[HN Gopher] Found: Medieval Cargo Ship - Largest Vessel of Its K...
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Found: Medieval Cargo Ship - Largest Vessel of Its Kind Ever
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 107 points
Date : 2026-01-15 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| dgan wrote:
| Patrician II/III anyone? One of the best games of my childhood,
| sweet memories
| alberth wrote:
| Who would have guessed the Smithsonian of all organizations would
| have so many video popup ads.
|
| Isn't the greatest experience on mobile when so little of the
| content can be seen due to popups.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Ads ? What Ads...
|
| I forgot that I use Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin. I
| don't see any ads NEVER.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I don't see any ads NEVER
|
| So you see some ads occasionally? Then why are you asking
| "what ads"?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I can appreciate their troubles. How is someone supposed to pay
| for all the overhead that goes into research and writing these
| articles without a source of income. People also seem dead
| against subscriptions. The only way that seems to work is
| appealing to the LCD and raking in stream bucks but not all
| media/literature, especially the valuable kind, is conducive to
| that model.
| quinncom wrote:
| Smithsonian Mag used to be the Institution's brain-child, now
| it's just a click-bait lifestyle tabloid full of celebs. The
| magazine's editorial directives have diverged from the
| institutions mission. They care more about pageviews and ads
| than research.
| mmooss wrote:
| Is there a paper somewhere?
|
| Statement from the Viking Museum:
|
| https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/about-us/news-and-press...
|
| Documentary referenced in the statement (I think):
|
| https://www.dr.dk/drtv/episode/gaaden-i-dybet_-fra-ukendt-ha...
| tokai wrote:
| No. It's going to take some time, and theres a good change
| it'll come as a danish language monography or one or more phd
| thesis'.
| paulnpace wrote:
| Amazingly under only 40' of water.
| Someone wrote:
| That may be not that amazing for a shipwreck in the Oresund.
| According to Wikipedia, its maximum depth is 40m (130')
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresund), so chances are a lot
| of it is less deep. There also may be sampling bias, with
| shipwrecks in shallower water being more likely to be found,
| and, if the tides flow faster in deeper water, survivorship
| bias.
| bluGill wrote:
| ships are less likely to wreck in deep water. Storms can sill
| overturn them (though if they are unstable getting to deep
| water is questionable). You mostly expect wrecks from hitting
| rocks on the bottom. Though in war time sinking happens in
| deep water.
| patall wrote:
| The baltic has tons of wrecks. Because of its brackishness,
| both marine and fresh water wood decomposing organism dont
| survive there and thus old ships got preserved really really
| well. Some are in really shallow (walkable) water, especially
| in areas where the land is rising.
| einpoklum wrote:
| This is the kind of ship they found:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cog_(ship)
|
| larger ships in the later middle ages were the Caravel and the
| Carrack, which typically had more than a single mast.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _Its planks are made of Pomeranian oak from modern-day Poland,
| and the wood of its frame came from the Netherlands._
|
| I'm surprised the raw materials came together over such a
| distance. That transporting lumber was economical back then is
| remarkable.
| twic wrote:
| Well, as the article says:
|
| > Per the statement, the large vessels were made to sail north
| from the Netherlands, around Denmark and toward the Baltic Sea.
| [...] Uldum adds that shipbuilders made the cogs as large as
| possible to transport bulky cargo, like timber
|
| Once you've built one cog, you've got the ideal tool to fetch
| Polish timber to build more!
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Yea, this is like the early railroads making steel cheaper
| via cheaper transport of bulk ore/coal, that made cheaper
| railroads, that then ship more products made of steel to
| larger markets opened by the extended rail networks, etc.
|
| This happened with tin all the way back in the Bronze Age,
| where a lot of it was shipped as ingots from industrial-scale
| mines / smelters in Cornwall all the way to the Mediterranean
| empires to mix with copper to make Bronze.
|
| A cog-based auto-catalytic wood industry is super
| interesting.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| Check out the History of the Germans season on the Hanseatic
| League [0]. The bulk goods trade was in the Baltic / Northern
| Europe was actually huge. The Hansa themselves traded all the
| way from London to Novgorod. Anyway, it's an absolutely
| fascinating subject and period.
|
| [0] https://historyofthegermans.com/hanseatic-league/
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You might be interested in tin transport during the bronze age
| then - You'll find tin mined in Cornwall in ships that sank off
| the coast of Turkey 3500 years ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_during_a...
| benj111 wrote:
| Is it possible the ship was rebuilt?
| tokai wrote:
| No the wood is also dated.
| evereverever wrote:
| Too wet to be on tinder though.
| cardamomo wrote:
| Dendrochronology-based age verification is coming soon
| namenotrequired wrote:
| I'm more surprised we can tell so precisely where wood that
| spent 600 years under the sea came from
| asymmetric wrote:
| > On its stern, researchers were shocked to find extensive
| remains of a castle, a kind of covered deck where the crew would
| have sought shelter. Records show that castles were distinctive
| features of medieval cogs, but no physical evidence of them had
| previously been identified.
|
| I suppose this explains why the thing that exists on more modern
| ships is called a "forecastle".
|
| PS go check the pronunciation for that word as it's quite
| surprising.
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(page generated 2026-01-15 23:00 UTC)