The 16th-century boat was one of 435 shipwrecks to be discovered on land in recent years. The plough has become an unlikely archaeological tool. Other hulks have emerged on building sites. The finds have become more frequent with increased rainfall and heavy flooding. But if you think about it, it is not so strange, because where we are standing was the seabed until the 1960s.
Maritime history is literally underneath our feet.
Since the 1930s the Dutch have reclaimed large tracts of sea. Whole new provinces have been created by building dykes. Roads have been built and new towns and farmland created. In some parts this has resulted in ancient fishing villages being stranded amid cornfields, far from the new coastline. The province of Flevoland, where more than 400 wrecks have been found, was part of the Zuider Zee, a large inland sea in the centre of the Netherlands.