wrecks in 1817

Railways 200: a maritime perspective, Part One

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Parallel lines – the growth of the railways and the steamers

Historic sepia postcard of parallel rows of multiple railway lines stretching into the distance, with the vertical posts of the coal hoists of the dock just visible to the top of the photograph. The postcard bears the punning title on the front 'Just a few lines from Immingham'
Postcard of the railways towards Immingham Dock around 1912 from the C J Wills & Sons collection. The firm of C J Wills & Sons were railway contractors whose work included Immingham Dock, built for the expansion of the coal trade initially. In the distance the coal hoists servicing the southern side of the dock can be seen.
AL0589/054/01 Source: Historic England Archive

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the world’s first passenger-carrying railway service on the Stockton and Darlington Railway on 27 September 1825 we take a look – in a three-part special – at the close relationship between the railways and the sea, a mutually interdependent relationship from the very beginning.

It’s a story full of surprises, so read on!

Steam ships and steam trains were forged in the same era on the anvil of the Industrial Revolution. The world’s oldest surviving steam locomotive is Puffing Billy, built 1813-14 for the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Meanwhile the wreck record demonstrates that steam ships stuttered into life on small passenger vessels in inshore waters, but were prone to disasters: in 1817 a steam packet on the River Yare exploded just after leaving Norwich for Great Yarmouth, with the loss of half the passengers. [1]

Later that same year. the Regent steam packet, a ‘fine vessel of its kind’ which had apparently cost £1100 to build, suffered a fire en route to Margate. According to a passenger, the fire came from the wooden casing on the deck surrounding the chimney of the steam engine. (Just like today, the press was keen to hear from survivors of any incident and print eyewitness accounts.) There were only two buckets on board to put out the fire, so all that the master could do was order everyone on deck and close all the hatches to deprive the fire of oxygen. He then made a signal of distress and directed the vessel towards Whitstable, the heat trapped inside still keeping the boiler going.

There was ‘terror and agitation’ among the passengers and the fire was ‘only kept from penetrating through the deck by the constant application of water’ from the two buckets to hand, but fortunately the vessel ‘grounded on the sand at Whitstable, when three boats from that place, which had overshot them, arrived to their assistance, and safely took on board all the passengers and crew’, who included children. The vessel burnt to the waterline and as the tide ebbed the keel and engine were exposed on the sand. [2]

‘King Coal’: the railways and the coal industry

From the beginning the railways were intimately connected with the coal industry. The earliest railways originated in the horse-drawn waggonways which brought coal out of the pits to waterways for onward despatch to market. Puffing Billy and its sister engine Wylam Dilly demonstrate the evolution of the waggonways from horse power to steam power.

View of Wylam Dilly locomative from above in a museum setting, giving prominent attention to its tall chimney and small size
Wylam Dilly at the National Museum of Scotland
Kim Traynor CC-BY-SA 3.0

At this period coal was not directly loaded onto the collier brigs of the Tyne from the shore, but taken out to the ships by the flat-bottomed barge-like Tyne keels, who gave their name to a standardised measure of coal (one keel = 21 tons 4 cwt). The keelmen of the Tyne went on strike in 1822 and a strange story persists that the Wylam Dilly locomotive was loaded onto a keel in order to break the strike by towing a number of keels behind her.

"Wylam Dilly" B&W illustration depicting the locomotive converted to a paddle tug on the River Tyne, surrounded by ships and the Newcastle skyline.
The ‘Amphibious’ Wylam Dilly, the print that tells a remarkable tale
Image © National Museums Scotland

This attractive story seems difficult to substantiate, however: it seems an audacious experiment which would surely have attracted the attention of the press. However, while both local and national newspapers devoted many column inches to the keelmen’s strike and the authorities’ and colliery-owners’ responses, the press is remarkably silent on such an event – despite the twin novelties of steam propulsion at sea, still in its infancy, and the repurposing of a railway engine for riverine use. [3]

The story does, however, serve as a neat illustration of the fundamental links between the railways and the sea, linked by coal. From the outset the powerful coal magnates of the north, landowners with several collieries, saw the potential in facilitating the links between the coalfields and outlets to the sea for domestic export, the best route to moving large quantities of coal. It was this great trade in coal from the 16th century onwards that gave rise to the expression ‘coals to Newcastle’ as an expression for a futile endeavour: coal was Newcastle, benefiting from the rich Durham and Northumberland seams, and the trade was so profitable that ships taking coal to London ran in ballast (empty) on the voyage home: there was no real need for a return or exchange cargo.

