Wrecks have occasionally brought to light some fascinating – and sometimes disgusting – objects.
When you think of amazing things found in shipwrecksyour mind may go to gold or others treasures. But would you consider a century-old champagne? Or love letters that can still be read decades later?
From the old 350 year old cheese to the world’s first analog computer, shipwrecks have brought to light some fascinating—and sometimes disgusting—objects. Let’s take a look at some of them.
350 year old ripening cheese
The Stora Kronan was a Swedish warship – the flagship of the Swedish navy in the Baltic – and one of the largest ships sailing the world’s seas in the 1670s. However, even the largest ships cannot defeat their fate… Her On June 1, 1676, the Kronan while sailing northeast of Hulterstad, Sweden, capsized when she made a sharp turn in rough weather. Then the gunpowder he was carrying caught fire, the ship burst into flames and the end came quickly. The warship took with it to the bottom 800 men, a safe full of silver and gold coins, expensive military equipment and its… history.
And so it remained floating in the dark seabed until in 1980 an amateur researcher discovered the exact location of the wreck. To date, more than 30,000 items from the ship have been recovered, most of them of high value. In 1982 a collection of 255 gold coins, mostly ducats, was found. Several musical instruments have also been found, including a trumpet and three violins
Of all of these, however, one stands out as the most curious and impressive: a box containing cheese almost 350 years old… The cheese survived thanks to the cold and low salinity of the Baltic and the fact that it was under a thick layer of sediment, which protected the container from corrosion.
Lars Einarsson, the leader of the diving expedition that discovered the delicacy, joked: “We’re pretty sure it’s some kind of dairy product, butter or cheese. It’s reminiscent of Roquefort, or a type of mature, unpasteurized cheese.” Einarsson immediately clarified: “I definitely don’t recommend trying it.” He added meaningfully, “Unlike the rest of the finds, I find its smell quite pleasant,” he said. “Smells life”…
1850 Veuve Clicquot Champagne
In 2010, divers diving in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Finland discovered the remains of a sunken merchant schooner. This ship was stocked with 168 bottles of champagne, which languished at the bottom of the sea for 170 years. Although the labels were completely destroyed, the stamps on the corks allowed a group of scientists to identify the winegrowers, among them Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, a company that is still popular today!
Fortunately, the conditions at the bottom of the sea were ideal for preserving champagne: minimal light and cool temperatures ranging between 1 and 3.9 degrees Celsius. Experts managed to secure a sample of the rare wine and conducted a taste test, comparing the “Baltic wine” with modern Veuve Clicquot. It was “clean”, with “intense notes of wet hair…” and after swirling in a glass, the taste improved significantly and received much more complementary descriptions, such as “spicy, smoky with hints of leather”.
“It was incredible. I have never tasted such a wine in my life,” said the leader of the team of scientists, Philippe Jeandet, professor of food biochemistry at the University of Reims: “The aroma stayed in my mouth for three or four hours after I tasted it.”
Many of these bottles have been auctioned and sold for up to €100,000 each to date, while other bottles have been sent to museums or historical institutions. So to our health!
The remains of drowned passengers
One of the most famous shipwrecks in history was that of the Vasa, a Swedish warship. The Vasa sank less than a mile into its much-publicized maiden voyage on August 10, 1628! When the Vasa “sat”, due to excessive weight, it took on water that began to flood the holds and sank rapidly. Thirty people are said to have perished with the ship.
The disaster was watched by a crowd of spectators from the port. Lying at the bottom for years, the wreckage of the Vasa was discovered in an area in Stockholm harbor in the late 1950s with its intact hull recovered from the sea in 1961.
The skeletal remains of at least 17 – and possibly as many as 19 – people were found when the ship was raised. The bones were of male crew, as well as women and a child. Some were almost intact skeletons and in one case there were fingernails, hair and even the brain!
Now housed in Stockholm’s Vasa Museum, the ship is one of Sweden’s most popular tourist attractions and has been visited by over 35 million people. Visitors can also see face reconstructions of some of the passengers whose remains were recovered.
The oldest computer in the world
In 1901, a mysterious ancient device, now known as the “Antikythera Mechanism”, was found on a shipwreck off Antikythera. It appeared to be a “piece of corroded bronze and wood”, but in May 1902, the Minister of Education Spyridon Stais visited the Archaeological Museum of Athens, together with his cousin, archaeologist Valerios Stais and his family; both of whom came from Kythera.
Valerios Stais watched the welding work of the bronze statue of the Adolescent of Antikythera by the French expert Andre. The Frenchman has asked that the boxes containing the bronze objects, which had not been identified, be placed around the statue to see if any match those missing from the statue. Stais then noticed that one of the bronze objects had gears and incomprehensible designs that looked like inscriptions. It was an “entirely oxidized machine”, as reported by the newspaper “Estia” on May 22, 1902.
The initial assessment was that it was a mechanical watch. But over time and thanks to more thorough studies, the scientific community remains dumbfounded. The Antikythera Mechanism is an analog mechanical computer, which was used as an astronomical observation instrument. This is the oldest known complex planetary mechanism! It was built during the Hellenistic period, between 150 BC. and 100 BC, and is nearly half a century older than the actual shipwreck that carried it, which is estimated to have occurred between 87 BC. and in 63 BC
The head of Hercules
The sea area of ​​Antikythera is still full of artefacts and researchers have discovered some great artifacts during a recent survey. In a statement on June 20, 2022, the Research Team said they located the objects after removing large natural boulders that prevented them from reaching some of the debris.
The finds include human teeth, the lead collar of a wooden anchor and fragments of various materials typical of a shipwreck. The researchers said they will carry out genetic tests on the teeth and hope to reveal more information about the person they belonged to.
One of the most interesting finds in this latest underwater research was a marble supernatural head of a bearded male figure, which at first sight is identified with the demigod Hercules of the Farnese type, the so-called “Hercules of Antikythera”, and possibly belongs to the headless statue No. 5742 of the National Archaeological Museum, which was lifted by mops in 1900.
The official website of the research mission seems to promise more discoveries in the future: “Since the ship was carrying luxury goods, there is a possibility of unimaginable finds, similar in importance to the Mechanism,” it says. “The Shipwreck of Antikythera hides more secrets”.
The clock that showed the time of the disaster
A remarkable object recovered from the wreck of the steamer Pulaski has revealed evidence of the ship’s final moments – literally. The steamer was bound for Baltimore from Savannah when one of its boilers exploded around 11:00 p.m., about 40 miles from North Carolina. One hundred of the approximately 200 passengers and crew lost their lives, many of them killed instantly by the hot steam.
In 2018, divers found a gold pocket watch in the wreckage of the ship that had stopped at 11:05 – minutes after the ship’s boiler exploded. The solid gold watch and gold chain would have belonged to one of the wealthiest members of society at the time. Many of those on board were among the wealthiest businessmen and landowners on the US East Coast. Among the other items found is a complete set of silverware.
And the research on the seabeds continues and certainly the ones that were recovered from the depths of the sea and we will never know, are the most exciting…
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