Archaeologists have discovered a huge medieval shipwreck at the bottom of a strait off the coast of Denmark.
The 600-year-old ship was the Cogwheel, a ship with round square sails, one of the most advanced ships of the Middle Ages. Researchers at Denmark’s Viking Ship Museum say the newly discovered ship is about 28 meters long and 9 meters wide, making it the largest cog ever discovered.
Researchers discovered the ship off the coast of Copenhagen in Øresund, or “The Sound” in English, a strait between Denmark and Sweden. They described it as a “supership” that could transport hundreds of tons of cargo at low cost during the booming trade of the 14th and 15th centuries.
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“This discovery is a milestone for maritime archeology,” excavation leader Otto Uldum said in a statement. “This is the largest cogwheel we know of and gives us a unique opportunity to understand both the structure and life on board the largest medieval trading ship.”
The discovery was made by chance as part of an undersea survey of a new artificial island that Denmark is planning to build off the coast of Copenhagen. Researchers removed what they described as “centuries of sand and silt” to reveal the outline of the ship, which they named Sverget 2 after the strait where it was discovered.
Sverget 2 was well preserved on the ocean floor, 43 feet (13 m) below the surface. Sand protected the starboard side, and there were traces of delicate rigging, unheard of in previous gear wrecks. Researchers also identified the first brick galley on a medieval ship in Danish waters, where the crew could cook hot meals over an open fire. The statement said artifacts on board included cooking utensils such as pots and bowls, as well as personal items belonging to the crew, such as hair combs and prayer beads.
Researchers have not yet discovered Svalget 2’s cargo. Uldum pointed out that the cargo barrels may have floated from the ship when it sank because the hold was not covered. However, researchers said Sverget 2 had no evidence of military use, making it more likely to have been a commercial ship.
Sverget 2 was built in 1410, a fact the researchers deduced from tree-ring dating, which shows the annual growth pattern of the ship’s wood. The researchers also compared the pattern to previously published tree-ring data and determined that the ship’s planks came from Poland, and the ship’s frame came from the Netherlands. Additionally, the construction pattern suggests that planks were imported to cut the frame at the ship’s construction site, suggesting that construction relied on a complex timber trade network across Northern Europe, the statement said.
This gigantic ship was designed for the perilous journey from the Low Countries (including modern-day Netherlands) to the trading cities of the Baltic Sea. Gears of this size could make it possible to transport bulky everyday items such as salt, wood, bricks and basic foodstuffs over long distances, but researchers say this was previously only done for luxury goods.
“Gears revolutionized trade in Northern Europe,” Uldum said. “It is now possible to transport goods on a scale never before possible.”
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