Remains of 500 year-old shipwreck: Dated 2019

[Allegheny]

Hello,

 

There was a discovery of a 500 year old ship in 2019.

I'm looking for an update on that discovery as five years have passed.

Attached is the link to the original article.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7273037/Remains-500-year-old-ship-retrieved-bottom-Baltic-Sea.html

 

Thanks!

Remains of 500 year-old shipwreck is retrieved from bottom of Baltic Sea in almost PERFECT condition

• Experts found the incredible relic while scanning the waters with a sonar device
• The vessel, which dates back to the Late 15th Century, still has its masts in place
• 'It is an intact and astonishingly preserved shipwreck,' said one maritime expert

[Louie da fly]

I originally thought this was the Gribshunden, a Danish royal ship, but apparently not. See https://sv-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Okänt_skepp_från_1500-talet_i_Östersjön?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

 

Interesting in its own right! I hadn't heard of this one before. I've bookmarked it. Thanks for posting.

 

Steven

[CDR_Ret]

You might try starting from this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/science/shipwreck-archeology-shipwreck.html

 

The Mail story didn't provide any information on the organization that did the survey.

 

Terry

Edited October 18 by CDR_Ret

[Louie da fly]

Unfortunately a few seconds after opening the link it went to NY Times advertising and demanding I log in and let them have access to my personal stuff. Looked interesting up to that point, though.

 

Steven

[Ferrus Manus]

Do we know what type of ship it is? It looks to me like it could be some kind of cross between a carrack and a cog. 

[CDR_Ret]

1 hour ago, Louie da fly said:

NY Times advertising

Wierd. The first time I accessed it I read the article. Now I'm boxed out. The article mentions the survey was conducted by some organization in Stockholm. Can't recall the details.

[Rik Thistle]

This link any good?....Archaeologists Find 500-Year-Old Shipwreck in Baltic Sea | Archaeology | Sci-News.com -https://www.sci.news/archaeology/shipwreck-baltic-sea-07431.html

 

Extract:

“This ship is contemporary to the times of Christopher Columbus and Leonardo Da Vinci, yet it demonstrates a remarkable level of preservation after 500 years at the bottom of the sea, thanks to the cold, brackish waters of the Baltic,” said team member Dr. Rodrigo Pacheco-Ruiz, a maritime archaeologist and deep sea archaeological expert at the University of Southampton.

 

Richard

 

Edit: From Feb 2023 ... Shipwreck of 500-Year-Old Floating Castle Found to Contain 'Thrilling Haul' - Newsweek -
https://www.newsweek.com/shipwreck-500-year-old-floating-castle-gribshunden-found-thrilling-haul-1780019

Edited October 18 by Rik Thistle

[Louie da fly]

Rik, that first link seems to be basically the same article as in the original post. I do like the fact that there's a video. And the ship's boat is quite a find. That and some of the deck furniture (for example the pump)  give some idea of the size of the vessel itself. It's now being referred to as Okänt Skepp, but that just means "unknown ship". A good enough name for me. Not much info available on-line about her even now.

 

The Gribshunden, which I mentioned in my first post, has quite a bit more information available.

 

 

Steven

[Nirvana]

The 500 year old Baltic sea wreck was published in 2019, finds found her to be a merchant ship. Origin of the ship still unknown.

[Louie da fly]

I wonder when the archaeological reports will start to appear. It'd be nice to know more about this ship.

 

Steven

[Allegheny]

Thank you everyone for your comments and links to articles on the ship.

Very interesting that this ship was a royal vessel filled with unique items of the period.

 

I love to know what the future holds for this ship in terms of potentially raising her.

What a marvelous museum piece it would make as well as all of the potential discoveries it would revel about life in that period as well as the ship building techniques actually used.

   

[Louie da fly]

Nowadays there's a move to leaving wrecks where they are - often it preserves them better than raising them (and you don't have all the hassle of keeping them from deteriorating, apart from the expense of providing somewhere to display it, staff to look after it etc). They're still working on the preservation of the Vasa and the Mary Rose, as well as others less well known.

 

The archaeologists record everything possible, publish the reports (usually years later) and leave it at that - and of course archaeology and preservation methods keep advancing, so who knows what they'll be doing - better - in the future?

