La Belle, the Ship That Changed History

After two decades of searching for La Salle’s lost ship La Belle , Texas Historical Commission (THC) divers in 1995 located a shipwreck containing historic artifacts of European origin in the silty bottom of Matagorda Bay, off the coast of Texas. The first cannon lifted from the waters bore late seventeenth-century French insignias. The ill-fated La Belle had been found. Under the direction of then-THC Archeology Division Director James Bruseth, the THC conducted a full excavation of the water-l