shipwrecks

shipwrecks is a word with several connotations but here it means vessels that are of particular interest to those working in marine archaeology. Many shipwrecks within the Exclusive Economic Zone of coastal states are now protected sites, particularly the ones within territorial waters, and efforts are being made to give a measure of protection to shipwrecks outside these zones. In the USA such sites are protected by the Abandoned Shipwreck Act (1987); in the UK all diving on shipwrecks is governed by the legal definition of wreck. Most governments issue permits which impose restrictions and obligations on those wishing to salvage artefacts from a shipwreck or to excavate a site. Marine parks and reserves have also been created for the management and preservation of shipwrecks. Unfortunately, in the past, the law was slow to catch up with treasure hunters who, helped by the advances in diving equipment and salvage techniques, have plundered many shipwrecks with little regard to recording their structures.

However, marine archaeologists are not just interested in a vessel's construction and fittings; whenever possible they also want information on its performance and seaworthiness, as well as the cargo it contained, the society on board, the socio-economic and historical framework within which it operated, and the environmental context within which it came to rest.

Shipwreck Environments.

The most accessible sites are usually those found on dry land but, whether interred or abandoned, vessels in this environment rarely survive well. The timbers of the sepulchral ship at Sutton Hoo, for instance, survived only as a buried print in the soil, and exposed hulls rarely last beyond 250 years. Those that end up in wet or submerged environments generally survive better, their state of preservation depending largely upon the botanical, biological, and chemical content of the water, as well as the dynamics and geomorphology of their resting place. Fresh water is an excellent preserver of wood and other organic remains, particularly if the remains are sealed, as was the case with the wetland boats of northern Europe, of which the 3rd-century bc Hjortspring boat from Denmark is an outstanding example. Some of these, to all appearances, were almost as fresh as the day they were abandoned.

Ships that sink in deep freshwater lakes also survive well. The armed schooners Hamilton and Scourge that went down in Lake Ontario during the Anglo-American War of 1812–14 surprised the world in 1973 when they were found sitting upright on the bottom. Their guns were still in their carriages and their anti-boarding cutlasses were still in their racks; indeed one still had its boat hanging from the davits. Cold also helps preserve structures: the Breadalbane, lost in 1853 while searching for the Franklin expedition, was found in 1980, upright and largely intact beneath the Arctic ice.

Salt-water environments are less conducive to survival, though some are quite benign. The Baltic for instance, which has a relatively low level of salinity and oxygen, is free of the teredo shipworm (teredo navalis) and most other wood-devouring organisms, which is why the great, four-deck fighting ship Vasa survived in such an excellent state of preservation.

But, generally speaking, shoreline, inter-tidal, and shallow-water shipwrecks tend to be badly eroded, much decayed, and, to varying extents, dispersed by the waves and currents that characterize shallow, open-coastal zones. Areas with particularly strong currents can produce surging waters and an unstable seabed. An Elizabethan wreck off Alderney in the Channel Islands, though over 30 metres (98 ft) down, has suffered much from this.

Ships that end up on a hard bottom generally fare worse than those that come to rest in soft sediments and work their way down into the seabed. Once within the silt and mud their environment is largely anaerobic, or oxygen free. This protects them from shipworm or other organisms of microbiological decay which destroy timbers and other organic materials. An example of a shipwreck being preserved in this manner is the Mary Rose.

Legendary Shipwrecks.

As ancient writings attest repeatedly, shipwrecks have always been objects of fear and fascination, particularly if they are associated with tragedy or great events, famous people, battles, mutiny, or explorations by sea, and the discovery and investigation of them always attract public interest. The loss of the Titanic, which touched everybody for its drama and the heroism and self-sacrifice of those on board, is one outstanding example; the Batavia, an East Indiaman wrecked off Western Australia in 1629, is another. The tragic events that followed the latter disaster, involving desertion, mutiny, massacres, and executions, have ensured that this became one of the most notorious shipwrecks of all time.

