Utrecht (naufrágio, 1648)

The Utrecht (De Uytrecht) was built in 1633 for the Amsterdam Admiralty and was about 34 m long, with one deck and 30 cannons. She came to Brazil in 1647 in the fleet of 12 ships sent by the Dutch States General to aid the West India Company. At the battle of Itaparica, on 28 September 1648, the Utrecht and the Huys van Nassau surrounded the Nossa Senhora do Rosário, whose captain blew up his own ship to strike the enemy, and both the Utrecht and the Rosário sank. Today the remains of the Rosário lie about 200 m from the wreck of the Utrecht.

A fisherman from Itaparica discovered the wreck, and the diver Walter Andrade obtained permission to explore it in 1982. The site was commercially salvaged in the early 1980s, and the first archaeological survey came in 2007, followed by an assessment in 2012. The tin found on the wreck forms the largest collection of tin in the world with such an early and specific date, and other pieces left the country and were auctioned at Christie's in Amsterdam in 1983. The identification as the Utrecht is probable but not certain: no object proves its origin, and the proximity of a second wreck, presumably the Rosário, supports the hypothesis.

In 2012, 16 cannons, two fragments and five complete anchors could still be seen on the seabed, in a 50 m by 40 m concentration oriented northeast to southwest, with piles of ballast stones. Around the site, the seabed is coarse sand and coral fragments, with banks of living coral in between.