Historic Ship La Belle

[Tgabe]

The La Belle, a ship belonging to the French explorer  La Salle, sank in Matgorda Bay in 1686. The sunken wreck was discovered in 1995 and was dug up and brought out of the mud.

They have moved the pieces to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin and are rebuiling the ship there.  The museum will become the permanent home of the restored vessel.

If you come to Austin, I would recommend seeing this ship.  They are rebuilding it right now and you can watch live streaming video of the build.  

 

 

http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/la-belle

 

If you have been stressed out about your own building project, you should check this out.  We went to see it during the Christmas break, it is really amazing.

[Charlie Jones]

When they were doing the excavation of La Belle we would go out to the coffer dam, tie up to the dock they had provided, and sit in seats on top to watch the progress. Afterward, they had a setup in Victoria, just a mile or so away from my shop where you could go  watch, and speak with, the curators as they cleaned artifacts. Quite a fascinating time.

 

At the site of Ft St Louis, they found buried cannon from the La Salle expedition  and located the foundations of the buildings there.

 

A part of the artifacts, and a small scale working  replica of the ship is located in Palacios, where all of the artifacts, and ship pieces were brought ashore.

 

Also a scale model of the ship,, and some of the artifacts are on display in the Maritime Museum in Rockport.

There is a statue of LaSalle on the shore of the bay just about 2 miles from my house, since this is the area he was in during that time.

 

The recovery was a very interesting time here on the Texas coast