 

Yes, the Gribshunden was a royal vessel, but the Okänt Skepp appears to be a merchant ship.

 

Steven

[mtaylor]

For those running into paywall stop after using a given site for a time, try going into your browser cache and removing ALL of the cookies for that site. Also note that some sites leave 2 or 3 caches to go through the list carefully to get all the ones to remove.    It is a toss up and sometimes it doesn't work, other times cleaning up does work.

[Louie da fly]

I came across this on the Facebook site Archaeology and Civilisations. Though the wreck is not specified, from the description it appears to refer to the same ship.

 

Among the islands of the Stockholm archipelago, at a depth of 28 meters, in 2017 the wreck of a merchant ship dating back to the 16th century, probably Swedish made, destined for the transport of material was located and documented by the archaeologists of the National Maritime Museum. ferrous and in particular of Osmond iron, of which about thirty barrels have been found.

Loads of this type of iron, produced mainly in the Scandinavian area and exported to Germany and Holland in the form of spheres obtained from the refining of crude iron in special furnaces, are known only in two other shipwrecks, always from the waters of the Baltic.

The ship, in excellent conservation conditions like most of the wooden wrecks of the area, thanks to the particular conditions of salinity and temperature of the Baltic that protect hulls and superstructures from the destructive action of xylophagous and teredini, still has the mast in the position of navigation, is about 20 meters long and 7.5 wide, and is characterized by elements of naval carpentry halfway between medieval construction techniques and those of the modern age: a precious fossil guides, in short, an age of great transformations , able to tell with a remarkable level of detail the transport of raw and refined metals between Sweden and Finland around the middle of the sixteenth century.

Despite the decision to keep the wreck's coordinates secret, however, the looters managed to locate the site, and in the course of repeated dives they stole pottery and significant artifacts protected for five centuries from the cold waters of the Baltic: this is what the underwater archaeologists involved in the study of the wreck, recently returned to explore the hull. "What happened was very sad: it was like tearing pages from a book; now we have the cover left, but we have lost the content forever", Jim Hansson, the archaeologist who has been coordinating operations on the site. The looting apparently went on for several months.

 

 

By the way, the comment about missing artefacts is very apposite in archaeology. They are often the best means of determining an accurate dating for the wreck - particularly pottery which went through relatively rapid changes of fashion, and of course coins, which usually had the date on them. Having them stolen makes it very difficult.

 

Steven

Edited October 31 by Louie da fly

[TheDukeOfWybourne]

Hello there!

 

The wreck Steven referred above is called Osmundvraket (Osmund iron wreck) and it is different than the Okänt Skepp (Unknown ship). The Osmundvraket in itself is rather interesting of course, it was probably made or atleast repaired in Finland at some point, which then sparked my interest in it (I'm Finnish), more info on it can be found on the Vrak - museum of wreks -site: https://www.vrak.se/en/wrecks-and-remains/osmundvraket/ (Vrak being of course the Swedish word for wrek). The museum site also has lots of information on other Swedish wreks.

 

From the Okänt Skepp I've not managed to find anything since the initial press release in 2019, the original press release was fron the University of Southampton (found here: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2019/07/unknown-ship.page ) and all news stories seem to be referring that.  Dr Rodrigo Pacheco-Ruiz also has a youtube page with some lovely footage of the ship. They were supposed to go back the next year to gather more information, but the next year was of course the infernal 2020 so I think it just didn't happen

[Louie da fly]

Thanks for this information. Every so often another wreck from this period comes to notice that I'd never heard of before. I've had a look at the site you linked, and it's fascinating. I'd love to see the archaeological reports on this one - in particular the kind of information that relates to modelling - the 'lines' of the ship, the equipment found on board, the masts etc.

 

It's a shame nothing else seems to have happened about the Okänt Skepp, but unfortunately these things happen - if it's not Covid then it's lack of funding or some other thing. I'm still hoping there's eventually enough money to see if the forecastle of the Mary Rose can be located. That would be a real find! 

 

Steven

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  Even if the Mary Rose Forecastle was in pieces, they could still put the 'jigsaw' back together with sufficient funding.

 

[Louie da fly]

Yes. I'm amazed what they can reconstruct sometimes with the scattered remains they are able to recover.

 

Steven