Newport ship: after 20 years’ work, experts are ready to reassemble medieval vessel found in the mud

When construction work began on a new arts centre in Newport, south Wales, in 2002, the builders on site could scarcely have imagined what they would dig up. While excavating the foundations on the banks of the River Usk, a section of a medieval wooden ship was uncovered which had been perfectly preserved by the river’s waterlogged silt. Archaeologists were called in and it soon became clear the vessel was extraordinary.

This was not a coastal sailing boat that would have plied the Severn estuary up to the 19th century. Rather, it was a “great ship” by medieval standards, one that…

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