All language subtitles for Drain the Oceans S06E04 The Myth of the Pacific Pirate Ship 720p DSNP WEB-DL DD+5 1 H 264-playWEB_track4_[eng]

♪ ♪

CRAIG ANDES: Since I was a kid,

I've heard about a lost
shipwreck off the coast.

There are stories
about the pirates,

or a battle that went on.

♪ ♪

There's definitely
something out there.

CHRISSY CURRAN: People have been
finding beeswax and porcelain

for hundreds of years.

SCOTT WILLIAMS:
These blocks of beeswax

had these strange symbols
carved into them.

And there was so much
being found

that it's called
the beeswax wreck.

ART TREMBANIS: As soon as they
started describing the beeswax,

I said, "Wait, this is
The Goonies shipwreck."

That movie was huge.

Oh, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Look at that.

CRAIG: Almost looks like
a bow and stern.

ART: Maybe, it does.

Our objective here is
to find a beeswax shipwreck.

This is finding a needle
in a haystack of haystacks.

JAMES DELGADO: There's more
to the story here.

Some people thought
it was a Japanese junk.

Other people thought
it was a Spanish galleon.

What was the ship?

When did it sink?

And where did it come from?

♪ ♪

CRAIG: Just looking at
all the wood out here.

That piece caught my eye
from over there,

just because it's off color,

but sometimes upon
further examination

it's just plain driftwood,

which the majority of it is.

♪ ♪

When I go down and walk on
the beach in the mornings,

it's the get away moment,
you know?

I find stuff every time,
whether I'm looking or not.

I can't help but find stuff,

or it finds me,
it feels like, sometimes.

♪ ♪

I've found a piece of beeswax,

a few pieces of porcelain.

Piece after piece, after piece.

Looks like part of a bowl.

Generations and
generations of stuff

has been washing up
on the beach.

And that's where I got
introduced to the treasure

in the beeswax wreck.

♪ ♪

This is just some of my stuff
I've collected

for a lot of years.

Pieces of porcelain that I found
on a beach from the shipwreck.

Those ones have writing on them.

There were strange, weird
stories from the local natives

about men from other nations
being washed ashore.

There's a couple of, like,
pirate theories, you know,

that just pirates showed up
to bury a treasure and left.

I think that it's very possible

there could still be
some stuff hidden.

I believe that the pirates would
misdirect where they hide stuff

and not necessarily, you know,
leave it easy

for somebody else to find stuff.

It just had me dreaming.

I mean, like, literally,
like, dreaming to find it

and I almost kind of
set up a goal to.

I was like, I want to
answer that question.

♪ ♪

ROBERT KENTTA: The northern
Oregon coast was where

little enclaves of
Tillamook and Clatsop people

gravitated towards.

There are stories
that were handed down

through the generations of
the origins of the beeswax.

There's a story at one time
that there were two ships

that appeared offshore,

and that they had a cannon
battle back and forth...

(cannon fire)

...and that one
of the ships sank.

Some of those stories say
that a big ship came ashore,

and foreign people
dug a big hole

and threw the chest in there.

Pirate booty is
basically what it was.

Some of it was speculation, some
of it was very folklorized.

DICK BASCH:
They'd instilled in all of us

the story of
the beeswax shipwreck.

The story of the treasure,
the story of our people

going out to the beaches

and befriending
any European survivors,

and making use of
whatever floated in.

I, with my cousin, would go down
to Neahkahnie Mountain.

We heard about the pirates that
buried a trunk down in there.

We would look at low tide
in the rocks

to see if we could see
a trunk or a chest.

I get chills thinking about

going down to the edge
of that cliff.

You do strange things
when you're 19.

(laughs)

♪ ♪

CRAIG: Being as interested
in all this as I was,

I one day noticed
at the grocery store,

a paper with an article about
a group of archaeologists

who were gonna come out here and
start doing a little research

on the beeswax wreck.

♪ ♪

SCOTT: Craig is so interested
and so excited

and so determined by this wreck.

