The Newshot Ship Graveyard
A search on Canmore, the national online database of buildings and archaeological sites, revealed that the “remains of several mud punts (once commonly used for dredging operations on the River Clyde) and at least three other craft are recorded lying within the small creek…” and that “…initial research and contact with local people suggests that the craft were abandoned there after a wartime bombing incident in one of Glasgow’s docks had severely damaged them by fire.”
The story was intriguing, and a visit to the Newshot ship graveyard showed that it would be a perfect location for another joint ShoreDIG project with the Nautical Archaeology Society. Over thirty people attended our first weekend of recording in October, including Steve from NAS and Courtney from the Museum of London Archaeology, who is helping to organize ‘CITiZAN’, a project with similar aims to SCHARP that will start in England next year.
In advance of the recording weekend, we’d visited the site and Eddie Martin used his hexakopter (a remote controlled helicopter fitted with a camera) to take a number of aerial images. He stitched these together to make highly detailed aerial views of the boats, allowing us to see far more detail than possible with Google Earth (click here to see the full resolution images).
The mystery was investigated and you can read the full story ( well part 1) here:
http://scharpblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/16/the-newshot-ship-graveyard-part-1-the-mystery-of-the-burned-schooners/
