Rare 400-year-old ship found in German river is a stunningly preserved 'time capsule'

Categories: Historical news

Rare 400-year-old ship found in German river is a stunninglypreserved 'time capsule'

The ship, arare discovery, is from the Hanseatic period, when a group of northern Europeantrade guilds dominated the Baltic and North seas from the 13th to 17thcenturies, Live Science previously reported. Wood quickly rots away underwaterin this region, and few shipwrecks of this age have ever been found. Butmaritime archaeologists think the wreck survived beneath the waves because itwas quickly engulfed and protected by a layer of fine mud carried there by theriver Trave, which leads to the city of Lübeck about 5 miles (8 kilometers)inland.

The wreckedship was between 66 to 82 feet (20 to 25 m) long and may have been a galliot, asingle-masted cargo ship common during the Hanseatic period, Fritz Jurgens, thelead maritime archaeologist on the project and assistant chair of protohistory,medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Kiel University in Germany, told LiveScience. At that time, the towns and guilds of northern Germany and elsewherein Europe made up a successful bloc — the Hansa — that dominated tradethroughout the Baltic and the North Sea.

"Thesource for this would have been Scandinavia — in the middle of Sweden or in thenorth of Denmark," Jurgens said. "We know that this cargo was comingfrom there, most likely to Lübeck, because northern Germany has no big sourcesof limestone."

Historicalresearch may have pinpointed the date of the shipwreck to December 1680. Aletter from that date in the Lübeck historical archives shows that the voight,or bailiff, of Travemünde asked an unknown recipient to recover the cargo of agalliot that had run aground in the river. That fits with what is known of theTrave shipwreck, Jürgens said, including the results of a dating techniquecalled dendrochronology, which revealed that patterns of tree rings visible inits timbers were from trees felled in the 1650s.

"Thereare still about 70 barrels in their original location on the ship, and another80 barrels in the immediate vicinity," Schneider told Live Science in anemail. "The ship therefore sank almost standing and did not capsize."He added that archaeologists may uncover further archaeological finds in thesediment that fills the ship's interior.

Raising theship from the riverbed will give archaeologists a chance to fully investigatethe hull and its construction, and perhaps identify its origin. "Thesalvage will probably also uncover previously unknown parts of the wreck thatare still hidden in the sediment," Schneider said, such as rooms for theship's crew in the stern that may still hold everyday objects from the 17thcentury.

AlthoughLübeck was a center for Baltic trade during the Hanseatic period, very fewauthentic maritime objects from that time had survived, Schneider said, so thediscovery of almost an entire ship from this era is remarkable. "We havesomething like a time capsule that transmits everything that was on board atthat moment," he said. "It throws a spotlight on the trade routes andtransport options at the end of the Hanseatic period."