He'd been looking for the wreck

since he was,
I think, a teenager,

maybe since he was a small kid.

CRAIG: Here is a board
that I found on the beach.

SCOTT: And so there's been a
couple of times where, you know,

I just kind of roll my eyes,
and like,

"Craig, you know,
that couldn't have happened."

CRAIG:
Yeah, that was something

I was
wanting to show Scott here.

SCOTT:
Or "That's crazy talk, Craig."

CRAIG: You never know what
it could end up telling you

in the long run, so...yeah.

SCOTT: So, this ship has been
called the beeswax wreck

for about 200 years,
and the reason for that

is the first settlers in Oregon,
the local Native Americans,

brought them beeswax to trade.

And they brought them
beeswax in big blocks.

And those first settlers knew

there was no honeybees
in Oregon,

so they asked the Indians,

"Well, where are you
getting this stuff?"

And they said, "A big ship
wrecked many years ago

on this beach."

CRAIG: And then one day I found
something trapped and pinched

in the rocks down
underneath the sand.

Oh, man.

This is totally a huge beam
from the ship,

and it goes way back
into that tide pool.

I put my hand on it, and
I was like, that's interesting.

I knew what it was.

It was from a shipwreck.

And then I had this feeling,

it had to do with
the beeswax wreck.

I took a video,
I danced up and down,

'cause I was that sure
I found it,

what I'd been looking for,
or at least something,

maybe that smoking gun piece.

I went home just tickled pink.

So I called up Scott and I said,

"Hey, what's going on?
This is, like, exciting.

Like, this is what I was hoping
sooner or later would happen."

SCOTT: Craig is one of those
people who gets very excited,

so when he found these timbers,

he was like, "Hey, I think
these are from the wreck."

And my initial response was,

"Craig, you think
everything's from the wreck."

And when Craig told me
he had found them in a cave

exposed at low tide, I told him
that, you know, Craig,

there's no way wood would
preserve for hundreds of years.

So, at that point I told him
honestly that he was crazy.

CRAIG: I kind of just almost
hassled him over it, you know?

I call him up, you know,
I found this.

I call him up,
I'd vent about this.

SCOTT: I don't know if he was
texting me every week,

but it was certainly
every month,

saying, "Scott, you really
got to come down here,

I really think these are
from the beeswax wreck."

CRAIG: I knew what it was,
and it was just like,

I'm gonna convince him.

We made it out to the cave
with the ship beam today.

Found five other pieces of wood.

SCOTT: And so finally, and
honestly just to almost

get him to leave me alone,
I said, "Okay, Craig.

Grab a couple of little pieces
and send them to me,

and I will get them identified
as to the kind of wood species."

CRAIG: So I went out and I cut
a slab big enough off of a beam

that was out there,
and I sent it to him.

SCOTT: I sent them off to
a laboratory to get identified.

They were tropical hardwood.

This is not the type of wood
you find growing

anywhere in North America,

so the chances are it did come
from some sort of shipwreck.

I was kind of like, oh,
you know, this is interesting.

I think the next conversation
I had with Craig was,

"Oh, my gosh, Craig, I'm sorry.

You can now tell me
'I told you so'

for the rest of your life."

So, we started making plans

for getting a crew
to go out with Craig.

Could it be that there was more
of the shipwreck offshore?

ART: They gave me a call and
said, "Art, we'd like to get you

involved searching for
the beeswax shipwreck."

It immediately clicked for me,

and I said, "Wait, this is
The Goonies shipwreck."

And they said, "Yeah, yeah.
It kind of is."

So, that, you know, just
immediately set a spark for me.

The movie The Goonies
was a story about

kind of a misfit group of nerds,
you know, like geeks

searching for
a mystery shipwreck

off this very coast
near Astoria in Oregon.

And I guess I sort of saw myself
in those characters;

I think many of us did.

The ocean does not reveal
its secrets easily,

and you really do have to bring
a team of diverse experts

with different skills together,

like archaeologists
and beachcombers.

