Our time
During the summer of 1970 the St. George was rediscovered by the diving club Delfinen (the Dolphin). It was when the divers first found the huge anchor for the St. George, they were lead on the track of the wreck. Only the front part were free of sand up to the level of the third gun deck. On the deck the divers found a considerable number of copper nails and some eroded lumps containing cannon balls. The diving club Vest-Dyk (West-Dive) from Ringkøbing carried out substantial work in measuring and drawing the wreck as well as they retrieved copper nails and other findings from the wreck. In 1972, diver Bent Pauli retrieved the ships anchor that has a weight of 4 tons. In the following years the wreck was visited by many different divers, but nothing of great interest was recovered due to the large quantity of sand in the wreck. In the month of May 1980, divers from the diving club Delfinen visited the wreck. Gert Normann then reported to Nationalmuseet (the Danish National Museum) that the wreck was more free of sand than it had been at the earlier diving's and the remainders of the wreck were free up to 1 - 4 meters above the sea bottom, but he also concluded that if the exposion of the wreck continued, large parts of it would be destroyed in a short time. A large number of artefacts had been observed along with two big iron cannons. The National Museum recommended that the divers in co-operation with the Ringkjøbing Museum first concentrated on salvaging the loose artefacts as they became free of sand. There could not be given permission to retrieve the cannons. Now there were frequent divings at the wreck, but most of the artefacts were either washed away or destroyed. The large leaden hawse pipe which today can be seen beside the anchor in Thorsminde was one of the finds that were retrieved. The storm surge hurricane in 1981 removed more sand from the wreck which then lay further exposed. |
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