Photo:Jens Lindstrom/Swedish Maritime Museum

This summer we posted about an 18th century ship found buried beneath the streets of Manhattan near Ground Zero.  Recently,  while excavating in front of Stockholm’s Grand Hotel during renovation work to a nearby quay, workers discovered a most unusual ship.  Believed to date from the 1600s, based on its location at the site of  naval shipyard from that era, the ship is unique in that its planks are sown together with rope rather than secured by nails.

Naval mystery uncovered near former shipyard in Stockholm

“We were super-excited,” Jim Hansson from the Maritime Museum was quoted on The Local, an English language news website in Sweden.

“It may sound a little strange when one finds little excavated pieces of parts of a ship, but I have never seen anything like it. We really know nothing about this technique other than it was used in the east.”

All other shipwrecks uncovered in and around Stockholm’s harbour have featured planks nailed together with the exception of one ship found in 1896, according to media reports.

Samples from the wreck will be sent to Denmark’s Copenhagen National Museum for analysis and dating. Results are expected sometime in January 2011. Experts from the Swedish maritime museum will also monitor the rest of the excavation.