During the week I was reading some local news about how a number of beaches in the area had lost a lot of sand during stormy weather, and on one beach it had actually uncovered an old ship wreck ! So that gave us something to do this morning !
The ship wreck was listed as being on a beach close to North Berwick, which is a little a long the cost from where we live in Edinburgh, in Scotland.
North Berwick is quite a lovely seaside town, that looks out onto the North Sea. We parked up on the edge of town by the golf course. It took 2 mins to get to the beach from where we parked, but the ship wreck was a good 2.5 miles further along the coast.
The coast on this side of the town is a mix of sandy beach interspersed with rocky areas, but stretches for quite a good few miles along the coast.
It was quite a lovely day here - around 22 degrees C, which is nice for us at this time of year, and it was nice to take a walk along the beach. Even our teenage daughter didnt complain that much - which is saying something !
The news article had mostly been reporting on the amount of sand that a number of beaches had lost. Here you can see that around 3-4 foot of sand at the top of the beach has completely gone, and thats what we could see along the whole stretch we had walked.
As we finally got closer to the wreck, you can see how it has been uncovered. It sits in a bit of a dip, and as such would have normally been completely covered over.
A quick search on the tinternet found some details on the wreck:
After a rapid condition survey, the team found that the wreck was an oak-built ship of at least 6 m beam and 25 m long which had also seen repairs to it using iron fittings. Looking through the historical records for wrecks and reported losses in the area. the team found the most likely candidate to be the Verein, a German two-masted brigantine which stranded in a storm one mile west of North Berwick in 1884. The ship, registered at Stralsund in the Baltic, was carrying a cargo of oak from Stettin to Sunderland when it was wrecked. The crew survived and were looked after by the people of North Berwick, as presumably was the cargo of oak. 140 years between northeasterly storms, one forcing the ship onto the beach and the other uncovering its remains.
[Source: https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/news/shipwrecks-uncovered-winter-storms accessed on the day of posting 12/05/24]
So if the survey research was correct, it would put the ship at a minimum of 140 years old. The timbers seemed in remarkably good condition for that length of time, but I guess they had been protected by the sand they were buried in. It was the main skeletal structure - and what remained of the timbers was still really solid.
We found it quite fascinating. An interesting piece of history that has been uncovered by a storm, and I loved the story of the ship, even if short !
These timbers were fairly big so it must have been an impressive ship in its time, and it was great to hear that all of the crew survived.
We really did enjoy our sunday out. It was cool to find the wreck, and the walk along the beach was also really nice. It was around 5 miles for the round trip, so we were rather tired by the time we got back to the car (walking on sand gets tiring after a while !). It was a lovely way to spend the day as a family - well worth the visit !
All the best from Scotland !