Year: 2013

No.42 The Bumper Christmas Edition

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The Annunciation: The Angel Gabriel from Heaven came . . .

The Engel Gabriel was a Dutch ship scuttled by the English at the Battle of Portland in 1653, during the First Anglo-Dutch War, and a name very much in tune with the times in the 17th century. Quite a few wrecks of the Anglo-Dutch wars bore names inspired by characters from the Bible, though such names were beginning to fall out of favour in the Protestant nations. We have an Angel Gabriel of unknown nationality which struck at Jury’s Gap in 1637 with a cargo of wine from Spain. You may also like to have a look at another Angel Gabriel, which was lost in a hurricane off the Maine coast in 1635.

The Annunciation to the Shepherds: The First Nowell that the Angel did say . . .

We have four wrecks in English waters called Noel, one of which was a French steamer which staggered from collision to collision off the Royal Sovereign Light Vessel in the English Channel, during a gale in 1897 which saw widespread casualties all over England. She ran first into a barque, which was at first feared to have gone down, but was later seen under tow with her bows ‘stove’. However, the Esparto steamer was not so lucky, and sank after being cut nearly in two. It took some time for the full story to emerge: the Noel‘s crew could not be rescued for a few days because they were ashore in a rather inaccessible location in the teeth of a howling gale, and could only communicate by signals from the master. In the meantime, the rest of the crew took shelter in the stern, the bows being ‘completely torn away, exposing the whole of the forepart of the ship, which is entirely submerged, having apparently settled over the bank’.

 . . . was to certain poor shepherds in the fields as they lay . . .

There is also a small flock (sorry!) of lost vessels named Shepherd, some probably for the surname. However, I particularly like the Shepherd and Shepherdess of 1766, which struck the Farne Islands: perhaps the name cashed in on the popularity of contemporary Arcadian subjects, for example, this Meissen couple from 1750.

O little town of Bethlehem . . .

The name Star of Bethlehem seems to have been current in fishing communities in the 1890s. Our first loss was a Grimsby trawler off Staithes in 1890, with three weeks’ worth of fish. I wonder if a local fisherman saw the name and was taken with it, since the next wreck, in 1892, was of the newly-built ship of the same name, operating out of Staithes, and also lost in that region. Finally, the last wreck to bear this name in English waters was a Scottish herring lugger from Banffshire in 1895, working the Great Yarmouth fishing grounds as so many Scottish fishermen did, up to the mid 20th century. Perhaps this last gives a clue as to why the name was popular: the crews followed the migratory herring as the shepherds and the wise men followed the star. Could anyone from a fishing community shed any light on this?

The Annunciation to the Magi: Star of the East, the horizon adorning . . . .

In the same way, a fishing vessel named Star of the East was run down by a steamer off the Eddystone in 1904, while returning from Newlyn to her home port of Lowestoft.

And finally . . . no Christmas would be complete without a nativity scene:

When the General Gascoyne struck the Burbo Bank off Liverpool, in 1837, inbound from Quebec and Montreal with deals, potash and passengers, she rapidly found herself in a perilous situation. Potash prices rose on the Liverpool markets with the loss of the ship and her cargo. This prosaic detail was rather overshadowed by what happened to the crew and human cargo who ‘were clinging to the poop and mizen rigging with a heavy sea breaking over them’ when the local tug Eleanor steamed to the rescue. Those on board either jumped off into the ship’s longboat or were taken off one by one by the Eleanor‘s crew, who boarded the ship at the risk of their own lives.

The accounts of what happened next are slightly conflicting: according to the Lancaster Gazette, a lady ‘far advanced in pregnancy’ promptly gave birth on board the Eleanor, suggesting the shock of shipwreck had brought on labour; according to the Times, she had been ‘only confined the previous day’, and was ‘rescued along with her infant’. Either way, this nativity was surely a miraculous rescue.

No.41: The Barbary Corsair

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Alarums and excursions:

In 1760-1 these news items appeared in the English press with a conflation of Turks and Algerians that was probably quite typical of the time.

