[franksolich]

Actually, the Norwegian boat is about 700 years older, than that ship of Henry VIII.

<<just woke up; even messed up the headline to this posting.

What stymies me are two things--how would vaccuuming do any sort of discernible damage to such a thing, and why would a wooden boat be more likely to rot on dry land, than in the water (as one poster suggested)?

"Science" was never my strong suit.

[Tallguy]

why would a wooden boat be more likely to rot on dry land, than in the water (as one poster suggested)?

I can answer that one for ya. In a word it is "oxygen". If a ship is buried in the mud, silt or sand underwater, there's almost no oxygen to feed the micro-organisms that 'eat' the wood. Raise the ship, and all those dormant organisms spring to life. I dove on wooden shipwrecks in the Great Lakes that date back to the Civil War period and they are virtually intact. The water has very low oxygen content.

[okie01]

What stymies me are two things--how would vaccuuming do any sort of discernible damage to such a thing, and why would a wooden boat be more likely to rot on dry land, than in the water (as one poster suggested)?

The vacuuming aspersion was probably archaeological. Who knows what may have been vacuumed up with the dust: nails, buttons, coins, etc.

So far as the boat degrading faster on land vs in the water, it's the relative availability of oxygen. The ship will oxidize in open air faster than underwater.