From the San Pedro, 1596

Standard gear in the ship surgeon’s kit, mortars, and pestles were used to grind and mix ingredients to make medicine. The Latin inscription around the mortar translates to ‘Peter Vanden Ghein made me in 1561’. Beyond revealing the mortar’s maker to be from a long line of renowned Dutch founders, the mortar offers a terminus post quem—or earliest possible date—for the wreck.

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