‘London, October 2. An express has been received from Mount’s Bay, that between the 26th and 27th ult. an Algerine Chebeck, of 20 guns, and full of men, was driven ashore by a strong southerly wind, and entirely lost; 170 of the crew got on shore, which terribly affrighted the country people. It is 25 years since an Algerine cruizer was in any of our ports in England…’  (Newcastle Courant, 11.10.1760, No.4385, p1)

‘London, January 3. His Majesty’s frigate Bland is arrived at Falmouth, to convoy the Turks, which were stranded at Mount’s Bay, to Algiers.’ (Newcastle Courant, 10.01.1761, No.4398, p1)

Why were the local people so ‘terribly affrighted’? They clearly suspected the ship of being a Barbary Corsair, or Sallee Rover, from Salé in Morocco, privateers of the Mediterranean who sometimes ranged further north in feats of daring seamanship, since their lateen-rigged triangular sails were less suited to the rougher waters of the Atlantic. They were occasionally active in British waters in the 17th and 18th centuries, and ventured as far north as Iceland in 1627, when the Revd. Olafur Egilsson was captured – which was why people were so afraid. (A recent English translation of his travels and travails has been made available.)

A household name, albeit fictional, who also spent time as a ‘guest’ of the Sallee Rovers, was Robinson Crusoe!

As was the case where privateers of any nationality were concerned, it was not uncommon for ships to be ‘taken and retaken’, captured by an opposing force, then recaptured by their own, or to suffer serial capture, as the two following ships with some connection to Corsairs demonstrate.

The Fountain was captured from the Algerians in 1664 and taken into the service of the Royal Navy. She was intended to be used as a fireship but was prematurely set ablaze by a shot from the Dutch side at the Battle of Solebay in 1672.

Similarly, the Dutch fluyt Schiedam, one of our Designated wrecks, was wrecked in Jangye-Ryn Cove, Cornwall, after serial capture. Laden with a cargo of timber from Spain, she was captured in the Mediterranean in 1683 by Barbary Corsairs. She was then captured by the English under Sir Clowdisley Shovell (shipwreck seems to have hung around his career: he just missed being wrecked in 1703 in the Great Storm, before being finally lost with his fleet in the Association disaster off the Isles of Scilly in 1707), and despatched for Tangier to act as a transport for England, on which voyage she was finally lost.

No.40: Mahratta I

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Jute, Jam and Journalism

Following my call in a recent edition for ‘challenges’ I was asked to investigate what wrecks we might have in the jute trade for Dundee. So here’s the answer: Dundee was famous not only for jute, but for jam (well, marmalade!) and journalism, including those august publications, the Beano and the Dandy. So here are some jute ships which got into a jam, and I shall quote some journalism!

We have seven wrecks that were bound from Calcutta to Dundee with a cargo explicitly described as jute, or including jute, exactly half of our jute wrecks, as other consignments were bound for London and Liverpool. Some may have discharged their other cargoes from the East Indies in London, before sailing on to Dundee with the jute, as the Mahratta was intended to do (I shall talk more about her in a minute). Our earliest jute wreck, the clipper James Baines, was being unloaded in the Huskisson Dock in Liverpool in 1858 when she caught fire, a fate echoed by our last known jute wreck, the Falcon, in 1926. There was a certain inevitability about it: her cargo was jute and matches, a combustible combination if ever there was one.

The time span of the wrecks bound for Dundee with jute parallels that of the heyday of the jute trade, from the late 19th century to the early 1920s, by which time the industry was already in decline. The earliest Dundee-bound wreck was in 1884 on the coast of Northumberland, followed by the Bay of Panama, driven ashore in a snowstorm in 1891 along with three other ships nearby.

The most famous was the Mahratta I, which struck the Goodwin Sands in 1909, her fame heightened by the fact that her namesake, the Mahratta II, struck a mile to the north-east in 1939. Mahratta I shows a wide range of human response to shipwreck: she had a number of passengers on board, some of whom were phlegmatic, and some not. One woman refused to leave the ship until she absolutely had to, when the ship was beginning to break up, objecting to the Customs intending to enforce the quarantining of her pet dog even under the circumstances.

