The quest to learn as much as possible about the still-unidentified ship and its cargo is chronicled in a 52-minute documentary being sold and shown at museums, including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

In May 2007, Texas A&M professors Donny Hamilton and William Bryant took eight graduate students from two departments on an 18-day excavation of what's being called the "Mardi Gras" shipwreck. The name was chosen because of the site's proximity to the Mardi Gras Gas Transmission System.

The approach

The Mardi Gras project was the deepest archaeological excavation ever attempted in the Gulf and the first deepwater project to use archaeological principles.

Hamilton and Bryant know the ship sank more than 200 years ago about 35 miles off the coast of Louisiana. They know the wreckage is 4,016 feet under water. But they don't know why the ship went down, what sort of vessel it was -- pirate ship or trade ship -- or its nationality.

Because of the extreme water pressure at that depth, divers could not be sent to explore the site and retrieve items. Instead, remote operating vehicles were sent to the ocean floor to film the wreckage and extract artifacts.

Hamilton, who is the head of the anthropology department and director of the Conservation Research Laboratory, said working with the ROVs made the excavation much more difficult and strenuous because of their lack of human dexterity. For example, he said, it took the ROV 45 minutes to tie a knot. Other tasks that a person could complete within a minute would take an ROV 20 minutes to accomplish.

"It's the first time we have had the chance to see what a ROV can do and can't do," Hamilton said.

The cost

The project cost $4.8 million, which Hamilton estimated as $1 for every second over the three-week period spent at sea.

The high cost of the project meant crews needed to work 24 hours a day, in three shifts, to make the most of their time at sea.

The funding came from a grant by Okeanos Gas Gathering Co., which discovered the ship in 2002 while surveying the route of the Mardi Gras Gas Transmission System.

"This was a rare opportunity to come up with the funding and resources to do a deepwater excavation," Hamilton said.

The wreckage

Though the crew extracted more than 600 artifacts -- ceramics, silverware and weapons -- they found nothing that would help them to positively identify the ship.

Apparently, the ship sailed the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean between 1810 and 1830, but the research crew was unsure whether the ship was a trade ship or a pirate ship, and the nationality of the ship is unconfirmed, Hamilton said.

The researchers said they know the vessel was either entering or leaving the port of New Orleans.

The ship was a small coastal schooner, but many think it was too heavily armed to be a trade ship. Hamilton, however, said that all ships during this time needed to be heavily armed because of the large number of pirate ships.

"My personal opinion is that it is a trade ship," he said.

The Aggies recovered French pewter spoons, Swedish guns, English ceramics, a compass, a telescope and Mexican coins.

Hamilton said the array of products would have been typical of an American ship at the time because few products were produced in the country.

Also recovered were liquor bottles, a stove, kitchen utensils, a cannon, lead shot and gun flints. Researchers also found a crate of guns, but it was too difficult for the ROV to extract it from the wreckage.

The artifacts

A&M's Conservation Research Laboratory at the Riverside campus is handling the conservation of the artifacts that were retrieved. It is one of 10 projects taking place at the lab, which handles work from all over the world, Hamilton said.

The lab employs 10 to 15 graduate students 20 hours per week, working under the supervision of four full-time conservationists.

Once the Mardi Gras items are ready, they will be shipped to the Louisiana State Museum for permanent display. Most of the work will be completed this year, but some could carry over into 2011, Hamilton said.

The conservation process differs for each type of material, but the intent is to remove the saltwater from the recovered items before it has a chance to crystallize and cause further damage.

"Everything on that shipwreck would fall apart within a few months if it was not conserved," Hamilton said.

The education

William Bryant, a professor in the oceanography department, is still working on the project as a principal investigator. He said the Mardi Gras experience was invaluable for students interested in archaeological oceanography.

"It gives some of the students a chance to go to sea and see how things work with a remote operating vehicle," Bryant said.

Anthropology doctoral candidate Ben Ford wrote the report for the excavation. He is in the nautical archaeology department at A&M and works for the Center of Maritime Archaeology and Conservation. He said that this was an especially unusual project because of the depth of the wreck.

"Any time you have an opportunity to work on a shipwreck, it contributes to your education," he said.

In September, Nautilus Productions released the documentary of the project. The footage spanned 14 months, including both the offshore work in 2007 and the continuing work in conservation.

Rick Allen was the producer, director and videographer on the project. He specializes in nautical and underwater documentaries, but said he has never worked on a project quite like this one.

"Mardi Gras was probably the most technologically advanced and without a doubt the deepest project I've ever worked on," Allen said.

Nautilus Productions is now looking for a national network to broadcast the documentary.

The DVD can be purchased for $19.95 from the Louisiana State Museum. A 10-minute version is available at www.uri.edu/mua. A 3-minute version is also part of the Ocean Hall exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Although both Bryant and Hamilton have worked on similar excavations before, both said that the depth of this project and the use of ROVs rather than divers made the experience unique.

"It was the first time anything like this has happened in the Gulf of Mexico or at this university," Bryant said.