And I thought, if we could get
a break in the weather,

if we could get some luck
in the condition of the seabed,

that we can find and discover
what may likely have happened

with the beeswax wreck.

Let's go play with some robots
in the ocean, shall we?

CHRISSY: Nothing gets
an archaeologist excited

like a potential shipwreck.

Our mission is stewardship

when we have these kinds of
far-flung discoveries,

which, by the way,
doesn't happen very often.

We've known that there
is something out there

for a long time, and certainly
our tribal community members

have been telling those stories
for hundreds of years as well.

ART: Beeswax blocks and
porcelain have continued

to wash up along a seven-mile
stretch of Manzanita Beach

between Neahkahnie Mountain

and the Nehalem River.

So, our plan was simple:

to look for targets
just off the coast

using our multi-beam sonar,

and then use the latest
underwater technology

to inspect anything
that looked promising.

On our first day, we got
a 5:00 AM start on the boat.

We know that there's
a very typical pattern

this time of year.

Calm conditions on the morning,
then the land heats up,

it draws in the sea breeze,

and the waves and
everything kick up.

And so we need to start scanning
as soon as we can.

CRAIG: It's a really, really
tricky environment

on our coast here.

We have storms
randomly, anytime.

ART: We immediately put all
our equipment together

and we start doing
our wide-area surveys.

So, we're gonna try to
completely map this whole area

so we can reveal
the underwater terrain.

Every nook and cranny.

CRAIG: Like right there.
ART: Oh, okay.

Let's start from as far inside
as we can get,

and then we'll work
our way offshore.

I could see vast areas
that clearly indicated

smooth sand areas,
and that was really helpful.

That allowed us to eliminate
big, big portions of areas.

CRAIG: Sure looks like
five meters.

ART: Yeah, I know.

I think it's a depression
with the sand.

Sadly, there was nothing
I could put my finger on

as we were doing that initial
scan that really set off,

you know, flags for me to say
there's an obvious wreck there.

As well as the timbers
Craig found,

one of the most intriguing clues

were the strange
blocks of beeswax

that have been washing up
along this coastline

for over a century.

♪ ♪

SCOTT: So, here are examples
of beeswax blocks

that have been found over
the years by beachcombers

and turned in
to the museum.

(sniffs)

Smells like beeswax.

At times, so much beeswax
was washing up on shore

that it made it into
the local newspapers.

♪ ♪

(whirring)

So, right now I'm looking
at the 1891 edition

of the Daily Morning Astorian,

and there's an article here
of over a ton of wax

lately dug from the ground
near Nehalem.

(whirring)

This is 1909.

This little article
is a great one,

because it says that the
substance found is not beeswax,

but ozocerite,
is generally admitted,

which to me is interesting,

because this is
an Astorian newspaper

where there were blocks
of beeswax on display,

and yet they're still saying no,
it just, it couldn't be beeswax.

There's just no way
a ship would have wrecked

carrying that much stuff.

So, the most scientific
explanation is it's mineral wax.

These so-called experts are
really totally ignoring

what the locals
were telling them,

that they found it
in molded blocks,

they found it in candles,

and totally ignoring
the Indian oral histories.

(whirring)

In 2010, a lab analysis
of a beeswax sample

using a mass spectrometer
revealed this molecular makeup.

It confirmed the sample
was beeswax.

And not just that.

Bees leave local pollen
in their wax,

making every region's
beeswax distinctive.

Remarkably, our test found
pollen from Southeast Asia,

so did the ship that brought
the wax come from Asia as well?

♪ ♪

ART: Our multi-beam scanning
drew a blank.

We're pretty sure the ship
wrecked in this bay,

so what has happened to it?

Could it have moved
or been broken up

on the rocky coastline
over the years?

In order to gather clues on how
the area's weather and currents

impact shipwrecks,

we headed for
a known wreck nearby,

a 110-foot-long steel barge
that sank in 1983.

Time to get the robots
in the water.

Woo.

