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Comment by shpx | Hacker News Reader

Preserved ancient shipwrecks are why I don't believe when people say some material "degrades in X years".

The extreme lack of ancient shipwrecks should convince you that those materials do degrade, almost every time.

Loggers used to sink logs in water to keep them from rotting. Keeping wood wet is a pretty good preservative.

What gets to wood is critters. A lot of sea creatures will nibble away at it. On land, it's insects and fungus and the like. Tidal action will also scour away exposed wood.

In most waters, wood will be consumed by various life forms fairly quickly. No ancient shipwrecks are found there.

The exceptions include the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the deep ocean.

Don't know what saved this old boat though.

Of course the Titanic has been continuously rusting away too, along with being eaten by bacteria.

In water yes, but ancient shipwrecks are found all over the place because they've been buried under sediment. That is the case with this one, you'll notice in the article that they say, "the sand protection is leaving", which I take to mean that while it was discovered in 1993, it was covered up with sand and so protected from issues such as water movement, sun, and life forms. The sand is now eroding away and leaving the ship unprotected, hence the move, hence the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_of_shipwrecks

Thanks. I wasn't aware of this!

It was also protected with a metallic coffin when discovered in the 90s

In Stockholm there now is, in addition to the well known Vasa museum, a museum about wrecks. It is called Vrak (Wreck) and is about wrecks in the Baltic Sea mainly. It is more of the interactive kind, no big wrecks on display, but smaller artifacts and audio/video/VR and so on. Interesting for those curious about the subject.

Sometimes sediments (sand, mud) protect the wooden wreck from decay. Once the wreck is moved, it becomes a race against time to prevent decay. The way that museum wrecks like the Wasa in Stockholm are preserved is by drying every wooden piece and saturating them with plastic resin. This process is slow and labour intensive: the article mentions that preparing the Spanish wreck for display will take four years.

The archeology museum in Arles, France displays a conserved Roman river barge which was conserved in this fashion, see their Youtube documentary [0] There are many more known river barges at the bottom of the Rhone, but these are best preserved by leaving them where they are.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUBvSkdJ4Ig

> Preserved ancient shipwrecks