Sadly, after going aground on the Goodwins, the chief engineer committed suicide in his cabin, the sole casualty of this wreck, in which a 90-strong crew, the majority lascar sailors from India, and all the passengers, were saved. Likewise all the salvors, about 100 local boatmen pressed into saving as much of the cargo as possible, were themselves saved. As the salvage proceeded, the ship began to break up, and only 289 bales of jute were taken out of the wreck, out of a cargo of 10,000 tons that also included tea, coffee, rice, iron, gum, and rubber. Much of the jute is said to remain on board what is now a well scattered wreck.

One of the engineers provided a rational but vivid description of the ship’s disintegration, as reported in the Times of 12 April 1909:

‘The vessel was in charge of a Trinity pilot when she struck. Efforts were made to get her off under her own steam, but these failed, and tug services were accepted. Within a short time of the stranding water entered the liner and the main shaft was badly bent. The ship strained severely, and there was a continual grinding and snapping as plates sheered and buckled and heavy iron rivets broke away by dozens. The crew were put to work assisting the boatmen in salving the tea and throwing the jute overboard in order to lighten the vessel, but only about 200 tons had been got out when the Mahratta broke in two. Before this we had been working over our knees in water in the engine room. The ship parted with great suddenness at about 8 o’clock. The noise was like a cannon shot, followed by rending and tearing. The liner broke amidships, across the bunkers and the saloon. There was a great rush for the boats immediately by the labourers who had been assisting to jettison the cargo. One man was so scared that he caught hold of me round the body, and I had a difficulty to get clear from him.’

I hope that’s a good answer to the question, and please do keep coming with more!

No.39 Late 18th century wrecks on the Goodwin Sands

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The Great Ship-Swallower

I recently decided to run a quick little experiment for a presentation to demonstrate the ebb and flow of wrecks on the Goodwin Sands. I chose the years 1760-1780 since every issue of Lloyd’s List survives for this period, giving me reasonable confidence that every major wreck on the Sands will have been recorded and that all the wrecks therein will have come from the same source.

Undoubtedly, as I have observed before, in the 18th century wreck reports in the press were biased towards major ships with losses of little fishing vessels and other minor craft not usually being recorded unless the circumstances were exceptional. 1767, 1770 and 1778 happily saw no losses on the Sands but at least two or three wrecks a year were usual.

There is a significant spike in 1775 with 9 losses. The weather was, naturally, often to blame: the Cranbrook in 1775 was ‘very deeply laden’ and the Kentish Gazette reported that it was ‘blowing hard at NW’ when she was lost. Sometimes, however, other factors were at play. A little salvage vessel was lost in November while going out to a recent wreck – which would clearly not have been out had it not been for other vessels lost a few days earlier, the Charming Sally, the Elizabeth, and an unknown vessel.

Sometimes, the dynamism of the sands was a notable factor. The Nederlandsche Jahrboeken for 1761 prints the inquiry into the loss of the Meermin Dutch warship on the Sands in some detail. The currents were blamed, and the depths as plumbed by the line ‘appearing to be in the fairway’ were found to be misleading. How many of the wrecks on the Goodwin Sands were lost not to the weather, per se, but changes brought about by previous storms, leading to the alteration of safe channels and encroachment of the sands?

Goodwin Sands Table I

A more sophisticated and long-term historical study might produce some interesting results! Any thoughts and ideas very welcome!

No.38: Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

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Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot

After visiting the House of Lords on the exceptionally appropriate date of 5th November, my thoughts naturally turned to our wrecks laden with gunpowder, of which we have 24 known records. There are likely to be others whose cargo is masked by description in contemporary sources as ‘warlike stores’ or some such other description; warships and privateers will have carried gunpowder anyway; while many cargo vessels, armed for self-defence, will have carried gunpowder as part of the ship’s stores, which therefore does not qualify for recording as cargo.

