscovery of a wreck explored at the bottom of Lake Titicaca by Commander Cousteau

2023-01-21T06:19:13.203Z


ARCHEOLOGY - A Belgian-Bolivian mission last year unearthed the remains of a 19th century steamship. Still under study, it sheds light on the modern history of lake navigation.


The metal hull of the steamer stands out a bit among the pre-Hispanic remains that dot the depths of Lake Titicaca.

Extending to more than 3800 meters above sea level, in the middle of the Andes and straddling Peru and Bolivia, this little mountain sea has been revealing treasure after treasure for several years.

An ax in a sector;

elsewhere, a lama carved from a shell and, sometimes, small gold offerings.

These ancient objects sometimes belong to the Inca world (15th-16th centuries), sometimes to the Tiwanaku civilization (6th-11th centuries) which preceded it on the summits of the Altiplano.

However, this is not the case of the steamer explored last year by an international mission.

“It is a remarkably well-preserved wreck, the first from the 19th century that we have been able to explore

,” says researcher Christophe Delaere of the Free University of Brussels, co-director with his Bolivian colleague, Marcial Medina Huanca, of the Belgo-Bolivian archaeological mission Project Titicaca.

Archaeologists, focused on the eastern - Bolivian - part of the lake unearthed the ship in May 2022, but are not the first visitors to the wreck.

Already in 1968, it had been prospected by the team of the French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

And snubbed.

Read alsoEtruscan bronzes, Amazonian civilization and excavation of Notre-Dame... The most remarkable discoveries of 2022

More interested in the lapidary vestiges of the bottom of the lake and the grace of a few frogs, Commander Cousteau only films the wreckage for about thirty seconds.

The images pass without commentary in the film that he takes from his Andean journey,

The Legend of Lake Titicaca.

And for good reason, his team estimates that the heap of scrap sank around 1940, less than thirty years earlier.

Almost the day before, brought back to the long time of History.

Frédéric Dumas, pioneer of underwater archeology who accompanies Cousteau, nevertheless records the location and his observations in his notebooks.

Reviewed some forty years later, this precious handwritten documentation enabled Christophe Delaere's team to find, with the help of a drone, this modern vestige of the lake.

It is the highest wreck ever discovered, since we are almost 4000 meters above sea level!

Christophe Delaere

“We knew where to look, even if Frédéric Dumas' indications did not all come true.

Our wreck was thus not at 20 meters deep, as recorded in the book published by Cousteau in 1973, but only at five”

, specifies Christophe Delaere.

The major, however, had nothing to do with this mistake.

“The French edition published in 1973 mistranslated the English version by transforming 20 feet into 20 meters…”

, remarks the archaeologist.

Adding, with a hint of malice from the Andes:

"It's still the highest wreck ever discovered, since we are almost 4000 meters above sea level!"

The researcher describes with verve the images taken from the wreckage, but without being able to communicate them: the Bolivian authorities remain masters of the clocks - and the pictures - as long as the research project has not been the subject of a publication.

Imported vessels

The archaeologists had time to clear the wreckage after two weeks of lake excavations, near the island of the Moon.

A clarification has surfaced: the boat did not finally sink in 1940, but approximately thirty years earlier, around 1910. It was also 24.5 meters long and 4 meters wide.

“An important dimension for the lake”

, rejoices the archaeologist.

It remains to understand where he came from.

"We are now trying to identify its origin, its course and to pinpoint what its first name must have been

," says Christophe Delaere, who works in particular on the history of navigation on the Titicaca.

View of the Island of the Moon, from Inca remains on the Island of the Sun, at Lake Titicaca.

NPL- DeA Picture Library, M. Borchi, Bridgeman Images

Local tradition peddles that the ship, nicknamed

Jach'a-Emilia,

sank along with another boat - the

Marcela

- during a terrible stormy night.

But little more.

Project Titicaca researchers were nevertheless able to ascertain that it was a late 19th century steamship.

This iron-framed ship, one of the first to slip on the surface of the Titicaca, was transformed into a large barge at the turn of the 20th century.

Climbing these buildings near the top of the Andes was nothing like a grandiloquent and wild journey à la

Fitzcarraldo .

: the boats were simply imported in spare parts on site.

A comparative analysis of the different parts of the wreck, from the composition of its metal alloys to the type of rudder, could provide additional answers on the origins of the ship.

Read alsoIn Rochelongue, the mysteries of a 2,600-year-old underwater treasure

The

Jach'a-Emilia

and the

Marcela

- which may also lie under the mud - were not the only iron-hulled boats imported there.

A few of these ships still exist.

“A boat is still used by the Peruvian army, another has become a museum, a third has been transformed into a restaurant, there is also one which lies abandoned…”

, lists the researcher.

Others, finally, still lie at the bottom of the lake.

Another team led by cartographer Laurent Masselin searched in 2021, for a docu-fiction project, for the wreck of the

Aurora

, one of the first modern ships on the lake.

It is said to have sunk in 1876 in the Peruvian part of Titicaca, after hitting a reef.

Unlike the Belgo-Bolivian operation, the expedition in search of the

Aurora

returned empty-handed.

Nothing seems to have survived from the ship

.

"The wreck was most likely broken up, dismantled and resold by the inhabitants of these shores, between 1876 and today",

blows the producer Frédéric Cordier, who had set up in vain the project of a documentary film devoted to the rediscovery of this

“Titanic of Titicaca”

.

For Christophe Delaere, the most beautiful discovery would however remain to find an Inca wreck.

Beneath the anaerobic sediments of the lake, some wooden remains may be waiting to be stirred up by a future Cousteau.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-01-21

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