Treasure wreck found in Namibia

The ship was laden with a wealth of objects, including six bronze cannons, several tons of copper, more than 50 elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, weapons and thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins.

Namdeb, a joint venture between De Beers and the Namibian government, said that the head of its Mineral Resource Department, Bob Burrell, had found some rounded copper ingots and the remains of three bronze cannons, on April 1. The ancient ship was found in the 'Sperrgebiet' or 'Forbidden Zone', where the company pushes back the Atlantic Ocean by building massive sea walls to search for diamonds. This protective zone ensured that the wreck was secure, allowing it to be thoroughly researched.

All mining operations were halted, the site secured and the archaeologist Dr Dieter Noli, was brought into the project and identified the cannons as 'Spanish Breach' - loaders of a type popular in the early 1500s," Namdeb said in a statement. "If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli, who is researching the ship's origins, said in an interview Thursday.

"Judging from the notables depicted on the hoard of Spanish and Portuguese coins and the type of cannons and crude navigational equipment, the ship went down in the late 1400s or early 1500s, around the time Vasco da Gama and Columbus were plying the waters of the New World, a period when the whole world was being opened up. If this proves to be a contemporary of the ships sailed by the likes of Diaz, Da Gama and Columbus, it would be of immense national and international interest and Namibia's most important archaeological find of the century," Noli said.

The wealth aboard is intriguing. Noli said the large amount of copper could mean the ship had been sent by a government looking for material to build cannons. Trade in ivory was usually controlled by royal families, another indication the ship was on official business.

On the other hand, why was the captain still holding so many coins? Shouldn't they have been traded for the ivory and copper? "Either he did a very, very good deal. Or he was a pirate. I'm convinced we'll find out what the ship was and who the captain was. Sending a ship toward Africa in that period, that was venture capital in the extreme," Noli said. "These chaps were very much on the edge as far as navigation. It was still very difficult for them to know where they were.”

What sent her down may remain a mystery. But the stretch of coast where it met its fate was notorious for fierce storms and disorienting fogs. It had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable coast. It sank, only to be found last month by men seeking other treasure In later years, sailors with sophisticated navigational tools avoided it. The only tools found aboard Noli's wrecks were astrolabes, which can be used to determine only how far north or south you have sailed.