A large fragment of a sixteenth-century ship found on a beach in the Orkney Islands, northern Scotland

A large fragment of a sixteenth-century ship has been found on a beach on one of the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland. Traces of shipwrecks in the distant past have been found in these parts before, but never has so substantial and well-preserved a piece of a ship's hull been cast up on the shore. It has been suggested that this may have been a vessel from the Spanish armada, but there is no specialist conclusion to that effect. Then again, here, off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea, a great many English and Danish ships were wrecked