The railways and the ports

Just five years after that inaugural passenger service in 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway was linked to a new port at Middlesbrough on the Tees for the transhipment of coal via the River Tees, but the demand soon outgrew the port and further development was needed.

Historic B&W aerial photo of rail lines surrounding a dock in the foreground, with several ships in it. In the middle ground is the Tees with the Transporter Bridge to left, and in the background a rural landscape contrasting with the industrial riverscape
Middlesbrough Dock and the Transporter Bridge, 1949
This post-war view of the dock (opened 1842) and the Transporter Bridge (opened 1911) well illustrates the integration of rail and maritime transport, replicated in many locations across the country
EAW024124 Source: Historic England Archive

At the same time the Marquis of Londonderry saw an opportunity to develop Seaham on the Durham coast to ship the coal from his nearby coalfields, connected by a railway line from Rainton from 1831. [4] The increase in maritime trade was not without its hazards: the number of shipwrecks associated with the region grew commensurately with the growth in shipping using the port. [5]

Coal thus made of the north-east a perfectly closed-loop economy. Coal was used in the manufacture of iron and steel for the engines and bodies of locomotives, trains and steamships, which were themselves powered by coal. Shipbuilding flourished accordingly in Britain’s industrial centres, particularly where there was a strong coal hinterland. Built using coal, powered by coal, and destined to carry coal, the steam collier built on the banks of the Tyne and the Wear unlocked cargo capacity for ever greater shipments of coal to meet demand. Coal created both its own demands and the means to fulfil them.

In terms of the coal trade, railways were intended at the beginning – through the development of port connections – to serve the shipping of coal, and not to replace it. The growth in freight hauled by rail, including coal, never did put the steam colliers out of work for many and complex reasons, not least the fact that from the outset the railways facilitated access to the ports, and hence port development by the coal magnates.

From our 21st century perspective, this approach, while understandable in terms of the bigger picture, seems counter-intuitive. The reliance on shipping rather than devolution to the railways to reach the domestic market would certainly come to place Britain in great danger during the two World Wars. Coal was needed to, quite literally, ‘keep the home fires burning’: it was required for factory production, for domestic heating, lighting and cooking, to build and to power the trains that connected the country, for shipbuilding and to bunker both British steamers and ships from all over the world arriving at British ports. It was therefore vulnerable to supply disruption and economic loss in both income and ships – and, of course, human lives.

Historic black and white print of three men lit up by the engines into which they are shovelling coal in a vast and dark space symbolising the power of the engines and the size of the ship, and underlining the fact the machines depend on these men.
Heroes : in the stokeholds of the Mercantile Marine
Three stokers shovel coal aboard ship
James McBey, 1917 (Art.IWM ART 1409). Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/17930

The steam colliers were vital, and thus became a clear target of the Scarborough minefield laid by enemy shipping during the First World War. During the Second World War colliers likewise had to contend with mines and the ever-present possibility of a U-boat strike or bombardment from the air. [For a little more on the attacks on collier shipping in the First World War, see our previous blogs on Sir Francis (June 1917) and The Schooners’ Last Stand, (September 1917).]

Fish’n’Chips

As well as taking goods to market – and facilitating their international export as well as domestic circulation by sea – the railways also brought fish from market. The expansion of the railway network over Britain coincided with the development of the steam trawler exploiting the fish stocks of the North Sea and North Atlantic.

The catch could be brought to market more quickly by steam trawler and onward despatch by the burgeoning railway network meant that from the late 19th century onwards inland communities could benefit as much as coastal communities from ready access to fish. It was a cheap meal – because it could be brought in quickly and in quantity – and a nutritious and filling one, particularly important for the diet of working-class communities in industrial cities.