Many of these wrecks were lost in the ordinary way and the cargo they carried did not make any difference as to the outcome, which was fortunate in the case of the Charming Molly dockyard tender in 1779 which, ‘lying near Gosport, was carelessly set on fire and burnt to the water’s edge. The powder, except half a barrel which blew up, was got out; the guns and swivels were loaded with ball, which went off, but did no mischief.’ Whether they crew managed to unload the vessel before the cannon went off is not known but if they had to dodge random cannonballs popping all over the place then it was fortunate indeed that ‘no mischief’ was done!

More dramatically, in 1802, the Newham brig caught fire on her arrival at Falmouth on her maiden voyage. ‘Apprehensive of the fire quickly communicating itself to the gunpowder with which the vessel was partly laden, the crew left her immediately . . . The inhabitants of the town were greatly alarmed . . . at 7 o’clock she blew up at her moorings with a tremendous and awful explosion: her masts, yards, etc. and a great part of her cargo were scattered in different directions through the air, her sides were blown out and the shattered hull immersed in the water.’ Despite the worst fears of local residents, this explosion resulted only in a number of windows being shattered.

Oh, I’ve only given you gunpowder – I shall have to truffle out some treason and plot for a later edition!

No.37: Wrecks from hides

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As a result of last week’s request for ‘information challenges’ I was given a few, which I shall answer over the coming weeks. The first one which came in was to see if we had any wrecks made out of hides. I am delighted to be able to rise to that particular challenge in not one but two different ways!

In 1844 it was reported that ‘two or three coracles or canoes, similar to those now in use among the fishermen on the Wye and Severn, framed of slight ribs of wood, covered with hydes’ had been found in Marton Mere, near Blackpool, together with other archaeology. The context in which they were found suggests abandonment at best, or sinking, not fit for purpose, at worst! The similarity to contemporary examples may suggest either a continuity of form or that these coracles, although old, were not of any great antiquity, since the context and stratigraphy of the finds is not discussed in the reporting source.

Turning now to Anglo-Saxon times, there were two principal efforts at building a national fleet, the first under Alfred the Great, popularly regarded as the ‘Father of the English Navy’ with some justification, for the warships he commissioned to a new design. Less well-known, perhaps, is the fleet that was commissioned by Aethelred ‘the Unready’ in 1008. Both fleets were intended to counter the Danish threat. Both met with disaster shortly after entering service.

In 1008 Aethelred ordered one ship to be built for every three hundred (or 310) hides across the nation, a hide being an Anglo-Saxon unit of land sufficient for a family and its dependants. In 1009 his new fleet was stationed off Sandwich when the greater part of it was destroyed, not by the Danes, but by an internal feud. The ambitious Brihtric accused Wulfnoth of the South Saxons to the king; Wulfnoth responded by enticing away 20 ships’ crews to follow him, ‘ravaging everywhere along the south coast.’ Brihtric took 80 ships in pursuit, only to be cast ashore in a storm somewhere in South Saxon territory, where Wulfnoth fired what remained of those 80 ships and the rest of the fleet simply sailed back to London. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle despairingly noted ‘the labours of all the people thus came to naught’.

No.36 The Charlwood and the Duke of Buccleuch

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Through A Glass Darkly

Tomorrow marks the 112th anniversary of the wreck of the Charlwood, an English barque which was struck amidships and cut virtually in two to founder off the Eddystone while en route from Antwerp for Valparaiso, Chile, with what was described in contemporary sources as a ‘general cargo.’

