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This is one of those adventure stories that make Panama such an alluring and fascinating place. In 2011 archaeologists found a well-preserved shipwreck off the coast. But the wreck was a mystery, an unexpected surprise.

It took years of research and historical detective work to discover the origins of the ship, which was described as “stunningly well preserved.” Finally, they discovered that the wreck was the Encarnación, a merchant ship which went down in 1681 during a storm near the mouth of the Chagres River on the Caribbean side of Panama, according to an article in National Geographic.

The article was published last year, but it is one of those fascinating stories that is a great read and shows the rich history of Panama, which sometimes can be found underneath the water. Explorers, traders and pirates sailed through the waters and established civilizations in the area.

The archeologists were originally searching for ships belonging to the English pirate Captain Henry Morgan, who commanded a fleet of 36 ships and more than a thousand men. In 1671 Morgan attacked and looted Panama City, which was one of the largest cities in the region at the time.

The Encarnación wasn’t loaded with gold and silver, but was stocked with crates of swords, nails and bolts of cloth—a merchant ship doing business in the area. The researchers found the bottom of the half of the hull buried in the seafloor and it hadn’t been looted like so many wrecks in the area.

While it wasn’t a treasure ship, the find provided researchers with all sorts of evidence of what life was like at the time, from the construction of the ships to the flow of trade. The clues from the Encarnación shipwreck provides a glimpse into “the rise of capitalism, imperialism, rationalism, and the middle classes that are going to buy art and consume literature,” Filipe Castro, a nautical archaeologist at Texas A&M University told National Geographic.

Read the full story here.