The steam fleets of Kingston-upon-Hull, Grimsby, and Fleetwood were particularly noteworthy, and well placed to reach the great cities of the industrial north and the Midlands – and beyond – by railway. The steam trawlers and the railways together made fish and chips a national dish.

Streetscape of brick terraced houses with round-headed door frames and windows. To right is a shop window bearing a stained glass Art Deco sunrise design with the legend 'Titus Street Fisheries' at the top.
Titus Street Fisheries fish and chip shop, 38 Titus Street, Saltaire, taken c.1966-1974, from the Eileen Deste collection. DES01/01/0626 © Historic England Archive

The wreck record parallels the twin growth of the steam trawler and the railways. Our earliest record of a steamer in the fishing trade being lost at sea in English waters dates from March 1853. The George Bolton was a ‘new screw steam schooner, which had been introduced in the fishing trade for the purpose of expediting the conveyance of fish from the coast of Holland to the London market’. She was supplied with a ‘full cargo of cod-fish, shipped on board of her from the numerous craft engaged in those fisheries, for Grimsby, where she would discharge her cargo, and thence conveyed to London by railway.’ Her boilers exploded off the Humber, almost cleaving her in two, and she sank, although collier brigs in the vicinity were able to rescue survivors, some much scalded by the explosion. [6]

Part 2 follows next week with the ever-closer connections between trains and steamers in the 20th century

With many thanks to Andrew Wyngard, railway consultant for this blog.

Logo celebrating 200 years of train travel since 1825, featuring a stylised number '200' in red with the zeros reminiscent of train wheels and terminating in the British double-arrow train logo

Footnotes

[1] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Horrible explosion of a steam packet’ Lancaster Gazette, 12 April 1817, No.826, p1

[2] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Total Loss of a Margate Steam Packet’. Stamford Mercury, 11 July 1817, No.4,503, p4

[3] The source for the story appears to be the print presented by Forster Bros, based at Scotwood-on-Tyne, depicting the Wylam Dilly ‘made to answer as a paddle tug’ in 1822 (reproduced above and in Grelling, M, nd, “Wylam Dilly: one of the world’s oldest locomotives”, National Museums Scotland). but it does not appear to be a contemporary record of events. It is undated: the typefaces and grammatical details in the caption appear more consistent with the mid- to late 19th century. It was certainly extant by 1912 when it was republished in a Newcastle paper in 1912 (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, September 10, 1912. p3) to celebrate the centenary of Henry Bell’s steamboat, the paddle steamer Comet. The newspaper credits Messrs Ord and Company, 45 Hartington Street, Newcastle, as the source of the print. John Shute Ord, shipbroker, was resident at that address in 1911 (England and Wales Census, 1911).

The caption reads “Wylam Dilly” Taken off Railway Waggon Way and fitted on a Keel called “Tom and Jerry”, at Lemington, and made to answer as a Paddle Tug, going by Quayside, Newcastle. By the mid-19th century the practice of capitalising nouns in English was very old-fashioned, but persisted to some extent in press circles, and this may be a hallmark of the print. i.e. it was handled by a press associated with the newspaper industry. There were Forsters owning tugs on the Tyne from the 1830s at least: Scotswood appears in connection with Forster ownership from the 1870s to the 1920s. There is sufficient detail in the print to suggest details from memory, perhaps from local rivermen as the Forsters had been – Tom and Jerry was a popular novel and play of 1821, just the sort of inspiration for a vessel name that was very common, Lemington was the end point of the Wylam waggonway to the river, and both Wylam and Lemington were places name-checked in acounts of the strike.

So far, so plausible – yet the print remains puzzling, in the face of the silence in the contemporary press on the Wylam Dilly‘s purported use on the river in 1822 and the fairly rudimentary nature of the paddle wheels as shown more by the movement of the water than in size or action. So far the origin of the story remains untraced, but the ‘presented’ caption at the bottom suggests to me that the original was commissioned or presented for a local publication on local industrial heritage. Wylam and Lemington were key locales in the strike, and Wylam Dilly in use on the waggonway at that time – that much is certain. Whether the locomotive actually made it onto the river is less certain.

