We have a close relationship with the Historic England Archive, source of some of the excellent images which tell a maritime story in many of these blogs – very often we are able to collaborate and tell a story that has never been told before, such as finally locating the last known images of Cretehawser and Cretestem at Hendon Dock in WWII.

Sometimes we are approached to identify a wreck image from newly-acquired or -identified collections. This was the case with the image showcased here, from the Janette Rosing Collection acquired by Historic England as part of the UK Government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme in 2025.

The only written clues that we had to go on were that the ship ashore was the brig Avance and the location was the Yorkshire coast. No date, no precise location, no nationality or cargo: just the ship’s name, a type, a rough location on a lengthy stretch of coastline, and the internal evidence within the photograph.

It clearly couldn’t be earlier than the medium of photography itself, so that ruled out a date before around 1850-1860: the clothes worn by the people in the photograph suggested a date in, perhaps the last 20 years of the 19th century or perhaps at most the first 10 of the 20th: stylistically a little earlier, around 1885-1895, I felt was probably a good guess.

The first port of call was to search within Historic England’s National Marine Heritage Record for any wrecks called Avance, but the three wrecks of this name could all be eliminated on the grounds of location, date, vessel type and manner of loss: the Avance schooner of 1815, from an East Prussian milieu, is the wrong type, is too early, and was wrecked in Chale Bay, Isle of Wight; a British fishing vessel of this name was captured and sunk by German submarine off Portland Bill in 1917; and the last ship known as Avance was a Swedish steamer torpedoed and sunk off Flamborough Head in 1918 – certainly off Yorkshire, but in deep water, and the wrong vessel type in any case.

The wreck looks fresh, as if it had newly occurred: the vessel doesn’t look greatly the worse for wear – although appearances can sometimes be deceptive on that score – but it is enough to tell us that the wreck is recent. The bows of the ship are to the right of the photograph, which, combined with the knowledge that the location is said to be on England’s east coast, suggests a southbound vessel, i.e. bows pointing south. The ship is broadside on to the shore and clearly lies in the inter-tidal zone with the sea partly surrounding her – the photo has been taken at the point that the stern is in the water but the bows remain dry – so we can tell that this is a stranding or a grounding (vessel temporarily ashore, later recovered).

The numbers of visitors suggest fine weather, warm and dry enough for what is presumably a family group sitting on the sand, and a larger group of men, women and children approaching the wreck. Indeed, one man and a boy at the bow end are very close to the wreck – they don’t seem to be concerned about her collapsing on them – but the further group seems more aware of the photographer than the family nearest the camera, as most people are turned or turning towards the camera (the older young lady in the group nearest the viewer seems to be laughing into the camera, however).

The whole is redolent of a summer visit to the seaside with the stricken ship as an attraction in, perhaps, the last two decades of the 19th century, judging from the clothes. The cartouche visible astern (to the left of the photograph) suggested a possible Norwegian origin for the ship, as do her lines and colour scheme. At that stage this was a hunch built on experience rather than anything concrete, but the ship’s own name supports this idea in that two of the three wrecks with this name in our records came from a Scandinavian/Baltic context.

For tourists to visit the wreck, it must have been in the news – and in the late 19th century, shipwrecks were newsworthy, filling up many column inches in the specialist (Lloyd’s List), regional, and national presses. So it was to the British Newspaper Archive I turned, in order to find this particular needle in a haystack. It wouldn’t be any good looking for ‘Yorkshire’, for example, as the wreck was likely to be reported from the actual place of loss or a nearby town, which at this stage was still unknown. At least this ship wasn’t a Friends or Two Brothers (the Smith and Jones of the maritime world).

I tried a basic keyword search first: brig + Avance, trusting to the fact that the name was sufficiently unusual + narrowed down by vessel type for hits to be readily identifiable immediately, but without unnecessarily narrowing it down, perhaps incorrectly, with the hunch it might have been Norwegian. This brought up the following from the Hornsea Gazette:

Very early on Wednesday morning [24 June 1891], the Norwegian brig Avance of Risor [Risør], 211 tons, Captain O. Olsen, laden with pit props and birch, and bound from Carlscrona [Karlskrona] to Hull, came ashore during a fog, about 100 yards south of the pier. . . The vessel was lying broadside to the sea, driving up on the rising tide . . . The vessel continued to drive up until high water at six o’clock, and when the tide fell again, she was left high and dry. [1]

I knew we had our ship: Norwegian, as I had surmised; southbound from Sweden for Hull, broadside on to the sea, in the inter-tidal zone, on the Yorkshire coast, in summer, and within the last 20 years of the 19th century. The vessel ‘fell over on her bilge’ on Thursday 25 June, which is the state in which we see her in the photograph. The crew started to throw the deck load overboard in order to lighten the vessel, but there was some difficulty getting locals to assist since the pit props were ‘worth little in this locality’ – being consigned after all for the South Yorkshire coalfields via Hull – but eventually ‘a few young men worked through the night’ to salvage the cargo. There is no sign of the deck cargo in the photograph, so it must have been taken after that point.

On Friday 26 June an attempt was made to tow the ship off but her position was ‘more unfavourable’ and it was unsuccessful, blamed on the delay in unloading the cargo. ‘She is an old vessel, having been built in 1857, and as the tides are falling off, it will probably be some time before she is got afloat, even if she ever sails the seas again.’ As there is no sign of the deck cargo in the photograph, it was probably not until after this attempt on Friday 26 June that the photograph was taken, so that narrows the date range by another day.

It must be have been taken before two tugs from Hull attempted to refloat the brig on Sunday 5 July. This attempt was unsuccessful and a third tug had to be sent for from Hull to accomplish the task, with £90 at stake from the underwriters for successful completion of the mission. At high water on Monday 6 July ‘their perseverance was rewarded . . . by a series of cleverly-managed rushes or jerks gradually dragging her over the shallows.’ [2] The operation was watched by ‘the residents and visitors, and there was no little cheering and waving of hats from the large gathering . . . ‘ so the Avance was a tourist attraction from first to last – a twelve days’ wonder for the summer season at Hornsea in 1891. No wonder the ship looked relatively unbattered and a ‘fresh wreck’, as I thought when I first saw the photograph.

No wonder, too, that the ship was unrecorded in our database, since she did not, after all, end up a wreck! On the other hand, we have confirmed that the minimal documentation associated with the photograph is correct, provided a fairly narrow date window and precise location for it, and helped our Archive colleagues.

Interestingly, the newspaper report places the wreck in relation to a now-vanished pier built in 1880, but bedevilled by financial and structural problems from the outset, being demolished in 1897. It was exactly contemporary with this photograph, which was clearly taken from a vantage point south of the pier looking towards the wreck, but of the pier too no trace remains. What we see is a summer photograph that is a snapshot in time for late Victorian tourism in Hornsea.

Our blog A Detective Story tells the story of another image identified for the Historic England Archive, which also became a tourist attraction, and for another that drew the crowds over the Easter holidays in 1919, see A Tourist Attraction. With many thanks to our Archive colleagues for bringing this to our attention and for their collaboration over many years.

Footnotes

[1] Hornsea Gazette, 27 June 1891, No.1,470, p4; details of the vessel and her build are in confirmed in Det Norske Veritas: Klasseregister over Norske Skibe 1890 (Christiania (Oslo): Carl C Werner & Co.) in both Norwegian and English, although the port of registry is stated as Østerrisør, the former name of Risør.

[2] Hornsea Gazette, 11 July 1891, No.1,472 p4