{"id":511,"date":"2017-06-12T20:56:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T20:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/conservation\/?p=511"},"modified":"2018-06-02T14:31:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-02T14:31:12","slug":"newport-ship-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/conservation\/newport-ship-workshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Newport Ship Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Recently,\u00a0four\u00a0conservation students from Cardiff and\u00a0three students from the University of Wales Trinity St. David (UWTSD) program in Nautical Archaeology met at the Newport Ship\u00a0Centre to conduct a collections assessment under the supervision of Cardiff lecturer Eric Nordgren and ship curator Toby Jones. The aim of the three-day workshop was to assess the condition of artefacts from the ship, repackage them if necessary, and make sure the database is up to date.<\/p>\n

The Newport Medieval Ship, currently housed in a warehouse in Newport, was discovered in 2002 in the bank of the River Usk during excavations for a new building. Archaeologists soon uncovered what is now the most complete example of a 15th century merchant ship. Due to the favourable burial conditions, the timbers of the medieval ship were so robust that the excavation team could walk on them while they worked. The excellent state of preservation also allowed for dendrochronology to be done, dating the construction of the ship to about 1450. Analysis of artefacts from the ship suggests that it met its demise between 1468 and 1470 – researchers believe that the ship came into Newport for repairs, but the cradle that was being used to support the ship during the work collapsed, causing the ship to tip over and take on enough water that it could not be recovered.\u00a0 However, since the ship was in an inlet of a tidal river,\u00a0it was still accessible enough that most things of value, including masts, sails, rigging and timbers, were stripped for reuse. The rest of the ship was eventually covered with alluvium, creating an anaerobic environment that kept it intact for us to study today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Excavation
Excavation of the Newport Ship in 2002 (from Wikipedia<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
All of the remaining timbers and artefacts were recovered and brought to a large warehouse for cleaning and treatment. If allowed to dry, waterlogged objects will quickly degrade, so everything had to be kept in tanks of water. These objects were then impregnated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) in order to replace the water and support the wood structure. Waterlogged objects that are dried without using PEG will shrink, collapse, and become useless for study and reconstruction. Once the timbers and objects were bulked with PEG, they were freeze-dried by the York Archaeological Trust.<\/div>\n
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\"The
The ship timbers were kept in large tanks of water and PEG. Each timber has a unique ID number on a yellow tag (image from Newport Ship website<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Water
Water was removed from the timbers using a large freeze-dryer (image from Newport Ship website<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The PEG and freeze-drying process is nearing completion, and the small artefacts have already been treated. However, many archaeological materials are susceptible to damage even after conservation: metal objects can continue to corrode if humidity rises too much, and organic objects (e.g. wood and leather) can grow mould if humidity is high, or crack and break if humidity is too low.\u00a0 Therefore, it is important to monitor the storage environment (the Newport Ship Centre uses TinyTag<\/a> dataloggers), and periodically assess the condition of objects. Since this is a long, slow process if done by one person, curator Toby Jones recruited students from two universities that have a long-standing relationship with the project. For many years, Cardiff conservation students have learned about treating waterlogged materials using wooden trenails and leather objects from the ship, and archaeologists from UWTSD at Lampeter were involved in the analysis of artefacts.<\/div>\n