The Modeste

Our guest blogger Mike Salter returns with a follow-up from his blog on the Sea Adventure in March 2024 on the Modeste, a ship with an intriguing tale behind her. Our thanks to him for providing such an interesting story!

He writes:

The same “Dreadful Storm” that accounted for the Sea Adventure also wrecked 60 other ships between Whitby and Great Yarmouth, in particular La Modeste, which has a number of intriguing circumstances.

She ran aground on the Main, or strand near Wainfleet on the Lincolnshire coast at 7am on Sunday 11^th November 1810 [1]. As with the Sea Adventure, wrecked about 20 miles east, across the Wash on Holbeach Marsh, La Modeste was forced ashore by a powerful ESE wind which also produced an extremely high tide, flooding many miles of low-lying coastal lands and marshes.

Her Name

The majority of newspaper and other reports at the time named her as La Modeste, [2] but later, as we will see, she was referred to as Modeste. However, some newspaper reports from sources published closest to the wreck site named her as La Minerva instead. [3]

Both names were in popular contemporary use, for example the Royal Navy frigates Modeste, operational from 1793-1814, and Minerva, 1805-1815.

Details of the Wreck Event

Lloyd’s List stated on 20 November 1810 that: “A fine new, American-built ship, about 500 tons and pierced for 18 guns; Prize to the Hussar frigate, by whom she had been captured in the Cattegat, went ashore at seven o’clock on Sunday morning (11^thNov.) on the Main above Wainfleet, where she bilged (i .e. had serious leaks to the hull after running aground). The name of the wreck was the Modeste. She was captured from the Danes off Kiel.”

The first advertisement for the auction of the ship on 5^th Dec. 1810 named her the Modeste and said she was copper-bottomed and about 350 tons. [5] She had cost $25,000 a few months previously ($600,000 today), so was a valuable prize. Most reports say she was a prize to HMS Hussar, a 38-gun frigate built in 1807 which saw significant worldwide service, including the Baltic in 1807 and 1810, and whose commanding officer at the time was Captain Alexander Skene.

At the time of the wreck the Modeste was in the hands of Lieutenant W. MacDougall, suggesting that he had been charged with bringing her to a UK port as a prize. Steel’s Navy Lists at the National Maritime Museum show a Lieutenant J MacDougall who was appointed in 1800, but the ships on which he served are not shown. A Lieutenant Drummond was appointed to the Hussar in November 1810, so it may have been as a replacement for MacDougall if he moved to another ship.

Auctions of the Modeste and Subsequent Events

There were two known auctions associated with the Modeste. The first, as above, was on 7 December 1810 at the farm of a Mr Carrott in Friskney, near Wainfleet. It sought those ‘experienced in getting off or breaking up a vessel; and if there was no sale the farmer would buy it and break it for firewood!

The second advertisement, headed “SHIP STRANDED”, was placed in the Stamford Mercury in April 1811 by Messrs. Barnard and Chapman of Boston who had clearly bought the wreck. They wanted someone to get her off for a fixed sum or part share. The ship was in ballast and they tried to arouse interest by saying “it is supposed to have valuable items on board”.

In June 1812 the same paper reported an Inquest on two men who had drowned after a late-night boat trip to “view the means resorted to for raising the wreck”. Sadly, on leaving their boat, they had waded out to sea in the darkness, instead of towards the shore. [6]

Gold in Ballast?

Edmund Oldfield, a local historian writing in 1829, says there was hope for several years the Modeste would be refloated but this came to naught. The ballast was ”a heavy black ore“ which it was surmised contained gold. This ballast was to be the reward of those who laboured on the wreck and some people were induced to buy the labourers “shares of the booty”. After repeated analyses in London hopes of riches were dashed and it seems that the ballast may well have been copper slag which was beginning to be used at that time. The hull was eventually broken up. (Copper slag does contain gold, but at such a small percentage – a fraction of 1% – as to be worthless.)

Modeste Figurehead

I came across, by chance, a reference in a newspaper article of 1854, to “the figurehead of the Modeste, wrecked off the Lincolnshire coast some years since” which was being displayed in an Exhibition at the Boston (Lincs.) Athenaeum and which had previously been shown in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in the Skirbeck quarter of Boston. [7] This would seem to confirm that the ship wrecked on 11 November 1810 was the Modeste, as also referenced by the Stamford Mercury auction and inquest reports on the two drowned men of 1812, and not La Minerva.

There was also an oblique reference to the Aztec king Montezuma immediately after the reference to the figurehead, the significance of which later became clear, and is addressed later in this article.

Modeste, prize to HMS Hussar

There are prize reports for several ships named [La] Modeste at this time, but none recorded as a prize to HMS Hussar, frigate, in the circumstances described: capture from the Danes in the Cattegat off Kiel.