Our autonomous underwater
vehicle has sonar that allows us

to progressively explore further
and in greater detail.

It's the difference between
sort of seeing the Grand Canyon

from a plane, versus actually
walking down on the trails.

14.8 meters, altitude 3.23,

that's, that's exactly what
we want it to be doing.

Then finally,
the last little piece

is to go in with
a remotely operated vehicle.

Splash, we're on.

Basically an underwater drone
gives us a live feed

of what's going on.

It's not just sand, we're seeing
rocks, we're seeing boulders.

The underwater scene is complex.

It's very non-homogeneous.

It's like we're in
a sandstorm here.

It's bringing with it
little bits of kelp

and algae and plankton.

Whoa, there goes a big chunk
of algae across.

Well, you can tell how strong
it is against it.

CRAIG: Yeah, I'm trying
my best to give you,

like, a smooth picture here,
I'm sorry.

ART: The environment here
is more turbulent

than we had realized.

It's just too turbulent.

Let's bring her
up to the surface.

Okay, we're coming up.

We couldn't see much optically
under those conditions,

and so we decide
to head back in

and start looking at the data.

♪ ♪

So, I'm looking at all of our
data that we've collected here.

This is this barge.

♪ ♪

This steel barge has
been exposed to forces

for nearly four decades.

It used to have
a large crane attached,

but today only the crane's
cabin section is visible.

We knew the barge was
scanned 12 years ago,

and so now we have
two sets of data,

so we can see how it's
changing over time.

Here it is in 2010,
and that's exactly what

a typical shipwreck
looks like on the seabed.

It's sitting proud.

The deck looks
pretty well intact,

but how does that compare
to our data from today?

In the past decade,

the steel ship's location
has moved imperceptibly.

It's basically stayed
in the exact same spot.

This has just been torn apart.

All this deck is gone,
we're now seeing the ribs.

Even in the last 12 years, it's
gone through incredible changes.

It's just getting
torn apart now.

That really tells us
about the processes here.

This is what's happening to
steel ships in 40 years.

I mean, what would be left of
a wooden ship after 300 years?

ART: The steel barge
gave us valuable clues.

Any wreck around here
gets broken up quickly,

so we had to shift our focus

from looking for
a fully intact beeswax wreck

to the search
for components and pieces.

Just a few miles south,

there's a spot
where fishermen claim

their nets are getting snagged.

So we're headed there to see

if at least part of the wreck
might be there.

(beep)

First, we'll scan with
the multi-beam sonar

to get a wide-area overview,

then we'll drop in with our ROV
to get a closer inspection.

Certainly an area consistent
with a lot of the history.

It doesn't look super...
much like geology.

The slope and characteristics
of it are quite strange.

CRAIG: I found
a piece of beeswax

in our crab pots there before.

ART: We're following one-eyed
Willy's little breadcrumb trail,

I guess, a little bit,
but we're going in reverse.

CRAIG: It's a pretty good trail.

ART: Well, this is great.

We have a marked spot that
could be the beeswax wreck.

Let's go survey this.

SCOTT: Investigation into
the beeswax blocks had shown

that they originated
in Southeast Asia.

We wanted to study them
closely for more clues.

So, this is one of the pieces
of beeswax from the wreck.

You can see there's
this carved mark.

They're not letters,
they're almost mystical symbols.

What could these symbols mean?

We began to look up ships
that were missing at sea

for at least the last 200 years,

and that led us to
a totally unexpected clue

from the Spanish empire.

In the archives, there are cargo
manifests that are preserved,

so you would have a list of,
like, this merchant shipped

X many crates of porcelain,
or X many tons of beeswax.

And it would show his mark
for that merchant,

and those marks match what's
been found on the beeswax.

That symbol...

is this one.

Those were shipping symbols.

And they made one thing
very clear:

the beeswax wreck
was a Spanish ship.

So, it wasn't a pirate ship
or a Chinese or Japanese junk,

but a cargo ship.

Spain was the main
colonial power in the Americas

for two centuries
after Christopher Columbus

reached the New World
from Europe in 1492.

