Page 80 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY,6 .I
part of her ballast, a ship of this type, being composed predominantly of naturally buoyant materials, could drift onwards for some time in an increasingly waterlogged state before struc- tural coherence was totally lost. With such sites, it is thus unreasonable to seek to understand the sea-bed distributions simply by imposing a plan of the ship over the remains. In the light of these results, it can be seen that the traditional idea of a ship planing down and settling on the sea-bed in the classic Dumas fashion could only have happened in exceptional circumstances.
of each class of site; this digest is given in Table 1, A measurement of fetch has been included in this table, since its correlation coefficient lay only a little below the 5% significance level (see Fig. 3), and rose above that level to a score of 0.336 when correlated with the distribution rankings; it would thus seem unreasonable to
discount its relevance entirely.
Based as it is on a sample of only 20 sites,
there are limits to the authority of Table 1. However, it has been compiled in such a way that every site is accommodated within the
Table 1.A table desrribing the relevant environmental attributesforeachof themainfive classesof wreck site.
Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4 Class 5
Topography
% of bottom sedimentary deposit
100% More than
70% More than 30% More than
10% Less than 25%
Deposit
Range of sediments
Gravel to silt Boulders to silt Boulders to silt Boulders to sand Boulders to gravel
Slope
Average over whole site
Minimal
Less than 2" Less than 4" Less than 8" More than 6"
Sea horizon
Sector of open water for 10+km
Less than
90"
Less than
90"
Less than 150" More than 30"
More than 120"
Fetch
Maximum offshore distance
Less than 250 km Less than 250 km More than 250 km More than 250 km More than 750 km
Such circumstances would include occasions when the ship became filled with water without suffering structural damage, an unusual occur- rence, but one which happened in a few famous cases, including the Mary Rose, the Wasa,and the Royal George. Similar inundation, resulting from swamping in exceptionally heavy seas, should help produce many well-preserved remains in very deep water, but this topic is outside the scope of the current paper. These thoughts do not, of course, necessarily invali- date previous conclusions regarding amphora- carrying vessels, since these were considerably smaller than the ships being discussed here, and did not have their ballast concentrated in such vulnerable and realtively restricted sections of the vessel.
Having thus identified those factors which are highly correlated with the characteristics of surviving archaeological remains on underwater sites in Britain, it is possible to indicate, in broad terms, the relevant environmental features
specifications for the appropriate class under four of the five headings, and so that the aberrant specification, if there is one, is always in one of the last three attributes, for which the correlation scores given above were some- what lower. In this circumstance, it seems reasonable to suggest that this table could be used in a predictive sense, so as to indi- cate the likely characteristics of a newly- found site by matching its environmental attributes with those of one of the above classes. When seeking to fit such a site into this system, greater weight should be given to corres- pondence with columns one and two than with the other columns; it would in fact be unusual if correspondence were to be achieved with the specifications for more than four attributes. Finally, it must be repeated that this exercise has been concerned only with sites on which some material has been found; the table cannot be used, therefore, in seeking to determine
whether remains are likely to be found on a site
54