• An excavation campaign is currently being carried out in the Rance estuary to try to reveal the identity of a mysterious wreck.

  • Lying 18 meters deep, the so-called ZI 24 wreck was declared in 1989.

  • It dates from the second half of the 17th century but we still do not know what its function was.

It lies 18 meters deep upstream of the dam of the Rance tidal power plant between Dinard and Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine), about ten meters outside the zone prohibited to navigation.

Declared in 1989, the so-called ZI 24 wreck has not revealed all its secrets and remains unidentified to this day.

To unravel this mystery, teams from the Association for the Development of Research in Maritime Archeology (Adramar) are currently carrying out excavations in the Rance estuary until June 24.

In 1996, a first expertise of the wreck had made it possible to map an alignment of eleven guns of similar dimensions arranged side by side and head to tail.

New excavations carried out in 2011, 2012 and 2021 had also brought to light under the sediment archaeological furniture and wooden elements of the ship's architecture.

A wreck dating from the second half of the 17th century

During the last campaign carried out last year, the Adramar teams managed to date the wreck to the second half of the 17th century.

The skeleton of the ship now taking shape, we also know that the wreck is about thirty meters long and eight meters wide.

"The massive and solid construction of the ZI 24 wreck, reinforced in the lower parts, confirms the hypothesis of a ship suitable for grounding", underlines the Adramar.



It is not known, however, whether it was a warship or a merchant frigate.

"The continuation of the architectural study of the wreck will make it possible to document the architectural practices of this period of transition of shipbuilding and to determine the function of the ship", specifies Adramar, which hopes to reveal the identity of this mysterious wreck.

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