Photos The Rooswijk wreck, - Blades carried by it.

[calm]

The Discovery of the Rooswijk Shipwreck

The wreck of the Rooswijk, which sunk in 1740, was discovered off the Kent coast in 2005.

heritagecalling.com

"The Rooswijk was a Dutch East India Company trading ship that sunk in January 1740 on the Goodwin Sands off the Kent coast."

"In total, five chests of concreted sabre blades were removed from the wreck. 100 blades have so far been removed from one chest and carefully cleaned and conserved for future generations.

These blades had intricate designs of the sun, moon, stars, and a weaving snake etched onto them with acid."

 

[jfk1110]

COOL....THANKS for sharing this...

 

[Kettleman]

Thank you for sharing that. Very cool.

 

[Rob47]

Interesting, the varying degrees of deterioration. Thanks for sharing

 

[John A. Larsen]

Would these swords be sold without handles, which would be put on when they got to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia)? John

 

[hank_rearden]

Big blades. Cutlasses?

 

[horseclover]

Trade blades. There are plentiful records of ship manifests, such as the medieval records from the port of London, right up through the 19th century showing the trade of bare blades.

 

[NG VI]

Interesting, the varying degrees of deterioration. Thanks for sharing

Lotta sacrificial material to help preserve the core of that block of blades! Packed tight for shipment and maybe in some kind of oiled wrap would have given them about the longest possible delay before the seawater penetrated and corroded all the pieces away