Recovering Bremen Cog: The 600-Year Ship Saved in 2,000 Pieces

Описание: #BremenCog #Shipwreck #MaritimeHistory #ShipSalvage #DivingBell
Bremen Cog was found by accident in 1962 when a suction dredge jammed on black oak buried in the Weser River. What looked like “solid timber” was actually waterlogged wood whose strength depended on the water inside its cells—meaning a normal lift could slice it apart. Instead of raising a single hull, the team switched to controlled recovery: carving out a stable workspace in a fast, opaque river using a pressurized diving bell vessel, then measuring, tagging, and lifting more than 2,000 timbers into wet storage to prevent collapse.

From there, Bremen Cog became a forensic puzzle. Dendrochronology dated the oak to 1378–1379, placing the ship in the peak of the Hanseatic League and finally giving historians a real, full-scale example of a cog beyond medieval drawings. Reassembly introduced a brutal engineering challenge: shell-first clinker planking has no rigid “skeleton,” so conservators suspended fragile planks from an overhead steel gantry to rebuild the form without crushing the lower layers.

To make Bremen Cog stable for display, the museum replaced water with Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) over many years—removing moisture without destroying the ship’s geometry. Subscribe for more shipwreck engineering & maritime history documentaries.
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