Mystery at sea: Shipwreck off Galveston probed in satellite salvage adventure 
 
 GALVESTON, Texas — A shipwreck undetected in the briny deep of the Gulf of Mexico for two centuries has been discovered off the coast of Texas, where archeologists using robotic submarines have launched a high-tech salvage operation. 
 
 Inside a control room on the campus of Texas A&M Galveston, a team of nautical archeologists and biologists are coordinating the exploration of the wreckage discovered by a Shell Oil survey crew about 150 miles off the coast. Satellite video and audio signals keep them in communication with the crew staffing a vessel stationed above the debris field, which sits about 3000 feet below the surface of the water. 
 
 Images beamed back from the floor of the gulf show muskets, cannon, clothing, plates and platters that went down with the ship. One especially striking artifact retrieved by the robotic arms: A sealed bottle filled with bright yellow ginger, which was used as a treatment for seasickness. 
 
 “We have a lead plate,” said Tom Oertling, a nautical archeologist with Texas A&M Galveston. “And sitting on top of the lead plate is the galley stove, which has fallen back over on its back. The lead plate, we think, was to protect the ship from embers that fell out of the stove.” 
 
 The discovery has brought a team of scientists and explorers together for an expedition broadcast live to an audience watching on theNautilus Live website. Texas A&M Galveston, renowned for its oceanographic expertise, is working with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration using a vessel borrowed from Bob Ballard, the famed underwater explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic. 
 
 With the discovery comes a mystery: Where did the doomed vessel come from and how did it she and her crew go down in the gulf? 
 
 The artifacts apparently date from the early 1800s, a time when Galveston infamously became the operations base for the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte. Some of the debris apparently came from Spain and Mexico, but the guns appear to be British. 
 
 Sprawled across a conference table in the control room is a large drawing of the debris field showing a rough outline of the ship. Anything found at the site is marked on the drawing, which brings a sense of organization to the stuff scattered around the floor of the gulf. 
 
 “It’s really a mystery being put together,” said Dr.William Kiene, associate science coordinator for NOAA’s Office of Marine Sanctuaries, who compared the salvage operation to “a CSI adventure.” 
 
 Beyond the archeological treasures, the shipwreck is also a biological phenomenon that’s attracted its own colonies of sea life. Everything from crabs to colorful anemones have made homes around the wreckage. 
 
 “Shipwrecks actually create life,” said Steve Gittings, the science coordinator for NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program. “They come back to life after whatever goes down with them goes down. So this ship has 200 years of life on it.” 
 
 What’s especially remarkable to the experts involved is their unique ability to stay on land and actively participate in a salvage operation happening at sea. Satellite links allow them to watch the underwater robot vehicles pluck away at the artifacts, pulling them out of the debris and placing them in boxes that carry them to the surface. By radio, they can relay instructions to the ship’s crew controlling the salvage robot. 
 
 “This is an amazing opportunity for the scientist to stay at home,” Oertling said. “So we don’t have to go there. We can go home at night and have dinner and sleep in our own beds, which is great. But it’s as though we are right there.” 
 
 University officials hope this operation sets a precedent that will make the Galveston campus a base for future remote salvage operations. 
 
 “Instead of having ten or twenty researchers out on a ship, you can have 100 or 200 or a couple of thousand all over the world,” said Gilbert Rowe, regents professor at Texas A&M Galveston. “That’s what makes this a really unique thing.” 
 
 The ship bearing the artifacts retrieved from the site is expected to arrive in Galveston on Thursday. Among the tantalizing items retrieved from the site: A leather-bound book that somehow survived for two centuries on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 The nautical archeologists working on this salvage operation hope it will offer clues to solving the mystery behind the shipwreck. ||||| Researchers say a shipwreck has been discovered 150 miles off the coast of Galveston that could yield insight into Texas' fight for independence. 
 
 Officials with Texas A&M University at Galveston and Texas State University say the recovery expedition of the two-masted ship concluded Wednesday. It may have sunk in the Gulf of Mexico 200 years ago. 
 
