Article in Wreckwatch Magazine, September 2020. The wreck site of the Portuguese ship Espadarte (1558) was discovered on the 30th of May 2001. The assessment of the site revealed that there was a number of Chinese porcelain artefacts... more
Article in Wreckwatch Magazine, September 2020. The wreck site of the Portuguese ship Espadarte (1558) was discovered on the 30th of May 2001. The assessment of the site revealed that there was a number of Chinese porcelain artefacts within the archaeological context and the decision was made to excavate it. After the removal of approximately 80 tons of ballast; the collection of porcelain items (from the Ming Dynasty, all Jingdezhen ware) reached almost 2,000 pieces that were either intact or nearly intact.
Methods of designing the bottom of ship’s hulls were only a small part of the process of building a frame-based ship in Portugal in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but they deserve a careful look. Using a number of geometric... more
Methods of designing the bottom of ship’s hulls were only a small part of the process of building a frame-based ship in Portugal
in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but they deserve a careful look. Using a number of geometric algorithms that were already
well-known to Italian shipwrights of the 15th century, Portuguese shipwrights obtained the co-ordinates of the turn of the
bilge points of the central, pre-designed, frames without the need for making drawings.
