Santa Maria, 1530-1531

Country: Malta

Place: Dockyard Creek (Birgu / Senglea), Grand Harbour. According to Bosio, the ship ran aground in shallow mud off Senglea, near the chapel of St Julian.

Coordinates (approximate): 35.885, 14.518 (location given by Bosio; the wreck has not been found)

Type: Carrack, flagship of the Order of St John

Identified: Santa Maria (formerly the Mogarbina), from historical sources; no remains have been located or identified.

Dated: 1530-1531

 

Beam: Unknown.

Keel Length: Unknown.

Length Overall: Unknown.

Number of Masts: Unknown.

 

History of the wreck

The Santa Maria, originally named the Mogarbina, was captured in the eastern Mediterranean in 1507 by the San Giovanni, a carrack of the Order of St John, and taken to Rhodes. When the Order left Rhodes in 1523, after an honourable capitulation, the Grand Master sailed on the "great carrack", the Santa Maria, with the principal commanders and the sick and wounded knights (Vertot 1989: II, 1-2). The fleet numbered some fifty sail.

During the seven years before the Order received Malta from Charles V, a new carrack, the Santa Anna, was built in Nice, and the Santa Maria was kept seaworthy, except for a short period when Spain and France were at war (Muscat 2000a: 14). Before the knights arrived, the ship sailed back and forth between Sicily and Malta, carrying supplies from Messina.

On 20 October 1530, a week before the arrival of the knights, the Santa Maria was moored stern-to in what is today Dockyard Creek. A storm, probably from the northeast, broke her mooring lines and anchors and drove her towards the Marsa, where she was beached and later refloated. She was not badly damaged, but was no longer fit for use as a warship and was turned into a floating warehouse, mint and sleeping quarters for female and child slaves (Muscat 2000a: 15).

The main source for the loss of the ship is Bosio, whose account was published over a century after the event and must rest on earlier sources; no primary document, such as an official report, has been found. Bosio uses the verb incagliare, "to run aground", not affondare, "to sink", which suggests that the ship ran aground in the shallow mud off Senglea, near the church of St Julian. Artillery, cannonballs and objects of the treasury, then kept on board, were then recovered; Bosio uses the word ripescarono, which implies that they were under water. What happened to the hull after this salvage is not known: it may have sunk where it lay, been broken up for its timber, or been raised and scuttled where it would not hinder navigation (Gambin n.d.).

 

Description of the site

Dockyard Creek is a drowned valley, once a tributary of the river system now flooded by the Grand Harbour. Over 20 m of soft sediment lie over the bedrock at the entrance of the creek, thinning towards its head (Figure 2). The Admiralty dredged the central channel from the late 19th century to keep it at about 60 ft (c. 20 m); only the upper sediments were removed, but the area was heavily bombed in the Second World War, which must have disturbed the seabed. The anaerobic mud favours the survival of wood and other organic materials, as shown by excavations in the creek, where 16th-century levels were reached at 1.5 m below the seabed (Gambin 2003: 76).

In 1999 a survey of the Grand Harbour by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and the Museums Department of Malta, with side-scan sonar and magnetometer, gave inconclusive results in the creek because of modern ferrous debris (Atauz 2000).

In 2002, as part of the Archaeological Impact Assessment for a yacht marina, a sub-bottom profiler survey was carried out under the direction of T. Gambin by EA Associates (UK), with an EG&G Uniboom boomer and a Trimble dGPS (accuracy c. 30 cm), from the Malta Maritime Authority vessel Madonna Ta' Pinu. Track lines followed a grid of 10 x 5 m cells; areas next to the quays and among mooring buoys were not surveyed. Only objects of 1 m or more were recorded: 186 targets, buried between 0.1 and 8 m below the seabed, and four clusters of objects, which proved to be recent metallic debris (Smith 2002).

No large object or cluster comparable to the remains of a large ship was found off the chapel of St Julian. The author proposes two explanations: either Bosio's reference point, probably derived from second-hand eyewitness accounts taken from different places, is inaccurate; or the hull slid from the Senglea side towards the centre of the creek and was buried there (Figure 1). Several of the large targets in the creek fall within the dimensions of the Santa Maria, and their study was left for a separate paper with J. Smith. The marina was designed not to affect the buried objects, and the author recommends that, if found, the remains be preserved in situ (Gambin n.d.).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cargo

At the time of her loss the ship served as a storehouse, mint and quarters for slaves. According to Bosio, objects of the treasury of the Order were salvaged after she ran aground.

 

Ballast

Not reported.

 

Anchors

The ship lost her mooring lines and anchors in the storm of October 1530. No anchors have been located.

 

Guns

According to Bosio, pieces of artillery and cannonballs were salvaged after the ship ran aground.

 

Iron concretions

Not reported.

 

Hull Remains

No hull remains are known; the wreck has not been located.

 

 

Keel, keelson and mast step

Not reported. The wreck has not been located.

 

Frames

Not reported.

 

Planking

Not reported.

 

Ceiling, thick stuff, and wales

Not reported.

 

Caulking

Not reported.

 

 

Size and scantlings

Not reported. Carracks could reach up to 1200 tons (Kemp 1988: 141), but no dimensions are given for the Santa Maria. If found, her remains would be the first of a large late medieval ship of the eastern Mediterranean.

 

 

 

 

Wood

Not reported.

 

 

Bibliography

Atauz, A. 2000. "Survey of the Valletta Harbours in Malta 1999." The INA Quarterly 27.1: 6-10.

Bosio, G. [1602]. Dell'istoria della Sacra Religione et Illustrissima Militia di San Giovanni Gierosolimitano, Parte III. Rome. [Full reference to be completed.]

Gambin, T. 2003. "A window on history from the seabed." Treasures of Malta 10.1: 71-77.

Gambin, T. n.d. "That Elusive Ship: The Search for the Wreck of the Santa Maria": 52-60. [Full reference to be completed.]

Kemp, P. (ed.) 1988. The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Muscat, J. 2000a. The Carrack of the Order. Malta: PIN Books.

Muscat, J. 2000b. Il-Flotta ta' l-Ordni ta' San Gwann. Malta: PIN Books.

Scammell, G.V. 1981. The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Powers c. 800-1650. London: Methuen.

Smith, J. 2002. Acoustic Archaeological Investigation of Dockyard Creek, Malta. UK: EA Associates.

Vertot, A. de. 1989. The History of the Knights of Malta, vol. II. Malta (facsimile edition).

Wismayer, J. 1997. The Fleet of the Order of St John, 1530-1798. Malta: Midsea Books.