[4] Seaham Town Council, nd, Seaham Harbour 1828-1851, published online

[5] Cant, S 2013 England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats (Swindon: English Heritage) p179

[6] Historic England NMHR records; ‘Blowing up of two Steam Vessels, and Loss of Life’, Morning Advertiser, 14 March 1853, No.19,258, p3

50th Anniversary of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973

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Part 2: A PWA50 Project

In the second instalment of our two-part special commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Protection of Wrecks Act, we look today at one of the projects funded by Historic England to commemorate 50 years of the Act.

Our guest blogger Michael Lobb from MSDS Marine writes about their innovative PWA50 project – Landlocked and Looking Out – to connect landlocked counties with England’s maritime heritage.

Modern colour photograph of three rock formations tilted upwards as if they were ships ploughing through seas, instead of the grass platform on which they sit, seen against a blue sky.
Three Ships rocks, Birchen Edge, Derbyshire: three large gritstone outcrops, so-called from their prow-like appearance, near a monument to Nelson.
© Graham Hogg CC BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1946715

Landlocked and Looking Out

Maritime archaeology, by its very nature, is concentrated around our coasts, and as a result, opportunities for the public to engage with it can be limited to coastal communities and those who have the means to visit them. People living inland do not always get the opportunity to participate in maritime archaeology projects, so, to address this, funding from Historic England enabled MSDS Marine to deliver fifty public pop-up events over summer 2023, specifically for schools and youth groups, to encourage active participation with maritime heritage.

All events were held in landlocked Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and as a result 17,066 individuals have attended at least one of these events. Not everyone who came will become a maritime archaeologist or volunteer: however, it is hoped that by having an understanding and appreciation of maritime archaeology, more people will value the hidden maritime heritage that surrounds the UK and start to believe it is of relevance to them, and this blog further highlights this work.

As part of the project MSDS Marine explored the links between historic figures, sites and artefacts from the landlocked counties of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, with maritime heritage and archaeology.

Shipbuilding and provisioning of ships

Copper mines at Ecton Hill, Staffordshire (scheduled as an ancient monument) produced copper sheathing to protect the timber hulls of Royal Navy ships in the age of sail, while a number of Peak District lead mines produced ingots for use as ballast in ships.

Derbyshire quarries also produced consumable items for ships, such as Morley Moor quarries which produced holystones for use on ships up to the Boer War (1899-1902) when the practice stopped. Holystones were pieces of gritstone used for scrubbing wooden decks, a regular part of a sailor’s morning routine. They were most likely called holystones because the sailors had to scrub the decks on their knees, reminiscent of kneeling in church. Large holystones were known as ‘Bibles’, while smaller ones for use in difficult corners were called ‘Prayer books.’

Historic sepia photograph of sailors in uniform, the front row on their hands and knees scrubbing a ship's deck, the back and side rows standing. It is clearly a posed photograph with all the men smiling or laughing at the camera.
Holystoning the decks on HMS Pandora (1900-1913)
Creative Commons

Perhaps of more interest to sailors were the stoneware rum bottles manufactured for the Royal Navy by Pearsons’ Pottery in Chesterfield. The most popular size was one gallon!

Other companies produced more specialised equipment for ships, such as the Haslam Foundry and Engineering Company Limited in Derby. The late 19th century downturn in the agrarian economy saw fears of a meat shortage in Britain, but at the same time farms in Australia were producing large herds of sheep. The solution was to develop and construct refrigeration systems to allow ships to transport frozen meat on the lengthy voyage from Australia to the UK. From 1881 ships fitted with Haslam machinery were transporting frozen meat from Australia and New Zealand to London. The factory backed on to the river Derwent, allowing the finished machinery to be shipped to coastal shipyards via the Trent.

