(Below) El Nuevo Constante carried some valuable cargo. In order to protect this cargo, the ship was armed with 22 iron cannons.

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     El Nuevo Constante is the name of a Spanish ship that wrecked near the Louisiana coast in 1766. In September of that year, a hurricane struck a fleet of Spanish merchant ships as they sailed from Mexico to Spain. One of the ships, El Nuevo Constante, nearly made it to shore before it sank in shallow water. The wreck of El Nuevo Constante lay submerged for 213 years. Then, in 1979, a shrimper caught some large copper ingots from the wreck in his nets. The ingots led to archaeological study of the shipwreck.