A 13th-century merchant vessel carrying a cargo of Purbeck marble has been identified as the earliest-known wreck site to be found with surviving timbers in English waters. Carly Hilts reports.
Due to her age and prestige, the condition of the wreck, and the accident’s political context, the discovery has been described as the most important British maritime find since that of Mary Rose in 1971.
The find has been hailed as the most significant British maritime discovery since the Mary Rose.
On 11 October 1982, an estimated global audience of 60 million people tuned in to watch one of the televisual events of the decade: the long-awaited raising of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's ill-fated Tudor flagship, from the seabed near Portsmouth, where it had rested since capsizing while fighting against the French at the Battle of the Solent some 437 years previously.
In its heyday, HMS Invincible was considered one of the finest ships in the Royal Navy – and although it sank off Portsmouth in 1758, its remains represent the best-preserved 18th-century warship known in UK waters. Carly Hilts spoke to Daniel Pascoe, who headed recent excavations of the wreck, and visited an exhibition currently running at The Historic Dockyard Chatham to find out more.
'This can be claimed as the single most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982.’
How a research expedition in Antarctica located the lost wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance.
The excellent state of preservation of the ship meant that once this wreck was located it was easy to identify, with its name still visible.
It is one of the oldest cogs ever found in Europe.
The remains of the ship were discovered in 1979 by local fishermen and she was designated a Historic Wreck in 1980.
The finds will now be analysed, before being exhibited in the city.
No other sailors from HMAS Sydney were ever recovered, even after the ship’s wreckage was located in 2008.
A look at the latest archaeology stories from across the globe, including a 4th century galley sunk off Egypt, evidence of social links between Mayan cities, and a study of Late Pleistocene husbandry.
The ship is best known as Admiral Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar
Among the objects found were bronze artefacts, imported Greek ceramics, and wicker fruit baskets still containing grape seeds
At very low tides, the remains of the Amsterdam, the most complete surviving example of a Dutch East India Company trading vessel, can be seen on Bulverhythe Beach near Hastings. CA Editor Carly Hilts visited the wreck, travelled to the Shipwreck Museum in Hastings’ Old Town, and spoke to Peter Marsden to find out more.
Current Archaeology explores recent news about a WWII minesweeper HMS Mercury discovered in the Irish Sea, the winner of the Kenyon Medal which is awarded in recognition of work in fields of archaeology and Classics, and new revelations about a plague hospital in Bristol.
The discovery was made as part of a joint research project between maritime archaeologists at Bournemouth University and scientists at Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences.
The Phoenicians occupied the coast of the Levant for over 1,000 years, but knowledge of their trade network and practices remains elusive. In 2007, an ancient wreck containing a large cache of ceramic containers was discovered off Malta. This ship proved to be one of only a handful of known Phoenician vessels. Since 2014, further exploration of the site has yielded some very exciting results. Project Director Timmy Gambin and Lucy Woods reveal some of its mysteries, and the challenges of excavating a shipwreck 110m below sea level.
The newly discovered Ptolemaic galley was found under 5m of dense Nile clay and building remains.
Frost fitted herself out with an improvised breathing hose at a party in order to explore a 17th-century well.
One of the exciting things about archaeology is that, just occasionally, something truly extraordinary comes along which radically changes the way we think about the past. One such moment came in 1900, when sponge divers working around the Greek island of Antikythera happened upon a shipwreck containing the single most important object of high technology ever recovered from the ancient world.
A seemingly unassuming lump of corroded bronze has confounded investigators for more than a century, ever since it proved to contain precision gearwheels that simply should not have existed in the ancient Greek world. A new study, using cutting-edge techniques, has now revealed what this machine could do, and how it did it, as Tony Freeth explains.
In the CA377 'News in brief' section, Kathryn Krakowka explores excavations in York, a survey of a warship wreck, and new inscriptions found in Anne Boleyn's prayer book.
The discoveries are significant as they reveal the long history of maritime trade in Singapore well before the establishment of the East India Company in 1819.
The wreck of the Royal Navy’s first long-range diesel-powered submarine has been awarded protected status by the British government.
Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, she nonetheless fought valiantly against her larger opponents, allowing time for the escort carriers she was protecting to escape. Of the ship’s 327-man crew, only 141 survived the battle.
Almost four decades have elapsed since the Mary Rose was raised and an astonishing array of new research techniques have revolutionised our thinking about the ship’s make-up, her calamitous final moments, and perhaps most poignantly, the skeletal remains of her 500-strong crew.
The Mary Rose museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard was reopened 471 years to the day since the sinking of Henry VIII’s flagship – for the first time giving the public a clear view of her hull
The arsenal of iron shot that was carried aboard Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, may have once struck fear into the hearts of the French fleet, but today they are somewhat more delicate. How do you stop the rot?
Thirty years ago, the wreck of the Mary Rose, pride of Henry VIII’s navy, rose from the seabed to the gasps of a live TV audience of millions. Neil Faulkner takes the opportunity to review the rise of English seapower in the early 16th century.
The 115m long Fletcher-class destroyer sank in the Pacific Ocean during the Battle Off Samar on 25 October 1944.
Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, famously sank in the Solent almost 500 years ago. Her partial remains were recovered by archaeologists in 1982 – what has been learned since then? Peter Marsden explores some of the latest thinking on the Tudor vessel’s appearance and her crew.
The Mary Rose was launched in 1511. In which year did she sink?
A cargo of ancient African ivory recovered from a 16th-century shipwreck is shedding light on early trade networks and historical elephant populations.
Excavations begin along the A303 Preliminary investigatons by Wessex Archaeology in advance of the planned A303 tunnel scheme are in progress. So far they have undertaken more than 462ha of geophysical survey and 440 evaluation trenches, uncovering diverse finds in…