Little was known about the ships of that period of exploration because those ships were not built using architectural plans. Little remained of the ship s wooden hull. Nearly five centuries on the hard sea floor, with little protection from a shallow layer of shifting sand, had left the ship s hull exposed to shipworm and other forces of destruction. Luckily, the configuration of items on the Molasses Reef wreck were hauntingly similar to a shipwreck in the Bahamas partially salvaged in the mid-1960s the Highborn Cay wreck . Other stones originated in the Azores, Canaries, or Maderia, the east coast of Spain, and Bristol, England all common trade connections with Lisbon.
Excavation is just the beginning of exploring a shipwreck.
Many years of conservation and research in libraries and archives uncovered much more of the Molasses Reef wreck.