It is being hailed as a lucky accident, after salvage teams searching for containers that fell off a ship in a storm discovered a 16th Century shipwreck on the North Sea floor.
The ship, dating back to 1540, was filled with a cargo of copper plates and some of them were put on display on Wednesday when the find was revealed.
It was owned by the Fugger family, one of Europe's richest banking families.
The wreck is being described as "the missing link" in shipping construction.
