2023-06-15 02:58:00
The northern coast of Spain, in Galicia, is known as the Costa da Morte. This name is given to her, for being treacherous and bumpy, which led to numerous shipwrecks in the region. What is surprising about this story is that long before GPS existed, a local fisherman had already cataloged the wrecks of more than 1000 boats.
José Lopez Redonda, better known as Pepe de Olegário and responsible for cataloging over a thousand castaways, born in 1941 in the city of Sardiñeiro, is an important figure in the region, especially for Galician fishermen.
He mapped every vessel in just over 40 years and he did it long before researchers could accomplish the feat. In an interview with the BBC, he points out that there are still many more castaways to be discovered.
How shipwrecked people were discovered
The fisherman Pepe is famous for having a specialty in his hunts, fishing for groupers. These animals are fish that can weigh up to 100 kilos and can live in places below 200 meters deep, which makes them difficult to find and increases their value.
Because of their size, these fish do not usually live in natural habitats such as among corals and algae. Therefore, to protect themselves, groupers generally choose to live in hulls, anchors and shipwrecks.
While many boats avoid the places where there were shipwrecks, Pepe went towards them to hunt groupers. This made the fisherman create bonds with other fishermen in the region. When a net ripped the ship’s captains, they would call him soon to warn of the impossible shipwreck.
However, even though he earned money by exploiting these places to hunt groupers, Pepe always recognized and respected the tragedies that happened there.
When I was fishing, I thought about the tragedy of that boat and, when I got to the shore, I asked about the story behind it and that’s how I learned
Pepe de Olegário
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Shipwrecks and the Cemetery of the English
Three English shipwrecks forever marked the history of Costa da Morte. In a period of 10 years, three British vessels sank in the most dangerous region, known as Ponta do Boi.
- Hull’s Irises was an English ship that collided with the Bass of Aton in 1893. he took 30 crew from Cardiff, UK to the West Indies, just one of them survived;
- Em 1890 it was the turn of HMS Serpenta British military ship bound for Sierra Leone, just 3 people survived out of 175 who were on board;
- In the same place as the other castaways in 1893, o SS Trinacrwent. He was destined for Mediterranean ports when he left Glasgow, in the United Kingdom, however the accident interrupted the trip beforehand and killed 36 people.
In the place where the ships sank, a necropolis was built, known as Cemitério dos Ingleses. It is currently part of the European Route of Singular Cemeteries.
environmental disaster
Among all the tragedies that have already happened on the Costa da Morte, the one that gained the most media coverage was that of the oil tanker Prestige, in 2002. The accident contaminated more than 2,000 kilometers of coastline with the 77,000 tons of oil that the ship was carrying. .
In 2020, Spain decided to build the Parador Costa da Morte hotel complex. The decision to invest in tourism came as an economic action to recover the coast where the accident happened.
The fisherman who discovered more than a thousand shipwrecks, even now retired, still keeps his manually made cartography. He also still remembers the names of the ships, destinations, reasons and years of the accident and even the cargoes they carried.
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