Mediaeval Shipwreck found in England

[Louie da fly]

I just came across this paper, about a merchant ship from about 1250 AD.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/mortar-wreck-a-midthirteenthcentury-ship-wrecked-off-studland-bay-dorset-carrying-a-cargo-of-purbeck-stone/3DCA5959D7C694C95EF788903A7BB383

 

Unfortunately, not much of it has survived, but they found the stempost and a floor timber and some clinker planking - enough to get a fair idea of its construction and its size and shape.

 

On board it had a cargo of 'Purbeck stone' - which was very commonly used in church building at the time. Imagine trying to transport all that stone over the roads of the time - no wonder it was being carried on a ship. A nice bit of evidence of the maritime trade of the period, as well as some pleasing confirmation of several of my decisions in my Winchelsea nef build.

 

Steven

[Ferrus Manus]

Could this be the first nef wreck ever found? 

[Louie da fly]

 The paper also mentions two other wrecks from about the same time - Magor Pills in Wales (archaeological report 1999) and Kalverev Syd (2022).Both are very fragmentary, as far as I've been able to make out, and both are smaller than this one. That being the case, they may be too small to be categorised as nefs - we just don't know,as we don't know for sure this one is a nef.

 

Part of that is in the definition - does it have to have castles to be a nef, or are we just talking about a double-ended clinker-built ship? And of course we don't even know for sure that it's double-ended - though the stempost has been found, the sternpost hasn't.

 

Steven