Phoenix rising from the ashes.

Possible Keel timber 

Here are a couple of images I took today of some timbers that have come to light on the wreck of the Phoenix.  It looks like it could be a piece of  her keel timber and a couple of associated bits. The bigger bit on the left is about 9 to 12 inches wide and has a thin outer planking board running along it the same way and coming out at an angle to it- with a smaller infill timber between the two. The wood looks like it runs right underneath the ballast mound and in the image directly below you can see this as the wood disappears under the ballast guns concretion, which has formed a void between the ballast guns and the keel wood.  I checked at the other end of this tunnel to see if the timber is there too but the stones were so tightly packed there that its impossible, without greater effort of excavation, to see if the timber continues onwards but I very much doubt it and dont feel the need to excavate it to find out.  I have evidence enough. My doubt is bore out by the fact that after this tunnel ends- the other ballast guns are lower down  on the seabed than those creating the void.  

Void beneath the ballast gun mound

The timber runs the same way/direction as the ballast guns there and also runs as the site does overall,  roughly north to south, which again would fit a possible keel theory. As for relative position of this wood to the ballast mound,  its right in the middle of the main mound and at the extreme south end of the site. The whole site is about 60 meters long in total thus far that I know about. I m currently checking out numerous magnetometer hits I have further away from the main site but nothing new from the wreck has been encountered thus far.  Its hard going as being a shallow wreck there is very thick weed and items can easily be missed.    This new timber find proves that the ship itself lay here- rather than the guns having been moved to here, off the site from somewhere else nearby, by Thomas Ekins during his salvage work in 1680. This is where she fell.  As you can see in the images- this timber must have been exposed quite a bit over time, long before I found the site, as there is clear extensive torredo worm damage to it. (the big hole making kind of worm rather than the smaller gribble kind) Many of her timbers could well have ended up in the building of St Agnes Islands first original wooden church. This worm eaten keel timber could be all that is now left of this 30 gun ships actual wooden structure- and it is only just still in existence today. So I got here just in time to see it before its gone forever too. Like the proverbial Phoenix from the Ashes - Slowly the wreckage gives up its secrets to me.

Some of the ballast guns from above

 A reminder- Some of the artifacts that dated the site.