But this wreck wasn't in the
Atlantic, it was in the Pacific.

To help understand what
it was doing there,

focus shifted from the beeswax
to the porcelain

that had also been
washing onshore.

♪ ♪

VANESSA LITZENBERG:
I grew up here in Portland.

As a child, we all love
Indiana Jones,

but it was actually
really in high school

when I was able to take
an anthropology class,

and it really
piqued my interest.

And then in community college

I started taking
archaeology classes.

♪ ♪

The coast is not forgiving

to the artifacts
that we're finding.

They're often broken up, small
chunks of what we would find.

Even though I got
only fragments,

they can really tell us
where they were made,

when, and even who for.

The first thing you notice about
these blue colored designs

is that they are Chinese.

So, why were Chinese porcelains
being brought to Oregon?

We found the sherds were
from large plates and cups

matching the European desire
for large meals

and mugs of hot chocolate.

This is likely a cup.

We don't really know what the
groove foot rim was meant to be

or what the purpose of it is,

but apparently
it was a very big thing

with the European market
at the time.

Using all this data together

we have come to
a mean date of 1690.

And what's intriguing is that
it's 120 years before

any Europeans arrived in Oregon.

CRAIG: That beach on that side,
there's a lot of porcelain

that seems to be right...

KYLE LENT: So basically what
you're seeing is material,

like, directly on the opposite
side of where we currently are.

CRAIG: Yeah.

ART: And you've recovered some
porcelain just north of here?

CRAIG: Yeah, lots of it.
ART: Yeah.

So, you know, you go here
to there, to there.

It kind of lines up, you know?

CRAIG: Just a trail.

ART: This is
an underwater environment

known by local fishermen as
a place where they've hung nets.

And that's always a great
indication of a place

that could be parts
of a shipwreck.

Are we clear?

That's perfect, okay.

We're looking at the data
as it's being collected,

and nothing was obviously
sticking out.

I should have had more coffee.

(laughs)

And suddenly we saw
this one area

where there was
this linear feature.

It looked almost like the spines
of the back of a stegosaurus.

There's definitely
something out here.

We're starting to pick up
already some linear features

in an otherwise
sandy environment,

you know, that doesn't
really look like rock.

Oh, here, already, yeah.

Here we're starting to pick up
a few more of those.

Yeah, it is. Four or five meters
long, something like that.

And another.

KYLE: That's the same one,
I think.

CRAIG: Maybe that's
the broken mast.

ART: Is it?

CRAIG: Yeah, now look, it's got
a hollow shadow in the middle.

ART: Yeah, there's a whole
notch out in this.

This is real--yeah, you can
probably see it in the...

Oh, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Look at that.

Look at it up here
in the point cloud.

CRAIG: Oh, look at the bow.
You can see the stern.

It looks almost like
a bow and a stern.

ART: Maybe.
Sometimes X marks the spot.

Could that be the beeswax?

CRAIG: It could be.

SCOTT: Now we know that
the ship was Spanish,

and we know it was wrecked
around 1680 to 1700.

But why was the ship here?

The nearest Spanish settlements
were over 1,000 miles away.

A vital clue came from even
further away: the Philippines.

In April 1991, a dive team
was exploring the waters

outside Manila Bay.

After weeks, they made
an unprecedented discovery:

a 17th century Spanish galleon.

Over 160 feet down

were the wooden remains
of the ship's hull.

♪ ♪

The ship was 115 feet long
and 28 feet wide.

The wreck site was
surrounded by cannons

and hundreds of
intact ceramic jars

containing the packaged goods
ready for sale.

More than 34,000
archaeological objects

were recovered from
the wreck site.

No one had ever found anything
like this in the Pacific before.

It was a Manila galleon
built only in the Philippines.

This ship was called
the San Diego.

It was part of a massive
new trade bringing Asian goods

to the Spanish colonies
in Mexico and beyond.

These galleons carried
large crews,

and they were Spanish-run ships.

