Page 34 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 3.2
each area, so that much of the finer sediment was dumped automatically on the cleared areas behind the excavators. At all times, there was a finds keeper on duty in the boat on the surface, who received the material from the divers and noted down all particulars regarding its context at once while all the details were fresh in the divers’ memories. We are confident that this total strategy represented the most efficient means of achieving our objectives with the resources available.
The distributionof the material
It is often said that one of the most important characteristics of the archaeology of wreck sites is the fact that they represent closed groups of finds. Whatever may be the position generally, this was certainly not true of the Kennemerland site, since the South Mouth, Out Skerries, had also been the graveyard of at least four other vessels, the Racer (1888), the S.S. Watchful (1906), the Nordwind (1906), and the Advena (1912). Furthermore, it is very likely that there are some unrecorded wrecks present, dating from the time before the Out Skerries lighthouse was constructed (1857); certainly, the bell and compass found in 1971 (Forster & Higgs, 1973: 296-7) seem to be early 19th century in date. There was also a good deal of material which had evidently accumulated recently, originating either from passing boats or the adjacent shores. Whilst it was usually quite easy to distinguish 17th century from more recent material, there was sometimes doubt concerning items such as heavily corroded pieces of iron. At the same time, we must remember that our evidence has been further distorted by the activities of later salvage operators, both those in 1664-5, and later ones (Forster 8c Higgs, 1973: 292-3. Bax,
1970).
In the definition of the areas of interest, we
were considerably assisted by the spread of ‘Overijsselsde Steen’. These yellow bricks have been found in enormous quantities on all contemporary Dutch East Indiaman wreck sites (Green, 1973; Martin, 1972). They appear to have served as paying ballast
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on outward voyages, and to have been used to help make Batavia itself a passable copy of a Dutch town, as is reflected in this des- cription of the town given in 1693 by Daniel Havant: ‘The town itself is not unpleasing. There are many streets in which none but Hollanders live, including several with houses built in a special way after the Dutch fashion, with three rows of trees in front of them.’ (Boxer, 1965). Since they are by no means the perfect ballast, not being particularly heavy in relation to their bulk, their presence is an interesting commentary on the priorities of the Dutch authorities when loading their ships. As can be seen in Fig. 3, they are concentrated in two distinct areas (only whole and unabraded bricks have been considered in mapping this distribution). The northern concentration covers the area where most of the small finds have been discovered, but the southern group is associated only with a few items, notably anchors 2 to 6. Intensive searches indicated that this apparent absence of finds is real, but it is worth noting that the relatively smooth sea-bed in this area may have allowed less dense objects to be swept away. The southern limits of this spread of bricks have not been determined accurately, on account of the great depth of the water (in excess of 40 m).
Taking the evidence of these bricks, together with that of the other large artefacts, it seems reasonable to interpret the course of the wreck on the lines indicated by the local traditions recorded by Bruce (1907). Having broken her back on Stoura Stack, part of the ship must have broken up at once, leading to the deposition of the bulk of the cargo of bricks to the south-west of the Stack. The currents in this area would tend to sweep material in this direction. This was probably the bow section, thus explaining the con- centration of anchors on the western side of the Stack. These should almost certainly not be interpreted as signs of attempts to hold the damaged ship, since if this were the case, the anchors would have been laid out in a line over some distance. However, a considerable part of the ship remained coherent, and was blown by the southerly gale northwards into the harbour. When it drew level with the end of Grunay, it hit the zone of breakers,