Le Dragon Wreck 2018 Project

The Gudgeon

During the survey, we found two iron sections of a gudgeon. The two sections I believe fit together and would have been one of say 5 which were on the stern post at the back of the ship to which the rudder blade was hung. The first had the cylinder hole for the pintle (the hanging bracket for the rudder blade) and had one of the sides attached to it and the fixing nails. You could see how it was made, with the cylinder being made first then the arms attached by curving the end around the cylinder. The other side was missing. This was found 5 meters away. You could see that the curved end had broken off the cylinder and down the arms there were nails. At the end, there was a bent piece of lead sheeting with copper (bronze )nails. This supports the theory that the lead sheeting like all the other pieces was used on the hull. However the way the lead is bent around the end of the arm indicates that this is during the post wrecking or possible explosion period as the lead does not appear to have originally been fixed to the arm. I have added photographs of when we moved the two pieces together to prove that they are a matching pair.

It is hoped that during the 2019 survey, more gudgeons and pintles will be located on the wreck site. This gudgeon was helpful in proving that the enlarged ship was arround e extent of the length of the ship to in the region of 100ft long.