Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday 15 December 2023

A fourteenth century compass from Estonia


What appears to be the earliest example of a small dry compass in Europe has been found during the excavation and conservation of a ship discovered in 2022 close to the harbour in Tallinn. 

The ship has been dated by dendrochronology to just after 1360 and the compass is therefore assigned to the later fourteenth century. It was then a relatively new invention, dating from around 1300. 

In this country small pocket compasses of this type were found on the Mary Rose which sank in 1545. This Estonian discovery indicates that such instruments were available to sailors in the Baltic a century and a half earlier.

Since the recovery of the Mary Rose there have been a significant number of ships from the later middle ages and succeeding centuries discoveres and recovered, such as the Newport Ship in Wales and a significant series in the Baltic.

The Tallinn ship, together with its associated contents, is illustrated and described in an article at Archaeologists Discover Oldest Dry Compass in Europe from Wreck of Medieval Ship in Estonia


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