e l l e B iV ve La In 1995 archaeologists recovered part of La Salle’s ship La Belle off Texas’ Gulf Coast. So began a remarkable project to preserve, reconstruct, and display the 17th-century vessel. By Elizabeth Lunday
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n the spring of 1684, a team labored to assemble a ship in the port town of Rochefort in southwest France.They fastened timbers using iron bolts and wooden pegs and raised three masts over the single deck.That summer the vessel, christened La Belle, set sail with Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, who was on a quest to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River. More than 300 years later, a team is again laboring to assemble La Belle, this time in a museum in Austin, Texas. Archaeologists and conservators are carefully hoisting the vessel’s original timbers, resting them on carbon fiber and fiberglass supports, and securing them with fiberglass bolts. Not only are the materials different; this time the team has an audience. A class from Highland Park Elementary School in Austin peers at the ship and the timbers arranged on the floor. “How do you know how these pieces go together?” asks one boy. “I spent 18 years looking at them,” says Peter Fix, La Belle conservator and head of reconstruction.“So I can tell you where each piece goes by looking at it.” “I’ve never seen anything this old,” says another boy with awe in his voice. La Belle spent only a few years afloat after it launched from
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La Belle emerges from a concrete vat ontaining polyethylene glycol, a liquid used to preserve the hull timbers.
spring • 2015
