In the spring of 2016, the museum world was suddenly turned upside down. Museum Kaap Skil on Texel presents part of the cargo from a shipwreck. Especially clothing items, including a royal dress. That dress was discovered two years earlier by Texel recreational divers.
What next with the Palmwood wreck?
The dress can now be seen in all its glory in the Kaap Skil museum on Texel, but there are still hundreds of valuable objects in the shipwreck in the Wadden Sea. The finds pose great riddles to science and dilemmas for those involved, because who has the right to the finds: the Texel divers, a local museum or the government? And what should happen to the rest of the treasures of the Palmwood wreck?
Documentary maker Arnold van Bruggen already made one three-part series about the Palmwood wreck, in which the divers and the government come into direct opposition when it becomes clear how the finds were handled. To protect the wreck and its cargo, the government had the wreck covered. “But that didn’t go completely well,” says Verbruggen.
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