Beached: The Sanday Shipwreck, Orkney    

When skeletal timbers emerged from intertidal deposits at Sand o’Erraby beach on Sanday, Orkney, earlier this year, they were soon identified as part of a shipwreck – specifically, the midships section of a vessel’s lower hull. Current thinking is that the ship was possibly of Dutch manufacture, and perhaps 17th-century in date; if so, it would be one of only nine wrecks of this time period known in Scotland.  As the 8.5m by 4.5m section of hull weighed an estimated 8-10 tons, it was too large and heavy to recover intact using equipment available on the island – and so the wreck was carefully disassembled under the supervision of Wessex Archaeology and Dendrochronic