“This speaks to the remarkable comfort and organization on board,” Uldam said. “Now sailors could eat hot food as on land, instead of the dry and cold food that had previously dominated life at sea.” Of course, plenty of dried meat and cold biscuits still awaited sailors for the next several centuries, but when weather and time permitted, at least the crew of Swellgate 2 could gather for a hot meal. The galley may have been a relatively new part of shipboard life for sailors in the early 1400s – and it soon became an important part.
cargo? go where?
One thing usually marks the site of a shipwreck, even when everything else has disintegrated at sea: ballast stones. When merchant ships were empty, they kept stones with them to help steady the ship; Otherwise, the empty vessel will be too heavy and at risk of capsizing, which is usually not ideal. (Modern merchant ships use water in special tanks for ballast.) But Uldam and his colleagues did not find ballast stones on Swellgate 2, meaning the slough was probably completely filled with cargo when it sank.
But cargo is also conspicuously absent. Cogs were built to carry large quantities of goods – things like bricks, grain and other staple foods, clothes, salt and wood. Those goods would have been secured with ropes and chains (some of which remain on the wreck) and placed in an open space between the ships. But barrels, boards and bolts of clothing all float. As the ship sank and water took over the hold, it swept away the cargo.
Some of it may have washed ashore or even on more distant beaches, becoming a windfall for local residents. The rest probably sank to the bottom of the ocean, far from the ship and its destination.
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