In an age which was increasingly dominated by steam, iron barques such as the Charlwood were able to hold their own on an ultra long-distance route from Europe to the Pacific coast of Chile where Valparaiso lies, negotiating Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America. They had one great advantage over the steamers – no need to put in for bunker coal in vast, empty oceans. It might be thought that there would be access to coal at calling points en route on the Atlantic coasts of South America, but there was a difficulty getting coal from the hinterland of South America to the ports – this is put into context by the fact that 10 out of the 14 wrecks recorded as lost in English waters with the destination of Valparaiso had a cargo of coal from the coalfields of Durham, the Welsh valleys, or the Ruhr. Coal was generally a popular import from Europe for various South American ports in the 19th and early 20th centuries. [Indeed, the Zoodochos mentioned in Wreck of the Week 29 was exporting coal to Buenos Aires.]

No wonder, then, that the cargo of the Charlwood was described as ‘general’. Yet she is a popular dive and her cargo is regularly seen to comprise glassware, including numerous wine and sherry glasses and decanters – so much so that she rejoices in the alternative sobriquet of the ‘Glass Wreck’. Her cargo suggests a demand for prestige goods from Europe and an appropriate destination in a country now one of the world’s largest wine exporters.

She has an almost contemporary parallel: only two years previously, in 1889, the Duke of Buccleuch also sank after a collision amidships with a significant cargo of glass- and chinaware, again on a long-distance route from Antwerp, this time to Calcutta. The Times, reporting on the incident, revealed that her ‘general cargo’ included iron nails and hardware. She is unusual in that her cargo, bound for a key outpost of the British Empire, originated in a non-British port – although she was, of course, a British ship. It was not until 1953 – after Indian independence – that another wreck in English waters bound to Calcutta began her voyage outside Britain, and this time it was a Swedish vessel.

Wrecks such as these are tangible evidence of the ebb and flow of international trade throughout time.

On another note: Does anyone have any ‘information challenges’ they would like to send me for inclusion in a future WOTW? Keep them coming!

No.35 A Lapse in the Time-Space Continuum

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When Worlds Collide 

This week I’d like to have a look at a couple of craft which were wrecked in the Manchester Ship Canal before it was built! How can this be?

They were discovered during the works to construct the Canal, a logboat being found at Barton-upon-Irwell in 1889 and a similar vessel discovered at Irlam to the south-west the following year. They were both recorded as a distinctive Lancashire type from very similar contexts, at approximately 25ft deep in alluvial soil. Both were also largely intact at the time of finding, suggesting their preservation in the local environment and that the wreck process had simply been one of long abandonment.

The second find gave rise to a very interesting local newspaper report comparing the two. It was noted that both examples had ‘sustained an injury’ from the heartwood breaking out, the Barton craft at the ‘bows’ and the Irlam craft at the ‘stern’, having been both mended. According to the Manchester Times in 1890, the Irlam boat had been found 100 yards from the course of the river, its location perhaps attributable to stranding when the river changed course. I can think of other reasons, perhaps a local flooding event, or intended recycling when the vessel reached the end of its useful life.

I’ve become quite a connoisseur of prolix Victorian journalese, here suggesting that the wrecking process was very nearly completed by mechanical means:

‘The [Irlam] boat is in an admirable state of preservation, far better than was the Barton one, and it suffered very little in the process of extraction, a piece of good fortune which is ascribable to the fact that the beds at that particular spot were being removed by spade labour: and though the British navvy is not renowned for a light and tender touch, still he would bear away the palm for delicacy from his steam rival, who snatched an ample mouthful out of the side of the Barton boat before its nature was discovered.’ (Manchester Times, July 5, 1890, No.1,719)

For more on the steam navvy, please click here.

The Barton boat was radiocarbon-dated to approximately 965-1095 AD, but this late Anglo-Saxon craft did have something in common with Victorian traffic on the canal. It has been suggested that it was used to transport grain, one of the principal cargoes also carried on the Ship Canal (along with cotton for t’mills, of course). Plus ça change . . . 

No.34 Dover-Calais

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“Nearly Swampt”

Inspired by Turner’s maritime paintings, the theme this week is the Dover-Calais crossing. To set the scene, please do have a look at the National Gallery’s Calais Pier (1803).