Historic B&W photograph of a long row of pipes with a flow meter connected to feeder valves on the right. The pipes are angled upwards, across the ceiling, and run down again opposite, with two rows of valves.
Brine distribution pipes in the refrigeration unit, Highland Warrior, 1924. Highland Warrior’s owners, the Nelson Line, a specialist in meat from Argentina, installed refrigeration units from both Haslam and the Liverpool Refrigeration Co. Ltd across its ships, the latter in Highland Warrior. BL26996/001 Source: Historic England Archive

The Midlands also played a part in the development of shipbuilding technology: in 1799 Simon Goodrich was sent on a tour of the industrial Midlands by the Admiralty to see how emerging technologies could be incorporated into the Naval dockyards. Goodrich was shown around the cotton mill at Derby by William Strutt, which inspired technology later used at Chatham Dockyard. He also visited a stone quarry near Derby where the saws used to cut the stonework later influenced the design of timber cutting saws at Portsmouth Dockyard. At Belper he was shown the mills by George Strutt and visited Outram’s foundry, where he took a particular interest in the boring mill.

Shipping and Trade

The proximity of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire to the river Trent, and the many canals linking up with it, including the Trent and Mersey canal, meant that a range of products manufactured in the Midlands were transported to the British coast and then further afield: for example, the wreck record shows that in 1818 the sloop Industry stranded on the Sunk Sand at the entrance to the Thames while bound from Gainsborough to London with household goods, ironmongery and earthenware pottery. [1]

Historic B&W photograph showing the corn mill seen from the canal towards the boat arch, with the text 'F E Stevens Ltd./Trent Corn Mills in the gable of the mill, with a plaque saying 'No.2 Mill' below a window.
B’ Warehouse at Trent Corn Mills, Shardlow, Derbyshire, showing the boat arch, in 1960, when still in use as a corn mill on the Trent and Mersey Canal. This warehouse was built in 1780, and from the 1820s was known as the ‘B’ Warehouse, almost exactly contemporary with the 1817 wreck of the Crown which foundered off the Farne Islands carrying barley from Gainsborough for Leith. For centuries produce from the agricultural hinterland was circulated domestically via river, canal and sea, not road or rail.
Eric de Maré AA60/04515 © Historic England Archive

From the 17th century cheese from the Midlands was transported down the Trent to Gainsborough, where it was loaded onto sea-going ships which navigated the river to the Humber, then coastwise to London. At a later date, wreck records show that the sloop Fanny, laden with cheese for Hull, capsized in the Trent in 1811, while in 1783 another sloop, the Acorn, stranded off Tynemouth while inbound to Shields with cheese from Gainsborough. Similarly, in the 17th century coal from Wollaton in Nottingham was transported to the Trent, thence to Hull on the Humber, where it was transhipped to London. [2]

The War Effort

During the First World War, Chetwynd Barracks, just outside Nottingham, was the site of Chilwell Filling Factory, a munitions plant which produced 19,000,000 shells, 25,000 sea mines and 2,500 aerial bombs over the course of the war. On the 1st July 1918 an explosion destroyed part of the factory killing 139 workers. A memorial to the workers is located inside Chetwynd Barracks, but many of them are buried nearby in a mass grave at Attenborough church. There were suspicions at the time that the explosion was the result of an act of sabotage (typical of rumours in wartime – similar rumours circulated when the warship London blew up in 1665) but it was most likely caused by the summer heat triggering an explosion.

Historic B&W photograph of long rows and rows of shells and mines of different types loaded on trolleys in a large factory.
National Shell Filling Factory, Chetwind Road, Chilwell, Notts. Melt House for Land, Sea and Air, photographed a few days before the Armistice in 1918. To the right are rows of rounded sea mines: sea mines were used by both sides and hundreds of ships were lost to mines in English waters over the First World War 1914-18. AA96/03598 Source: Historic England Archive

Many other industrial sites in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire also contributed to the war effort in both World Wars: Stanton Iron Works just outside Ilkeston made experimental torpedo casings, while parts of Mulberry harbours for the Second World War Normandy landings were built at Hilton, just south-west of Derby.

Sailors

There has been a Royal Naval Reserve base at HMS Sherwood in Nottingham since the Second World War, with the Midland counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire at one point providing the most popular recruiting ground for the Royal Navy.

