Archaeologists from the National Museum of Denmark recently announced that two 18th-century shipwrecks off the coast of Central America were confirmed to be slave ships.
According to Fox News, the remains of the two ships, known as the Fridericus Quartus and Christianus Quintus, have been located underwater off the coast of the Cahuita National Park in Costa Rica for more than 300 years. The outlet noted that the two ships were believed to have been pirate ships prior to a recent discovery.
Fox News reported that David John Gregory, an archaeologist with the National Museum of Denmark, told the outlet that the ships are now believed to have been carrying between 600 and 700 African slaves and roughly 100 crew members when the ships sank.
“When the ships were abandoned on the coast of present-day Costa Rica, almost all of the enslaved were released on the forested coast except for about 20 people, who were forced onboard smaller vessels heading for the nearby Spanish town of Portobello,” Gregory said. “[Fridericus Quartus] was set on fire by its crew, while the other, Christianus Quintus, was set free from its moorings and soon after stranded on the coast.”
The National Museum of Denmark announced last month that new information regarding the Fridericus Quartus and Christianus Quintus had been revealed by “scientific analyses from an underwater excavation in 2023, when marine archaeologists from the National Museum of Denmark and the Viking Ship Museum took samples of wood from one of the wrecks and from the bricks that were part of the cargo more than 300 years ago.”
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Gregory told Fox News that the excavation was “minimal” and that his team surveyed approximately 21 square feet around one of the ships to “obtain samples of the ship’s timber.”
According to the National Museum of Denmark, archaeologists have been able to use dendrochronological technology to determine that the wood from the ships was from the 17th century.
The National Museum of Denmark explained, “The timbers originate in the western part of the Baltic Sea, an area that encompasses the northeastern German province of Mecklenburg, as well as Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and Scania — and that the tree was cut down sometime during the years 1690-1695.”
The museum added that the “charred and sooty” wood confirmed historical sources that claimed one of the ships had been “set ablaze.”
“The analyses are very convincing and we no longer have any doubts that these are the wrecks of the two Danish slave ships,” Gregory said. “The bricks are Danish and the same goes for the timbers, which are additionally charred and sooty from a fire. This fits perfectly with the historical accounts stating that one of the ships burnt.”
Pictures of the remains of the two Danish slave ships have been shared on X, formerly Twitter.
