According to legend, the ship Santo Cristo de Burgos and its precious contents washed up on the shores of Oregon, in the northwest of the United States, in 1693. In 1985, this story inspired a film by American director Steven Spielberg, The Goonies. Finally, in 2022, this fantastic tale finds its epilogue: the local authorities announced, Thursday, June 16, that wood having belonged to the boat was found and taken from a sea cave, reported National Geographic in a long report devoted to this perilous operation.
The archaeological treasure is made up of a dozen wooden planks, reports the magazine which tells how the work of archaeologists from the Maritime Archeology Society (MAS) identified the ship.
Remains of the wreck had already been discovered over the centuries. Thus, the indigenous tribes of the region were already trading with the blocks of beeswax carried by this ship, which disappeared 329 years ago, when it linked Mexico to the Philippines – then under Spanish domination -, says the magazine. Remains of wood found in the region had already been attributed to the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a ship whose story has been told over the centuries by the native peoples of the region, before fascinating the local press. It was by reading one of his articles that Steven Spielberg had the idea of making a film of it. The Gooniesreleased in 1985, tells the adventures of a group of children, the Goonies, on the trail of pirate Willy le Borgne’s treasure.
These boards “confirm that our ancestors knew what they were talking about”told National Geographic Robert Kentta, the Siletz Confederated Tribes Cultural Resources Manager.
Finally, in the mid-2000s, the MAS had studied the remains of porcelain that once constituted the cargo of the ship. In 2020, a local fisherman accustomed to explorations along the rugged coast of this part of Oregon, Craig Andes, approached the MAS, fearing that wooden planks he had identified a few years earlier in a cave under -marine, are washed away by the sea. They are dnow safe at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in the city of Astoria.