Abstract

Nautical archaeologists act as architects of ruins as they rebuild ships from wrecks. Architectural salvation from demonic depths appeals to two aspects of the Early Modern legacy: God as Divine Architect and the restoration of Edenic utopia from dystopia. This chapter considers the uncanny encounters between scholar and shipwreck that must precede archaeological resurrection. Ships are reengineered with information negotiated from the wreckage underwater, yet submersion dulls or nullifies each of the five senses classically used in scientific enquiry. The concept of dystopian phenomenology explains how archaeological knowledge of shipwrecks is acquired underwater. Recollections of ‘visitations’ to a wrecked sixteenth-century galleon in Ribadeo, Spain inform a phantasmal sensory approach to help unveil the elusive ontology of shipwrecks.

Keywords: uncanny; sensorium; abjection; matrixial borderspace; maritime archaeology; Ribadeo galleon

Delirium of language, the boldest navigators. With their hulls and sails, don't they want to take possession of her depths? … How needy and suppliant they are in this moment. How afraid they are the sea will swallow them up. How unprepared they find themselves to face this unchaining of natural forces. And what good is all their seamanship if the sea refuses to submit to it? What good is their language if there is nothing and no one to appeal to?