"More than 400 wrecks have been found like this and more turn up every year."

The ships are all being found on reclaimed land that once was part a bay off of the North sea.

"Some remarkable ships have been discovered. There was one medieval ferry that sank in a storm in the 1440s.

A passenger must have been carrying some eggs and you can imagine the surprise of archaeologists when they found them with their shells in perfect condition.

The egg inside however had been replaced by sea water.

Unusually there was a skeleton left in that wreck. The bones were scarred in a way that suggests the man may have been a leper."

The ship is one of many found buried in fields on reclaimed land in the Netherlands. The museum that is doing a lot of the excavations and preservation is The National Institute for Ship and Underwater Archaeology in Lelystad.

Does any one have any more info on them?

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Naval Architecture is a hobby-horse of mine, and I'd love to find out more. I often point out when asked the most significant invention of the 15th century "The Carrack or Caravel". This surprises people, but the invention of combination fore and aft rigged and square rigged vessels, multimasted vessels, the centeral rudder,and the (North Atlantic) seaworthy hull of Northern European vessels made the face of the future - our present day.

More than any other invention, the ability to dominate the sea, cross oceans, and project power through seapower made the face of our modern age European in outlook and philosophy - for better or worse.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it Gutenburg! (oh yeah, you couldn't have the pipe and tobacco to smoke if it wasn't for those little cockleshell ships that the Aztecs equated to floating mountains.)

Sorry, the Yankee in me gets carried away sometimes. I just love sailing ships. Were I as rich as a Forbes, I'd have a carrack to tool around in.

What I wouldn't give to see the writeups and artifacts on those mudlocked ships! Not to mention whatever lines they can draw off them.

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