The roots connecting the Midlands to the sea and seafaring are ancient: Nottinghamshire was the home of Sir Hugh Willoughby, an early Arctic explorer who led an expedition to find the North-East Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He died in 1554 when two ships from the voyage were locked in the Arctic ice.

Sir Hugh’s descendant Rear Admiral Sir Nesbit Josiah Willoughby (1777-1849) was born in Cossall, Nottinghamshire. He was knighted twice, court-martialled four times, and, as his obituary in the Annual Register noted:

He was eleven times wounded with balls, three times with splinters, and cut in every part of his body with sabres and tomahawkes: his face was disfigured by explosions of gunpowder, and he lost an eye and had part of his neck and jaw shot away . . . and at Leipzig had his right arm shattered by cannon shot.

(See our previous blog on disabled sailors and shipwrecks)

Historic B&W engraved half-length portrait of man in military uniform with a black patch over his eye.
Sir Nesbit Josiah Willoughby by William Greatbach, after Thomas Barber
mixed method engraving, published 1837
NPG D11236 © National Portrait Gallery, London CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Another significant figure in British maritime history with a strong link to the Midlands was Samuel Plimsoll. Despite having been born in Bristol, he only lived there for a short time, and it was as the Liberal MP for Derby from 1868-1880 that he fought for amendments to the Merchant Shipping Act, introducing the famous ‘Plimsoll Line’ showing the safe level of loading for a vessel, preventing the loss of unseaworthy and overloaded vessels.

Modern colour photograph of sculpted bust of bearded man on plinth flanked by statues of a man and a woman looking down at a commemorative plaque in gratitude. The sculpture is seen against leafless trees and an ornate background on a bright winter's day with clear blue sky.
Memorial to Samuel Plimsoll, Victoria Embankment, London.
The central plaque is surmounted by a sailing ship: just visible above Plimsoll’s name is his load line. On the plinth the modern load line is seen, a barred circle with the letters LR for the classification society Lloyd’s Register, with load lines marked for different seasons and bodies of water. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 http://tinyurl.com/5fcb6wen

Monuments

There are numerous monuments to Nelson and the Royal Navy throughout England, but at Birchen Edge in the Peak District the obelisk commemorating Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar is accompanied by a slightly more unique memorial in the form of the natural feature of Three Ships Rocks [shown at the top of the blog], three large rock outcrops which are carved with the names of warships from Trafalgar – Nelson’s own flagship Victory, Defiance and Royal Soverin.

Modern colour photo of the word VICTORY incised on a rock and still legible despite erosion. The rock formations run from bottom left to top right of the image, are weathered in places, and have light coloured spots of lichen.
Carving of the name VICTORY on one of the Three Ships boulders at Birchen Edge, Derbyshire.
© Neil Theasby CC BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2959671

The grounds of Thoresby Park in Nottingham contain a monument to Nelson’s Navy and another in the shape of a pyramid commemorating the Battle of the Nile in 1798. The interior of the monument is inscribed with the names of the ships and men involved in the battle. Both monuments were constructed by Charles Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers who had been an officer in the Royal Navy, and whose son was a serving officer at the time of the monuments’ construction.

Modern colour photograph of stone pyramid with entrance porch flanked by classical columns, seen against a backdrop of tall trees on a cloudy day.
Pyramid, Thoresby Park
IOE01/16506/05 © Mrs Mollie Toy. Source: Historic England Archive

Perhaps one of the most unusual tributes to Britain’s naval heritage can be found at Newstead Abbey, just north of Nottingham. The 5th Lord Byron (1722-1798), great-uncle of Byron the poet (the 6th Lord Byron), was forced to leave his position in the Royal Navy when he inherited the estate and title. Frustrated at leaving the sea, he expanded the lake outside the house, and built cannon forts on either side so that he could stage mock naval battles. The battles were no small affair, involving numerous boats, including a twenty-gun schooner manned by professional sailors!

