Ship Wreck

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

Hey Mike,now all we have to do now is let Wilbur Smith loose on this topic and voila,what a whopper of a book it should be, , carrying us all back to the time the ship struck. Pam the coins we picked up at Meob Bay was VOC 1742 coins, i think my father and some one else i am not sure, are also in possesion of a silver pieces of eight coin,perhaps our good friend ALEXANDRE can elaborate a bit more on that. bling1

[Alexandre]

Pam the coins we picked up at Meob Bay was VOC 1742 coins, i think my father and some one else i am not sure, are also in possesion of a silver pieces of eight coin,perhaps our good friend ALEXANDRE can elaborate a bit more on that. bling1

"In 1964, a group of scientists from the U.S. were doing a diamond prospecting survey near the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. While they were on the beach they began finding hundreds of silver coins. Most of them were Dutch VOC coins with some scatterings of Spanish Pieces of Eight. The coins varied in dates from 1744 to 1746. In the sea the scientists spotted a ballast pile and several bronze cannons. They even filmed the event on 16mm filmcamera and later had it edited onto video. Copies of this film are very rare and hard to find. The shipwreck from which the coins and cannons must come from is believed to be the VLISSINGEN. Travelling from Holland to India via the Cape, she ran aground around Meob (halfway between Luederitz and Walvis Bay) at the Namibian coast in 1747."

 
Bibliography and Sources:

Bruijn, J.R., Gaastra, F.S., Schöffer, I. Dutch-Asiatic Shipping In The 17th and 18th Centuries (3 Vols). The Hague, 1979, 1987


Now that I have dealt with this dutch ship, and if you excuse me, let me put my 9 mont baby up to bed and let me return to this shipwreck of ours in a couple of hours and have a go at the ivory... :)

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

Nine month old baby......! gee alex now i feel like a flippen grandfather,thanx for the info..

[SandyB]

Alexandre  .. I was trying to post with the words my reply  about the skeleton coast  but I dnt know whats going on .. either the site or my server  .. clunky as hell  worse  then  mweb dial up   .. my  quote ... Well  .. our  coastline  was not  called  the ' skeleton" coast for nothing  hey ?? like some  have  said  .. there must be a lot more  wrecks  lying about  undiscovered ...

@ Mike when things  slow  down  the  emoticons  seem  to  be  more  of  a  hinderance  gettting  themelves  downloaded  ,,  superflous ??

I  try again  to   post  a reply  for  the  umpteenth  time  and  al the  darn  things  are still  hanging in the  air  and  slowing  tings  down....

[Alexandre]

@ Alexandre  -  it would be great if you could stay active on this forum and give feedback on the progress as you perceive it from where you are.  I truly hope that you are able to gather more detailed information in order for you to study the history of the wreck to sort of aprox the date as close as possible.  It would be a true treasure if you will be able to actually name the ship in the end.  I do presume that logs dating as far back as the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries still do exist somewhere in archives and museums?

Thank you so much for your input and the info thus far.  I think most of us appreciate it very deeply. 

Well, like I said earlier, it is pretty much unethical to do archaeology by proxy..  After all, who better than the archaeologists that are on site to analyse the artefacts and reach some conclusion based on hard evidence?

Anyhow, opinionated as I am, I do have an opinion, a date and a name... :)

[Alexandre]

Alexandre', welcome, great experience.....  Loved your post.... As you know the big debate, was the boat on it's wasy south or North? You say South to trade.....however how would one explain the Elephant tusks? Where did they come from...?

Alexandre' , was there ever any "fleet" going missing down the south coast of Africa?

Not a whole fleet, as far as I can recall, but there have been some horrific losses. I do remember quite well the case of the 1615 armada, of which I have found the wreck site of the Capitania - of the five that were dispatched to India, only one managed to reach Lisbon.

In another case I am working, the Santa Catarina made an uneventeful voyage all the way to India and back, only to be wrecked 20 miles West of Lisbon. more that 600 drowned, only 12 escaped...

