But in spite of years of painstaking work, two tantalising details about the vast wooden ship lying off the Dorset coast remain elusive - its identity and how it came to its meet its end.
But tomorrow, as the recovery phase ends, the biggest clue yet will come to the surface when the vessel’s 27ft, 2.4 tonne rudder, complete with Baroque carved face, is brought to the surface.
The team behind the project hope this piece can be added to the jigsaw to allow them to finally solve the 400 year old mystery of what is known only as the Swash Channel Wreck, after its location.
So far, they have established several clues, including more than 1,000 recovered artefacts, to hint at the ship’s real identity and have pieced together a most likely chain of events to explain how it came to be resting in 22ft of water, off the south coast.
The wreck was found in 1990, after a dredger hit an obstruction while conducting routine work in the approaches to the harbour.
Closer inspections revealed it to be the wreck of a 130ft ship, of which more than 40 per cent remained, including parts of the ship’s forecastle, complete with galley and gunports,
An early suspect was the Spanish Armada vessel, San Salvador, lost in the area in 1588.
However, it was eliminated after the tests dated the vessel’s timber frame to wood felled in 1628, from forests in the coastal region of the Netherlands-Germany border, near the modern city of Emden. Analysis of the artefacts suggest they came from the second quarter of the seventeenth century, giving experts a window of 1628 to 1650, during which the vessel was lost.
Ornate woodwork on the vessel, including four other baroque-style carvings recovered, mark it out as a high status vessel. It was also heavily armed, with 34 gun ports, but the design suggested it was not a warship. The galley was located in the bow castle, keeping the hull clear for cargo, indicating the vessel was an armed merchantman.
Frustratingly, there remains no sign on board of a possible cargo, suggesting it has either not survived almost four centuries on the seabed or was salvaged at the time.
However, the vessel’s hull did give one other crucial clue. Its outer layer is a sacrificial coating of pine and tar, applied to vessels involved in long distance trade, to be eaten by shipworm found in tropical waters.
The origin of the timber makes it most likely that the ship is Dutch, and some of the artefacts on board, including ceramics and a smoking pipe, hint at the same origin.
However, the team cannot rule out that the vessel could have been captured or purchased by another power, including Britain. Records of the Dutch East India Company provides no clues, nor do other archives checked so far.
Dave Parham, project leader and senior lecturer at Bournemouth University said: “I’m surprised we haven’t found any reference to a sinking. There is usually some sort of argument, or claim that gives you your starting point. It doesn’t appear to have survived in the popular memory, as others have. We have been working on names, but there is no smoking gun, which is surprising, because it is a big ship and its sinking would have been a big event.”
He hopes the rudder carving could provide a breakthrough. It is similar in style to those found on the Swedish shipwreck, Vasa, which sank on its maiden voyage from Stockholm in 1628, and experts from that project have been consulted. “It is an artistic object, which may give information about its origins,” Mr Parham said.
As for how it ended up in its current location, the wreck gives few clues, with no obvious sign of a “catastrophic” incident which sent it to the bottom.
But from the information available, Mr Parham believes the most likely scenario was that the vessel was passing along the English Channel - possibly on its first trip, as there are few signs of wear and tear on the wreck - on route to the Mediterranean or Far East.
At this point, it suffered from a common navigational error of the time which meant that vessels - which usually travelled along the English, rather than the French coast - frequently found themselves farther north than they calculated. The sandbank on which it now rests, Hook Sands, was, in those days, far closer to the surface.
“It was blown ashore in heavy weather. The first thing they would have known were the breakers in front of them,” he said.
Mr Parham added: “The identity of the ship would obviously help to personalise what happened. But what we want is the story of the ship and what it represents. These were the ships that were being sent round the world for the first time, right at the beginning of what we now think of as globalisation. Vessels of this sort are the ones that created the modern world.”
There have been various research projects involving the Swash wreck since its discovery, funded by English Heritage, Bournemouth University, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Poole Harbour Commissioners.
The site has been designated as a Historic Wreck under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. Around four per cent of the vessel has been recovered. Once research on them has been carried out, the timbers are likely to go on display at a museum in Poole.