A shipwreck found off the north coast of Haiti could be the 500-year-old remains of the Santa Maria, which led Christopher Columbus's famed voyage to the New World, according to a team of marine explorers, according to the Associated Press.
"All the geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this wreck is Columbus' famous flagship, the Santa Maria," Massachusetts marine investigator Barry Clifford said in a press release on Tuesday, the AP reported.
"I am confident that a full excavation of the wreck will yield the first-ever detailed marine archaeological evidence of Columbus' discovery of America," Clifford said, according to the AP.
The Santa Maria was one of a fleet of three vessels that departed Spain in 1492 looking for a shorter route to Asia, the AP reported.
The ship drifted into a reef and had to be abandoned after arriving near the Bahamas, according to the AP. Columbus ordered sailors to build a fort nearby before taking the remaining two ships back to Spain to report his findings.
Clifford, who led a reconnaissance expedition to the site, will hold a press conference Wednesday morning at the Explorer's Club in New York City to announce the discovery, the AP reported.
Clifford and his team first discovered the wreck in 2003, but were unable to identify the ship, according to the AP. Yet the discovery of Columbus' encampment on nearby Haiti and data from the explorer's diary appear to prove the heavily decayed vessel on the seafloor was the Santa Maria.
"The evidence, as you can imagine, after more than 500 years is not going to be very much because of time and the environment that the site is in," said Roger C. Smith, the State Underwater Archaeologist for Florida, the AP reported. "It's going to require some careful archaeology."
