I first saw the Cutty Sark in 1980. It was in the same dry dock as it is now, but Greenwich then was a very different place to what it is now. Then it was very rundown, but now with the coming of the O2 and lots of regeneration money the place has been transformed. Now, ‘Maritime Greenwich’ is a World Heritage site where you can see all manner of things including the Royal Observatory.

The Cutty sark in the 1980’s

The Cutty sark in the 1980’s

The Cutty Sark had been open as a tourist attraction by the Queen in 1957 and until the fire that nearly destroyed her in 2007 more than 13 million visitors had walked her decks and peered into her vast holds. A year before the fire started, the Cutty Sark had been closed to the public for much needed repairs and conservation work. One of the biggest challenges faced by the conservers was the need to introduce a new support system for the ships’ hull. When the Cutty Sark had been dry docked all those years ago, she was done in the conventional manner, with her keel resting on blocks at the bottom of the dock with large baulks of timber props holding her upright. Over the years this put an immense strain on her hull and was starting to distort it quite badly. The other big problem besides the constant leaks in the deck, was the preservation of the vessels composite construction. The Cutty Sark is not a wooden vessel but a ship made up of many thin wrought iron frames on to which are bolted wooden planks. This had the advantage of making an extremely strong hull with much more room in the holds because it did not need the massive beams a wooden hull needed.

The Cutty Sark today, fully restored

The Cutty Sark today, fully restored

To get around the distortion of the hull, the conservers came up with the elegant idea of raising the hull three metres in the air and supporting it with steel props. It is a fascinating piece of engineering which allows the visitor to walk right under the hull. At just above dock level the gaps have been glassed in, so that the ship looks as if it is floating. It is a very clever and practical idea.

Even the area has had a makeover.

Even the area has had a makeover.

Nowadays we have all heard of the ‘War on Drugs’ but in the 18th Century England was engaged in the Opium trade in a very big way and the British Government, through the East India Company, trafficked huge amounts of opium into China. The Chinese had banned opium in 1799 but like today they found that it was impossible to halt the illegal trade so they seized and destroyed shipments in Canton. The British were outraged, seeing the Chinese actions as a restriction on free trade and declared war in 1839. The Chinese were no match for the Royal Navy and in the end were forced to cede Britain a number of ports including Hong Kong. So what was all this about? Well tea, the humble cuppa. Tea was fashionable, expensive and produced exclusively in China until the mid 19th century. Tea had been introduced into England by the wife of Charles 11, Catherine of Braganzer and

The elegant structure that supports the ship.

The elegant structure that supports the ship.

despite being heavily taxed was enjoyed by all social classes, mainly due to the fact that it was smuggled in vast quantities into Britain, so much so that at one time, more illegal tea was smuggled into the country through the Netherlands than through the legal importers of the East India Company. The reason for the opium trafficking was the fact that the East India Company had to pay for the tea in silver, as the West had little in the way of trade goods that China wanted. To redress this so called trade imbalance, the East India Company grew opium in India and sold it to smugglers to run into China. The smugglers naturally had to pay for the opium in silver.

Catherine of Braganzer.

Determined to support the Company the British Government slashed the tax on tea from one hundred and twelve percent to twelve and a half percent. As tea became cheaper sales boomed and were further increased by the Temperance Movement, who in the 1840’s, promoted tea as an alternative to alcohol. A second Opium War broke out between 1856 and 1860 which resulted in more ports being opened up to Europeans including the important tea port of Hankow which was hundreds of miles up the Yangtze River. All this did not profit the East India Company much as the British Government was later forced by the Free Trade Movement to end the Company’s monopoly with China. This left the tea trade wide open and with demand for tea sky rocketing ever upwards there were fortunes to be made. Clipper ships like the Cutty Sark were built with the express purpose of shipping tea from China to London in the fastest possible time. Speed was vital and as the first home got the highest prices the ships became increasingly competitive and so the great tea races began. To give you an idea of how competitive these skippers were, there was a race in 1866 where five ships starting within hours of each other sailed 15000 miles from China to England over a period of ninety nine days, and when the first ship, called Ariel, arrived off the Kent coast,, she was only ten minutes ahead of her rival the Taeping.

memorial items

A great collection of figureheads.

