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The archaeological remains of a boat, possibly a seventeenth-century Dutch ship, were found on Friday in the Melides Lagoon (Grândola) and collected for analysis and identification, the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage (DGPC) reported this Sunday.
According to the DGPC, in a statement released this Sunday, the heavy rains that occurred earlier this month exposed, “for a brief period”, the remains of a boat that is suspected of being “Schoonhoven”, a Dutch ship that, “according to historical records, he was shipwrecked off Melides on January 23, 1626. “
At the site, a three-dimensional record of the accident was made and “a sample of a panel of the ship’s exterior cladding” was collected, which will be studied to validate this hypothesis.
The investigation will include an analysis of the growth rings of the wood (dendrochronology) of the remains found, which will allow knowing “the date of felling of the tree that gave rise to the table, its species or the type of climate where it grew”. “.
According to the DGPC, the work on the site was carried out “urgently” by the project team “An immersion in history”, specialized in “detection, excavation and dissemination of historical shipwrecks.”
The “monitoring and evaluation” was carried out by a team from the National Center for Nautical and Underwater Archeology (CNANS), together with the Alentejo Regional Directorate for Culture and the municipality of Grândola.
The Administration of the Alentejo Hydrographic Region, the Republican National Guard (GNR), the Captaincy of the Port of Sines and the National Maritime Authority also participated in the operation.
The archaeological find, “only visible at low tide,” “was re-buried by the dynamics of the estuary, which is also on the verge of disappearing when the lagoon closes again,” the DGPC said in a statement.
According to the DGPC, other remains, possibly the same ones on the ship, had previously been identified by divers in Laguna Melides.
There is documentation that records that this Dutch ship, with 400 tons, departed on December 20, 1625 from the island of Texel, in the Netherlands, on what would be “its third voyage to Asia, on a route that is interrupted by its shipwreck of the coast of Portugal “.
“The ship will have thrown itself against the coast, or it will have tried to take refuge in Melides in a last desperate maneuver”, says the DGPC.
The unpublished documentation, belonging to both the Overseas Historical Archives and the Dutch Archives, allowed not only to identify Melides as the place where this shipwreck occurred, but also to inform the efforts made by local institutions to collect the daring saved on the coast “read in the press release.
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