They founded a colony
in the Philippines,

and they would use that colony
to trade with the Chinese.

The San Diego carried a similar
cargo to the beeswax wreck.

Its 6,000-mile trip to Mexico
passed just south of Oregon.

The San Diego's cargo
was from Asia,

bound for Europe
on a Spanish ship.

It all fits the picture.

If our hunch was right,

the beeswax wreck was
a Manila galleon, but which one?

We looked for more clues,
then noticed something strange.

Some of the porcelain
was found inland,

well above the high tide marks.

How did that happen?

Once our geologists came out
and looked at our sketch maps

of where material
had been reported,

he said the only way you could
get shipwreck pieces there

would be a big tsunami.

They're caused by
underwater earthquakes

that send surges of water
up to 25 feet high.

A tsunami did hit
the Oregon coast in 1700.

So, we looked for galleons
that sank before that date,

and the records reveal a Manila
galleon that was lost in 1693.

All that evidence put together,
the porcelain dates,

the beeswax that was found,

the geo-archaeology information
about the tsunami,

where artifacts had been found,

high above the reach of
storm waves or high tides.

So, now we know.

The beeswax wreck is
the Santo Cristo de Burgos.

♪ ♪

But how big was the ship?
And what did it look like?

ART: The scans from Manzanita
Beach produced good data.

From this area where
fishermen had reported

getting their nets snagged,

there's what we thought might be
a piece of the beeswax wreck.

It fits so many of
the historical accounts

for the location.

Ah, and here's our AUV photos.

The scans here show
the entire area.

The gray section in the middle
shows the site in greater detail

using a composite of
our underwater photos.

It looked like a pointed boat...

in the previous
lower-resolution data,

but here, it really looks
more like a rock pile.

I thought it might be
part of the wreck,

but it's devastating to find out
it's just a bunch of rocks.

Well, this saved us a dive.

But there's something else
on the scan that's intriguing.

We can see this beautiful ramp
split between the rocks.

It's as if somebody has
dug a little channel.

It slopes right up, right up
to the mouth of the cave.

Anything coming into this bay
that gets up over these rocks,

it's just naturally gonna get
funneled up to this sand chute

right towards that cave,
and it's like a loading ramp.

This is where Craig
found his timbers,

which is exactly where
the geology and the current

suggests pieces of the wreck
could end up.

So, it looks like Craig
was right all along.

Those timbers he found
are the smoking gun.

If we can recover them
and analyze them,

we might be able to learn more
about the ship itself.

♪ ♪

SCOTT: The complications
of recovering the timbers

are that the caves are
at the base of a cliff.

The only way to get out there

is to hike along the base
of that cliff at low tide.

So, you have to time the tides

to where you're walking out
at the right time.

You only have about 60 to 90
minutes to work on the site,

and then you have to hike back.

And at that point we realized

that we needed more help
to do this.

And so we started talking
to an archaeology company

called Search, and Jim Delgado
is probably, you know,

one of the most noted maritime
archaeologists in the US,

and probably the world.

JAMES:
I'm a West Coast-raised kid.

I saw my first shipwreck here

years ago, sticking
out of the sands,

and one might say
that was the beginning

of a lifelong obsession.

If this wreck is
a scattered jigsaw puzzle

and I don't have all the pieces,

a nice diagnostic
piece of the puzzle

will go a long way towards
working out whether

any identifiable parts
of the ship still exist.

And any piece could tell us
how big the ship was,

or even what it looked like.

SCOTT: We are getting ready.

The overland crew is
we're basically gonna hike

along this exposed
cliff base here,

so, over all these boulders.

(Velcro tearing)

ART: Alright.
Good luck. Be safe.

♪ ♪

SCOTT: You're scrambling over
boulders and slick rock faces.

If you fall into
one of those holes,

you could either twist an ankle
or break a leg.

That's why we had
the surf rescue team

and the high angle rescue team
standing by to help us.

JAMES: Any swell that comes in
out of nowhere is one concern,

and they're called
sneaker waves.

