"Medieval ship raised from Dutch river" Topic

"An early 15th century merchant ship was raised from the river IJssel near the Dutch city of Kampen, about 60 miles northeast of Amsterdam, on Wednesday. The wooden ship is 20 meters (66 feet) long, weighs 50 tons and is a type of vessel known as a cog, a single mast flat-bottom ship that was the workhorse of the Hanseatic League's Baltic maritime trade. It is the best preserved medieval cargo ship ever discovered in the Netherlands. The cog was discovered buried in the sand and silt during dredging operations in the summer of 2011. Two smaller vessels, a barge and a punt, found at the same time were recovered last October, but the cog is the largest, the heaviest, the most intact and the most historically significant, so raising it required a months of advanced planning.

Divers ran straps underneath the hull of the ship and attached them to a steel cage structure that would keep the entire vessel in one piece. Sensors inside the ship reported on the pressure inflicted on various parts of the ship while forty motors lifted the cage and the 50 tons of oak ship within. The raising was expected to take all day, but the cog was in even better structural condition than experts realized, so they were able to lift it out of the water in a few hours. Crowds on the shore cheered when it emerged from the river for the first time in 600 years.

When the cog was first discovered, archaeologists thought it was deliberately sunk as a means of waterway management. On the night of November 18th-19th, 1421, a tidal surge from the North Sea broke through the dikes of a large part of what is now the Netherlands. The 1421 St. Elizabeth's flood (November 19th is St. Elizabeth of Hungary day) claimed thousands of lives and redrew the map of Zeeland and Holland. The Rhine river, which before the flood had flowed into the IJssel, changed course and flowed over the Waal to the North Sea. The IJssel's water level dropped, severely hampering its commercial value. The heavy cog and smaller ships could have been dropped onto the riverbed in an attempt to narrow the width of the fairway and raise the water level to make the channel suitable for cargo shipping again…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Beat you to it Tango01
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Every time I reach the point where I believe that people no longer care about their history, something like this comes along to restore my faith.

Thanks to both of you for posting the story.

B

@Blutarski
You're welcome. Check out my original post for an item about a different ship of similar age found near Sweden