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Maritime Research · Wreck Archaeology

Blog 5: A Bottle from L’Herminie – Teddy Tucker and the Ocean Discovery Centre

The ocean explorer Teddy Tucker donated a bottle recovered from the wreck of the French frigate L’Herminie to the Ocean Discovery Centre – an unassuming object that vividly illustrates everyday life on board.

Bottle recovered by Teddy Tucker from the wreck of L’Herminie
Bottle from the wreck of L’Herminie, recovered by Teddy Tucker and donated to the Ocean Discovery Centre.

The bottle recovered by Tucker comes from the immediate context of the loss of L’Herminie. As part of the Ocean Discovery Centre’s collection, it adds another highly informative object to the existing wreck finds.

“This artefact is an important addition to our wreck exhibition. It allows visitors to directly experience what everyday life on board a historic warship would have felt like.”
– Director of the Ocean Discovery Centre

The bottle was used to store medicine – an everyday item which today offers rare insights into supply chains, consumption habits, and daily life on board L’Herminie.

In the area around the wreck, timbers, cannonballs, ceramic fragments, and glass shards can still be found in the sediment today. Although many objects deemed valuable have already been recovered, divers continue to report isolated coin finds and ship’s utensils.

In early 1838, L’Herminie struck a reef off Bermuda. Despite difficult conditions, all 495 crew members were brought safely to Ely’s Harbour in small boats. The objects on display today – including this bottle – connect the archival record of the event with the traces that remain on the seabed.

Field Logbook – Bottle Scan Module

Origin and Age Detection

Dozens of bottles have been recovered from several wrecks off Bermuda.

Start the scanner, watch the rapid sequence of recovered bottles and wait until the system locks onto a possible match.

LOG: GLASS·SCAN WRECK: UNKNOWN
SCAN – SAMPLE / L-HERMINIE
Scan of a recovered bottle
Artefacts
STATUS: ready
Still frame from a randomly selected bottle data set.

The bottles from the wrecks

Which inventory number belongs to this bottle?

In the blog entry “Why so many wrecks”, you saw the Flickr photos of the L’Herminie. Some of the bottles recovered there are shown here in a small selection.

Task: One of these bottles comes from the L’Herminie. Enter the correct inventory number.

Tip: In the blog “Why so many wrecks?” you will find the same bottles with their inventory numbers.

First, take a look at Bill’s Instagram profile to find out which glass coins come from the Sea Venture. Then look for the markings on the black-and-white photo and state the letter/number combination (e.g. D1 F3).

You have found coin .