Shipwrecks associated with important historical figures also arouse the public's imagination. The excavation of Nelson's first major command, the 64-gun Agamemnon, which sank in the River Plate in 1809, caused considerable interest in the mid-1990s. The one cannon not salvaged when she sank was raised and examined, and a commemorative seal bearing Nelson's name in reverse was recovered. There was public interest, too, when items from Captain Bligh's Bounty, which was burned at Pitcairn, were recovered in 1957; and when the Pandora, the vessel that went after the Bounty mutineers before being wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, was found in 1977. Surveys carried out on the latter suggest that much of the hull has survived in good condition as have some important artefacts. Excavation of the site is ongoing.

Shipwrecks of Warships.

These are always interesting as they can sometimes add to our knowledge of warfare at sea in earlier centuries. Those that have caused widespread interest include the early American ironclad Monitor which sank off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in 1862. Her remains were found in 1973, but proved too fragile to move, though her turret was recovered in 2003. Another Civil War shipwreck of great interest is the CSS Alabama, sunk by the USS Kearsage off Cherbourg, France, in June 1864. Of the many items recovered from her, the artillery and how it operated was of particular significance. Important work has also been done on L'Orient, the flagship of the French fleet that Nelson defeated at the battle of the Nile in 1797 from which 400 artefacts have been raised since the first excavations of the site in the 1980s.

In recent years the public gaze has shifted to the great battles and fighting ships of the 20th century. Examples include the German battleship Bismarck, which was found and filmed by Dr Ballard in 1989, and the remains of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled in the River Plate in 1939. A gun was raised from her in 1997, the rangefinder in 2004, and her sterncrest in 2006.

Cargoes of Shipwrecks.

Many shipwrecks have become well known because of the artistic and historical importance of their cargoes. The first of these was found in 1900 by sponge divers off Antikythera, Greece, which contained a series of spectacular bronze and marble statues from the late classical period as well as later Roman copies of Greek originals. Another sensational cargo of similar art works, dated to the 1st–2nd centuries bc, was found in 1907 in a shipwreck off Mahdia, Tunisia.

If the importance of a wreck is measured by the extent to which it advances learning, then there can be few more important wrecks than the Hoi An junk which sank in over 80 metres (260 ft) of water, 22 kilometres (14 mls.) from the Da Nang peninsula in Vietnam. The wreck appears to be of Thai origin and its spectacular cargo of blue and white and polychrome ceramics, painted with human figures, landscapes, fish, birds, and mythological animals, dates to Vietnam's Golden Age of the mid-15th century when Vietnamese potters filled the vacuum that China created by distmantling its fleets and forbidding exports. Over a third of a million pieces were raised during the late 1990s and they not only provide a new chapter in South-East Asian arts but also illuminate what happened when, for a few decades, China closed its doors on the world. Another cargo of great importance came from what is reported to be an Arab dhow that went down at Batu Hitam in Indonesia's Karimata Straits. In 1998 over 65,000 9th-century ad Tang dynasty ceramics were recovered from it which were intended for the Malay, Indian, or Persian markets. They demonstrate that, even at this early date, there was a maritime alternative to the overland silk roads.

Sometimes the cargoes of shipwrecks are not only of historical, and artistic, importance but are also immensely valuable. The Dutch East Indiaman Geldermalsen (aka the Nanking wreck), lost in 1752 on a reef in the South China Sea, was located in 1985. Part of her cargo, some 160,000 pieces of Chinese porcelain and 126 gold ingots, was auctioned the following year in Amsterdam and created a buying frenzy the like of which Europe had not seen since similar cargoes were sold in the Low Countries in the 16th century. Another sensational find, made in 1987, was that of the Central America, a side-wheel paddle steamer that went down in deep water during a storm off South Carolina in 1852. Four hundred and twenty-three lives were lost. On board was over US $2 million in California gold, a large part of which was retrieved using underwater vehicles.

Some of these last wrecks were not recovered in an archaeological manner, resulting in a great loss of information, particularly with regard to structure.

Construction Methods Learned from Early Shipwrecks.

Shipwrecks also reveal how our ancestors built their ships. Bronze Age examples found off the Turkish coast had their cargoes contained within a shell-first hull where the planks had been edge joined with mortise and tenons before the installation of the frames. This method of assembly, which continued, with some variation and development, throughout the Graeco-Roman period, is best exemplified by the 4th-century bc Kyrenia ship, an amphora carrier that was found in 30 metres (100 ft) of water off northern Cyprus in the late 1960s. Its remains and remnants of its cargo are now on display at Kyrenia Castle.