In the centre of the action is a French fishing vessel with a white sail putting out in a boisterous sea, looking as if it is about to collide with the English packet (regular ferry service for passengers and mails) coming in, crammed to the gills with passengers, the Union Jack wound round itself in the gale. It all looks quite perilous, with a bit of artistic licence allowed – it’s not so perilous that a stream of little fishing vessels can’t put out to sea! This painting is partially based on a number of Turner’s sketches which survive from 1802, his first journey abroad, one of which notes that he was “nearly swampt” on arrival at Calais.

It wasn’t a particularly pleasant passage (the weather, as Turner shows, being somewhat rough that week in July 1802) and it was probably longer than the quick voyage of 3.5 hours recorded by Joseph Farington, Turner’s fellow artist, the following month. (Compare 90 minutes today.)

Occasionally it genuinely was dangerous: we have 4 recorded instances of a Dover-Calais vessel being lost at Dover between 1770 and 1820, and there would probably have been more, but for the interruption of the service during an international dispute with a certain M. Bonaparte in the latter part of that period! By coincidence, there was actually an incident in the year of Turner’s voyage, 1802, but in the reverse direction. The Flèche French packet, while attempting to enter Dover, ‘mistook the stern head for the entrance to the harbour and ran on shore.’ In 1820, the Flora ‘missed stays’ in a ‘heavy gale at S by W’ while leaving Dover. It sounds as if there was a bit of a scramble to get ashore, but everyone did so before the ship went to pieces.

I wonder if they were ‘nearly swampt’ too?

No.33 Durham and the Farne Islands

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Power and Piety

A recent visit to the Farne Islands observing diving ops, followed by a trip to Durham to see the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition, inspired me to look at the ways in which the See of Durham and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne are intertwined in terms of wrecks.

In 1320 a ship laden with wool and hides was lost near Holy Island. The Bishop of Durham, Lewis de Beaumont, claimed the cargo since the wreck lay ‘within the Bishop’s liberty of Norham’, wherein he had ‘regal rights’ – the Bishops of Durham were, after all, Prince Bishops! The wool was arrested in Newcastle on its way south, since Robert the Bruce in his turn laid claim to it, following a treaty at ‘Twedemuth’. The treaty notwithstanding, Edward II upheld the Bishop’s rights in this matter.

In 1534, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall dealt with a ‘Scotch ship’ stranded within his bishopric. James V of Scotland complained on behalf of his subjects, who accused locals of plundering the ship – a fairly typical accusation, which, in being escalated to the highest level, has preserved a shipwreck in the official record. Tunstall, clearly with an eye to Henry VIII’s finances, felt that offering ‘full reparation against all who could be proved to have offended’ was one thing, but ‘full value, as if the goods had arrived undamaged’ was a step too far! He thereby demonstrated a shrewdness which enabled him to survive the subsequent religious upheavals under Henry and his children, before eventually meeting his match in Elizabeth I.

Nathaniel, Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham 1674-1721, married a Bamburgh heiress, and between them they posthumously influenced the outcome of shipwrecks on the Farne Islands and Bamburgh for the better. From his wife he inherited considerable estates in Northumberland, stipulating in his own will that surpluses from these assets be charitably distributed. From at least 1776 shipwrecked mariners were succoured by Lord Crewe’s charity, noted with approbation by the newspapers of the day.

The Scotsmen from the Friendship wrecked on the Farne Islands in 1796 met with a better reception than their predecessors in 1534: being ‘liberally supplied from Bamburgh Castle, by the noble charity of the late Lord Crewe.’ I shall close with the happy ending to the ordeal suffered by the sole survivor of the John’s Adventure which struck near the Castle itself the following year:

‘[he] held by some part of the wreck till she righted, when he took his station on that part of the mast, which remained above water. As soon as he was discovered, every exertion was made by the steward of the castle for his relief, and a boat was just putting off when they discovered his deliverers making toward him from off Waren Bar. When brought to land he was much swelled, and had nearly lost the use of his speech, sight, and limbs, but by the care of the Dispensers of Lord Crewe’s noble charity, he is happily restored.’

Have a great weekend!