Objects from 1622 Vessel Donated to Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society
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Objects from 1622 Vessel Donated to Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society

Corey Malcom
Director of Archaeology
Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society
March 2002

Shipwreck artifacts are where you find it and they're not all at the bottom of the sea! The MFMHS is pleased to announce the donation of an important group of artifacts recovered from one of the 1622 Tierre Firme vessels. The objects were donated by the U-Store-It Corporation of Middleburg Heights, Ohio. 

Last fall, Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society director of archaeology, Corey Malcom got an interesting phone call from Gustavo Maragliano, who is a U-Store-It District Manager and also a long-time follower of both Mel Fisher's and the Society's projects. Maragliano recognized the objects as Spanish colonial and most likely from a shipwreck. "I saw they were just like the ones in Key West, and figured your museum would be the best place for them," said Maragliano.

The artifacts had been found abandoned in a self-storage unit at their South Miami location and soon came to Maragliano's attention. He called Malcom who went to Miami to examine them. Malcom confirmed that the objects were 17th century, and certainly useful towards achieving the Society's mission of education about the maritime past. He made arrangements with Maragliano to bring the objects to Key West. They arrived on January 19th. 

The collection consists mostly of the remains of ceramic vessels, primarily from olive jars. Three nearly complete vessels are in the group, as well as many other, large pieces which await reassembly. An intact majolica jar, tin-glazed majolica plates, and a pitcher are also found. Also included in the collection of objects from this site are a number of ballast stones. Many of the pieces bear tag numbers or other notations that indicate they originated from the "Seahawk I" shipwreck site. This site is found in 1600 feet of water about twenty-five miles south of the Dry Tortugas. It was excavated by Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology, Inc. of Tampa in 1990 and 1991 using cutting-edge robotic technologies. Long-time MFMHS associate David Moore served as project archaeologist on this site, and confirms the origin of these pieces. Moore believes the ship was the 110-ton patache, Buen Jesus y Nuestra Seņora del Rosario. Contemporary documents indicate the Buen Jesus foundered in deep water off the Tortugas during the same September 1622 catastrophe that claimed the galleons Atocha and Margarita. "It is exciting to have materials from a 3rd site of the same date," says Corey Malcom. "Now we can start looking at the differences, or more likely the similarities, between the objects used on different ships in the same flota. We will 
certainly have a better understanding of what an olive jar of 1622 looked like."

One additional item in the donation is an intact rim of a large earthenware tinaja. This heavily constructed piece is 15 inches in diameter. An associated tag indicates it was recovered in 1983 from the "Rio Mar" site on Florida's east coast. This wreck is one of the Nueva Espaņa galleons lost in a hurricane in July of 1715.

A sincere thanks goes to U-Store-It, Inc. for their generosity and desire to see these objects placed where they would be used for educational purposes. The MFMHS is now formally accessioning these artifacts, and beginning the process of recording them via photographs and scale-drawings to understand how they compare with other, similar ceramics.

If you are considering donating objects to the museum, don't forget that the value is fully tax-deductible. 


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