A wreck found at Yassi Ada, Turkey, dating from the 7th century ad, seems to mark the transition from shell-first to frame-first construction, but a different method of Mediterranean ship construction was found on several 6th-century bc shipwrecks where stitching was the principal method used to bond together the planking and much of the primary structure. The earliest example of this is the Giglio wreck from the Archaic period (c.600). It was found at 50 metres (165 ft) off Tuscany in 1961, and was excavated in the 1980s. Quite apart from its construction the Giglio ship had an astonishing cargo which included Etruscan storage jars, painted wares from Corinth, Lakonia, and Etruria, a range of weaponry, and a spectacular Greek helmet that had been engraved with boars and snakes.

Shipwrecks found outside the Mediterranean revealed a very different method of construction which, for want of a better term, has been called the Romano-Celtic tradition. Examples have come from various points across north-west Europe including the Thames, the Severn Estuary, the Channel Islands, and some German rivers and estuaries. Within this group there is much variety in hull forms and the fastening, design and installation of the individual components, but, in general, they feature dense, heavy framing with (usually) flush-laid, caulked planking that is gripped to the frames with clenched iron nails.

Other shipwrecks that contrast markedly with the mortise and tenon ships of the Mediterranean are the mainly clinker-planked vessels of northern Europe and Scandinavia, whose best-known examples include the Nydam boats which were excavated from a former lake in Jutland in 1859–63, and the Oseberg (c.815–20), Gokstad (late 9th century), and Tune (c.910) Viking Age ships from Norway. These vessels found their full expression in the cogs, hulks, and other Nordic ship types of the Middle Ages.

Types of 15th–18th-century Ships.

Shipwrecks of later vessels include the caravel, of which several examples have been found. One, the so-called Molasses Reef Wreck, was found off the Turks and Caicos Islands. It was about 19 metres (62 ft) long and can be dated to around 1510–30. Though very little of it survives, it stands out as one of a very few wrecks in the world that has been fully excavated, preserved, and published after the site was excavated by American marine archaeologists in the 1980s. Over 10 tonnes of artefacts were removed, much of which are now on display in the Turks and Caicos National Museum.

Far more discoveries have been made of 16th-century ships, including late examples of the carrack. One of the best preserved is the Portuguese-built Fort San Sebastian wreck that went down off the Island of Mozambique in the 1550s with a cargo of pepper, nutmeg, mace, porcelain, and gold, and which was excavated between 2001 and 2004. Several examples of the other vessel that helped shape the 16th-century world, the Iberian galleon, have also been found and excavated, one off Saipan, another off Luzon in the Philippines, and a third, the San Agustin, California's first recorded shipwreck, which was lost in 1595 in Drake's Bay, California. The wreck itself has not yet been confirmed, but its presence is well attested by large numbers of late Ming porcelain fragments that have come from Indian graves. All these were involved in the so-called Manila Trade.

The evolutionary high point of 17th-century ship development was the fully-fledged East Indiaman of which many examples have been found and excavated. Of the Dutch examples the earliest are the Nassau (sunk in battle, Straits of Malacca, 1604) and the Mauritius (lost off Gabon, West Africa, 1609).

Numerous instances of East Indiamen shipwrecks belonging to other East India Companies, and those of ships from later times, could be given, but they do not tell us much that we do not already know. Of the vessels that represent the peak of sailing ship development, and the advent of steam propulsion, mention must be made of an important group of 19th- and early 20th-century hulks from the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Tierra del Fuego. They were mostly victims of Cape Horn but have survived mainly because of their isolation and climate. The most important of these is the Great Britain, which was returned in 1970 to Bristol where it had been built and is now on display to the public, a shining, if rare, example of how shipwrecks can be saved and restored as museum ships. See also wreckers.

Bibliography

Bound, M. , Lost Ships (1998).
Monaghan, J., and and Bound, M. , A Ship Cast away about Alderney: Investigations of an Elizabethan Shipwreck (2001).
Sheaf, C., and and Kilburn, R. , The Hatcher Porcelain Cargoes (1988).

Mensun Bound