Join NOVA for the discovery and recovery of one of the most important shipwrecks ever found in North America. For three centuries the Belle, part of French explorer Robert LaSalle’s floating armada, lay buried on the bottom of Matagorda Bay on the Texas coast. In 1995, after an exhaustive 20-year search, the ship was found entombed in mud, but with a remarkably well preserved wealth of artifacts that includes cannons, pewter dishes, muskets and leather shoes.

LaSalle’s reputation as a bold explorer also remained intact. The excavated evidence makes it clear he had an audacious plan to establish France as a New World superpower. But LaSalle’s scheme was ultimately thwarted by pirates, sabotage, mutiny, navigational nightmares, foul weather and foul luck.

Through an unprecedented recovery effort- including the construction of a dam around the wreck site- a long-lost ship reveals her secret history for NOVA’s cameras. Now, historians and everyday citizens alike can enjoy a more vivid picture of the life of an adventurer in the 17th century.