Researchers have opened an Elizabethan brass padlock for the first time in more than 400 years after using X-ray imaging to determine its four-letter combination. The lock was recovered from the wreck of the Anne Francis, an English merchant ship that sank off the coast of Wales in 1583, and may once have secured a chest containing treasure.
The lock was part of the Anne Francis’s cargo. Some of the ship’s goods were recovered soon after the wreck, while other items were salvaged at sea. In recent decades, dredging and storms at Margam Beach in South Wales have exposed additional artifacts from the wreck.
Solving the lock’s combination
Between 1996 and 2017, metal detectorist Peter Hughes discovered many of the artifacts, including locks and gold and silver coins. The lock was later acquired by Amgueddfa Cymru, the National Museum Wales, which worked with researchers from Cardiff University to decipher its combination.
The research team used micro-computed tomography, or micro-CT, to examine the lock’s internal mechanism without damaging it. The technique uses thousands of X-rays to create a three-dimensional digital image. By matching an internal notch with the external lettering shown in the 3D image, the researchers identified the correct code as “ANCE” and opened the lock.
“We typically use this technology to study bones. It was certainly a first for us to investigate a 400-year-old padlock,” David Williams of Cardiff University’s Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research Institute said. “It’s not every day you get to solve a 400-year-old mystery!”
The smuggler’s ship
The Anne Francis was owned by Francis Shaxton, a merchant and notorious smuggler. Shaxton claimed that the ship was sailing along England’s eastern coast from King’s Lynn to Hartlepool, but it was actually heading in the opposite direction toward Spain with a cargo of wheat.
According to Amgueddfa Cymru, Spain relied on grain shipments at the time and paid for them with gold and silver obtained through its colonial conquests in Central and South America.
The ship was returning to England from Spain when it encountered a severe storm on the night of December 28, 1583. It went off course and was wrecked near Margam Beach.
Diocesan records document the deaths of 14 sailors in the same month as the wreck. They may have been members of the Anne Francis crew. The deaths were attributed at the time to the alleged evil work of a witch.
Local residents quickly plundered the wreck, and a legal dispute later broke out over who had the right to its contents. One Welsh lord who claimed to have been affected by the wreck produced an inventory of seized items, including cannons, guns, mast sections, Spanish silver coins and three chests with broken locks. The newly opened lock may have secured one of those chests.
A lock preserved beneath the sand
Centuries later, Hughes found the lock while metal detecting on the coast, near a previously undiscovered cache of Spanish silver coins and coin weights.
“When I found the lock, I was immediately struck by its amazing workmanship and amazing condition,” Hughes said. “When I moved the combination ring dial, it turned easily, even after more than 400 years under the sand. I couldn’t believe it.”
Hughes had tried to open the lock for years but could not find the correct combination. After the museum acquired it, staff heard sand moving inside the dial and were concerned that trying to force it open could cause damage. The lock has more than 1,000 possible combinations.
The micro-CT scan provided a non-destructive view of the lock’s interior and allowed the researchers to identify the correct code.
“Although Elizabethan combination locks are known in England, this is a unique find because it is in excellent condition and is associated with a historic shipwreck, making its code an interesting mystery to solve,” Alastair Willis, senior curator of numismatics and the Welsh economy at Amgueddfa Cymru, said in a statement. “Of course, we’ve solved that now, but the question remains whether that code meant anything to its owner.”
Researchers described the work in a statement from Amgueddfa Cymru.
Source: www.livescience.com