Mysterious Victorian-era shoes are washing up on a beach in Wales

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hundreds-of-mysterious-victorian-era-shoes-are-washing-up-on-a-beach-in-wales-nobody-knows-where-they-came-from-180987943/

by Brajeshwar • 7 months ago

87 29 7 months ago

smithsonianmag.com

kitd• 6 months ago

Fascinating story.

One thing that I don't understand though. The theory is they washed up a local river, got embedded in sediment and are only now being released. Given that, I would have thought their condition would be much worse. More likely that they were well-packaged on the wreck and have only just been released ?

brabel• 6 months ago

The leather on those shoes are in nearly perfect condition! How can that be possible??

cyberax• 6 months ago

Leather can survive for surprisingly long time in anoxic environment. E.g. in a swamp.

jandrewrogers2• 6 months ago

Likely anoxic or anaerobic conditions where nothing decomposes. It isn’t that uncommon in nature.

mr_toad2• 6 months ago

I wouldn’t call those near perfect. Parts have clearly rotted away.

tokai• 6 months ago

More likely that they were well-packaged on the wreck and have only just been released ?

No not at all. Embedded in sediment would preserve them better.

jawilson2• 6 months ago

Like bog shoes?

jandrewrogers2• 6 months ago

I am reminded of the many shoes[0] that mysteriously wash up in the Pacific Northwest. At least the ones in the article don’t have feet in them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea_human_foot_discover...

0x1ch• 6 months ago

Went to college around the area and worked for some of the tribes up there. Very interesting... mystery or something, I remember the the news around the 2019/2021 incidents.

b112• 6 months ago

I'll give a more gruesome reason.

They were attached to corpses, and the corpses are starting to completely decompose. Now the shoes fall off the feet. It could even be a local disturbance, such as something feeding on the corpses (crabs, etc) after the silt receded.

defrost2• 6 months ago

That's reasonably probable save for "and the corpses are starting to completely decompose".

The geology of the island of Great Britain is such that it has a steady rate of coastal erosion .. a number of villages once inland "far" from the sea have been lost to the sea.

The villages of Clare and Foulness succumbed to erosion in the 15th century, that still continues to this day: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwvj80yg40o

Old churches and their graveyards are lost, previously unkonown mass burial pits are exposed as cliffs erode away and the remains (bones, clothes, shoes, etc) are lost to the water sometimes before it's even noticed.

Possible, sure. On balance, given the large numbers all at once, the theory about old shipwreck cargo being breached and freed has somewhat more weight.

mr_toad2• 6 months ago

If it was a graveyard you’d also expect many artifacts of different eras, not just Victorian era shoes.

INTPenis• 6 months ago

Read the full story, we're talking hundreds of shoes. And we have a record of a cargo ship carrying shoes sinking 150 years ago.

thewanderer1983• 6 months ago

How about some local performance that recreated shoes from the Victorian period. That ended up in the ocean?

xnx• 6 months ago

Garfield phones are still my favorite: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47732553

metalman• 6 months ago

personaly,having found very old shoes, harness leather, beaded moccasins, and other probable organic artifacts, beach bone anyone? in a variety of useualy anoxic or acidic situations, I can then extrapolate, that these are common things to find if a person takes a moment to examine and confirm that they are historical artifacts, and all in all the top 10 to 100 feet of most of our planet is a good place to look for direct evidence of past human activity, use a microscope and now 100% of the planets surface has an artifact.

throw310822• 6 months ago

My hypothesis, since no-one mentioned it yet: beforeigners.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ASr0n5LnWnU

jerrysievert• 6 months ago

still mad that when discovery took over hbo, they axed that amazing show.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn• 6 months ago

reported before Christmas by the BBC 1.

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy84ezd4421o

QuercusMax• 6 months ago

That baby bootie is amazing. It's not very different than the ones I put on my kids when they were infants.

Mysterious Victorian-era shoes are washing up on a beach in Wales

Related Stories