Modern colour photograph of blue lake with fort on the left bank and a forest landscape on the right bank. In the middle distance a swan swims towards the viewer.
Newstead Abbey, Newstead, Nottinghamshire, looking NW across the lake towards the Cannon Fort.
DP278046 © Historic England Archive

Thus we can see that in the Midlands, the furthest it is possible to get away from the sea in England, there is a strong connection to ships and shipbuilding in times of peace and of war, a heritage expressed in a legacy of wrecks and terrestrial landmarks alike.

Explore our other PWA 50 blogs:

50 Years of Protecting Shipwrecks – Hefin Meara, Historic England

The Cattewater Wreck – Martin Read, licensee of the Cattewater Wreck

Footnotes

[1] Historic England wreck records

[2] Historic England wreck records

From Woolwich to Paglesham via the Galapagos

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HMS Beagle

Designation news: 

The remains of a rare 19th-century dock, a mud berth on the River Roach near Paglesham, Essex, built to accommodate a coastguard watch vessel, are now protected as a nationally important site, designated as a scheduled monument by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of Historic England.

Mud Docks: 

Mud docks like these were once a common feature of river life, but are now rare and little-known, with only a handful recorded anywhere in England. Characteristic features included shoring to stabilise the sides, stocks to support the ship, and a brick hard. All these features are depicted in a painting by John Constable, depicting a barge being built near his father’s mill at Flatford on the River Stour, which forms the Essex-Suffolk boundary.

Historic oil painting with the barge under construction the central feature of a rural landscape on a flat river plain.
Boat-building near Flatford Mill, John Constable, 1815. © Victoria & Albert Museum An associated dock was excavated and restored at Flatford c.1988.

Coastguard Watch Vessels: 

Similarly, little is known about the history of coastguard watch vessels, which once played a prominent role along from 1822 in the long-running battle against smuggling: before 1822, the Preventive Service and ‘revenue men’ had taken on that role. They used ‘revenue cutters’, fast, small ships capable of intercepting the typically small vessels which brought in contraband and which could negotiate the often difficult waters the smugglers chose to exploit. The Essex coastline with its mud flats was one such area. (1) 

Occasionally these vessels crop up in the record as wrecks in their area of operation, for example, the revenue cutters Felicity, which stranded on a rock among the Isles of Scilly in 1790 after seizing significant quantities of contraband from a smuggling cutter, or the Fox, which stranded in 1824 near Bridport, not far from the Chesil Beach locale which inspired John Meade Falkner’s classic 1898 tale of smuggling, Moonfleet. (2) 

These were, of course, seagoing vessels, but the coastguard also made use of static watch vessels. Static service in one form or another was typical for obsolete naval vessels which nevertheless still had a useful part to play and assignment to a coastguard role was fairly typical: there is a long heritage of such vessels, which have been the subject of previous blogs examining the uses to which they were put, from the 17th century Vogelstruis to Fisgard II in 1914.

A station on the river Roach at Paglesham no doubt provided a commanding position in the flat Essex land- and sea-scape for the coastguard watch vessel. The former HMS Kangaroo, an Acorn-class brig-sloop of 1852, similarly ended up in the Essex marshes from 1870 at nearby Burnham-on-Crouch, and gives a good idea of the appearance of a 19th century coastguard watch vessel and how the Paglesham vessel must once have looked.

Dickens’ Great Expectations of 1861, exactly contemporary with the coastguard watch vessel at Paglesham, describes a similar conversion to a prison hulk (without masts or sails) on the Thames marshes as a ‘black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore’ and a ‘ghostly pirate calling out to me’.

The Paglesham coastguard watch vessel saw a long period in service over a quarter of a century from 1845 to 1870, before being sold to be broken up in situ in the dock. The lower portion of the vessel is believed to have settled into the mud, and therefore potentially survives, and thus there is a history not only of the dock but of the vessel which occupied it for so long.

