A recent radiocarbon dating of excavated wooden details conducted by the Tallinn University of Technology put the ship's construction date between 1210 and 1280. There is now reason to believe that the ship, discovered in the fall of 2009 by builders pouring concrete below Lootsi street near the Old City Harbor's D-terminal, is the best-preserved late medieval era ship discovered in Estonia so far.

Researchers have said that more than 50 percent of the vessel has been preserved underground, which is considerably more than the rivets, scant planks and crew remnants of the "Salme ship" found in Saaremaa in 2011, which dates from around the year 750.

This offers a lot of hope for archeologists and historians. However, there is currently no money in the state budget to fund exhaustive research of the site, Eesti Päevaleht wrote. The state is planning to place the finding under heritage protection, but until more prosperous times arrive, the vessel will remain buried four meters below street level.

Erkki Sivonen