Wessex Archaeology’s Scottish Office has helped to recreate two British shipwrecks – using 3D printing.
It says that the technique adds to other options such as virtual reality and digital reconstruction that archaeologists are now using to analyse remains and share wreck sites with the public.
First to be printed was the 17th/18th-century Drumbeg shipwreck, which lies at 12m in Eddrachillis Bay in Sutherland. This small site consists of three cannon, two anchors and partial hull remains. Discovered by scallop-divers in 2012, it is a designated Historic Marine Protected Area.
It is thought possible that it is the Dutch trading vessel Crowned Raven, lost in the bay in the winter of 1690/1691 carrying timber and hemp. Data from sonar, magnetometer and photogrammetry surveys was used to print the 3D model.
The second, larger wreck, printed from multibeam sonar data, was the 100m HMHS Anglia, a steamer built in Dumbarton in 1900 and being used as a hospital ship. She was bringing wounded troops back from Calais to Dover in 1915 when she struck a mine off Folkestone, with the deaths of more than 164 people.
Wessex Archaeology carried out a multibeam-sonar survey of the Anglia for Historic England in 2014, and has now used 3D printing to add colours based on depth, and overlay historical information such as an illustration of the ship sinking.
“It’s been a fascinating process to transform the light captured in the photographs and the sound captured by the sonar sensors back into solid objects through the 3D printing process,” said archaeologist John McCarthy, who undertook the 3D-modelling project. “We hope that future surveys by our team can result in more models, which can be used in local and national museum displays and at talks and open days.”
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