More than a year after its discovery, a historic vessel has been identified.
The hunt was initiated after a child was going for a run on a remote beach on Sanday, an island in Scotland, where he stumbled upon a wooden ship poking out of the sand. Archaeologists and historians spent a year digging through community research and using high-tech science to identify the ship.
Researchers announced it to be an 18th-century warship, the Earl of Chatham.
“I would regard it as a lucky ship, which is a strange thing to say about a ship that’s wrecked,” said senior marine archaeologist Ben Saunders to the Associated Press. "I think if it had been found in many other places, it wouldn’t necessarily have had that community drive, that desire to recover and study that material, and also the community spirit to do it.”
Historians uncovered the Earl of Chatham's background, originally named HMS Hind, a 24-gun Royal Navy warship built on England’s south coast in 1749. In the 1770s, the ship served as a British convoy escort during the American Revolutionary War. In 1784, the navy sold and renamed the warship, which was converted into a whale hunting boat off the coast of Greenland. In 1788, the whaling boat met a tragic weather accident off the coast of Sanday, where it was discovered almost 250 years later.
“The discovery of the Sanday Wreck is a rare and fascinating story. Wessex Archaeology worked closely with the community of Sanday to discover the ship’s identity, which shows that communities hold the keys to their own heritage,” said Alison Turnbull, Director of External Relations and Partnerships at Historic Environment Scotland. “It is our job to empower communities to make these discoveries and be able to tell the story of their historic environment.”
from Men's Journal https://ift.tt/OneBiyI
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