Tsurumi pumps have been employed by the Norwegian Maritime Museum to provide site drainage at a rare archaeological find in Oslo harbor.

When building work began to prepare the ground for the construction of a new highway tunnel in Oslo, Norway’s capital city, excavators were not prepared for what they were about to find buried under the mud. As work progressed, the largest collection of antique shipwrecks ever found in Norway gradually was uncovered.

Once specialist archaeologists from the Norwegian Maritime museum stepped in to take over the dig, they were surprised to discover the remains of at least 14 wooden boats. The wrecks measure up to 56 feet, and are believed to date from the late-16th and early-17th centuries. The boats all are remarkably well-preserved, due to the mixture of mud and fresh water found where the rivers run into the sea at Bjoervika, part of Oslo’s old port, near the new national opera house.

Lin Hobberstad, an archaeologist onsite to oversee the safe recovery of the shipwrecks, explained that the removal process had to happen as quickly as possible so that the ships could be examined and construction work on the tunnel could start again. “Oslo Vei, a construction specialist based in Oslo, recommended Tsurumi pumps for the onsite drainage,” she says. “Good, reliable pumps are an essential part of an archaeological project like this.”

The pumps in question are 70 Tsurumi LB-480A contractor pumps – single-phase portable pumps with level sensors which start and stop the pump automatically. The 0.48 kW power-rated LB-480A can pump up to 225 L/min. at maximum capacity. With the automatic shut-off, this particular model is well suited to this type of application. The pumps will remain onsite until the end of construction in 2012.