Time Travelling by Water

Time Travelling By Water, Wessex Archaeology’s Coastal and Marine archaeology outreach programme, has developed two new workshops as part of the English Heritage funded project, Assessing Boats and Ships.

The project looked at boats and ships lost around the coast of England between 1860-1950. Information gathered from these shipwrecks was used to provide guidance on how to assess the significance of newly discovered shipwrecks.

The reports written as part of this project have been disseminated via the Time Travelling By Water programme from Wessex Archaeology. Workshops on Victorian and World War 2 boats and ships were developed and run in schools. This has been supplemented by the creation of two new teacher packs filled with activities and information to support lessons.

Children can learn about different classes, or use, of vessels in the Victorian period. As well as investigating how shipbuilding methods changed dramatically during the Industrial Revolution. WW2 activities include a battleships game with codes to break and ships to deploy and destroy. Plus children can adapt a civilian vessel for the war effort demonstrating wartime requisitioning.

The Teacher’s Packs are suitable for KS2 and KS3 history classes. As well as extracurricular clubs, home-schoolers, Young Archaeologist’s Clubs, and anyone who wants to learn more about our underwater heritage.

Each pack is free to download and use. Visit our Teacher’s Pack page to see all the resources you need to explore the coastal and marine heritage.

Wessex Archaeology sponsored a Christmas tree in St. Thomas’s Church, Salisbury, and decorated it with boats from the Time Travelling by Water timeline. The tree added a festive air to the church from the 1^st till the 6^th of December and stood alongside 114 other trees, all of which had been sponsored and decorated by local churches, communities, schools and individuals. The story was covered by BBC Wiltshire.

The Wessex Archaeology tree is now on display in our head offices in Salisbury. To download and make your own Time Travelling by Water tree decorations, click here or visit the Resources page.

In October Alex Pope joined Wessex Archaeology for one week’s work experience, following successful results in his GCSEs. Whilst he was with us he spent a day on board Wessex Archaeology’s dive vessel as our marine and coastal archaeologists investigated a site near Poole, Dorset. Here he was able to see first-hand what our divers do when they survey and investigate a protected wreck site. Read his account of a day spent on board the dive vessel as our team explored the Swash Channel wreck.

For the past two months Newhaven Fort, in Sussex, has hosted an exhibition of photos featuring shipwrecks off the Sussex coast that were taken by Wessex Archaeology. The Fort recieves many visitors who have had the opportunity to explore their local marine heritage whilst enjoying the many displays and exhibits at the Fort itself.

Philip Baldock, Curator and Education Officer at Newhaven Fort said, ‘The exhibition was very well received and demonstrated to our visitors that archaeology is not just about “digging things out of the ground” and that marine archaeology is not just about treasure ships. It also showed that history is literally on our doorsteps.’

We’d like to thank the staff at the Fort for hosting the display.

The latest Time Travelling by Water podcast is now online. In this, the 13th in the popular Archaeocast series, we join our geophysical survey team as they study Area 240 which lies deep below the North Sea, eight miles east of Great Yarmouth. It was from this site that 75 Palaeolithic handaxes were dredged in early 2008. Listen as geophysical surveyor Tina Michel describes the work that Wessex Archaeology are doing to understand this enigmatic site.

Visit the Resources Page to download a free template to make your own version of the Time Travelling by Water ship. It’s easy to make and requires only glue and scissors.

Time Travelling by Water will be at the Hampshire Water Festival for the second year running. Join us in the main education marquee this weekend to learn about the archaeology all around us and handle some real finds. The event is open to the public from 10am on the 25^th and 26^th July and this year is being held in Staunton Park, Hampshire.

Time Travelling by Water’s Festival of British Archaeology celebrations at Salisbury Museum were a huge success. Crowds of intrepid archaeologists braved the weather to make this one of the largest celebrations of British archaeology held at the museum in recent years. Visitors to the Time Travelling by Water stall learnt about trade and the routes that have bought food to our tables in the past. We would like to thank everyone who took part in making the day a great success.

Time Travelling by Water has spent the last two weeks in Norfolk supporting Wessex Archaeology’s Area 240 project.

During the first week over 300 people aged between 9 and 90 benefitted from talks and workshops delivered in Norwich and Great Yarmouth.

Four times this number of people learnt about the project last week at the Norfolk Show, a huge event visited by thousands, where visitors had the chance to handle real archaeological finds.

Time Travelling by Water will be in Norfolk for the next two weeks to support Wessex Archaeology’s Area 240 project. Our Area 240 team are exploring an area of seabed 13km east of Great Yarmouth, where flint tools and animal remains from thousands of years ago were found last year. Time Travelling by Water will be talking to schools, community groups and appearing at event days such as the Royal Norfolk Show. Hope to see you there!

For more information on this or any Time Travelling by Water project please contact education officer Gemma Ingason.