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In December 1708, two Danish West India Company vessels, the Fredericus IV and the Christianus V, set sail from Copenhagen, bound for West Africa. There, they picked up 800 enslaved African men, women, and children, intended for sale in the Americas. In September 1709, following an aborted uprising by the Africans imprisoned on board the Fredericus IV, the two ships left the port of Accra in Ghana together and embarked on the next leg of their voyage, to the Danish colony of St Thomas in the Antilles. They never arrived.
According to historical sources, adverse weather conditions and navigation errors led them astray, and in early March 1710 the ships found themselves forced to seek shelter in a bay on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, c.2,000km from their intended destination. The ships’ crews, growing anxious about their dwindling food supplies, appear to have launched a violent mutiny, which is believed to have been joined by the Africans on board. In response, the captains set ashore the c.650 surviving enslaved Africans, and allowed the crew to divide the ships’ gold among themselves before disembarking. Witness testimonies indicate that the Fredericus IV was then set alight, while the anchor rope of the Christianus V was cut and the ship left to break up in the surf. The crew found other transport to Panama; the two captains returned to Denmark. Of the enslaved individuals released on the beach, some were later recaptured, questioned, and sold to plantations in Costa Rica, while others may have escaped into the forests and assimilated into local communities.
This much is understood of the ships’ last moments thanks to a combination of historical sources and oral tradition, but conflicting information surrounds the details of these events, and the final resting place of the vessels remained unknown – until now.
Mystery shipwrecks
Off the coast of Costa Rica, in Cahuita National Park, two shipwrecks lie in shallow water. Their existence has been known for many years: the earliest reported sightings come from Afro-Caribbean fisherfolk who arrived in Cahuita Point in the 1800s and handed down stories about the wrecks through their oral history. Various hypotheses about the ships’ identities have been proposed over the years, with suggestions including pirate ships, Portuguese or Spanish galleons, and even slave ships, but scientific confirmation was needed.
The wrecks have undergone several investigations since the 1980s, but since 2016 they have been the focus of a project led by the Centro Comunitario de Buceo Embajadores del Mar (CCBEM) – the Community Diving Centre Ambassadors of the Sea – a group comprised largely of local young people, created to train divers and steward archaeological projects in this region. The CCBEM collaborated with archaeologists from around the world, including East Carolina University and, most recently, the National Museum of Denmark, to study the Cahuita wrecks. Detailed photogrammetric maps and 3D models were created, underwater excavations were carried out, and archaeological material was obtained for analysis. This research clearly identified two wreck sites c.1km apart: one scattered with cannon, anchors, bricks, and loose artefacts, while the other featured a distinct pile of bricks covering the bottom of the wreck, resembling a cargo or ballast area. The latest investigations took place in 2023 and focused on the wreck closest to Cahuita Point: the one with the distinct pile of bricks. From this wreck, researchers took 23 brick samples, as well as a sample of wood from the frame of the ship. They also recovered 10 fragments of clay pipes, and three loose pieces of wood.
Now chemical analysis of the brick samples has revealed that the clay came from one of two locations, Iller Strand or Egernsund, both of which are located in the Flensburg Fjord, near the Danish border with Germany. This finding confirms earlier suggestions that the size, shape, and yellow colour of the bricks observed at the wreck site were consistent with those made in Flensburg in the 18th and 19th centuries for use in Denmark and the Danish colonies. Similarly, study of the wood samples determined that the ship’s timbers were made of oak from the western Baltic Sea region, which encompasses Denmark, north-eastern Germany, and southern Sweden. Dendrochronology shows that the tree in question was felled around 1690-1695, lining up perfectly with the history of the ships. What is more, the wood samples are charred and sooty, in accordance with historical reports that the Fredericus IV sank in a fire. Meanwhile, examination of the clay pipes revealed that they were a standard type made in the Netherlands, which were commonly used on board Danish ships, too. Their design indicates that they were made in the period just before 1710, and such pipes were rarely used for more than five years.
These analyses, combined with documentary sources and oral history gathered as part of the research, leaves little doubt that the shipwrecks in Cahuita National Park are indeed those of the Christianus V and the Fredericus IV.
Community heritage
The discovery of the final resting place of the lost ships fills a gap in the historical record, as well as answering the question of the identities of the Cahuita wrecks, which has been of long-standing interest to the local community. The findings are particularly valuable due to the devastating loss of ancestral heritage caused by the transatlantic slave trade; the results of this project represent a new addition to the personal histories of some of those affected. Ethnographic research has been used to trace the story of an African man named Miguel Maroto, who was among the enslaved individuals disembarked from the Christianus V onto the beach in March 1710. He was recaptured four months later in Matina and sold in Cartago. Eight generations later, his eldest living relative has been identified: Celia Navarro, a 103-year-old Costa Rican who still lives in Cartago today. Celia and her daughters have thanked the project for giving them ‘the privilege to know a part of our identity that we did not know about until now’.
Also of great importance is the unique way this project was carried out, with citizen science at its core. María Suarez Toro, Maraya Jiménez Tsysigue, and Pete Stephens Rodríguez, three ‘Ambassadors of the Sea’ from CCBEM describe how the project’s ‘unique holistic approach… combined professional archaeology with scuba diving and amateur underwater archaeology skills and the community’s ancestral knowledge’. Such an approach is the first of its kind in the country, and resulted in the region being recognised by UNESCO in 2022 as the ‘Birthplace of Community Underwater Archaeology in Costa Rica’.
Text: Amy Brunskill