A schedule of Hussar‘s movements can be reconstructed from various newspaper, Lloyd’s List and Navy List reports, including a stint in the Rear Squadron in the Baltic Fleet Order of Sailing of July 1807. [8] Along the way there were false reports that she had been wrecked, a diplomatic row in January 1810 after on boarding the American ship John Adams, bound for a blockaded Dutch port, [9] before she sailed once more from Yarmouth to join the Baltic fleet on 3 July 1810.

In July Hussar captured the Resolution and passed through the Belt (between Sjælland and Fyn, Denmark) to the Baltic with 332 sail. [10] By 3 August she was returning through the Belt with HMS Orion and 120 sail. [11] As an indication of the sailing time, in September 1810 the Hero sailed from the Baltic to England in a mere 6 days, although 2-3 weeks was probably more usual.

On 18 August Hussar captured Julia (no location given), which was auctioned after being condemned in the High Court of Admiralty [12]: distribution of prize money was recorded in the London Gazette of 21 July 1812. This shows the procedure: sending in to a UK port; application for condemnation as prize; sale by auction and later distribution of prize money. This could take some time: two years in this case, but immediate sale could be ordered if there were good reasons.

On 2 October 1810 Hussar was reported to be back in the Yarmouth Roads: “Roebuck, Lord Gardner, Hussar 74 guns [sic] and other warships remain in the Roads.’ Lord Gardner was flag officer on the Roebuck. This report continues: ”Upwards of 20 sail, prizes to the North Sea fleet, have entered this port; the principal part of which are laden with wheat.” [13] In mid-December Hussar arrived at Leith from the Baltic, thence sailing to Portsmouth.

Date of capture of Modeste and conclusions:

From the above voyages of Hussar, it seems Modeste could have been captured, as described in newspaper reports in the Baltic, at any time from mid-August to late October (excluding the visit to Yarmouth in early October if that newspaper report is correct).

No date in July 1810 is given for the capture of the Resolution, while the Julia was captured 18 August 1810, location unknown, so these may /may not have been in the Baltic, although it seems likely.

After Hussar’s return to the Baltic in October there would have been time to send in Modeste to a UK port if she had been captured up to about the third week of that month, which suggests that Lieutenant MacDougall was put in charge of her return late in October, but was then shipwrecked on 11 November, before reaching a port where prize proceedings could be started.

All newspaper reports of the Modeste wreck and the two sales by auction of the wrecked hull state that she had been captured by HMS Hussar, but none that she had been condemned as prize to her. No Notice appears in the London Gazette which did report the capture and condemnation of the Resolution and Julia. [14]

The first auction advertisement for Modeste was on 5 December 1810, taking place two days later at the farm of Mr Carrott in Friskney, less than a month from the date of the wreck. As a local landowner with a large acreage bordering the sea he may have had ‘rights of wreck’, or it was simply a convenient venue.

The appointment of a Lieutenant Drummond to the Hussar in November 1810 may have been as a replacement for MacDougall conveying the prize to England.

It has been an interesting journey, unravelling some events surrounding the loss of a new and valuable ship, captured from the Danes, taken as prize by HMS Hussar, wrecked in Lincolnshire along with many others: speculated over for riches and finally, ignominiously broken up and sold for fence posts or firewood. The dashing HMS Hussar’s exploits in the second Baltic fleet are integral to the story.

Serena writes: There we must end Part I, but Part II will follow in which Mike explores further details of the capture and wreck of Modeste. Very rarely are we able to expose such detail in our understanding of wreck events, particularly at this period, and my thanks go to Mike for his painstaking research.

Footnotes

[1] Topographical Account of Wainfleet and Ingoldmells, Edmund Oldfield, 1829

[2] Edmund Oldfield (op.cit.); Sun (London) 17 Nov 1810; Hull Packet, 20 Nov 1810; Evening Star 5 Dec. 1810; Stamford Mercury 12 April 1811 and 18 June 1812; Lloyd’s List; London Gazette.

[3] Stamford Mercury 16 Nov. 1810; Bury and Norwich Post

[4] Rif Winfield Royal Navy in the Age of Sail 1793-1815

[5] Evening Star (London) 5 Dec. 1810

[6] Stamford Mercury 19 June 1812

[7] Lincolnshire Chronicle 24 March 1854

[8] Morning Post, 5 July 1807

[9] Hampshire Chronicle 1 January 1810; St. James’s Chronicle, 16 January 1810

[10] London Gazette, 21 July 1812; A M Ryan, The Saumarez Papers, Navy Records Society, 1968

[11] Star (London), 12 October 1810

[12] Public Ledger & Daily Advertiser 1 January 1811; London Gazette 21 July 1812

[13] Star (London), 3 October 1810

[14] See note 10 above