It was into this fiercely competitive trade that the Cutty Sark was launched in November 1846.She was owned by John Willis, who at nineteen, had brought home his first tea cargo and now owned a fleet of clipper ships. The Cutty Sark was 64.74 metres in length with a beam of 10.97 metres and a displacement of 2100 tons. She was able to carry 1700 tons of cargo and her 32000 square feet of canvas was tended by a crew of between 28 and 35. At the time that Willis placed the order for the ship, American clippers were the fastest ships and although the British ships were some of the finest in the world they had yet to win a single tea race. In 1868 the Aberdeen clipper Thermopylae had set a new record of 61 days for a voyage between London and Melbourne in Australia, and Willis was determined that his new ship would do better. Not only was there a great deal of money to be made by having the fastest ship, there was also a huge prestige for the owner. The Tea Races were reported in the National Press and huge amounts of money were wagered with the event being treated like a National sporting event, much like the Grand National today.

John Willis.

The firm of Scott and Linton were contracted to design and build the boat within six months with strict penalties applied for non compliance. The design was a judicious mix of some of the most successful clipper designs and a light composite hull. This was all quite experimental for its time, and as it was being built to Lloyyds A1 Standard ,problems soon arose with Lloyyds wanting the hull to be strengthened. Half way through the build Scott and Linton ran out of money and the job was completed by William Denny and Brothers. When finished, the Cutty Sark maximum logged speed was seventeen and a half knots, so she was not faster that the Thermopylae on paper , but in heavy weather with strong winds she had the edge. So John Willis had been successful in making one of the fastest clipper ships in the world. However his dream of winning the tea race was not to be.

The Thermopylae

The most famous race against Thermopylae occurred in 1872, the two ships leaving Shanghai together on 18 June. Two weeks later Cutty Sark had built up a lead of some 400 miles, but then lost her rudder in a heavy gale after passing through the Sunda Strait. John Willis’ brother was on board the ship and ordered Moodie to put in to Cape Town for repairs. Moodie refused, and instead the ship’s carpenter Henry Henderson constructed a new rudder from spare timbers and iron. This took six days, working in gales and heavy seas which meant the men were tossed about as they worked and the brazier used to heat the metal for working was spilled out, burning the captain’s son. The ship finally arrived in London on 18 October a week after Thermopylae, a total passage of 122 days. The captain and crew were commended for their performance and Henderson received a £50 bonus for his work. This was the closest Cutty Sark ever came to being first ship home. She was not to make many more Tea races, because by now the Suez Canal had been open for a few years and gradually steamships were taking over the trade and prices were dropping. However there was another cargo that clipper ships could still carry competitively and that was wool from Australia.

The vast hold

Ships wheel and binacle.

It was on this route that the Cutty Sark showed what a wonderful ship she was. On one return trip from Britain to Australia she took 77 days, but on the return only 73 days. No ship was faster, not even her old rival Thermopylae, and for ten years the Cutty Sark was the fasted ship on the Wool trade. In one famous incident in 1889 that caught the publics’ imagination, the passenger steam ship R.M.S. Britannia recorded in her log that when she was steaming at 15 to 16 knots she was overtaken by a sailing ship. That ship was the Cutty Sark.

Rotting as the Ferreira.

As a cadet ship.

But the era of the clipper ships was coming to an end, and by 1895 only ten remained. The rest had been wrecked, foundered or been condemned. They were to be replaced by huge four masted steel barques with much larger carrying capacities. They would continue in the grain trade well into the 20th century, but for the Clipper ships the bell was tolling. In 1895 the Cutty Sark was sold to a Portugese company and renamed the Ferreira. She carried cargoes all over the world becoming more and more dilapidated as the years passed. In 1922 she put into Falmouth for a short time looking nothing like the famous Cutty Sark. Even so she was recognised by a retired sea captain Wilfrid Dowman, who as a sixteen year old apprentice, had seen her when he was in the sailing ship Hawkdale. Sickened at her sorry state he was determined to save her for the Nation and pursued her back to Portugal where he bought her. Luckily his wife Catherine was a member of the wealthy Courtauld family so there was plenty of money to enable his dream to come true.

