galleon shipwreck
AIRED: Season 7, Episode 2
THE DETECTIVE: Elyse Luray
THE PLACE: Portland, Oregon and Olympia, Washington
THE CASE:
A woman in Portland, Oregon has a large chunk of what she believes is very old beeswax.
This 23-pound block, dug up on the northern Oregon coast in the late 1930s, seems to have been deliberately carved with strange markings. For centuries, ships carried beeswax on trade routes across the Pacific Ocean.
Could this beeswax have been cargo aboard a Spanish Galleon that wrecked over 300 years ago? And what do those odd markings mean?
History Detectives unlocks the clues to decipher where the beeswax came from and which ship may have brought it to the Oregon Coast.
Think you have a case for the History Detectives? Send us your mystery here. 