flats of Newport
“The Newport Ship: Unveiling a Time-Honored Relic After Two Decades of Restoration”
An artist’s impression of what Newport’s medieval ship might have looked like. David Jordan/Newport Museums and Heritage Service
When construction began on a new arts center in Newport, South Wales, in 2002, local builders could hardly have imagined what they would dig up. When excavating the foundations on the banks of the Usk River, part of a medieval wooden ship was uncovered, perfectly preserved by the river’s waterlogged silt. Archaeologists were called in and it quickly became clear that the ship was exceptional.
This was not an inshore sailing boat that would have navigated the Severn Estuary until the 19th century. Rather, by medieval standards, it was a “great ship” that would have navigated the long-distance routes of the Atlantic and Mediterranean. And yet it lay, or at least part of it, on an old slipway in a small Welsh port with a medieval population of around 500 people.
The remains of the ship quickly attracted public attention, with large numbers of locals visiting the wreck. It was a reminder that while Newport is historically best known as the 19th-century Iron City, the city has a long history that is closely tied to the sea.
A group of people wearing safety helmets and safety vests stand on wooden planks inside a construction site
So it was perhaps inevitable that locals were outraged to learn that ‘their’ ship would simply be recorded where it stood before being sampled and then bulldozed. The price just seemed too high; Preserving the remains would take decades and cost millions.
Excavations of other ships, such as Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, had shown just how expensive it would be. But local passion and campaigning outweighed such considerations and plans eventually changed. The ship would be saved.
Twenty years later, the task of excavating, preserving and recording all the woods and artifacts is almost complete. Attention now turns to the reconstruction of the remains and how best to display the ship in the future.
We’ve learned so much more about the Newport ship since its discovery. It’s not like the Mary Rose or the Vasa, a 17th-century Swedish warship salvaged in 1961. Both are complete ships full of artifacts. The Newport ship is the surviving part of a ship that was wrecked while being serviced in a dry dock.
Most of the contents and almost all of the upper parts of the structure were salvaged and removed before a medieval slipway was built on top. So only part of the shell remains intact. This fragment is important, however, because it is beautifully preserved and because it is the largest and most complete section of a 15th-century European ship yet discovered.
In a large warehouse, wooden planks lie in the water in large but shallow yellow baths.
Dendrochronology (the scientific method used to date tree rings to the year they were formed) has also made it possible to pinpoint that the ship was built in 1450 in the Basque Country. The same techniques, when applied to the collapsed scaffolding used to hold the ship in place, can tell us when within a year (1468) it was wrecked. This makes it possible to place the ship in an eventful time, at the beginning of the European Age of Discovery and the Wars of the Roses.
The Newport Medieval Ship represents the latest flowering in a shipbuilding tradition that stretches back centuries. For this purpose, a shell was constructed from overlapping planks, into which a relatively light frame was fitted for stability.
It has more in common with Viking longships than with the early modern skeleton ships. But the Newport ship is much larger than Viking ships. In its heyday it could carry 160 casks (about 320,000 pints) of wine in its hold on a voyage from Bordeaux.
A small French coin “petit blanc” was found in the keel of the Newport ship. Newport Museums and Heritage Service
One of the most positive aspects of the project was the way archaeologists, curators, scientists and other experts worked together. A team of historians I assembled examined the context of the ship to better understand the world from which it came.
New imaging techniques were also developed, including 3D scanning of each timber. This made it possible to digitally reconstruct (and even 3D print to scale) the entire ship. In many ways it was reassembled long before the real woods even touched.
Most recently, the project’s curator, Toby Jones, has worked with the charity Friends of the Newport Ship to create complex visual reconstructions of the ship. 3D animation films will be used to convey the nature of the ship to the public and open up new research opportunities for experts.
This article was republished by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Evan Jones received £2000 from Newport City Council / The Friends of the Newport Ship to help meet some of the costs of hosting a conference on The World of Newport Medieval Ship in 2014. Both bodies also made contributions (£3,114 in total). the publication costs of the sequel, The World of the Newport Medieval Ship (University of Wales Press, 2018).
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