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Beneath the muddy waters of the Thames, something extraordinary was hiding — and now it's finally been found. 🌊⚓ A 17th-century warship called The London has resurfaced after centuries, almost perfectly preserved in riverbed silence. Once a mighty vessel of the English Navy, it met a fiery end in 1665, exploding and taking 300 souls with it. 💥🚢 Now archaeologists have uncovered cannons, personal belongings, and even candles that somehow survived the deep. 🕯️🔍 Each artifact tells a forgotten story of life, war, and tragedy aboard a ship lost in time. Credit:
Viking Ship: By emelyarules/sketchfab, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, https://skfb.ly/orFJG
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Transcript
00:00360 years ago, a massive British ship, the London, blew up in the Thames estuary.
00:07The tragedy took over 300 lives, including the sailors and their loved ones.
00:12No one knows exactly what led to all this, but scientists are finally getting close to the truth.
00:18Divers accidentally found an exceptionally well-preserved bronze cannon from the ship.
00:23This cannon, that was buried in silt and clay for centuries, could have all the answers.
00:30The London was a service ship built for the navy of the Commonwealth of England.
00:34It set off on its first journey in June 1656. The ship played a huge role in British history,
00:41as it was part of a convoy that went to the Netherlands in 1660 to collect Charles II
00:47and restore him to the throne. Five years later, in March 1665, it was traveling from Chatham to Hope.
00:55From there, the Admiral Sir John Lawson was supposed to take it to the sea.
01:00But just before reaching the buoy of the Knower, the gunpowder suddenly blew up on the ship.
01:07About 25 people who were in the roundhouse and coach survived, but over 300 drowned.
01:13The ship broke into two pieces. Henry Bennett, the Earl of Arlington, passed along rumors that it all
01:20happened because of cheap, low-quality gunpowder that was on the ship. When experts of that time
01:26inspected the shipwreck, they concluded that the cannons could still be salvaged, but the ship itself
01:32was a total loss. Later, when someone recovered some of them, in 1679, there was a scandal where they
01:39tried to use them to settle a completely unrelated deck. In 2005, divers rediscovered the London.
01:48To protect it, port authorities even had to move the shipping lane, and a team of archaeologists got
01:53to work exploring it. That wreck is a big deal because it gives us real insights into English naval history.
02:02Visibility in the Thames estuary can be terrible. Sometimes you can't even see a foot and a half in
02:08front of you. Working on the site is also super tough because it's in a crazy tidal environment and a
02:15busy shipping lane, where huge cargo ships constantly pass by, is still near. So when a cannon suddenly
02:22appeared stuck deep in the clay, it meant the conditions had to be absolutely perfect.
02:28Experts believe the find is from the Commonwealth era and its medium size, about 8 feet 6 inches long.
02:35It was part of a special set made specifically for the London and was placed on the ship's lower deck.
02:41Every single gun carriage on the London was one of a kind because all of its cannons came from
02:47different countries and different periods in naval history. Big cannons were really rare and crazy
02:53expensive to make since they needed tons of bronze or iron and had to be individually cast. That's why
03:00the navy often grabbed cannons from captured rival ships, old shipwrecks or decommissioned vessels.
03:06The new find is one of the clues that could eventually help scientists to solve the mystery
03:12of the London tragedy. So far, they've also found leather shoes, pieces of instruments, wooden tools,
03:19rope and a compass. All these artifacts are like puzzle pieces to them. They still don't have enough
03:25evidence to be sure, but it looks like both the pipe and candles could have been sources of flames
03:31that set off a larger bang. Some workers made another amazing find at a flooded quarry in nearby
03:38southeast England, about 60 miles southeast of London. They stumbled upon the remains of a rare
03:44Elizabethan-era ship hundreds of yards away from the nearest coastline. Finding a ship from the late 1500s
03:51is a huge deal because very few vessels from that time have survived. Studying it could help scientists
03:58answer some big questions about an important era in history, when England was becoming a major player
04:05in European trade. Today, the quarry site is about 1000 feet from the sea, but back in the 1500s,
04:13it was actually part of the coastline. Archaeologists think the ship either wrecked on a rocky headland
04:19or someone dumped it there when it was too damaged to sail anymore. Scientists haven't identified it yet,
04:26but they studied over 100 pieces of its wooden hull, reading the tree rings, and found that it was
04:32built from English oak trees cut down between 1558 and 1580. At that time, Northern Europe was switching
04:41from the old clinker method, where the planks overlapped like fish scales, to the Carville style
04:46from the Mediterranean, where the planks are smooth and flush against each other, nailed to an internal frame.
