An English sailing ship which sank 154 years ago as it tried to enter the Venetian lagoon was pulled out of the water on Thursday and will now be cleaned and studied by experts.
The Margareth, 30 metres long and originally weighing 150 tonnes, was carrying a cargo of coal to Venice when it ran aground on one of the sandbanks that made access to the Italian port notoriously tricky.
The wooden hulk of the vessel, made in the shipyards of Sunderland and Durham, was discovered a year ago during work on the flood barriers that Venice is building to protect itself from high tides.
Half buried in sand and lying just inside a sea barrier built soon after it was wrecked, the wooden structure of the Margareth had suffered minimal damage.
According to Venetian port records, the ship was captained by T. Farlam of Newcastle and did frequent runs between Britain, northern Europe and the Mediterranean.
No crew members were lost in the wreck and most of the cargo was recovered. But because there was no equipment to move the ship, it stayed where it was and later sank into eight metres of water.
The remains of the vessel, which originally had two masts and square sails, will now be cleaned and examined by Venetian archeologists before being sent to a laboratory for restoration.
The Margareth is one of several discoveries made thanks to the work on Venice's flood barriers, which have required vast swathes of the seabed to be scanned and mapped with sophisticated equipment.
In 2003 technicians found the wreck of a 300-year-old ship at a spot not far from where the Margareth ran aground. This vessel, built in Venice's shipyard in 1698, has yielded a wealth of information and artefacts including firearms and swords.
