The paper starts by describing the ship wreck discovered recently at the mouth of the Tagus River, known as the Pepper Wreck, which was identified as the Portuguese ship Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, lost in this place on its return voyage from Cochim, in India, on September 14, 1606. The method that is presently being applied by the authors to investigate the technical characteristics of these ancient ships combines the analysis of archaeological remains, the interpretation of contemporary texts on shipbuilding and modern Naval Architecture techniques. The reason is that they were built in a pre-industrial era when technical design and documentation procedures almost did not exist. Although extremely interesting, there is presently very little knowledge about the technical characteristics of these ships. Most ships employed in this route belonged to the Nau type and were among the largest and strongest ships of their time. The Portuguese sailed yearly on the India Route during over two centuries, between the early XVI century and the XVIII century.
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