Watery Grave Sparknotes

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Recommended: Impact of colonization on Native Americans

While looking through the book list I was mainly looking for a title that really got my attention and would be a good read. With this goal in mind I really thought that “From a Watery Grave: The Discovery and Excavation of La Salle’s Shipwreck, La Belle” fit that criteria. While reading it I gained a lot of insight on how you go about excavating a sunken ship. The book is about the excavation of the explorer Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle ship the La Belle. The ship slammed in the Texas bay by gale winds and storm surges, La Belle finally slipped beneath the water and sank, where it would remain for over 300 years until it was finally found by the Texas Historical Commission archaeologists. It was assumed that Robert Cavelier was looking to establish a colony in the New World. I believe if they had landed where they wanted to, they would have been able to colonize there with the cargo they had arrived with. To see if this would have been able to achieve I must take a closer look at the materials that they brought with them on their voyage.
The first thing that comes to mind when trying to kick-start a colony is having enough items to trade with the natives. From what I learned from the book and other sources, beads were the items of choose when trading with the Native Americans. Archaeologists have always found beads on sites they have been excavating in North American because they have used it in their attire for centuries. These beads were mostly made from shells, stone, wood, copper, bones and antler and other available materials in their area. Glass beads were introduced to the Native Indians by European explorers when looking for the new world. The Native Americans took a big interest into the bead because of their va...

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...ge reloading time for a musket was 10 to 15 seconds. Out of the 27 people assigned to the ship I could guess that 3 or 4 people died through out the voyage if they had actually landed at their destination. After doing some calculation if all the 24 new colonists had a musket they would each have 12,500 lead shots. With these shots it would take each colonist about 35 hours to shoot all of their bullets. There could be so many scenario were the colonist to fire all of the lead shots but 35 hours is the least amount of time they could be firing their muskets, the most would be about 35 days straight. I came to the conclusion these would be the worst scenarios because this would only happen if they immediately started to shoot at the Native Americans as soon as they hit land. After landing the ship probably would go back to get more supplies, ammunition and manpower.

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