News & Events

The rudder from the Swash Channel Wreck was finally recovered from the sea bed after residing in Poole Harbour for four hundred years, provoking a wide range of media coverage.

What the ship was and how it came to be on the seabed in Poole Harbour remains a mystery and the 27 foot rudder that was uncovered yesterday could uncover the mysteries of the Swash Channel Wreck. Some say the ship was part of the Spanish Armada, but on closer inspection, the timber frame, found by a dredger in 1990, dates back to the 1600’s; after the Spanish Armada. The ship is most likely of Dutch or German origin.

Bournemouth University received sixty one pieces of coverage, ranging all across print and broadcast media. The list included:

• South Today
• BBC TV South
• BBC Somerset, Solent, Stoke, Surry, Ulster, Shropshire, Scotland, Nottingham, Newcastle, Merseyside, Manchester, Leicester, Leeds, Kent, Humberside, Gloucestershire, Devon, Cumbria, Cambridgeshire, Bristol, Oxford, Lincolnshire and Jersey
• BBC Radio 5 Live
• The Times
• This is Dorset
• Daily Express
• Scottish Daily Express
• The Independent
• The Independent Online
• The Guardian
• The Daily Echo
• Bournemouth Daily Echo

Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University and Project Leader of the Swash Channel Wreck Project, Dave Parham, featured in a number of the papers, giving quotes and information with the on-going project.

“The wreck is important because so much of it survives. It is the ship itself that is significant – there are only a few wrecks like this in the world, and it tells is more about the beginnings of large scale international trade”, Parham said to The Independent.

“It would have been a very big vessel for its day and the whole vessel would have been a spectacular work if art. It was making a statement, showing how great and wonderful the owners were. They would have needed a large Dutch conglomerate, similar to the East India Company”, he said in The Times.

“To see it in daylight in all its glory is quite spectacular, it is very large and impressive so you can imagine how spectacular this merchant vessel would have looked. It is an extremely find and has led to one of the largest ship wreck investigations in Britain. We this it was a Dutch trading ship and would have taken high quality European goods such as tweed to the Far East and traded them for things like exotic spices” explained Parham in the Daily Express.

“What would be nice would be to have a historical reference papers saying it was sailing from here to there. You don’t need that; from an archaeological perspective the really interesting thing is the study of the whole…” Dave added in the Bournemouth Daily Echo.

By Dean Eastmond

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.