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Researchers opened a brass combination lock from the 1583 wreck of the merchant ship Ann Francis off southern Wales, Smithsonian Magazine reported on November 12, 2026. Micro-CT scans at Cardiff University helped identify the four-letter combination, ANCE, after a third scan proved revealing. Metal detectorist Peter Hughes found the lock on Margam Beach in 1999 and spent two decades trying to solve its dials, which offered 1,296 possible combinations. When the lock was tested, it clicked open for the first time in more than four centuries. The Ann Francis was sailing from Spain to England when a storm on December 28, 1583 drove it off course onto Margam Beach. Museum Wales recently acquired Hughes's collection, and its curators asked Cardiff University biomechanical engineer David Williams to scan the lock, which he normally uses to study human movement. Conservators later cleaned grit from the mechanism before it opened. The lock is on display in the free exhibition Tides of Treasure at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, which runs through June 26, 2027.