Researchers move a step closer to one of the most important archaeological finds in history.

In July of 1519, in a bold act that changed the course of history, Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, ordered his men to sink all but one of the 11 ships they sailed from Cuba to what is now Mexico. It was a remarkable act of “all or nothing” commitment that has become legend, and Cortés’s subsequent conquest of Mexico irrevocably altered the New World and set world geopolitics on a course that continues today. The remains of those scuttled ships have never been found. But five hundred years later, new clues are bringing an international team of researchers tantalizingly closer.