In 2024, the Colombian government began extracting artifacts from the Spanish galleon San Jose, sunk by British warships near Cartagena in 1708 and said to hold “billions of dollars in treasure.” Examples of historically significant wrecks crop up in Canada and Estonia, too, yielding both artifacts and questions about ownership and material value.
In 2022 during construction work on Lootsi Street in Tallinn, archaeologists uncovered a remarkably well-preserved medieval cargo ship wreck. The vessel measures about 24.5 metres in length and nine metres in width. Archaeologists Mihkel Tammet, Priit Lätti, and Raija Katarina Heikkilä note that it’s one of the largest medieval shipwrecks discovered in northern Europe. Dendrochronological analysis indicates that the timbers used to build the ship were felled around 1360. Among the finds from inside the hull were tools, leather shoes, weapons, and the remains of two ship rats. Most notable is the recovery of what’s thought to be the oldest surviving dry compass in Europe, in which the needle can rotate freely (rather than floating in a liquid).
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