Michelle A Eng Leang

Dutch ships that have slept on the seabed of the Scar­bor­ough Har­bour for more than four cen­turies will soon be brought to the sur­face, now that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has giv­en the green light to a project by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut and the In­sti­tute of Nau­ti­cal Ar­chae­ol­o­gy of the Unit­ed States.

"Now the re­al work must be­gin," says Dr Kroum Batch­varov, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of mar­itime ar­chae­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, who will lead the project in To­ba­go. His team is ex­pect­ed to be­gin pre­lim­i­nary work in June. Batch­varov's in­ter­est in To­ba­go is sim­ply be­cause of the wrecks them­selves. He has al­ready se­cured the lo­ca­tion of three Dutch wrecks from 17th-cen­tu­ry bat­tles in the Scar­bor­ough har­bour area, but be­lieves that there are more.

"This was a very im­por­tant pe­ri­od in his­to­ry and the Dutch were be­lieved to be the lead­ers of ship­build­ing at that time," he says. Now that he has been giv­en the ap­proval, what next? A trip to To­ba­go in June with a large team will kick-start the project with pre­lim­i­nary work, which will in­clude fur­ther con­fir­ma­tion of the wrecks' lo­ca­tion and sur­vey­ing of the wrecks to es­tab­lish their size as well as the size of the site.

"The ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sea­son for 2012 has al­ready be­gun, so the avail­abil­i­ty of man­pow­er needs to be as­sessed as many oth­er projects are un­der­way." The re­al work will be­gin in 2013. "The ma­te­r­i­al that will be re­cov­ered will be ex­cep­tion­al, and a very com­pelling tale can be built from what is dis­cov­ered," he added.

"These were dy­nam­ic cen­turies and the Dutch were the best ship­wrights at that time. No ships from this pe­ri­od have been stud­ied be­fore and we are hop­ing to draw con­clu­sions with ref­er­ence to the co­her­ent struc­ture of the ships them­selves."

Batch­varov, who spe­cialis­es in 17th-cen­tu­ry ship con­struc­tion, is known for his work on Swe­den's Vasa, which is now housed in its own mu­se­um, and at­tracts over a mil­lion vis­i­tors a year.

"The Vasa is the longest-main­tained ship­wreck and its mu­se­um is huge­ly suc­cess­ful." He al­so worked on the War­wick Project in Bermu­da (the 2011 ex­ca­va­tion of the mid sec­tion of the hull of the mer­chant ship War­wick be­long­ing to Sir Robert Rich, the Earl of War­wick which sank in Oc­to­ber 1619, when a dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane wreaked hav­oc on the is­lands of Bermu­da).

Mas­sive un­der­tak­ing for To­ba­go

He be­lieves this is a mas­sive un­der­tak­ing for To­ba­go and "has the po­ten­tial to be the leader in un­der­wa­ter cul­tur­al re­source man­age­ment and pro­tec­tion in the en­tire Caribbean". "The easy part will be rais­ing the wrecks; it's their main­te­nance that is an in­tri­cate process."

Wrecks that are sur­faced need to be kept wet, to pre­vent the tim­ber from col­laps­ing. The ships' wood will be com­plete­ly wa­ter­logged and will need to be sprayed with chem­i­cal agents to re­place the wa­ter and bulk up the cells. "The Vasa, for in­stance, had to be sprayed con­stant­ly for al­most 12 years and kept in a build­ing where the tem­per­a­ture was kept con­stant at 16 de­grees Cel­sius all year round," Batch­varov ex­plained.

As for fund­ing, Batch­varov con­firmed that many or­gan­i­sa­tions have ex­pressed in­ter­est in the project, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic. Con­firmed fun­ders in­clude the Glob­al Ex­plo­ration and Ocean­ic So­ci­ety, whose pres­i­dent, Ja­son Pa­ter­ni­ti, ac­com­pa­nied Batch­varov to To­ba­go ear­li­er this year and will re­turn with the team for the pre­lim­i­nary sur­vey in June.

He sees great ma­te­r­i­al com­ing out of this project, in­clud­ing books, ar­ti­cles and doc­u­men­taries. Every­thing will be record­ed in data­bas­es, no mat­ter how small the item, and "every­thing is the prop­er­ty of To­ba­go." Batch­varov is very ex­cit­ed to be­gin his work in To­ba­go.

"I do hope that I can at least min­i­mal­ly con­tribute to To­ba­go. I loved To­ba­go. I have been down there three times now-twice in 2007, once ear­ly this year-but have not seen a tenth of what I would like to see. "Every­where (that I went) I was met with great kind­ness, gen­eros­i­ty and friend­li­ness.

I ap­pre­ci­ate it. To­ba­go is do­ing a very good job of pre­serv­ing its his­to­ry. The Trust mem­bers that I met are very wise peo­ple, who re­al­ly know what is in the in­ter­est of the is­land and want to pre­serve it. They know and un­der­stand what a cul­tur­al trea­sure they have."