Going...going...gone? The London wreck.

[druxey]

From the BBC news site, an update on the wreck of the London that sank in 1665:

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-53183454

[Mark P]

Thanks Druxey for posting this;

 

It is an ongoing tragedy: the dive team are banned from removing any objects from the sea-bed, however exposed they are; while the English Heritage 'experts' sit on their hands over what can be done with the site. They make an arthritic snail seem like an Olympic sprinter in the speed of their progress. I heard Mark Beattie-Edwards give a fascinating talk on this earlier this year, in Southend, along with Richard Endsor and other interested parties. I would be certain that EH have not advanced one syllable from what they had achieved then; which was nothing good. 

 

I just hope that the divers will manage to retrieve material which the prop wash has moved further away, out of the 'protected' (read 'rapidly deteriorating') wreck-site. 

 

All the best,

 

Mark P

[mtaylor]

Quite possibly there those of less than honorable intentions also visiting the wreck.  The saddest part is the folks who have the power to do something or give someone authority to do something just won't do their job.

[Matle]

Is there no way to divert traffic, or is it too narrow?

 

 

In related news, one of the newly discovered wrecks in the Baltic was recently plundered by vandals. New technology discovers wrecks quicker than the authorities can protect them - but since there is no money to guard them that might not matter anyway. Part of me hope that we won’t discover any more wrecks in easily accessible waters...

[mtaylor]

It's become a world wide problem not only for artifacts.  In the Pacific, some WW2 ships have been totally destroyed and carried off by those who can sell the steel.  In this case, the steel has no radiation from the atomic bomb tests while now all steel has some traces of it.   

[Jack12477]

17 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

In the Pacific, some WW2 ships have been totally destroyed and carried off by those who can sell the steel.  

Every one of which was an Internationally recognized  "war grave" !

[mtaylor]

4 hours ago, Jack12477 said:

Every one of which was an Internationally recognized  "war grave" !

Yes,  Piet in the log for the ship his father went down on during WWII  had photos, etc. about this.

[Frank Fox]

 

Losing the London is a disaster.  Earlier they allowed the Stirling Castle in the Downs (wrecked 1703) to wash away, when they had the entire hull including the upper deck exposed.  The land archaeologists that run Historic England just can't seem to understand that wrecks that become exposed must be explored and everything possible brought up and recorded, or it's just knowledge lost.    

[druxey]

Absolutely, Frank. It's so frustrating that we are losing answers to many questions this way.

[Frank Fox]

 

Meanwhile, Historic England is doing a book about what wonderful work they've done on the London, when many of the co-authors haven't even been there.  Did they invite ship structure specialists such as Richard Endsor to contribute?  Did they invite gun specialists such as Charles Trollope?  Did they ask Steve Ellis, the only authorized diver and the only one who knows where everything is?  Did they ask any historians?  Nooooooo!  Only archaeologists who are paid to do nothing  and are never found at the London site.  Why can't they at least let Steve try to locate and recover the probably 35 brass guns that are still there?  Some are well documented, well known guns with recorded histories.  The whole thing is a shameful travesty.  

[Martes]

And to think that Britain could have had two preserved ships on a scale of Wasa...

[Beef Wellington]

Interesting development...Divers are making a digital map of 17th century warship 'The London'

[mtaylor]

At least they're getting to do "hands on" research.  Given the costs and probable fragility it probably won't ever be raised and preserved.   

[Roger Pellett]

The problems in saving this magnificent wreck are unfortunately inherent with human nature.

 

First of all our’s is a technical, specialized discipline with it’s own history and language.  At least here in the US, criteria for historic preservation are written by govt. bureaucrats and reflect the current political fads about our history.  Engineering on its own has been unfashionable since the 1960’s, with military history a close second.

 

Second, I suspect that there is a Lot of “not invented here” on the part of the archeologists, so that people that actually have specialized expertise get the cold shoulder.

 

A case in point is the Sutton Hoo wreck recently publicized on NETFLIX.  The wreck was identified by a highly knowledgeable amateur investigator leading to a fight with the archeologists.

 

Roger

[thibaultron]

This reminds me of the USS Monitor. She was rediscovered, I believe in the 70s, upside down on the ocean bottom, mostly intact. Then the government experts chimed in. The location was too exposed to shipping , the currents were too strong, the wreck too fragile! two decades later, all that was left was the iron work, and they only recovered the turret, engines, and some of the plate, the wood they were so concerned with preserving had fallen apart, anyway. They could have at least done extensive photo work.

[Mark P]

Good Evening Gentlemen;

 

There are archaeologists, who are only happy when they have a trowel in their hands and are down on their knees finding real artefacts; then there are 'archaeologists' who are part of English Heritage, who believe that any decision made in less than a year cannot have been properly considered; any project organised in less than two years cannot possibly have been properly sanctioned; and anything which means that they might have to actually do something in less than three years will automatically be an absolute disaster. The reality that they and their institutional mindset are the actual disaster will of course never strike them. Valuable artefacts being lost forever is only a minor concern, and it seems does not even register on their consciousness as something which should be minimised at all costs. Allowing amateurs to have any real say in decision making, or any real part in actually finding something is a 'Dear me! What a frightful thought!' scenario for the poor dears.

 

Re the Netflix Sutton Hoo film, I too was of a similar opinion to Roger, having read the publicity for the film; but then I read an actual account of the excavations, and it seems that not only did Netflix exaggerate/fabricate a great deal about the inter-personal relationships of most of those involved, which the publicity to some extent admitted; but they also created a new element of tension between Basil Brown and the more experienced archaeologists who took charge once the significance of the site became clear, which was never actually there in real life (note to English Heritage: the 'professional' archaeologists were on site within a very short period, and recovered all that they could with the technology of the time, as quickly as possible)

 

All the best,

 

Mark