The largest medieval shipwreck ever found in history was found off the Danish coast, located in the waters of the Øresund Strait, which separates Denmark from Sweden. The wreck, named Svælget 2, lies at 13 meters deep and dates back to the 15th century: it measures 28 meters long, 9 meters wide and 6 meters high.
The ship was a “nock” (cog in English, kogge in Dutch) a type of flat-bottomed cargo vessel, widespread in the late Middle Ages in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. To date, it is the largest nock ever found, with an estimated load capacity of 300 tons. The ship’s wood is in an exceptional state of conservation, having been preserved under the sand of the seabed for six hundred years: archaeologists have even found parts of the rigging, or nautical cordage, a more unique than rare case in the context of underwater archaeology.
To trace the period of construction of the ship, very particular analyses, called “dendrochronological”, were carried out. The dendrochronological analysis, which is carried out on ancient wood, allows us, through the comparison of the growth rings, to estimate with a good degree of approximation when the tree from which the wooden elements were obtained was felled. The trees with which Svælget 2 was built were felled around 1410 AD. C. and come from two different areas of Europe: Holland, from which the material for the load-bearing structures of the ship came, such as the keel and frames, and Pomerania (historical region corresponding today to the north-east of Germany and the north-west of Poland), from which the wood to make the planking came.
The Svælget 2 find is of exceptional importance in naval archaeological research. In fact, this is the first archaeological evidence of construction solutions that until now were only known from period illustrations, such as the presence of bow and stern “castles”, or raised structures useful for making the nocks effective also for military use. Furthermore, archaeologists have found several objects related to the daily life of sailors, such as meal remains, crockery, combs and rosaries. Particularly exceptional was the discovery of a real oven made of bricks, which would have allowed the crew to cook over an open fire while minimizing the risk of fire.
Although many objects related to life on board were found, strangely, there is no trace of the cargo. This is no small problem, because corks were the commercial ships par excellence of the Hanseatic League, a commercial union that made the fortune of many cities in late medieval northern Europe. Danish archaeologists have tried to explain the absence of cargo in the wreck by postulating that it may have been composed of goods left afloat after the shipwreck, such as cloth (one of the busiest goods within the Hanseatic League) or uninsured wooden barrels. In any case, it is an exceptional discovery, destined to update our knowledge of medieval navigation.
