Last May we posted that marine archaeologist Barry Clifford had announced that he believed that he had located the wreck of Christopher Columbus’ ship Santa Maria  which ran aground and sank on Christmas Day 1492 off Haiti near Cap-Haitien.   UNESCO has now scuttled that claim. In a report issued on Monday they concluded that the wreck was farther from shore than historical accounts would indicate and that the fasteners found on the wreck site indicate a technique of ship construction that dates the ship to the late 17th or 18th century rather than the 15th or 16th century. There are also possible signs of copper sheathing, which would put the likely date of the ship wreck in the late 18th century.

UNESCO sinks claim Haiti wreck was Christopher Columbus’s ship