Orkney Islands<\/a> that lie off Scotland\u2019s northern tip.<\/p>\nIt excited interest on the island of 500 people, whose history is bound up with the sea and its dangers. Around 270 shipwrecks have been recorded around the 20-square-mile (50-square-kilometer) island since the 15th century.<\/p>\n
Local farmers used their tractors and trailers to haul the 12 tons of oak timbers off the beach, before local researchers set to work trying to identify it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was really good fun, and it was such a good feeling about the community \u2013 everybody pulling together to get it back,\u201d said Sylvia Thorne, one of the island\u2019s community researchers. \u201cQuite a few people are really getting interested in it and becoming experts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dendrochronology \u2014 the science of dating wood from tree rings \u2014 showed the timber came from southern England in the middle of the 18th century. That was one bit of luck, Saunders said, because it coincides with \u201cthe point where British bureaucracy\u2019s really starting to kick off\u201d and detailed records were being kept.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so we can then start to look at the archive evidence that we have for the wrecks in Orkney,\u201d Saunders said. \u201cIt becomes a process of elimination.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou remove ones that are Northern European as opposed to British, you remove wrecks that are too small or operating out of the north of England and you really are down to two or three \u2026 and Earl of Chatham is the last one left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further research found that before it was the Earl of Chatham, the ship was HMS Hind, a 24-gun Royal Navy frigate built in Chichester on England\u2019s south coast in 1749.<\/p>\n
Its military career saw it play a part in the expansion \u2014 and contraction \u2014 of the British Empire. It helped Britain wrest control of Canada from France during the sieges of Louisbourg and Quebec in the 1750s, and in the 1770s served as a convoy escort during Britain\u2019s failed effort to hold onto its American colonies.<\/p>\n
Sold off by the navy in 1784 and renamed, the vessel became a whaling ship, hunting the huge mammals in the Arctic waters off Greenland.<\/p>\n
Whale oil was an essential fuel of the Industrial Revolution, used to lubricate machinery, soften fabric and light city streets. Saunders said that in 1787 there were 120 London-based whaling ships in the Greenland Sea, the Earl of Chatham among them.<\/p>\n
A year later, while heading out to the whaling ground, it was wrecked in bad weather off Sanday. All 56 crew members survived \u2014 more evidence, Saunders says, that this was a vessel blessed with luck.<\/p>\n
The ship\u2019s timbers are being preserved in a freshwater tank at the Sanday Heritage Centre while plans are discussed to put it on permanent display.<\/p>\n
Saunders said that the project is a model of community involvement in archaeology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community have been so keen, have been so desirous to be involved and to find out things to learn, and they\u2019re so proud of it. It\u2019s down to them it was discovered, it\u2019s down to them it was recovered and it\u2019s been stabilized and been protected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For locals, it\u2019s a link to the island\u2019s maritime past \u2014 and future. Finding long-buried wrecks could become more common as climate change alters the wind patterns around Britain and reshapes the coastline.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the biggest things I\u2019ve got out of this project is realizing how much the past in Sanday is just constantly with you \u2014 either visible or just under the surface,\u201d said Ruth Peace, another community researcher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON — When a schoolboy going for a run found the ribs of a wooden ship poking through…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":87292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[58653,58652,347,10106,53191,57,50,159,103,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-87291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-58653","9":"tag-archaeology-and-anthropology","10":"tag-article","11":"tag-climate-and-environment","12":"tag-coastlines-and-beaches","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-world","17":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114905414706305799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}