As for the Ivory, one of our colleagues from India, Sila Tripati, has done a very good work on the ivory trade in the 16th century based on what he has found so far in Indian waters, so I will draw extensively from his data.

The basic pattern of trade of the Portugal to India route was to bring soldiers, trade goods, administrators, furniture, war material, building material, etc. to the region and on return carry spices, porcelain, cloth, silk, rice, timber and finished manufactured products.

Commodities like ivory, gold and some precious metals were brought to Goa in Portuguese ships in exchange for Indian spices, cloth and foodgrains. The main items of export by the Portuguese were pepper, ginger and other spices from Malabar and Karnataka, cotton and silk from Bijapur, Bengal, Cambay and Golconda, cinnamon from Ceylon, and mace, nutmeg and clove from the Maluccas and Banda Islands. Similarly, ivory, gold, slaves, precious metals, stones, corals and other articles of trade were brought to Goa from Mozambique, Mombasa, Sofala, Angola and other places in Africa.

The Portuguese generated huge revenue and wealth by trading with these centres, with ivory being one of their most profitable commodities. Ivory brought to Goa (from Lisbon, in the first half of the 16th century and from then onwards from Mozambique), was dispatched to Cambay, Surat and other places in Gujarat because artisans concentrated in this region were more skilled than those in other regions.

So, the Portuguese mainly dealt with high demand goods which could fetch large profits, with ivory being one of the most profitable among these. Understanding the importance of and high demand for ivory in India, they imported it from African countries – like the Skeleton Coast, the Ivory Coast designation is pretty much self explanatory - to meet this demand-

Ivory from the African elephant (Loxodonta Africana) is much better in quality than the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) because of its superior hardness, pale blonde transparency and ability to be more finely polished. While african elephant tusks can measure up to 3 m in length with diameters of 9 to 11 cm and weights up to 90 kg, tusks of Asian elephants are smaller and lighter, are only sported by males (and not all of them) and their weight record still stands at 40 Kg. Although Indian ivory has been used for making miniature sculptures and artefacts since the beginning of the Bronze Age in India, it was unsuitable for making big sculptures because of its brittle texture, softness, opaqueness and tendency to discolour. Besides ivory statues, inlay ivory figures were incorporated in chairs, tables, wardrobes, chests, sofas and jewellery.

[Alexandre]

Here's more info on the dutch wreck VLISSINGEN:

Master: Adriaan Kakelaar, 
Tonnage:  650 
Built: 1732 
Yard:  Zeeland 
Chamber:  Zeeland 
Date of departure:  09-01-1747 
Place of departure:  Rammekens 
Total on Board:  214     

[Michael Alexander]

Well the government delegation visited the site today, all stood around on a barren piece of ground looking quite amused, one wonders if us unprofessional people had to go there, if we would be disappointed.... I realise that just a sliver of an ancient piece of timber would cause quite a stir amongst the educated, whereas the rest of us would be expecting to see something that rose at least 10 feet above the desert, perhaps a sail flapping in the wind....a body, yes, a body or two in skeletal forms.... so I wonder what the government thought as they stood on that barren, windswept piece of the skeleton coast.

However I do believe they were whisked of to the "castle" to feast their curious eyes among the treasure.... coins, cannons and ingots...... damn! i wish I could have gone to the "castle"

On another point , thanks to Alexandre' on his explanations, fascinating stuff indeed.  Another small question if you have time, what was the average crew for such a wreck as ours, and what was the average sailing time from Portugal to India?

I also heard from another person , that a good few months back , a solid "beam' of wood, in a curved shape, like that of a scorpions tail, but on a larger scale was found in the area, nobody knew or cared what it was, and it was just left , sticking up through the ancient sands, whilst the miners went about their task of recovering diamonds.... It is now known that this piece of wood, is part of that wreck.....

where to next will this wreck of ours take us......? One can only wonder, like a good Mystery novel...we turn the page....

