Pepper Wreck 15 Years Later

In this article comic, we present the story of excavation and reconstruction of a seventeen century Portuguese nau, the Nossa Senhora dos Mártires.

After a six-month voyage returning from India, the nau sunk on September 14th, 1606 in Tagus River very close to Lisbon.

It is called Pepper Wreck since naus carried an enormous amount of peppercorns in addition to a variety of other trade goods. Peppercorn, used to season food, was the most important spice in Portuguese trade. Special boxes were built into the holds of the ships to store the pepper, taking up most of the space available on the lower decks.

When the nau sank, the pepper boxes built into the hold ruptured, and the spilled pepper formed a black tide that extended for leagues along the coast. The beaches on the Tagus mouth were full of pepper for years. This is where the name Pepper Wreck came from.

The remains of the nau stayed undisturbed under Tagus River for 350 years. In 1996 and 1997, excavations were conducted on the wreck site under the direction of Dr. Castro and Dr. Francisco Alves, who was then director of the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia (National Museum of Archaeology) in Lisbon.

The Pepper Wreck is the only Portuguese nau of the period to have been excavated by archaeologists.