Cutty Sark in Falmouth, with Fondrouant in background.

Once back in Cornwall and spruced up, the Cutty Sark became a cadet training ship and during the summer she was also opened up as an attraction, with visitors arriving by rowing boat. Thus she became the first historic ship to open to the public (H.M.S. Victory followed shortly afterwards) since Francis Drakes Golden Hind in Deptford in the 1580’s. When Wilfred Dowman died in 1936 the ship was incorporated into the Thames Nautical College at Greenhithe on the River Thames. However after the Second World War the college obtained a much more modern ship ,H.M.S.=- Exmouth, to carry out her training in, and so the Cutty Sark was seen as outdated and unwanted. The future looked bleak, but at the last minute Frank Carr, the director of the National Maritime Museum, stepped in and persuaded the London County Council, to make a site in bomb damaged Greenwich available for the Cutty Sark. In 1951 the Festival of Britain was in full swing, so the Cutty Sark was given a lick of paint and moored off Deptford to test the public reaction to her full time preservation. People loved her and in two years raised over £250000 towards her conservation. In 1954 the Cutty Sark was floated into her permanent dock at Greenwich and the channel leading to the Thames sealed off. She was safe at last.

Save at last.

Besides being the last of the Clipper ships her other and some would say more important justification for being preserved was to be a lasting memorial to the Merchant Navy and all those brave men who lost their lives in Two World Wars. By the way I am sure you know this, but the name Cutty Sark comes from the poem Tam O Shanter by Robert Burns and describes a beautiful witch cavorting in a ‘cutty sark’ a sort of short shift. If you drink up the whiskey, it all makes perfect sense.

One of the better souveniers to be bought.

Opening times, transport links and maps can all be found at the website below.

The Cutty Sark

Tucked away in the middle of the Teign valley near Doddiscomeleigh is a collection of large sheds that house one of the best collections of marine Antiques and associated artefacts in the country. You can buy anything from a torpedo to a figurehead, and the list is so large that I am not going to try and catalogue it, and anyway it constantly changes as new stock comes in. If you want a hard hat divers helmet, silver and crockery from say the Liner Winsor Castle, or just a ships bell or a brass porthole, this is the pace to go.

Torpedoes

Harpoon

Telegraph

Bells

Outside in the yard merchandise for sale or refurbishment is stacked up in cages including torpedo’s, ships lanterns, gun mountings, small yellow submersibles and just about anything else that you can think off. They also have two showrooms where you can view an amazing collection of binnacles, ships plaques, furniture ships telegraphs, telescopes, sextants, ships wheels and searchlights. The list just goes on and on and around every corner is a new treasure

Showroom

Showroom

Showroom

Showroom

The Company was founded about fifty years ago as general dealers, and then morphed into Marine memorabilia due to the passion and enthusiasm of the family that runs it. The man you are most likely to meet is the ever helpful Mark Jameson, who‘s knowledge is quite encyclopaedic.

Mark Jameson

My old helmets.

So where do they get all this stuff? Some comes from auctions all over the world and some comes from the shipbreaking yards at Alang in India, where Trinity Marine have an outpost.

The shipyards at Alang recycle approximately half of all ships salvaged around the world. The yards are located on the Gulf of Khambat, 50 kilometres southeast of Bhavnagar. Environmentalists note that before shipbreaking began there in June 1983 the beach at Alang was pristine and unspoiled. However, locals say that the work provides a reasonably paid job by local standards, with a steady income to support their families.

