2004 Diving Season - Page 4 of 4

11th - 15th August

Today is day 15 and so far we have spent 12 days underwater, totalling 290 hours. We have been extremely lucky with weather, equipment and visibility. We have 119 registered finds, 51 timbers and 53 environmental samples. We also have a large number of timber from collapsed upper levels which are not registered as individual items, but are logged under the appropriate dive.

We are still recording the two large elements of port side structure which are associated with the stem timber, and are finding more extremely large timbers directly west of the end of the stem. All of this suggests that more of the ship lies to the west than we thought, and the condition bodes well for preservation of the castle structure of the bow further east. The eastern trench, where we feel the bowcastle lies, is still extremely slow going, as there are so many large timbers. These have probably collapsed from higher decks, but they have to be plotted, removed and lifted before we can have access beneath. The parametric profiler when tracked across the 16 x 4 metre grid displayed numerous layers of differing density over the entire area, and this is what we are finding with wood interspersed with layers of shell, wood, clay and silt, and then more wood. We have only several days more of the excavation before we have to backfill the site, cover it with a membrane material and sandbag over this. We are all extremely excited about what we have found, and everyone wants to continue.

Thursday 12 August was Press Day onboard. This began with one of our divers, Peter Magowan, giving a live interview for BBC Radio Ulster on the ‘Good Morning Ulster’ programme. We had representatives from local television and a number of newspapers, and radio stations (both local and national) onboard the diving support vessel and the BBC broadcast television interviews from the Mary Rose Museum. In the early evening we had a small live slot on BBC Radio Wales. We carried on as much as possible with the archaeology at hand, still planning the distribution of frames to the west of the stem timber and taking the east side of the trench to the same depth removing all the collapsed structure. The frames in the north- west are beginning to curve and beneath these are the remains of several hood-ends. These would have fitted into the rabbets (grooves) cut into the stem. This confirms our theory that we have the lower part of the portside bow structure. The full western portion of our grid is now excavated to a depth of up to three metres below seabed level, and timber is continuing outside the grid in all directions.

People are beginning to leave as we complete the excavation phase of the operation. Colin McKewan, who was responsible for planning the frames in the west sector, left on Friday to set up for a job excavating a crannog (man-made Island) in Wales. Paul Chisholm (with us on his holiday) left to go back to Switzerland. Both were with the 79-82 excavation team and we are sorry to see them go.

As we finished the last of the excavation on Friday and Saturday we were joined by Damien Sanders and Ian Oxley. Ian is Head of Maritime Archaeology with English Heritage. Ian and Damien worked on the earlier excavations. Both were impressed with the amount and condition of the structure we have uncovered, despite the deteriorating visibility resulting from the stronger Spring tides and a freak storm. This lost us half a days diving. We also bid farewell to Kevin Camidge, who has maintained our acoustic positioning system and site plan for most of the excavation as well as helping with finds and timber recording. He is off to work on one of the sites he has responsibility for, the Colossus in Scilly.

Late Friday night we were contacted by Sky News. They were with us Saturday and Sunday. This resulted in live broadcasts from the ship throughout Sunday interspersed with footage taken in the Museum and of the rest of the ship in the Shiphall.

The anchor has been exposed along its entire five metre long shank, from the ring to the crown. It extends from the middle of the east sector of the grid right back towards the stem timber, T 49. There are a number of small concretions (the remains of corroded iron objects) which may be attached to it, so we will not be lifting it this year. There is also structure over the anchor which must be removed to have access to lift. Two anchors were recovered from under the starboard side of the ship just aft of where we are, so this may represent an anchor in a similar position on the portside. It shares similarities in form and size to one recovered from the upper deck amidships, although the shape of the flukes has not yet been determined.

The eastern trench is now down to one level, but this is an extremely hard surface with only several longitudinal timbers running through it. Large timbers extend at a depth of 2 metres below seabed level out towards the east, and also to the north. It is the same depth as the trench in the west. This is slow work, and we are unable (due to lack of time) to take this trench any deeper although we feel that we are within Tudor levels and have now removed all the later deposits and gone through the infill resulting from excavations in part of this area in the 70’s and 80’s. Everyone is sad that we have uncovered so much, everything is just beginning to make sense and we have to backfill the site. All diving today (Sunday) has been on rolling out the membrane over the site and pinning this with tons of sandbags. The last pair of divers have just placed the final bag and are now decompressing in the wet bell. The archaeology is over and we will lift the grid tomorrow.

We have been onsite for 21 days and our in-water time is 336 hours, so we have spent 14 of the 21 days underwater, with 20.160 minutes so far. We estimate that we have removed 300 tons of sediment and have registered 140 artefacts, 52 timbers and 65 samples. The next phase is to choose and dive a selection of the 83 anomalies registered within the protected area, a radius of 300m around our dive vessel. These were found during remote sensing undertaken last year.

 

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