04:52Old wood usually rots away pretty fast when it's exposed to air or water. But if it's buried under
05:00a thick, oxygen-free layer of mud or silt, it can survive for centuries. That's exactly what happened
05:06here. The team is using laser scanning and digital photography to document everything about the wreck.
05:13Once they finish their research, they plan to rebury the timbers under the silt in the quarry lake,
05:18so the ship can stay there safe for many more centuries to come. A team of archaeologists in
05:24Norway found a ship in an even more unexpected location, in a flat field. There's a hill nearby
05:32called Jell Mound. It's actually a huge burial monument that the Vikings themselves had built.
05:38The farmer who owns the field wanted to dig some drainage ditches, but first he needed experts to
05:44check for anything important underground. Archaeologists used a high-resolution georadar
05:50attached to a tractor-like vehicle. When they scanned the field, they discovered that it used to be packed
05:56with burial mounds, at least eight new ones nobody had ever found before. And beneath one of the mounds,
06:03the radar picked up the outline of a ship. Back in Viking times, ships were super valuable,
06:09so they only buried them with really important people. Scientists have only found three boat
06:15burials in all of Norway before, and this is the first new one in years. The team believes this ship
06:21is from Viking times, probably between the years 500 and 1000 CE. Because the burial mound above it got
06:29flat over time, the ship is now only about 1.6 feet below the ground. That's super close to the surface.
06:36It's around 66 feet long, and the radar showed that parts like the keel and the floorboards
06:43are still preserved. The archaeologists plan to explore more using non-invasive tools so they
06:49don't wreck anything by accident. If they need to, they'll start an excavation.
06:55Far away from Norway, in the Namibian desert, a miner looking for gems accidentally found a legendary
07:01shipwreck almost 500 years old. The workers called in an archaeologist to check it out,
07:07and they thought it must have been the remains of a Portuguese trading ship,
07:10the Bom Jesus, that had mysteriously vanished in the 1500s. The Bom Jesus had left Lisbon loaded with
07:18treasures, aiming for India. But somewhere along the southern tip of Africa, a brutal storm slammed it
07:24into the Namibian coast. The ship smashed into rocks, broke apart, and disappeared under the waves.
07:31When archaeologists explored the wreck, they found parts of the ship scattered across the shore and
07:37buried under thick sand, which actually saved the remains from rotting away. They even discovered
07:43treasure, over 40 tons of cargo that had spilled out of the captain's chest underwater when the hull broke.
07:50There were cannons, swords, fabrics, tools sailors used to navigate by the stars, and most impressive
07:57of all, 1,845 copper ingots, solid pieces of metal weighing 16 to 17 tons in total. Scientists could even
08:08read the old trademarks stamped on them, revealing they were made by a mega-rich German trading company.
08:14And then there was the real jackpot. More than 2,000 gold and silver coins from all over the world,
08:22Portugal, Venice, France, and the Moorish states. Plus 105 giant elephant tusks, weighing about 2 tons.
08:31The tusks were likely on their way to become luxury goods like jewelry and fine carvings. DNA tests later
08:39showed the ivory came from West African forest and savannah elephants. They didn't find many bones,
08:45though, which means the crew either managed to escape or were lost forever at sea.
08:52That's it for today. So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it
08:58with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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