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By Root 757 0

to see, close up and in detail, a type of ship that has not sailed the oceans for centuries and which most of us have only seen as an engraved drawing in an old book. Mike moves along the port side of the wreck, and there, cemented to the hull planks by rust, is one of Vrouw Maria’s iron anchors. From its position, it looks as if the anchor was lashed up against the hull, its hooks pointing skyward and not hanging down, as we might expect. The anchor may have been tied by rope that has disintegrated, because something had to hold it against the planks long enough for the rust to bind with the wood. But why it is where it is, and how it was set, are mysteries.

As Mike continues back to the stern, we see that the lintel above the entrance to Lorentz’s cabin is beautifully carved with a scroll decoration. It is a lovely touch on a utilitarian, hardworking ship, and a reminder that people loved and cared for her. That hint of a long-ago emotion has survived the wreck and Vrouw Maria’s long slumber in the deep.

The time has come for Mike to start ascending, but he pauses for a moment to gaze back at Vrouw Maria, lying silent in the cold greenish-blue gloom of a Baltic grave. Then he begins the long slow climb back up to the surface, pausing to decompress as we share notes and observations.

We’ll repeat this process tomorrow and in the days that follow, and the Finnish team also will send down their divers, with cameras and measuring devices, to meticulously plot and document every loose plank, every artifact on the deck, every fallen spar, to create a detailed record of Vrouw Maria as she now is. This level of painstaking documentation is absolutely essential before anything is disturbed or removed, a scientific protocol that separates us from souvenir hunters. If the lead line was taken away or some of the crates yanked out, we’d lose important clues as to what had happened. We’d lose some of those evocative connections across time, like the single handspike in the windlass, indicating where a sailor stepped away from working the anchor lines to start pumping. It is one thing to read about events in an old logbook; it is another thing altogether to have the privilege to see the scene exactly as that writer left it.

The discovery of Vrouw Maria poses a unique opportunity and a challenge. This intact wooden ship of 1771 is a time capsule. Packed full of merchandise as well as Catherine the Great’s collection of paintings, the ship, when excavated, will yield valuable details about European trade of the time and Russia’s rapid pace of westernization. As for the thirty-five or so lost paintings that still rest in Vrouw Maria, they may very well not be in as good condition as the ship. Even if the panels and canvas have survived, the paint may not. Conservators, the scientists who meticulously battle the ravages of time and the elements to restore and repair antiquities, are sure that any watercolors are gone. Other paints may have emulsified or washed away after two centuries in the sea. But paintings have survived Baltic immersion, including one from a seventeenth-century shipwreck, and Catherine’s paintings may have been sealed in waterproof containers. It will be years, however, before Vrouw Maria and her cargo are raised and every crate is carefully unpacked in the laboratory.

Our last day on the site comes as the Maritime Museum of Finland crew also prepares to leave for the winter. Soon the ice will come and lock up the Turko Archipelago. That’s one form of protection for a rare treasure. Another is the surveillance cameras that the Finnish Coast Guard has installed around the wreck, feeding continuous video images back to land to ensure that no souvenir hunters or looters seek to plunder the site.

Meanwhile, the Finnish government is examining plans to raise and restore Vrouw Maria and display her cargo, perhaps in a new state-of-the-art museum in Helsinki. If that course is pursued, it will take years of planning and cost millions to raise the ship and then to preserve it, because the moment the ship is lifted out