Credit: dive team Badewanne www.badewanne.fi
Find a ship sunk 400 years ago in almost perfect condition
They found a mysterious 400-year-old ship in the depths of the Baltic Sea and its characteristics astonished specialists.
It is a ship that belonged to the Dutch Empire, which is in such a good state of preservation. How it got to the bottom of the ocean is not yet understood.
The ship is a construction known as “fluyt”, filibote, which was so comprehensive because it could transport large quantities of cargo with a small crew around the world, a vessel widely used in ancient times, of which few examples remain.
“No indications of how it sank,” explained the dive team that found the ship, the hull remained intact. “It’s in the middle of the sea, so it didn’t run aground”
Maybe it sank in a storm, or the pumps got stuck and the ship got too much water due to a leak. Or maybe the rigging froze and made the boat unstable.
The condition of the ship is so good that it is believed that the only damage it has was caused by trawling during these years, which means that the ship sank when it was in perfect condition.
The ship’s hold is full, and due to the amount of sediment that covers the ship, it was not yet possible to determine what is inside.
The reasons why it was preserved for more than four centuries were the conditions of the Gulf of Finland. “Only in rare places, like the Baltic Sea, can wooden debris survive for centuries without being destroyed. It is due to low salinity, absolute darkness and very low temperatures ”
“Perhaps most importantly, wood-piercing organisms, such as the shipworm, cannot live in these environments. Even in temperate seas, all the wood remains disappear in decades, unless they are buried in sediments ”.
The entire Baltic Sea is good for preserving old shipwrecks. But towards the Gulf of Finland conditions just improve as salinity decreases. In addition, the sea is frozen in winter, so the ice sheet further stabilizes conditions.
