Diving Tudor Shipwrecks

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

In the 16th and 17th centuries, sailing was a tool of warfare and empire, of conquest and discovery, of trade and travel. But vessels were often lost or wrecked in heavy storms or on unfamiliar routes, through attack and piracy. Many such shipwrecks are still being found.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. David Gibbins, maritime archaeologist and author of A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks. His work as a diver has taken him across the globe, investigating some of history’s most fascinating wrecks.

This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In the 16th and 17th century, sailing was crucial. It was a tool of warfare and empire, of conquest and discovery, and of course of basic travel.
0:19.0	The dominant maritime forces of the time, Spain, Portugal, England and Holland all had established extensive
0:25.1	fleets for trade. Merchant ships carried art, textiles, currency and other
0:30.3	precious goods, the most valuable of which was Spice, to expand their territories
0:35.2	and establish the first global trade routes.
0:40.9	In heavy storms and on unfamiliar routes through attack and piracy as well as
0:46.9	incomplete or incorrect maps vessels were often lost, wrecked and many of them are still being found. The most famous Tudor wreck is of
0:57.6	course the Mary Rose on display in a wonderful state of the art museum and Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, but how about other wrecks
1:05.9	from the period?
1:06.9	Here to talk about just some of them is David Gibbons, maritime archaeologist and author of a history of the world in 12 shipwrecks.
1:17.5	His work as a diver has taken him across the globe, investigating some of the most fascinating wrecks in history. David, welcome to not just the Tudors.
1:33.2	Very pleased to be here, thank you.
1:35.1	I am delighted to have a chance to talk to you, pick your brains about this fascinating
1:40.1	subject.
1:41.1	Can you tell me, first of all, what it means to work as a marine
1:45.3	archaeologist. What can we learn from investigating a shipwreck in the
1:50.8	situ? Well shipwrecks are, of all unique types of archaeological site because
1:56.8	they represent a single moment in time that you might call very high resolution
2:01.0	sites so that the artifacts you find have a very close association with each
2:06.6	other, you can date them by that association and they tell us about a particular event which in a way is very familiar to us.
2:15.0	We don't have to work very hard to understand what happened with a shipwreck.
2:20.6	So in one sense, they're really easy sites to understand archaeologically, and they have this incredible power to tell us in great detail about that moment in time, and for that to be a springboard for looking at all of the other
	...

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