Around 1635 a large ship was wrecked near Texel. The wreck would not be discovered by accident until 1984, and underwater archaeologists turned it up in the following years. The research only stalled due to lack of capacity and the finds were gathering dust on the shelf. Until now.
Underwater archaeologist Alice Overmeer dived into the wreck and examined the finds that emerged. She tells Kennislink about how she got involved in underwater archeology and about the research into the wreck.
Alice:“During my archeology studies at Leiden University, I was taught underwater archeology by Thijs Maarleveld. At that time, he was the only professional underwater archaeologist employed by ROB-NISA, now the Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE). In the summer, Thijs took students to the excavation of the wreck at Texel, named Aanloop Molengat after the site, and I was there too. As a 'find processor' I wrote down everything the divers brought up. After that, I went to get my professional license as soon as possible and the first wreck I dived on was Aanloop Molengat.”
Despite our maritime past, underwater archeology is only a small specialty within archaeology. Obtaining the mandatory professional diving license is expensive and the working conditions dangerous. There is also no specific training for underwater archaeologists in the Netherlands. Diving to wrecks has long been a hobby for recreational divers. The discovery of Aanloop Molengat resulted in some professionalization through the appointment of an underwater archaeologist at the then Ministry of Welfare, Public Health and Culture.
Alice continues:“Few people were involved in this discipline and Aanloop Molengat was the first professional underwater excavation in the North Sea. It was not until 1995 that a complete archaeological diving team was formed at ROB-NISA. Until then, Thijs had to do it with the help of temporary professionals, but especially volunteers, students and recreational divers. The tips from local fishermen, who came across shipwrecks, were also very important here. The excavation of Aanloop Molengat took a long time:from 1985 to 1999. This was mainly due to circumstances. The wreck is 16 meters deep so the dive team was only able to work underwater for a limited time. The weather conditions in the North Sea are also not ideal for diving and caused a lot of downtime.”
From 3-D to 2-D
The 14 years of excavations had brought up a lot of objects. The ship itself had been photographed from front to back using stereo photography. This would yield a 3-D model when worked out, but there was no capacity for this in the 1990s. There were too many wrecks to investigate and too few people to develop the research material into an overview report. All objects and information were a bit dusty, until the NWO program Odyssey. With the help of grants for archeology research that are still on the shelf, this program makes special finds available to a wide audience. With this grant, Alice, together with Thijs Maarleveld and many others, was able to get back to work with Aanloop Molengat in 2012.
Alice:“The fair was only for one year, so we had to make choices here. A 3-D model was not possible, we did not have the expertise for that, so I made a 2-D drawing. Furthermore, we would digitize and describe all objects to make them accessible to everyone. Some corpses came out of the closet:due to several relocations of the objects, everything was still in boxes. When unpacking it turned out to be not the 750 objects expected, but more than 3000. And also paper reports and hundreds of slides and photos. A huge job, but it worked out in the end.”
Remarkable results of research
Alice:“To find out where the ship was going, we looked at the cargo. The wreck of Aanloop Molengat was full of industrial products that still had to be processed into end products. A lot of heavy material and the ship must have been very deep in the water. Examples of semi-finished products that we have discovered are cattle hides, mercury, rolls of tin, wrought iron and textile leads. The bales of luxury textiles had perished themselves, but the lead, an inspection mark, were still in the wreck.”
“This included weights with the year of production, 1635, and the Leiden keys. The accompanying fabrics therefore came from Leiden and will not have been on the shelf for long because of their high value. We assume that the ship sank in 1635 or shortly after. This year corresponded to the outcome of the dendrochronological research into ship wood.”
With the help of this dating and the cargo, the researchers were able to make an important contribution to the knowledge of trade routes from the seventeenth century. Amsterdam was the staple market for most of the goods from the hold, so it can be assumed that the ship started its journey from the Netherlands. But where did the cargo come from? The ship was packed with goods from all over the world. The tin turned out to have been brought to the Netherlands from the Czech Republic via Hamburg. The lead blocks came from Poland. The textiles from Leiden, Delft and the Flemish cities of Bergen and Hondschoote. The wrought iron from Sweden or Germany. Elephant teeth from Africa and pepper from Asia.
The cowhides must have come from Spain or South America, despite the fact that the Netherlands was at war with them. DNA research should have given a definitive answer, but unfortunately the hairs on the leather turned out to be too polluted. The ship also carried mercury, but the seventeenth-century people were still looking for the best way to do it. The investigation showed that this ship transported the heavy metal, which remains liquid at -38 degrees Celsius, in glass vials with lead caps.
“We haven't been able to find out what ship this is and where it went to,” Alice says. “We couldn't find a name in the often incomplete sources. Approach Molengat was a large ship of 300 load. Most ships of that size sailed across the oceans for the VOC or WIC, towards the Far East and New West. In the VOC and WIC archives it is easy to find which ship left when and where and what the cargo was. No match was found with the wreck in these archives, so the destinations east and west are not included."
The Baltic Sea area could be a destination due to the demand from this area for the type of cargo the ship is carrying. However, the toll registers at the Sound, where size and cargo of each passing ship were noted in order to determine the height of the toll, are much smaller ships. So this destination is also cancelled. (The Sound Toll Registers can be viewed online.)
The third and most likely option is a Straitvaarder:a ship that sailed to France via the Channel. The cargo of semi-finished products could very well be used to make weapons and France was at odds with Spain from 1635 during the Spanish-French war. The question then remains whether it was an order for the arms industry or an illegal delivery. The researchers have not yet been able to substantiate this theory and it is currently being further investigated.
Finds for the public
In the end, the researchers succeeded in digitizing all those thousands of objects from the wreck and placing them with captions in EDNA, the e-depot for Dutch archaeology. From 19 December 2013, anyone who wants to know more about the wreck and its cargo can access this database.
Alice:"The digitization is mainly important for other researchers. Because underwater archeology is still so young, there are few studies and data to compare with in new research. Every new project is therefore welcome to generate more data and knowledge. Until now So far only a few small explorations and two major excavations have been made. Besides Aanloop Molengat, Scheurrak SO is the only fully excavated wreck." (That is, inventoried and the cargo brought ashore. The wrecks themselves are still under water.)
Scheurrak SO is a ship from the 16th century and in the video Thijs Maarleveld tells more about the excavation and the construction method of the ship.
Alice:“Another reason underwater excavations are so important is to show people our maritime history. It is difficult to send everyone out to sea with a boat to go and have a look. Part of the surfaced cargo can now be seen in the Maritime and Beachcombers Museum Kaap Skil on Texel. And from April 14, 2014, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden will present a retrospective of all Odyssey projects, including Approach Molengat.”
Furthermore, anyone who is interested in seeing what underwater archaeologists pop up from Dutch waters can visit the National Depot for Ship Archeology in Lelystad. Cannons and objects from wrecks can be seen here, but also wreckage itself:from a canoe from Roman times to wreckage from the Flevopolder. In the time when Flevoland was still the Zuiderzee, a lot of ships were wrecked. These wrecks are usually smaller than Aanloop Molengat.
Alice Overmeer (Nootdorp, 1977) studied Pre- and Protohistory of Northwestern Europe at Leiden University. In 2000 she graduated with a thesis on the inventory of the Scheurrak SO wreck. Between 1999 and 2005 she worked with the archaeological diving team of then ROB-NISA (now RCE), after which she started her PhD research on seven clinker-built freighters from the 15th and 16th centuries.
From 2010 to 2012, she worked on the NWO/Odyssee project Wrak Approach Molengat with, among others, her former teacher Thijs Maarleveld. He is now a professor at the Syddansk Universitet in Denmark.