A UK dive team has found rope and cannon from the wreck of an English warship that sank in 1703.
Not only that, but recent dives on the site revealed a stunning array of artifacts, including sealed chests containing musket balls, swords and other weaponry as well as wooden desks.
The wreck is that of the Northumberland, a 70-gun English warship lost off the coast of Kent during the Great Storm of 1703. She was commissioned in 1679 by the Royal Navy and built in Bristol by Francis Baylie. The wreck lies at a depth of approximately 20 meters/66 feet and appears to be in remarkably good condition.
Continuous tidal movements have cleared away layers of sediment, revealing massive elements of the ship’s structure in exceptional condition and challenging earlier assumptions about how much of the hull survived the centuries. The survey was conducted in July of this year.
According to one of the divers on the dive, Hefin Meara, one of the Historic England maritime archaeologists:
“What we’re seeing on the seabed is that big, big element of the ship structure. It’s fantastic. It’s the exact kind of ship you think about when you think of great big warships of the age of sail. On the dives we can see this great big iron cannon, there’s large bits of wooden ship structure.
“But because it’s so intact you can see a lot of the organic material you don’t normally see — things like coils of rope, smaller wooden objects and organic artefacts like that. They’re all lying on that decking, exactly where they would have been when the ship went down.”
