In January 1686, the dreams of the famous French explorer Sieur de La Salle came to a tragic end when his ship, the La Belle, sank in a storm off the coast of Texas. La Salle, with hopes of setting up a French colony in America, was searching for the "river to the interior of the new world," known today as the Mississippi. Three centuries later, in 1995, a team from the Texas Historical Commission located the ship, about the size of a city bus, some 14 miles off the shore of Texas in 12 feet of water and buried in mud. Posing many challenges for years to come, the shipπs discovery and subsequent reclamation tested the skills of many, including the engineers at Hub City, Inc., 1275 miles away from site.

Instead of risking damage to the ship by trying to raise the hull in one piece, the restorers decided to dismantle the hull piece by piece and transport it to the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A & M University. Hub City, Inc., Aberdeen, S.D. was soon contacted to assist in the restoration process.

The first step was to excavate the site. A construction team built a giant coffer dam around the hull and pumped out the saltwater to expose the ship. Since mud sealed a majority of the boat, the La Belleπs hull was largely intact. This provided archeologists the opportunity to remove the wreckage and artifacts without damaging them.

Then, at the conservation lab, a vat the size of a 96,000 gallon swimming pool (60 ft. long, 20 ft. wide and 12 ft. deep) was made with a steel mesh platform that raised and lowered the ship into the pool of water during its piece-by-piece reconstruction. If the pieces of the hull are not kept wet during reconstruction, they would eventually warp and crack. The rigid lift, supported by cables from four winches, enabled the restorers to lift the hull to ground level so they can work on it. This is where Hub City came in. After reviewing the system requirements, Hub City recommended four 8-inch triple reduction winch drives for use with the 12-ton lift elevator. The gear boxes were 2000/1 ratio coupled with 1-1/2 HP brake motors and are being used to this day to store the ship in the vat filled with polyethylene glycol (a preservative) until it is fully preserved and ready for display. The rest, as they say, is history.

Thousands of articles from the shipwreck were recovered including glass beads, pistols, muskets and brass cannon rings. As a token of their appreciation, the Commission made casts of the French Royal Crest from recovered brass cannons and mounted them on a decorative wood plaque. This gift was presented to Hub City, Inc., and is now on display at Hub City in Aberdeen.

Keep in touch with the "La Belle" restoration project by visiting the web sites: www.thc.state.tx.us/belle and www.tamu.edu.