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

So Mike,what are we going to discover next? The lost camel of the Namib!!!  :emot26: Alexandre, i never really liked history,but hell you sure make it a interesting topic ,yes it is a pity they covered the wreck so fast,for the delegation that visited the site today it, would really have been something. bling1. 

[Diana Rudd (Boehme)]

Thank you for your interesting facts Alexandre.

[Jeremy Dixon]

Mike were or what is the "castle" ?

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

Dont worry Jeremy he is in a drooling mood

[georgswa (Georg Ruf) (RIP)]

Mike were or what is the "castle" ?

I offer you a castle here

http://www.livevideo.com/video/Georgswa/323B60E7A4D747D7B8A0270FD6408A75/chateau-uss-fairy-tale-cast.aspx

[Alexandre]

Somebody told somebody, that some of the old guns are actually fossilised into the rock already and thus difficult to extract. Alexandre' how does this work? Has the wreck been lying long enough for this to happen?

Michael, the sea has a funny way to hold to whatever it has once claimed. An iron cannonbal might lie in the ocean bed for centuries. When a diver finds it and unplucks from it's watery grave, the sea will cast a spell into it: after a week at the surface, all those sodium chlorides that had migrated slowly into the very core of the metal, ions micro-inching year after year well within that Fe structure will explode the cannonball from the inside. It will even get too hot to be touched and all it will left of it will be a pile of red oxides.

All materials will be affected, to lesser or greater extent. All, that is, but gold (that's also why gold is so appreciated).

So, my greatest fear is for those wonderful things we have heard to have been found there: the muskets, the swords, the timbers, mainly the timbers. A piece of wood that has been soaking in water for 400 years might look like it was felled from a tree yesterday but looks are nothing more than appearances: a timber will be mostly water and it will need to be preserved in water until all that water insed can be replaced by PEG.

Have a look at this INA page http://nautarch.tamu.edu/class/anth605/File0.htm - the institute cited by Paul Brandt up in this thread, who is truly leading the way in whatever is being done worldwide regarding the preservation of artefacts recovered from the sea.

"Artifact preservation is one of the most important considerations when planning or implementing any action that will result in the recovery of material from a marine archaeological site. It is the responsibility of the excavator or salvor to see that material recovered is properly conserved. The conservation phase is time consuming and expensive, often costing more than the original excavation. Without conservation, however, most artifacts will perish, and important historic data will be lost. The loss is not just to the excavator but also to future archaeologists, who may wish to reexamine the material.

Artifacts recovered from a salt water environment are often well preserved but of a very friable nature. In general, artifacts recovered from anaerobic marine environments (i.e., buried in sediment) are recovered in better condition than artifacts recovered from aerobic marine environments (i.e., the water column and surface sediment). Artifacts not properly conserved in a timely manner are apt to deteriorate at a very rapid rate and subsequently become useless as diagnostic or display specimens. Organic material, i.e., leather, wood, textile, rope, plant remains, etc., if allowed to dry without conservation treatment, can crumble and become little more than a pile of dust and debris in a matter of hours. Iron, on the other hand, can last for a few days to months according to the size and density of the artifact; however, it too will eventually deteriorate and become useless as a display or diagnostic specimen. Bone, glass, pottery, and similar material will, if not conserved, slowly devitrify and, in extreme cases, degenerate to a pile of worthless slivers. For these reasons, conservation must be of paramount concern when the excavation of a marine archaeological site is considered."


As for those cannons (are they iron or bronze? bronze tends to, due to the toxicity of the copper used in the alloy, be relatively kept free of organic growth, a major factor in the "fossilization" process) they should be removed with the bedrock still attached, put into water and then worked upon by specialized technicians, armed with air guns and dentist picks...

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

Hi Alexandre,i was privvy to see some new photo's today,and it seems that most of the articles recovered are lying submerged in huge containers of water,i hope that will let you sleep better!