Not since the heady days of 1846-7 when El Batallón de los San Patricios (The St Patrick’s Battalion) assembled south of the border to take up arms in the Mexican-American War, has your regular Gael displayed such an enthusiasm for things Mexican.

An oil company exploration crew’s chance discovery of a 200-year-old shipwreck in a little-charted stretch of the Gulf of Mexico is yielding a trove of new information to scientists, who say it is one of the most well-preserved wrecks ever found in the Gulf.