Modern manipulated colour image of mud and vegetation with the outline of Beagle picked out by a red line.
Multispectral UAV survey involved flying a UAV (drone) fitted with a specialist camera, which captures red, green, infrared, near-infrared light, to create a Neutral Density Vegetation Index (NDVI). This has created a clear outline within the dataset of the original mud dock where HMS Beagle was most likely dismantled, confirming its location. © Wessex Archaeology

However, this is not only a story of a mud dock and the vessel for which it was built, but that vessel’s illustrious antecedents. Its identity was no less than HMS Beagle, famed both for three survey voyages and, above all, an association with one of the key figures of the 19th century. Charles Darwin took part in her second voyage from 1831 to 1836, as a naturalist, a voyage which would prove key in developing one of the scientific milestones of the 19th century and its public fame assured by the publication of Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle in 1839.

Background to the Beagle:

Two hundred years ago this month HMS Beagle was launched at Woolwich in May 1820, as one of the numerous and long-lived Cherokee-class brig-sloops, which began to enter the Royal Navy from 1808 onwards. According to the memoirs of John Lort Stokes, a hydrographic surveyor who served aboard Beagle, and who knew Darwin on that second voyage, she stood out from the rest of her class:

The reader will be surprised to learn that she belongs to that much-abused class, the ’10-gun brigs’—COFFINS as they are not infrequently designated in the service; notwithstanding which, she has proved herself, under every possible variety of trial, in all kinds of weather, an excellent sea boat. (3)  

A number of Beagle‘s sister Cherokee-class brig-sloops were certainly wrecked around the English coastline, (4) for example  HMS Jasper (built 1808) which stranded under Mount Batten, Plymouth, in 1817 with significant loss of life in a ‘tremendous gale of wind’, while HMS Fairy (built 1826) capsized and sank with all hands off Kessingland, Suffolk, in 1840.

By contrast, HMS Skylark (built 1826) struck on Kimmeridge Ledge, Dorset in fog with no loss of life in 1845, thanks in great part to the efforts of the local coastguard, a story which also underlines not only a secondary function of the coastguard but also of their importance in the 19th century.

The voyages of the Beagle: 

After some time laid up out of service (‘in ordinary’ in the parlance of the time) in 1825 HMS Beagle was commissioned into the Hydrographic Service as a surveying vessel, her first voyage to Tierra del Fuego taking place between 1826 and 1830.

Historic black & white print of HMS Beagle in profile view against a backdrop of mountains with native inhabitants looking on from small canoes
HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan: frontispiece from the 1890 edition of Charles Darwin’s Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle (London: John Murray)

The Beagle was refitted and set out for her second and most famous voyage in 1831, returning to South America, this time with Charles Darwin on board as a naturalist: such survey expeditions were an opportunity to add to the body of scientific knowledge concerning regions little known to Europeans at that time, as well as to undertake chart-making surveys. This was the voyage which visited the Galapagos Islands and led to Darwin beginning to evolve his principles of natural selection, published as On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Beagle returned once more to England in 1836 and set out again the following year, this time on a survey of Australia which would last until 1843. It was after these three arduous voyages that Beagle was demoted to a coastguard watch vessel, until sold for breaking. Breaking in situ was again typical for vessels which were no longer suitable for any service, as was abandonment after a partial breaking, which then became a secondary stage of a wreck process in itself, as seems to have been the case with the Beagle.

While the Beagle, his former home for five years, was literally sinking into obscurity among the mud-flats of Essex, by contrast Darwin’s fame continued to grow. He settled at Down House, Kent, in 1842, where he led a life of active scientific research and publication against no little controversy surrounding his theories of evolution, before his death in 1882. Each layer of significance in the history of the mud dock at Paglesham is fascinating in its own right, and is all the more special for its association with the remains of a very special vessel.

Modern colour photo of historic Victorian desk with shelf and drawer files and scientific instruments.
Detail view of the Old Study of Charles Darwin’s home at Down House DP053644 © Historic England Archive

References: 

(1) Benham, H. 1986. The Smugglers’ Century: the story of smuggling on the Essex coast, 1730-1830 (Chelmsford: Essex Record Office Publications)

(2) Information derived from Historic England’s National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) database

(3) Stokes, J. 1846. Discoveries in Australia; with an account of the coasts and rivers explored and surveyed during the voyage of HMS Beagle, in the years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43 by Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Vol. 1. (London: T and W Boone)

(4) Information derived from Historic England’s National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) database