Protecting the Wreck and Valuing the Collected Data

In twelve days we can get a fairly good impression of a shipwreck site. As seen above, it is clear that the conservation conditions concerning the BZN 10 wreck are excellent. However, the wreck is threatened by erosion and the ship worm (Teredo navalis).

We can conclude that this ship was probably not Dutch. The wood and the inventory point to a northern German origin. The cargo is probably Iberian. Was it a 17th century German merchant ship on her way back from a trip to the Iberian Peninsula? The facts point at that direction. The wreck is valued as archaeologically very interesting, and it is now protected by fine polypropylene gauze (picture 8). Future research at this wreck can give us much information about seafaring and trading on the European West Coast and the (intermediate) role of the Netherlands between the South and North European markets.

In the next three years, the wreck will be monitored and data about its degradation processes collected for the European project MoSS. As I stated above, the wreck is really threatened by nature. Now it's time to find out: how much, how quick, and what we can do about it. In the Netherlands we are especially focussed in testing our new method of protecting shipwrecks. In the past four years, we developed a method in which an artificial reef is created from sand and gauze to cover the wreck on the seabed (picture 9). The method is cheap and easy to put in its place. It seems to work very well. The question still is, if the wreck and its artefacts are permanently protected from the ship worm and other organisms of the sea.