And this very cove
has been the site

of sneaker waves and accidents.

Biggest worry is being able
to get everything out on time,

and most importantly actually
is doing that safely

so that nobody gets hurt.

(clanging)

♪ ♪

MAN: Yeah, we're trying
to move right now.

MAN: Got it?
MAN: Yeah.

♪ ♪

SCOTT: Yeah, it's wedged.

(laughs)

What we're looking at here
is a large wooden beam.

It's been eroded and
rounded on this end,

but we can tell
it was squared off.

And this crack gets
really narrow and tight.

And I think this is what's
held this beam here

for the last maybe 300 years.

That's why it hasn't
washed away.

JAMES: Radio report
just came in.

They're gonna start pulling out
the first of the timbers,

and that begins
with the biggest one

that's wedged
inside the sea cave.

SCOTT: Steve got out his pry bar

and a couple of
short lengths of 2x4

that he could put between
the beam and the pry bar.

Oh, Steve, that's perfect.

We got it.

♪ ♪

MAN: Go slow, guys.

SCOTT: We had brought out with
us a bunch of life jackets.

We wrapped those life jackets
around the beam

and then took those straps that
we had used to lift the beam

to secure the life jackets
to the beam.

Then came scrambling around

trying to find
the other pieces of wood.

The next feeling I had was
kind of a sense of urgency,

because the tides were
starting to come in.

There's a couple of pinch points
on the trail back,

that if you don't get over them
before the tide comes up,

you can't get past them.

♪ ♪

STEVE: Does somebody have
a flagging tape?

We can start doing
some of these smaller ones,

because we're gonna have
the time against us.

MAN: This is three?
MAN: This is three, yup.

JAMES: So, we've been on scene
now for just under three hours.

SCOTT: Hey, guys!
We need to start going!

♪ ♪

Losing our window.

♪ ♪

STEVE:
I'm running out of time here.

♪ ♪

(grunt)

ART: Well, that's not light.

JAMES: No, it's not.

(Art laughs)

So, definitely not driftwood.

STEVE: No.

JAMES: But you can see
the pattern right here, here.

There's more of
the pattern there.

It could be up,
more upper structure.

SCOTT: We finally had
what we believed

were pieces of the Santo Cristo,
a ship lost over 300 years ago.

STEVE: Let's see what we got.

SCOTT:
It may not look like much,

but with the help of experts
like Jim Delgado,

we're optimistic that we might
be able to use these pieces

to figure out more
about the ship.

♪ ♪

KYLE LENT: I think there's 13,
maybe 14 total pieces.

Not all of them may be
cultural from the wreck,

but we wanted to basically
grab what we could

and then sort it out here.

SCOTT: Galleon wood, especially
for Manila galleons, is rare.

So, every bit of wood that
we can get tells us something

about how these galleons
were constructed.

Could it be these pieces of wood

tell us which part of the ship
was washed ashore here?

So, we're gonna be examining
all those pieces of wood

to try to figure out where
in the ship they might have fit.

JAMES: See the patterns there?

Some of these you can
almost get the sense

of this being a bolt
that was clenched.

Here's a piece that I can say
comes right off of that ship,

and here's where
it fit in the ship.

What else can it tell us
about the galleon?

There's something harder in here

that we'll probably want
to shine a light in.

Appears to be a rock.

♪ ♪

Sorry, guy.

We got any water for him?

This is a square hole.

SCOTT: Yeah.

JAMES: It's eroded a bit
around here, but yeah.

Possibly what we're
looking at here

is where a bolt fastener
came in.

This one piece alone is
sheer, you know, magic.

SCOTT: Yeah.

JAMES: The holes and the weight
of the piece tell us

that it likely came
from low in the hull.

The more we look at it,
the more you learn, you know?

If we could figure out
where this piece belonged

in the hull of
Santo Cristo de Burgos,

then we could work out
how big the hull was.

PETE KELSEY: Let's make
a digital copy

we can share with the masses.

JAMES: I love it.

