Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom
Friday, November 19, 2004
Tudor cannon recovered
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The Guardian
Maev Kennedy
One of the earliest iron cannons cast in England has emerged from the shattered hull of a Tudor ship, wrecked off the Kent coast near Gravesend.
The gun, probably made in the early 1570s, is of international importance. Only one earlier English cast-iron gun survives, in a private collection: this new find will probably be housed at the Royal Armouries' artillery museum, at Fort Nelson in Hampshire.
The gun was made, and the ship may have been part-owned, by Thomas Gresham, Kent entrepreneur, iron founder - and fixer and probably spy to both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
The wreck was found by chance last year when a Port of London dredger hit what was first assumed to be a sunken Thames barge. It was only when the first of the guns surfaced that the archaeologists were called in.
Bruce Richardson, chief harbour master of the Port of London Authority, explained yesterday that with several of the older channels completely silted up, they decided it was essential to dredge out the Prince's Channel, the shallower of the two remaining shipping lanes. Their charts show more than 600 known wrecks, but not the Tudor ship.
Anthony Firth of Wessex Archaeology said the discovery of the ship's hull were also of great importance.
The Guardian
Maev Kennedy
One of the earliest iron cannons cast in England has emerged from the shattered hull of a Tudor ship, wrecked off the Kent coast near Gravesend.
The gun, probably made in the early 1570s, is of international importance. Only one earlier English cast-iron gun survives, in a private collection: this new find will probably be housed at the Royal Armouries' artillery museum, at Fort Nelson in Hampshire.
The gun was made, and the ship may have been part-owned, by Thomas Gresham, Kent entrepreneur, iron founder - and fixer and probably spy to both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
The wreck was found by chance last year when a Port of London dredger hit what was first assumed to be a sunken Thames barge. It was only when the first of the guns surfaced that the archaeologists were called in.
Bruce Richardson, chief harbour master of the Port of London Authority, explained yesterday that with several of the older channels completely silted up, they decided it was essential to dredge out the Prince's Channel, the shallower of the two remaining shipping lanes. Their charts show more than 600 known wrecks, but not the Tudor ship.
Anthony Firth of Wessex Archaeology said the discovery of the ship's hull were also of great importance.
