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PHOTOGRAPHS BY BALAZS GARDI
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Carrying riches from Asia, the Spanish galleon wrecked off Oregon’s wild Pacific coast 329 years ago, its sinking told by Native Americans who fished out distinctive blocks of beeswax that floated ashore. Those tales fired the imagination of Steven Spielberg, who had the idea for 1985’s film The Goonies, about treasure-hunting kids and the mystery galleon.
Today, Oregon officials said a dozen timbers from the Santo Cristo de Burgos have been recovered from sea caves in a risky emergency recovery mission involving archaeologists, law enforcement personnel, and several search-and-rescue teams (pictured above).
The discovery of the rare galleon thrilled historians and Native Americans, whose ancestors passed down the oral history of the wreckage. It “confirms that our ancestral people knew what they were doing,” Robert Kentta, a member of the Siletz Tribal Council, tells Nat Geo’s Kristin Romey.
Read the full story here.
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