So, our first step was to make
a 3D virtual copy

in forensic detail.

This gives us a chance
to take this piece

and virtually send it
to experts everywhere,

and say, "What do you think?
Where do you think it fits?"

SCOTT: Our investigation into
the beam is telling us a lot

about the full structure
of the Santo Cristo.

X-rays revealed iron residue
inside the beam

which must have come from bolts
that have rusted away.

Okay, this is gonna be great.
I can't wait to see this.

Comparing the timbers
from the San Diego galleon

in the Philippines with the ones
we found in the cave

revealed they are both
tropical hardwood,

the sort of wood that only
grows in the Philippines.

3D scans allow us to pinpoint

exactly where on the hull
our timber fits.

Comparing it to a similar timber
on the San Diego

tells us that
the Santo Cristo de Burgos

must have been a bigger ship.

We can use that information to
scale up the ship's structure.

That gives a ship that was
130 feet long and 41 feet wide.

Fully loaded,
it weighed over 1,500 tons,

carrying over twice the cargo
of the San Diego.

(rigging creaking)

This was the container
freight ship of its day,

and it was part of a nearly
forgotten global trade route.

That is great. Look at that.

♪ ♪

They were doing
something truly epic.

They were taking cargo from Asia
and shipping it to Mexico,

and then overland
by mule train,

and on across
the Atlantic to Europe.

This extraordinary trade route
continued for over 250 years.

So now we know the full story
of the Santo Cristo de Burgos.

It set off from Manila and
must have been blown off course,

sinking off the Oregon coast
in 1693.

Seven years later,
a tsunami hit the Oregon coast,

smashing the wreck apart

and scattering hundreds of tons
of cargo along the coastline

to elevations over
25 feet above sea level.

JAMES: Everybody has always
talked about,

in terms of our wreck here
on the north Pacific coast,

has either been an Asian wreck,

a Japanese junk or
a Chinese vessel,

or it was a Spanish galleon.

And so, Hollywood
notwithstanding,

no pirates, no time, no how.

No way.

CHRISSY: Craig Andes is
a good example of somebody

who knows that coast
really, really well,

who has spent his life
researching

this particular wreck.

ART: The Coasties are out.

CHRISSY: But what's
most important is

that he raised his hand and
said, "Hey, I found something,"

and he brought it to the museum.

And here we are with the biggest
piece of this puzzle

in 330 years
because he did that.

CRAIG: Out here, a lot of
the locals have known about

the beeswax shipwreck
suspected to be in this cove.

Um, Joe, on the Sigi.

MAN: This is the gentleman.

Craig, could you put
your hand up?

So, Craig is what is known as,

like, the beachcomber
that found this thing.

Everybody thought
you were crazy.

CRAIG: Oh, I know.

I've been called Crazy Craig
a lot of times.

(laughter)

I hope there isn't any
hard feelings, that I like,

disturbed, you know,

a grave site
or something like that.

I'd like to think
I did a service

to potentially answer
the questions

that the Natives that were local
here seem to have.

♪ ♪

ROBERT: Wow.

ROBERTA BASCH: And this is
300 pounds approximately? Wow.

ROBERT: And over 300 years old.

DICK: Amazing.

ROBERT: You know, it's direct
proof of our oral history

as being accurate, but also it
is some of the earliest history

of our contact with
non-Native folks here.

But it definitely has spots for
some big bolts to go through.

DICK: Incredible.

Wow.

Wow.

ROBERTA: This just really
makes me think of the people

and the things
that were in there

when you talk about
the beeswax boxes

that we all found,
the tribes found.

And the people that
must have come ashore,

the people that might have
survived and lived

with everybody during that time.

ROBERT: With our families.
ROBERTA: Yeah.

♪ ♪

JAMES: We're certain that
we have confirmed pieces

of Santo Cristo here,

but it was a huge ship, so
more of it is still out there.

You never know what's buried
beneath the sands offshore.

This coast, those caves,
these sands, these dunes,

all have held history,

and some portions of them
still hold history.