Unidentified wreck that was being protected was confirmed to be the Dutch warship Klein Hollandia

Sci­en­tists have uncov­ered the iden­ti­ty of a 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch war­ship that sank off the coast of Eng­land with a load of Ital­ian mar­ble on board.

The unknown ves­sel pro­tect­ed off Sus­sex has been iden­ti­fied as the Dutch war­ship Klein Hollandia.

Built in 1656, she was owned by Admi­ral Rot­ter­dam and took part in all the major bat­tles of the Sec­ond Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667).

The wreck lies 32m below sea lev­el and was for­mer­ly known as the ‘Unknown Ship off Eastbourne’.

She was sunk in 1672 and dis­cov­ered in 2019.

There­fore, it was giv­en such impor­tance that in the same year it was giv­en the high­est lev­el of pro­tec­tion under the Pro­tec­tion of Wrecks Act 1973.

Over the past year, experts from His­toric Eng­land, the Dutch Cul­tur­al Her­itage Agency (RCE) and the Nau­ti­cal Archae­ol­o­gy Soci­ety have worked to iden­ti­fy the vessel.

Evi­dence col­lect­ed from the wreck, archival research, and tree-ring analy­sis of wood sam­ples were con­duct­ed by a team of pro­fes­sion­al divers and volunteers.

Her­itage Min­is­ter Lord Parkin­son said, “The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Klein Hol­lan­dia gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el back in time to the 17th cen­tu­ry, to learn about mar­itime his­to­ry dur­ing this peri­od, and to uncov­er trea­sures that have been under the sea for hun­dreds of years.

Thanks to our British-Dutch part­ner­ship, we are hap­py to unrav­el some of the mys­ter­ies sur­round­ing this ship­wreck and pre­serve it for posterity.

Dun­can Wil­son, Chief Exec­u­tive of His­toric Eng­land, said: “We are delight­ed that mate­ri­als sci­en­tists at His­toric Eng­land have played a key role in unlock­ing the iden­ti­ty of this pre­vi­ous­ly hid­den shipwreck.”

Uncov­er­ing the his­to­ry of the war­ship Klein Hol­lan­dia opens a fas­ci­nat­ing new chap­ter in the already rich mar­itime his­to­ry shared by Britain and the Netherlands. ”

The con­di­tion of the wreck is aston­ish­ing, experts say, and may pro­vide a wealth of infor­ma­tion about how 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch ships were built and what the war­ships were doing when they set out on their last voyage.