Large super tankers, car ferries, container ships, and a dwindling number of ocean liners are beached during high tide, and as the tide recedes, hundreds of manual labourers dismantle each ship, salvaging what they can and reducing the rest into scrap. Tens of thousands of jobs are supported by this activity and millions of tons of steel are recovered. There are loads of video’s on Y-tube, so I have put up three to give you an idea of what goes on.

This piece of furniture, pictured below, gives you an idea of the history that is involved with some of these pieces. This sideboard was once the property of Admiral Sir ‘Jackie’ Fisher on board H.M.S. Renown. Renown was taking King George and Queen Mary, then the Prince and Princess of Wales to India. It can be yours for a little over £2000. Not bad for a bit of history.Contact their website for the latest items.

Trinity Marine

Jacky Fisher’s Sideboard

Sutton Hoo A few years ago I was visiting the British Museum in London when I found that they were having a touchy feely day. This is when the curators get out some of their great treasures and allow members of the public to hold and touch them. One of the objects that I was allowed to hold was a sword from the Sutton Hoo treasure, a vast Anglo Saxon ship burial hoard that had been found encased in an earth mound in Suffolk overlooking the river Deben and the town of Woodbridge.

The iconic helmet

Upstairs they had the whole treasure including the Iconic helmet that the great Anglo Saxon king wore in battle. To see the helmet, which incidentally, was in pieces when they found it, and to hold the great sword dating from the 7th century was a strange and exciting experience. For them to survive at all, down through the passage of so many years is astonishing enough, but more to the point is the light that these objects shine on a period of our English history that is not truly understood and often drifts between fact and myth. So what is Sutton Hoo, and how did it come to give up its secrets? At the least, Sutton Hoo is a large burial ground. As far back as the 6th century and probably before, noble and eminent people had been buried in barrows or large earthen mounds, often with their possessions and sometimes with their favorite horse. Many of these mounds can still be seen today although much reduced by the passage of time and agricultural activity. One mound, but not the one with the boat, has been restored to its proper height and so gives a good indication of what the whole site must have looked like.

Restored Mound.

Restored Mound.

That the burial was discovered at all was down to the enthusiasm of the landowner, Mrs. Edith Pretty. Inspired by a recent trip to Egypt she came back full of curiosity about what was in the barrows. She thought there might be something historically interesting buried in them but was completely unprepared for what was eventually found, a wonderful funnery treasure, complete with a 27 meter, long ship. It was one of the greatest discoveries ever found in England.

Mrs.Edith Pretty

It is generally agreed that the person occupying the burial long ship was Raedwald, a 7th century King of East Anglia, which today would have included the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. He reigned from 599 till his death in 624 and from about 616 he was the most powerful of the English kings south of the River Humber. Raedwald was the first East Anglian King to convert to Christianity, although he still kept a temple to the Old Gods, and the Venerable Bede mentions him as the fourth ruler to hold Imperium over other southern Anglo Saxon Kingdoms. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, written centuries after his death refer to him as a Bretwalda, an Old English term meaning Britain Ruler or Wide Ruler.

Reconstruction of the burial chamber.

In order to get the dig started Mrs. Pretty asked Guy Maynard the Curator of Ipswich Museum for advice and he referred her to Basil Brown an archeologist familiar with the area. After much discussion it was decided to dig in Mound 3, even though Mrs. Pretty herself favored Mound 1. Because there was so much earth to be moved Mrs. Pretty volunteered the services of her gardener, John Jacobs, and her gamekeeper William Spencer. Even with the three of them the task was enormous. The mound was 25 meters wide and nearly 1.5 meters high. Basil started by digging an exploratory trench from west to east and when he got to the center of the mound he dug down 2 meters and came across the remains of a human skeleton and the bones of a horse together with axes and a jug. That was all they found in the rest of the mound, but Basil was interested enough to have a go at Mound 2. Here he carried out more or less the same methods and again digging down near the center he found a Saxon grave that had been ransacked with all the objects removed. The grave robbers had made a complete mess of the tomb and the incumbent had disappeared. Even so Basil Brown found some silver shield adornments and bits of silver gilt for horn cup decorations, as well as a blue glass jar and a couple of iron blades.

