A team of maritime archaeologists has discovered a 16th-century Spanish merchant vessel, now nicknamed the 'Spanish Indigo Wreck', in the deep waters off the Florida Keys. The ship was carrying a valuable cargo of refined indigo cakes and cochineal dyes from the Americas to Europe when it sank during a hurricane in 1572.
Remarkably, the anaerobic environment of the deep-sea silt has preserved the organic dyes and the wooden crates containing them. Researchers believe this find will provide the first direct evidence of the industrial-scale processing of dyes in the early colonial period and offer new insights into the global luxury textile trade that connected the New World to the courts of Europe and Asia.