Unusual discovery by archaeologists from the Polish Maritime Museum

Another spectacular success of archaeologists from the Polish Maritime Museum is coming up. After finding and excavating 18th-century cannonsThis time at the bottom of the Gdańsk Bay, near the old entrance to the port, they discovered the remains of a sailing ship. The find is entirely covered with sediments deposited by the Vistula. If the research on the wreck they found confirms their assumptions, we will be able to talk about a discovery on a global scale.

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“If it is confirmed that it has been preserved in its entirety, it will be the second such discovery in Europe,” – Museum director Jerzy Litwin reports.

“Sticking out of the sandy bottom, at a depth of about five metres, is the almost undestroyed side of a large medieval sailing ship. Our findings so far suggest that the rest of the hull is deep in the sand. If this is the case, then we are dealing with a find on the scale of a medieval Bremen cog – adds the search manager and coordinator, Dr. Waldemar Ossowski.

Very few ships built before the 17th-18th centuries have been preserved in good condition in the Baltic Sea. One of the few is a medieval koga ship from the end of the 16th century, excavated in 1961 and converted into a museum, 17th-century ship Vasa, a medieval coga from the end of the 14th century, found during the modernization of the Bremen harbour in 1962, or the discovered this month 15th century wreck near Gotland.

“Our find is not a koga. We are dealing here with a holk, that is a large Baltic merchant ship, which was used from the 14th to the 17th century. The last time we examined a similar wreck was in the 1970s. It was the famous ‘Miedziowiec’, from which the cargo and some underwater parts of the hull were preserved,” explains Dr. Ossowski.

Holk, a type of large medieval sailing ship, used in the North and Baltic Seas between the 14th and 17th centuries. It had a typically commercial purpose. As the years went by, its design evolved from single-mast to two- and three-mast. Later they were replaced by more modern galleons and flukes.

The wreck was discovered during a standard sonar survey of the seabed. Hidden in the sandy bottom of the Gulf of Gdansk, it was completely invisible. After being partially uncovered and inventoried, the find will await further research and exploration. The biggest problem that will have to be faced during the process of uncovering and rescuing the tug will be the financial aspect of such an undertaking. Storing such a huge vessel is always a challenge. In Sweden, a dry dock has been adapted for this purpose, while in Germany a special building has been built to house the dug-out tug.

Source: trojmiasto.gazeta.pl
Photo: archeologiamorska.pl