Swedish museum workers help digitize 18th-century Cossack boats in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia

The Zaporizhzhia Museum of Shipping has started a project to digitize ancient boats in their collection.

The Khortytsia National Reserve announced this on Facebook.

What is the problem?

Today, the Museum of Cossacks in Khortytsia is one of the most popular places for tourists to visit and one of the places with the richest historical materials in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region. The museum has many interesting exhibits dedicated to almost all aspects of life's history on Khortytsia Island, which has played an essential role in the history of Ukraine, especially in the history of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who founded a Ukrainian parliamentary state. 

Some exhibits, such as boats, have suffered significant destruction due to being in water or due to time. The new initiative restores them not to forget the history of the Cossacks.

What is the solution?

The Zaporizhzhia maritime museum started a project to digitize ancient boats. They say the project is implemented thanks to Swedish specialists from the Vasa Museum.

How does it work?

What was achieved?

• a team of surveyors made a model of a "cloud of points" using laser equipment;
• photographers took more than 5,000 pictures for photogrammetry;
• developed a plan to improve the conditions of storage and display of ancient boats;

Ukrainian specialists gained invaluable experience and learned new digitization methods that can be used to create 3D models of ships and other objects on the island of Khortytsia.

The Swedish and Ukrainian scholars also agreed on further long-term cooperation, which would continue during the war and after Ukraine's victory.

A team of restorers from the Vasa Museum is scheduled to visit to examine the condition of the exceptional exhibits on the site and assist with contemporary techniques for preserving wet archaeological wood.