Monte Cristi Pipe Wreck

Image:Monte Cristi, Coastline.JPG

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|width = 220

|float = right

|label = Monte Cristi Pipe Wreck

|caption = Location of Monte Cristi Bay in the Dominican Republic

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|lat_deg = 19 |lat_min = 53 |lat_dir = N

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Monte Cristi Pipe Wreck is a submerged archaeological site located off the north coast of Hispaniola in the Dominican Republic near the border of Haiti, part of the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean. The site is one of the hundreds of historic shipwrecks that lie on the ocean floor between Monte Cristi and Puerto Plata.{{cite web

|url=http://www.imacdigest.com/field.html

|title=Maritime Archaeology & Cultural Resource Management Project Monte Cristi - 2000 - Dominican Republic

|publisher=

|accessdate=2007-08-02

|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20071021112957/http://www.imacdigest.com/field.html |archivedate = 2007-10-21}}

Archaeological evidence indicates that the shipwreck is one of a merchant trader, probably sinking in the second half of the 17th century. Hispaniola, together with Jamaica, was originally settled by adventurous men seeking the life of a buccaneer, and until the 18th century, these islands thrived through piracy rather than through growing sugar.{{cite book

| first= Jan

| last= Rogozinski

| year= 1999

| title= A Brief History of the Caribbean

| edition= Revised

| publisher= Facts on File, Inc.

| location= New York

| pages= [https://archive.org/details/briefhistoryofca00rogo_0/page/85 85]

| isbn= 0-8160-3811-2

| url-access= registration

| url= https://archive.org/details/briefhistoryofca00rogo_0/page/85

}} The historical and geological information together indicates that the ship was likely to have been a buccaneer vessel headed to the Americas most likely for the Upper Hudson River Valley.{{cite web

|url = http://ina.tamu.edu/montecristi.htm

|title = Monte Cristi Shipwreck Project - The 2001 Excavation

|accessdate = 2007-08-02

|url-status = dead

|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20070816090243/http://ina.tamu.edu/montecristi.htm

|archivedate = 2007-08-16

}}

{{cite web

|url=http://www.sandiego.edu/anthropology/nautical.php

|title=The Monte Cristi Shipwreck Project

|publisher=sandiego.edu

|accessdate=2007-08-02

|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20070227080301/http://www.sandiego.edu/anthropology/nautical.php |archivedate = 2007-02-27}}

This wreck is known as the "Pipe Wreck" because of the large number of clay smoking pipes it carried as cargo, the type of long pipe the indigenous inhabitants used to smoke tobacco that was a shaped cane and called tobago.{{cite web

|url=http://www.caoba.ch/history-english.htm

|title=History of Monte Cristi de Tabacos

|publisher=

|accessdate=2007-08-02

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929132256/http://www.caoba.ch/history-english.htm

|archive-date=2007-09-29

|url-status=dead

}}