Page 129 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 9.1
and tied together (Fig. 2). When all was ready for the lift, a little extra air was placed in the leading barrel, until it began to rise. As it went up, the air inside expanded and provided the lift to start the second unit on its way, which in turn then started the third one, and so on down the line. Only in this way could one avoid the danger of units becoming entangled, with its attendant risk of accident. Once on the surface, a line from the leading barrel was attached to the boat, and the whole string towed in to the fishquay on Bruray. In practice, this could only be achieved when the tidal current was running with the boat, which it did for only 2-3 hoursaday.
Before lifting, each ingot was marked with a number using a wax crayon, and the location of the piece marked on a master-plan of the site; this number stayed with that ingot, and is used below. Once on shore, a record was made of the markings on each specimen, its dimensions, and any unusual surface corrosion or other features. In time a comprehensive photographic record of each piece was made, and tracings taken on plastic drafting film of the upper surfaces of those on which a substantial number of stamps occurred (over half of the collection). In ad- dition, lengthwise and cross-sections were drawn of representatives of each different type of ingot, together with those of any deviant examples. In June 1977 Messrs Muckelroy and Willies returned to the Out Skerries to complete
this comprehensive recording, and also to weigh each specimen (Fig. 3). While only a sample of these photographs and drawings can be pub- lished here, the full set is at present held by Mr Muckelroy, and will in due course be deposited in the Lerwick Museum along with the rest of the Kennemerland collections.
Description of the ingots
As can be seen in Fig. 3, the ingots are boat- shaped, a form easy to cast and convenient to sling. Table 1 gives a list of the weights and principal dimensions of each example, together with a note of the number and type of stamps occurring on its flat upper surface. Across the whole collection there are in fact only 37 different types used, of which a single ingot may possess between none and six (Fig. 4). Figure 5 illustrates the full range of stamps, together with the conventional abbreviations for them used in Table 1; this drawing super- cedes and corrects the preliminary illustration published previously (Price & Muckelroy,
1977: fig. 22).
By the end of the recording process it was
apparent that there were a number of recurrent forms within the assemblage, many of them so similar as to suggest casting in the same mould, or at least from the same pattern. Thirteen shape classes have been identified, together with six ingots which do not fit into any class, although one of these (numberlo) appears to
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Figure 4. A palimpsest of stamps on one end of the upper surface of an ingot.