(21-04-10) When entering the wonderful world of diving, who has not imagined finding “something”, although that “something” is not a pirate’s treasure, but arouses our interest?

    This is the topic of this article. In Argentina they are working now, and a lot, on identifying shipwrecks and studying them. It is a very hard activity with very few official supporting (it is mainly private), not always well paid, in difficult climatic areas for practicing diving. It is a silent activity but very fertile, not only for those who practice it, but also for the cultural heritage of the country where the remains are found.

    Shipwrecks, and everything living in them, are a very important part of history and culture of a region. The most developed countries preserve the remains with appropriate legal frameworks that prevent "trading" elements extracted from them. Argentine is one of them.

    Is not more attractive to visit a museum where we can appreciate the elements rescued from a wreck, where we are told their history? I am for museums! Well, let’s go to the deep sea and listen to the stories about the English corvette HMS SWIFT. There we go…

A BIT OF HISTORY

    Making a bit of History and more than 200 years ago, the overseas countries Spain, France and England were competing for the world and among other objectives they wanted to get the marine routes in the south of the American continent, specially the Patagonia because of its close location to the Falkland Islands, English base until nowadays.

    So, in 1770 and with destination Port Egmont (British base in our Argentinean Falkland Islands) the corvette HMS SWIFT began a reconnaissance trip of the geography (?) with one hundred crew members. (¡That’s what they say!)

    Maybe destiny make it wreck in the Patagonian coasts at 6 pm on March 13, 1770, when they were spying (now I relieve them a bit more) in a virtual economic war between the British monarchy and her eternal enemies: France and Spain, to occupy new territories, according to historic research.

    According to the Mexican archaeologist and anthropologist Jorge Manuel Herrera Tovar, the presence of the ship in the coast of the province Santa Cruz (Argentine) was due to a “conflict of interests”, and that was the reason why they were watching the Spanish movements.

    The tragic wreck occurred near the coast of the current harbour of the city Puerto Deseado (Santa Cruz Province). According to what historian say, in middle of a heavy storm the bow of the British vessel collided with a rocky promontory.

    Only three sailors died sunk, the rest of the crew, about 88 sailors with different graduation, get to survive and arrived to the safe Patagonian beaches while the corvette lied in a wet bed 18 m. deep approximately. In that liquid house it remained with no visits until 1982.

THE DISCOVERY

    The discovery of the sunken vessel in the estuary of the Puerto on March 13, 1770 is not, as usually thought a task for scientists of the «Discovery Channel», but the result of the curiosity of a teenager that attended the Salesian School San José.

    Marcelo Rosas was who, in 1980 during a Maths lesson with teacher Ricardo Loncarnini, listened his teacher mentioning the English war ship. The student was interested in it, and when lesson finished he asked the teacher where he could get more information about the issue.

    The teacher recommend him asking the former Tourism Director of Puerto Deseado, Leandro Roberts, and this man was who told him that in 1975 somebody had arrived to Puerto Deseado. He was “the Australian Army retired Patrick Rdney Gower, who said that his ancestor Erasmus Gower had arrived to Puerto Desado aboard the  SWIFT on March 13, 1770”. Gower was one of the survivals of the wreck and wrote the story on a personal diary. Patrick decided to visit Puerto Deseado to search information, but, surprisingly, nothing was known there”.

    The student- researcher Marcelo Rosas visited later Captain Marcos Oliva Day, who showed him a nautical chart and so he could reconstruct the route of the English ship. A bit later and after telling the story to his friends, Rosas creates a “commission” with Mario Brozoski, Marco Kelez, Rubén Puschel and Carlos Santi, who added to his crazy adventure of finding the corvette, sunk in the local coast.

    Everybody worked. They looked for maps, recordings, old notes, and began to dive among papers, museums, libraries and also water. Once, and twice, and again… but nothing. Until luck changed on February 4, 1982, when Rosas and Guillén, a man from the Puerto that had arrived there attracted by love, found some old woods.

    “That imaginary tour would lead us some time later to find the remains of the ship.” That day, Marcelo Rosas wrote on his diary: “… we took our tubes and went to a close place… we thought that the “SWIFT” could be there. Some months before we had observed a rock appearing at low tide… We proceeded to dive…

“… The impression was incredible...”

    “…we were holding our hands, because they are very cloudy waters and I didn’t have as much experience like diver. Suddenly, Guillén pointed out the wood. I thought it could be anything, but we turned back and it was there. It was clearly the “crack” of a ship… it was the corvette “SWIFT”.

    The Puerto Deseado Museum was created in August 1983 to keep the objects of the corvette HMS SWIF” and María Isabel Sanguinetti was in charge of the institution. In 1986 Mario Brozoski, who has worked so much to rescue the vessel, died in an accident repairing ships, so since 1988 the Museum is called Museo Regional Provincial Mario Brozoski.

    The circle in the map attached indicates the place where the accident happened, 47 º 47 'South Latitude and 66 º 10' west longitude “in the Patagonia, whose distress at varying degrees to the north and south of Puerto Deseado hardly be compared…” (Teniente Erasmus Gower, 1803)

    The archaeological research in Project Swift is very relevant because it is the first work in Argentina in which archaeologists that are certified to dive are working. We must not forget however that the work that archaeologists are doing is integrated in the framework of a multidisciplinary work, with the also main conservation tasks and value of this valued cultural patrimony of Santa Cruz and Argentine.