Deepest Shipwrecks Found In Gulf Of Mexico Marine archaeologists examining a well-preserved shipwreck deep in the Gulf of Mexico have made a "thrilling discovery." The wooden hull has rotted away but the ghostly copper sheathing remains Underwater cameras have spotted two other sunken vessels that likely went down with the main ship 170 miles southeast of Galveston in Texas sometime during an early 19th century storm. They came to rest 4,360ft (1300m) below the surface, making them the deepest Gulf or North American shipwrecks to have been systematically investigated by researchers. Speaking at a news conference, Fritz Hanselmann, who is the the lead investigator with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Okeanos Explorer Project, said: "What you're going to see and hear I hope will blow your mind - because it has ours. We went out with a lot of questions and we returned with even more. The big question we're all asking is: What is the shipwreck? And the answer is we still don't know," he added. Metal plates and bottles poke out of the sand covering the wrecks During eight days of exploration that ended this week, the scientists used remote-controlled machines to recover more than 60 artefacts from the initial shipwreck site. They include musket parts, British and Mexican ceramic cups and dishes, liquor bottles, clothing and even a toothbrush. Nationalities, cultures, all collide in these shipwrecks. We hope to return in the future next year with more work," he said. For now the team was not allowed to retrieve artefacts from the two new sites, but researchers took thousands of photos. An NOAA underwater camera floats above one of the ship's anchors The NOAA's Jim Delgado said the ships likely went down during the first two decades of the 1800s, which was a time of great upheaval in the Gulf region and in the New World. "Empires were falling, Spain was losing its grip, France was selling what it has, Mexico becomes independent, Texas independent, Latin America becomes independent and the US is beginning to make a foothold in the Gulf," he said. So these wrecks are all tied to that, we are sure. An anemone living on top of a pile of muskets It is likely each ship was carrying 50 to 60 men and that none of them survived. Among the wreckage were telescopes and other navigational tools that survivors likely would not have left behind if they could have helped it, the researchers said. The ship that the team set out to examine initially was armed with six cannon and may have had two masts. Undersea images show the outline of a copper-clad, 84ft (25m) long by 26ft (8m) wide wooden hull. It was first spotted by a Shell Oil survey crew in 2011 who then notified federal officials.