The Industry, the only whaling ship known to have sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, has been identified as No. 15563.
On Wednesday, scientists said they were confident that the wreck was Industry, which capsized in a storm on May 26, 1836. Black Americans, white Americans and Native Americans are most likely to have been on the crew of the ship.
A geological data company spotted the carcass of a ship at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in 2011. The company reported the wreck to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which left it alone.
The world's seabeds are covered in wrecks and oil contractors find them all the time. James P. Delgado, senior vice president of Search Inc., a firm that manages cultural resources such as archaeological sites and artifacts, was interested in this one because the description from the oil contractor mentioned a tryworks, a type of furnace unique to whaling vessels.
Search Inc. was asked if there were any wrecks it was interested in exploring.
The crew of the Okeanos Explorer vessel was directed by Dr. Delgado to drive a remotely operated vehicle around the wreck, 70 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River. An orthomosaic is a three-dimensional model of the vehicle that was created by Dr. Delgado and other researchers.
They looked at the ship's size (64 feet by 20 feet), hull shape, materials, and tryworks, which were insulated with large amounts of brick.
The location and all of it matched what the researchers knew about Industry.
The whaling trade brought together Black Americans, white Americans and Native Americans to a degree that was rare in other sectors. One prominent ship builder was Paul Cuffe, the son of a freed slave and a member of the Wampanoag tribe, and one of his own sons, William.
The Cuffe family hired almost all black and indians for their ships, and they paid them equally according to their shipboard rank, according to the president of the New Bedford Historical Society.
If the crew had docked at a Southern port, they would have been imprisoned and sold into slavery, because of their race. According to research by Judith Lund, a historian who worked for the New Bedford Whaling Museum, only a small number of whaling voyages sailed in the Gulf from the 1780s through the 1870s.
Historians did not know what happened to Industry's crew.
When Robin Winters started digging in September, she knew that the ship had sunk in the Gulf in 1836. The passenger manifest fell with it. The captain of the Starbuck whaling family was identified in documents.
Ms. Winters was dry for months. Jim Borzilleri, a researcher in Nantucket, found a mention in an 1830s news clipping of a Captain Soule connected to the Elizabeth.
Ms. Winters said that Soule was a common name in New England.
She asked Mr. Borzilleri to look for any mention of Industry and Elizabeth together.
He called back in 10 minutes.
He read from a small notice in the June 22, 1836 edition of The Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror that Elizabeth had arrived home on June 17 carrying 375 barrels of whale oil.
The crew of Industry was saved by the luck of being picked up by another ship from the North.
The ships that speak to the everyday experience are the most interesting discoveries in marine archaeology.
He said that history isn't big names.
When a ship is found, it is like a book is open.
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