The Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company (TSC) has sequential and complementary objectives:
Principally, to create an interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon Mound 1 ship that provides the best possible means of testing and understanding how the ship could have been used under a range of different conditions. This will be achieved:
- using modern technologies and a range of professional skills to interpret data from records of the 1939 and 1967 excavations including information about the impact of the burial process and passage of time to develop a design brief for a ship resembling the ship that was built and subsequently buried in Mound 1.
- using the design brief to build a ship based on current understanding of the materials and building methods that would have been used by Anglo-Saxon shipbuilders
- to carry out sea-trials to test hypotheses regarding how the boat was propelled (by oars and/or sail), what it could have been used for, what it may have carried, under what conditions was it safe and therefore where it might have been sailed
- to provide a comprehensible, informative and entertaining means of engaging the public and increasing understanding and appreciation of Anglo-Saxon life and culture
- to achieve these objectives in a way that enables local people of Woodbridge to engage in all stages of the project either through active participation in the build process or ancillary activities e.g. recording, interpretation, guiding.