It's not everyday that maritime historians find a shipwreck that will substantially change the trajectory of their profession, but for a team of researchers in the Netherlands, this moment has come around by accident.

Key points: A search for missing shipping containers led crews to the shipwreck site

A search for missing shipping containers led crews to the shipwreck site The wreck is the oldest that Dutch researchers say they have found in the North Sea

The wreck is the oldest that Dutch researchers say they have found in the North Sea The wreck also contains copper plates that shed light on early modern Dutch currency

On the bottom of the North Sea, salvage teams — who were looking for shipping containers that fell off a merchant ship in a storm near the Dutch coast — stumbled upon a shipwreck and alerted researchers.

They had found a wreck dating back to 1540 that may hold clues to what researchers have been trying to uncover for decades.

"A lot of people think of the Dutch as a maritime nation, and this ship tells us something about how we became that nation," said maritime and underwater archaeologist Martijn Manders from the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

"It tells us a lot about our identity, our maritime history, and why we are who we are now."

The North Sea harbours a string of shipwrecks dating back to the middle ages and earlier. ( Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands )

Mr Manders said this shipwreck is of great importance because it dates back to a period where ship-building technology was in a transition from the medieval period to the Dutch Golden Age.

"We have to keep in mind that about 100 years after this ship sunk it was the Dutch Golden Age, where we had all these big ships travelling all over the world," he said.

"This ship is the oldest we've found in the North Sea … Basically, it's our missing link."

Previously, Mr Manders and his colleagues had been investigating a ship dating back to the 1590s for evidence of this technological transition, but this new wreck puts the transition period at least 50 years earlier.

Part of the reason why researchers have been able to identify this ship as one belonging to this transitional period is because of the way the timber was arranged.

Some of the timber lifted from the wreck bore prints of the copper that sunk with the ship. ( Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands )

In the medieval period, ship hulls were constructed with timber planks overlapped — known as clinker-built hulls — whereas ships built afterward started introducing timber arrangements that saw planks sit flush alongside each other, known as carvel-built hulls.

"This ship shows signs of a specific transition from the smaller medieval ships to the larger ships with more masts," Mr Manders said.

"We can learn much more from this ship than all of the other ones put together."

Wreck's cargo also has stories to tell

The copper plates were dated back to the beginnings of copper coins in the Netherlands. ( Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands )

Preserved with the ship was its cargo containing various copper plates that belonged to the Fugger family, who were one of Europe's richest banking families that financed kings and emperors including the Holy Roman Empire's Maximilian I.

Mr Manders said the family was able to enrich itself through the copper trade by pushing out Hanseatic traders from the North Sea— a middle-ages trading guild from North-Western and Central Europe.

Mr Manders speculated that this Hanseatic purge was a contributing factor for innovation within the Dutch ship-building industry, as the Fuggers had no other choice but to commission ships from Dutch manufacturers.

The Fugger family was one of Europe's richest, and the copper plates found at the wreck site appear to carry their logo. ( Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands )

Subsequent chemical testing has determined the copper plates lifted from the wreck were also of the same substances used to create the Netherlands' first copper coins.

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While it is unclear if the wreck's copper plates were slated to become coins, the cargo remains significant for Mr Manders.

"At the time this ship sunk, you had more people starting to move into cities who needed different kinds of money because buying bread with gold and silver was quite difficult," he said.

"These copper plates date back exactly to the beginning of copper money that was produced in Europe, which was a very special time."

Presently, the wreck is being secured by Dutch authorities while another wreck visit is slated for the Dutch summer.

For Mr Manders, what lies in the deep may unlock a raft of stories about how Europe moved from medieval society into one of sea-faring imperial might.