Basque Ship
The Newport ship was Basque
Around 1450 a very large ship – with a keel of 30 meters and an overall length of 32-34 meters – sailed on the town of Newport in the Bristol Channel Area. Built in 1447 it was dismantled at Newport around 1468-1470 when it was abandoned after a capsize.
There (still) seems to be some confusion about what the ship looked like. On the frontispiece of the dedicated homepage the ship is drawn as a kind of cog, while the logo looks more like a caravel; the archaeologists have apparently not quite decided yet. However, “given the known dimensions of the ship it does seems probable that she did have an upper deck and two small masts, one fore and the other aft, in addition to the main mast whose supporting structure has survived. The sails on these additional masts were important as much for helping to steer the ship as for providing extra propulsion”.(Friends of the Newport Ship)
French Coin in Situ
What did she look like?
Further, according to the latest presentation there is no evidence of a “raised forecastle or sterncastle, and as the extreme end of the stern lacks, it is not poosible to be certain about the presence of a centre-line rudder (as on modern vessels) or a “steering board” (hence “starboard”) side hung rudder. However, it is reasonable to expect that the Ship was steered from the centre line. Other sources (such as the Bremen Cog built around 1380 and a gold noble in the National Museum of Wales from 1412) show that European ships had centre line rudders well before the 1440′s. “
As the ship was in dock for repairing at the time of its dismantling, the cargo of the ship cannot be determined, but it seems at least to have been carrying cork. A fact which falls well in line with the current understanding of the ship as a large merchantman sailing along the Atlantic Coast from Spain to England and back again with wine, spices, wool and animal hides. To get a sense of the size of the ship it might be compared to the Santa Maria, which Columbus sailed on his first voyage to the Americas. Her keel was only 18 metres and she probably carried no more than a 100 tonnes; a third to a half of the tonnage of the Newport Ship.
When the ship was excavated a French “petit blanc” was found within the keel embedded in such a way, that it was obviously not a chance find of a lost coin. This helped to date the ship’s construction to the late 1440′s as it was one of 65,000 coins ordered by the Dauphin of France, which were minted from May to July 1447 in the town of Crémieu near Lyon. Already at the time of this find the ship was believed to have been built in France, in Bayonne.
However, for several years the exact building-site of the ship remained unknown. Dendrochronology did not yield the information, as the series of three-rings did not compare well with the English or French circles. Now, however, the mystery has been solved: the ship was definitely made in the North of Spain in the Basque country. A Basque origin had been suspected for some time, but it was only with comparative research into the ship’s timbers and those of historic buildings in Northern Spain that the new results were possible, reads the statement from The University of Wales.
Stall Part from King’s Lynn © V&A
Such a ship may be seen on two oaken stall parts or benches end from St. Nicholas Chapel in King’s Lynn, Norfolk from 1419. In the unique carvings both a fishing vessel with two masts and another with one mast may be seen; large vessels busy with angling for fish in deep waters. The stall parts are in the collections of the Victoria & Albert.Salted and dried cod?
Maybe she was even used for some serious cod-fishing? When in 1497 John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) sailed from Bristol in order to search for the spice-producing lands of Asia, he found Newfoundland and fishing waters steaming with cod. When Jaques Cartier 1535 sailed the same route, he came across more than a 1000 Basque fishing vessels; presumably busy doing what they had always been about: fishing cod at the banks.
Unfortunately the fish-bones found in the hulk of the Newport ship have so far not been studied. A good guess, though, is that they are cod. If so, at some point strontium analysis may even be able to discern where the fish swam and enlighten us about how early Basque fishermen in the 15th century strayed to the East Coast of North America. The Newport Ship has still a lot of secrets to keep the archaeologists busy the next many years.
Read the press statement from The University of Wales, Trinity Saint David
Fundacion Arkeolon which contributed with the Basque dendrochronology
Read more about the Newport ship at Newport’s homepage
Marcella Pattyn