Grave with person and horse.

Undaunted Basil still toiled on and excavated Mound 4. This was the most disappointing one yet. All he found were some cremated bones and some bronze fragments together with some material of good quality which indicated that the tomb had been intended for somebody of high standing. Later studies of the bones showed that they were of a young adult and a horse. By now it was 1939 and war clouds were gathering ominously over England. As the summer approached, Basil Brown realized that with a War imminent Mound 1 needed to be excavated, and the work would have to be done quickly. Mrs. Pretty, for her part had always wanted to see what was in Mound 1 so she was happy to once again sponsor the dig.

Some of the wonderfull jewelry in the hoard.

Some of the wonderfull jewelry in the hoard.

Once again Basil used the same methods that had served him well with the other mounds. Very soon he discovered an iron rivet and thought idly that this might indicate a Saxon ship buried in the mound. Happily he moved methodically towards the center and after only two hours he found himself removing earth from what looked like the bow or stern of a ship. This is the moment that Basil Brown came into his own and frankly saved this great find from being completely ruined. Basil has often been depicted as a plodding amateur, using archeological techniques that nowadays would be treated with contempt by the experts. However he was very methodical and what’s more had great experience of the area and was very conversant with the effects of sandy acid soils on bio-degradable materials such as those to be found at Sutton Hoo. Because of this knowledge he quickly realized that none of the wood had survived the centuries, but what had survived were their imprint and the rivets that had held it all together, they were still in their original places.

Front to back,Charles Philips, Miss. Wagstaff, ‘George’, Basil B

With much painstaking work, gently removing the top layer of soil and following the lines of rivets, the full wonder of the ship became apparent. The timbers had rotted, and the by the process of oxidization had diffused into the sand creating a sort of fossilized cast that virtually showed the complete construction of the ship which appeared to be what we would know today as clinker built with the planks overlapped and riveted. The vessel had 26bulkheads and was over 27 meters long with a beam of 4.5 meters. A later survey suggested that the ship had been propelled by 40 oarsmen, 20 on each side. Because of its shallow draft it was assumed that the boat would have been used to carry goods along rivers and estuary’s rather than longer sea crossings, as fully laden it would have had hardly any freeboard and therefore would have been unseaworthy and difficult to handle in rough seas. There were also signs that repairs had been made to the hull, so this ship was not purpose built as a burial ship, but rather used for that purpose as necessary.

The dig.

As the dig progressed poles were placed on top of the mound over the ship, so that Basil could work from a swing, thus avoiding damaging the ship. As they finished with one part of the ship, Basil and his helpers, recovered it with a layer of sand. As the ship became more and more uncovered, and the excavation approached the center of the mound, Basil came across signs of an earlier excavation. Here the refilled pit had only gone down 3 meters and Basil calculated that it had not reached the ship. For the first time Basil Brown allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that he might find a completely undisturbed burial chamber.

The rusting rivets that started the hunt.

As the year turned to June and Basils methodical approach uncovered more and more of the ship, he must have been thinking endlessly about the burial chamber, and it is to his credit that he didn’t give in to temptation and rush straight for the prize. Unfortunately he was about to be robbed of the opportunity to find what he had strived for. By now word had leaked out about the Sutton Hoo ship and Guy Maynard the Curator from Ipswich decided that the dig should be put on a more academic footing. A team of leading archeologists led by Stuart Piggott were drafted in, and although Basil was retained, he was basically sidelined and left to do the donkey work while the experts got on with the detailed work. When it came to the burial chamber and all the other artifacts that were found, Basil Brown was forbidden to touch or remove any of them. This seems a bit harsh to me. Whilst it is true that Brown did not have the expertise to do the more delicate work and to take the excavation much further it must have hurt him deeply, especially as it was his knowledge and care that had led to the boat being discovered in the first place.

More wonderfull jewelry in the hoard.

More wonderfull jewelry in the hoard.

