The Molasses Reef Shipwreck is the site of a ship which wrecked in the Turks and Caicos Islands early in the 16th century.
[1] In 1976, unlicensed treasure hunters discovered a wreck on Molasses Reef, on the southwestern edge of the Caicos Bank near French Cay.
Concerned about the salvage company's plans, the Turks and Caicos Islands government invited the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University to survey the wreck site.
Later a new group arrived in the Turks and Caicos Islands, claiming to have inherited the rights of the earlier salvage company.
The government then revoked the company's salvage license, and invited the Institute of Nautical Archaeology to excavate the Molasses Reef Wreck.
[3] When researchers from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology returned to Molasses Reef in 1982 they discovered that extensive damage had occurred since the earlier survey.
Responsibility for the wreck and artifacts was transferred to a non-profit entity, Ships of Exploration and Discovery Research, which was set up by the archaeologists working on the project.
[7] Artifacts found at the wreck site included items typically carried on Spanish ships in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
Arms on the ship included two bombardettas, fifteen versos (a type of breech-loading swivel gun), haquebuts, haquebuzes (a smaller type of arquebus), grenades, crossbows and quarrels, swords, daggers, breech chambers (powder cartridges) for the bombardetas and versos, shot molds, and sheets of lead to be melted as needed to make shot.