Page 98 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

R. PRICE AND K. MUCKELROY: THE KENNEMERLAND
have been true of the bricks and iron-work forming Concretion 2. An interesting find under one of these leads was a worm-eaten piece of wood, which appears to be of some variety of tropical hardwood; no explanation as to how it got there has emerged yet.
g.Site interpretation. Some current ideas
currents off Stoura Stack, which has in turn prompted further thoughts on the movements of the wreckage after initial impact. The start of the northward drift of the floating remains under the influence of the southerly gale has already been described, but the subsequent movement of the submerged or semi-submerged remains presents two distinct alternatives, de- pending on the state of the tide at the precise moment of wrecking. If the wrecking took place at any time between five hours after high water and fivehours before the next high water, then there would have been an eastward setting tidal current which would have swept the wreck- age in an easterly direction, to be washed up on shore at Old Man Stack or beyond (see Price & Muckelroy, 1974: fig. 3). This interpretation could account for the two cannon which have been found in this area, whose provenance has always been in doubt (Price & Muckelroy, 1974: 261-2), although a substantial bulk of floating remains would have been required to effect the
Some ideas on the interpretation ofthe detailed
distributions of finds within the excavated sites
has been given above; in this concluding section
the aim is to summarise the development of
ideas regarding the overall interpretation of
site, in the light of recent documentary and
archaeological finds, and especially the dis-
covery of the lead ingots. Previous interpreta-
tions have been published by Forster & Higgs
(1973: 298-9) and Price & Muckelroy (1974:
260-2), both of which are still broadly accept-
able, being founded on the considerable histori-
cal data which was available from the earliest
days of the project. A more systematic attempt
at interpretation was published last year carriage of these pieces (the bows of the ship,
(Muckelroy, 1976), in which the relationship between the site remains and the ship which had produced them was explored in terms oft both ‘extracting filters’ which have removed large parts of the wreck material from the site, and ‘scrambling devices’, which have re-arranged the patterning of the surviving materials. It is hoped that this approach can be further de- veloped in the final site report.
One change in emphasis which arises from the discovery of the lead ingots concerns what pre- cisely happened to the ship when she struck Stoura Stack. Early interpretations have all talked in terms of her bows sinking into deep water south-west of the stack, while the stern section floated northwards (e.g. Price & Muckel- roy, 1974: 260). However, even before the 1976 season, an alternative hypothesis was advanced tentatively, suggesting that the major damage on the stack involved the ship’s bottom being ripped open, leading to the spillage of large numbers of ballast bricks and anchors (Muckelroy, 1976: 287). The finding of the lead ingots adds considerable weight t o this idea, since it is almost inconceivable that these heavy items were stowed only in the bow parts of the hold.
The process of raising over 100 lead ingots necessitated a detailed familiarity with the tidal
perhaps?). Under this theory, the area of wreck- age to the south-west of the stack must have been deposited later, perhaps when the wreck- age apparently floated back through the South Mouth on the morning after the disaster (Bruce, 1907: 127). It should be noted that reports from scallop dredges operating a quarter of a mile offshore in depths of up to 60 m, suggest that the bricks extend much further south than divers have been able to observe them. The alternative hypothesis seeks to explain this spread of remains to the south-west by assum- ing that the wrecking took place during the other nine hours of the tidal cycle, when there is a strong tidal current running out of the South Mouth. Of course, this explanation makes it almost impossible to account for the two cannon off Old Man Stack, and would suggest that they are not from the Kennemerland at all.
Despite these continuing uncertainties, work on the site during these third and fourth sea- sons has greatly increased our knowledge and understanding of many of its features, and pre- sented a challenging series of problems to be tackled in the future. Furthermore, these seasons have produced a wide range of new and interesting artefacts; the final section of this report seeks to describe and discuss some of them.
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