Ribadeo – Trench 1

This area was surveyed and trenched in 2015. We believe it is a section of the starboard side, amidships. There are apertures in the ceiling planking, perhaps to receive deck beams.

The inner and outer planking are 15 cm thick and the frame timbers around 25 cm square, spaced less than 25 cm.

The cut in the ceiling is possibly related to the existence of a deck beam in this area.  A second hole was exposed in 2019 and it looks like it was also cut to receive a deck beam.

The outer planking is fastened with two or three iron nails per frame.  The hoods inspected had two nail holes. In 2019 we did not excavate in the area of Trench 1 but there was a period during which the current cleaned about 10 cm of sediment and we could observe several features in the ceiling plank exposed.

It is possible that this timbers (098-097-099) are part of a clamp, but it is too soon to know. To our knowledge there are no other early modern Italian shipwrecks published in sufficient detail to allow us an early interpretation of these timbers.

In 2018 only six timbers were numbered in Trench 1, and as in 2019 we focused on the area of the ship’s maststep, we decided only to number these timbers when we trench deeper across this area of the shipwreck.

In the 2015 model of the shipwreck we can see a number of hull planks collapsed on the starboard side of the hull.