2005 Diving Season - Page 3 of 7

29th September

Both flukes of the anchor are now visible and are intact. Approximately one fifth of the shank has been exposed on all sides, and it appears to be sound all the way along. The anchor flukes are lying flat on the seabed, parallel with the stem. The bulk of the artefacts in this area are post-Tudor, for example pipe stems and blue and white china, interspersed with the odd Tudor shoe and many animal bones. The structural timbers in this area so far represent collapsed, incoherent structure and we are now considering the possibility that the anchor may be the forecastle parallel of the anchor on the upper deck at the front of the stern castle. In form, the anchor we have on the seabed is similar to this anchor, 81A0646. The anchor on the seabed has a length of 4.85m and length across the flukes of 2.46m. There are several timbers attached to the lower portion of the anchor, we are currently enlarging the excavation to try and understand the relevance of these to the anchor and the stem.

A video survey along the length of the anchor was undertaken this evening. We plan to leave the anchor in the trench as long as possible in order to preserve its orientation relative to the stem and collapsed structure, In the meantime, we have trench faces of over 2 metres in depth and are taking these back to have good access all around for stropping the anchor. This weekend our underwater surveyor, Peter Holt, will be joining us for three days and next week we are expecting visits from the MoD, English Heritage and Wessex Archaeology. Today we spent 21.73 man hours underwater.

Alex Hildred

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