The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2005) 34.1: 110–122 doi: 10.1111/j.1095-9270.2005.00048.x © 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. F. CASTRO: RIGGING THE PEPPER WRECK. PART I—MASTS and YARDS NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 34.1 Rigging the Pepper Wreck. Part I—Masts and Yards Filipe Castro Nautical Archaeology Program, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843- 4352 USA Discovered in 1993 at the mouth of the Tagus River, the SJB2 shipwreck—or ‘Pepper Wreck’—was tentatively identified as the Portuguese Indiaman Nossa Senhora dos Mártires , lost in this place on its return voyage from Cochin, in India, on 14 September 1606. Its archaeological excavation led to a tentative reconstruction of the hull, based in contemporary texts on shipbuilding. Further analysis of these texts allowed us to propose a reconstruction of the rigging. © 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society Key words: Pepper Wreck, Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, Portugal, 17th-century shipbuilding, India route, Portuguese nau. T he hull remains of the ‘Pepper Wreck’ (officially designated SJB 2) were found during a survey at the mouth of the Tagus River, near Lisbon, Portugal, in 1994, and excav- ated between 1996 and 2000 by a joint team from the Portuguese Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University. A search in the database of the National Museum of Archaeology showed the nau Nossa Senhora dos Mártires as the most probable identification of this shipwreck. It was lost in front of the fortress of São Julião da Barra on 14 September 1606, returning from India with a main cargo of peppercorns (Castro, 2005). A small portion of the bottom of the ship’s hull was preserved, including a section of the keel, an apron, eleven frames, and some of the planking, extending over an area measuring 7 by 12 m (Alves et al ., 1998). After analysis it was found that this was the portion of the ship’s bottom immediately forward of the midship frames. Based on the scantlings’ dimensions and on the analysis of the carpenters’ marks found on the timbers, the Pepper Wreck hull remains were reconstructed following the rules and proportions indicated in contemporary texts on shipbuilding (Castro, 2003). Three Portuguese treatises on shipbuilding and a handful of sets of rules on how to build ships— regimentos in Portuguese— contain valuable information about a number of types of ships from this period. However, not being written for 21st-century nautical archaeologists, these texts are unclear in many places and often lack basic information, which is implied rather than expressly stated. For these reasons, our understanding of Portuguese shipbuilding for the India Route in the late 16th and early 17th centuries cannot be based on contemporary written sources alone. A shipwreck like the Pepper Wreck, with real scantlings and carpenter’s marks that set some of the hull’s basic dimensions, was therefore a good opportunity to propose a tentative reconstruction of the hull. Although this reconstruction is only tentative and stands as an educated guess, it is nevertheless a good educated guess, based on archaeological data. The next logical step for the understanding of these ships was to try to reconstruct the ship’s sail plan. It was Fernando Oliveira’s Liuro da fabrica das naus, written around 1580, that best described the hull of the Pepper Wreck (Oliveira, 1991). However, this treatise does not include a section on rigging. We have searched all the possible sources—which were recently compiled in an outstanding work by Francisco Contente Domingues (2004)—and found three regimentos with descriptions of the rigging of both India Route naus and galleons from this period: a) ‘Medidas para fazer h¨a Nao de Seicentas Tonelladas’, an anonymous regimento from the Livro náutico , a manuscript dated to the