Shipwreck at King’s Landing: A real 200-year-old sunken ship found at a Game of Thrones filming location
While installing an underwater pipeline a worker happened across a wooden boat buried in the seafloor adding another chapter to Dubrovnik’s history.
Dubrovnik, Croatia has a storied past both in real life and as the fictional city King’s Landing in the Game of Thrones. The city is known as ‘the Peral of the Adriatic’ is today a top tourist destination, even more so since it was featured so prominently in the epic HBO TV series.
However, it was once a major Mediterranean trading port in medieval times that maintained its independence from other regional powers for several hundred years. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that every now and then when you turn over a stone you may just find something hidden underneath.
Underwater construction work leads to chance discovery of a sunken ship
While working on a water pipeline in Dubrovnik’s old port, Ivan Bukelic stumbled across the find of a lifetime in April. Buried just a few feet under the sea floor he found a wooden structure which turned out to be a sunken ship.
“I can now say I discovered a boat at the Old Town Dubrovnik,” he told the Associated Press.
Radiocarbon dating has determined that the vessel is from the 18th century. However, few other details have been made available about the discovery.
“We still cannot speak of the type of vessel or its dimensions but we can say for certain, based on the results of radiocarbon analysis that it was from late 18th century,” Irena Radić Rossi, marine archaeologist, told the outlet. “We must protect it for the future,” she added.
Currently the remains of the vessel are being protected with the help of the Croatian Ministry of Culture which is also cooperating in further investigations.
Diver found ship wreck from 320 AD near popular tourist beach
It’s not the first time that a historic wreck, that has gone centuries unnoticed, has be discovered within a stone’s throw of a popular tourist destination. In 2019, a diver from Mallorca found a commercial ship just a few hundred feet from one of the island’s most popular tourist beaches, Ses Fontanelles.
The “unique find” was from around the year 320 AD and contained numerous artifacts that provides “a kind of compendium of the economic, social and religious evolution that at that time was about to occur in the entire Roman world,” according to Enrique García Riaza, co-director of the recovery project.
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