 The ship was some 4,300 feet below the surface. Items discovered aboard the vessel include muskets, swords, cannons and clothing. 
 
 Scientists say it may have been a warship or a vessel transporting arms and soldiers. It may have supported the Mexican army during the fight for Texas independence or been sailing to provide arms to the Texans. 
 
 A Shell oil and gas survey crew first detected the wreck in 2011. ||||| 1681 Spanish shipwreck holds intrigue for Texas researchers 
 
 Sword blades, scissors and mule shoes are a few of the myriad artifacts from a colonial Spanish shipwreck being studied by Texas researchers. 
 
 The Spanish merchant ship, which sank in 1681 off the Caribbean coast of Panama, is a rare find, according to underwater archaeologists at the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University in San Marcos. 
 
 Dug out of sand in July 2011, the ship, known as a nao, has recently been identified through painstaking analysis as Nuestra Senora de Encarnacion, which was built in Veracruz, Mexico, for Spain. The identification was accomplished partly through archival research in Seville, Spain, by project historian Jose Espinosa of the Universidad del Norte. 
 
 The 334-year-old wreck is extremely well preserved because it was buried in up to 3 feet of muddy sand and silt, said Fritz Hanselmann, head of the research team. 
 
 "The amount of hull that's still there is really unique for the Caribbean and any warm saltwater locale," he said. "Very few Spanish merchant naos have ever been found, making this one an extraordinarily significant find because it is so well preserved." 
 
 The entire lower portion of the ship's hull is still there, along with the cargo in the hold, including wooden barrels, more than 100 wooden boxes with sword blades, scissors, mule shoes, nails, ceramics and other items. 
 
 About 20 artifacts have been removed from the ship, in dives during 2012 and 2014, Hanselmann said. Among them are lead seals, devices that looked like coins and were attached to strings around items such as bales of cloth, to mark ownership. While the cloth has long since disintegrated, the lead seals remain. 
 
 The mule shoes suggest a direct link to the overland trade routes used by Spain to carry goods and money from places such as Peru through Panama to be loaded onto ships, project archaeologist Christopher Horrell, a Texas State alumnus, said in a statement. 
 
 The artifacts belong to Panama and will become part of a database about shipwrecks from the area at the confluence of the Chagres River and the Caribbean Sea. 
 
 The area has a rich, 500-year maritime history and holds 30-some shipwrecks, said Hanselmann, who has also worked on three unidentified shipwrecks discovered in 2011 in about 4,300 feet of water, some 150 miles off Galveston. 
 
 Hanselmann described the Chagres River as "mother nature's Panama Canal," which was previously used as one of two routes across the Isthmus of Panama, to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 The Chagres feeds the modern Panama Canal and remains a crucial factor in today's maritime economy, Hanselmann said. 
 
 The Encarnacion was found during an overall study of the region and the continuing search for five ships that Capt. Henry Morgan, a Welsh privateer, lost in 1671, on his way to sacking Panama City. 
 
 "The Chagres has a very storied history and it is reflected in the remains of Encarnación and the other material culture that we are finding as part of this project," Hanselmann said. "We've barely scratched the surface of what we could learn about this area of Panama."
– Insights into Texas' War for Independence may have just bubbled up from 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. A mystery shipwreck 150 miles off the coast of Galveston—found carrying muskets, swords, and cannons—may have been transporting weapons and soldiers to help in the battle, the AP reports. But while most artifacts from the 200-year-old wreck are from Spain and Mexico, some look British, and scientists aren't sure what type of ship it is and where exactly it came from, the Houston Chronicle reports. "It's really a mystery being put together," one of the salvagers told KHOU, calling the expedition, "a CSI adventure." Ceramic plates, anchors, clothing, glass bottles—including one sealed, full of yellow ginger—and even an intact leather-bound book were also recovered in the expedition by Texas A&M scientists using robot submarines. While it's also a mystery what sent the ship down, KHOU offers a clue: It hit the depths around the time that notorious pirate Jean Lafitte called Galveston home port.