The burial chamber, situated between bulkheads 10 and 16 would have possibly had some sort of wooden roof over them to form a small cabin. In here would have been laid the King and his treasure. In the event all the wood and bones had rotted and oxidized into the soil so the shape of the chamber was hard to define, but there between bulkheads 10 and 16 was found the personal belongings of a very important person, King Raedwald. As the summer progressed and the outbreak of War came ever closer, all the finds were taken away to be put in storage for safe keeping. The site was recovered and as War became a reality research into Sutton Hoo tailed off. Many of the records and photographs were destroyed in the London Blitz, and because East Anglia was so flat, trenches were dug all over the place to deter German glider attacks. It seems impossible now, but two glider ditches were dug right through the Sutton Hoo site. Even more incredible, is the fact that the burial mounds were used for mortar practice. Well there was a War on, you know.

Plan showing glider trenches and the various burials.

Amazingly after the War, and eight years since the treasure was uncovered, the site had survived well enough for the British Museum to send down a team under Bruce Mitford. He was even more methodical than Basil Brown had been, and wrote many books on the subject, some casting doubt on what the other experts had found. Even today that argument is ongoing. However one thing is very clear to me. Without Basil Brown and the enthusiasm of Mrs. Pretty, nothing would have been done. They discovered the ship. You can’t argue with that.

Basil Brown’s work room.

Basil Brown’s work room.

So who owned all the artifacts, and how did the ship get into the mound? Well the ship appears to have been dragged up the valley from the River Deben. That must have taken many men and a huge amount of effort. The ship was then buried with the King and a large mound raised over it. The artifacts were awarded to Mrs. Pretty as they were not considered to be Treasure Trove (the law can be very complex on this issue) The academics were dumbstruck as they thought they should have them. In the event Mrs. Pretty donated the whole lot to the Nation and gave Sutton Hoo to the National Trust so that you can visit it today.

You can see how far it is to the burial mounds.

What’s there? Well, earth covered burial mounds, and a lot of sheep, set in wonderful picturesque countryside overlooking the River Deben. You can also wander around Mrs. Pretty’s house, and see Basil Brown’s work room. It all sounds a bit tame, but it really is a great day out. The National Trust has done a great job with the interpretation center and has had some wonderful replicas made of the treasure. Mind, you ought to go to see the real thing at the British Museum. Also it is very atmospheric to walk in the footsteps of those far off Kings, along land that hardly seems to have changed down the centuries. To see their burial mounds is quite comforting, as it gives a sense of timeless continuity,that in some way, seems to be so typically British. There is a great progam by the BBC called Chronicle, which did a program on Sutton Hoo in 1989. it is well worth watching. Just click the link below.

Chronicle/Sutton Hoo

How to get to Sutton Hoo

I must confess that I have a personal attachment to H.M.S. Belfast, as in 1964 I was doing my seaman ship training at H.M.S. Bellerophen in Portsmouth, where the Belfast was used as an accommodation ship. I slung my hammock in the rear mess deck and so got my introduction to life aboard ship. H.M.S.Belfast was a heavily armed light cruiser of the Southamton class. Originally she displaced 10,000 tons, but later, in 1942, after a slight mishap with a mine she was ‘bulged’ amidships and so her displacement increased to 11,500 tons.

H.M.S.Belfast at Tower Bridge

Originally she was to have had sixteen, six inch guns, in quadruple turrets, which was the maximum allowed under the terms of the ‘Washington Treaty’. Unfortunately it was found to be impossible to manufacture an effective quadruple gun mounting due to ballistic problems with the ammunition, so they reverted to triple mountings that were already in use on other Southampton cruisers. The extra space was later filled up with anti aircraft guns, and for a short time she had a small seaplane to help with spotting the enemy. Radar later made this obsolete

Belfast with her Walrus

Belfast was built, appropriately at the great Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolf (home to the Titanic), and was launched on 17 march 1938. Ironically this great warship was launched by Anne Chamberlain, the wife of The Prime Minister Neville, famous for his speech about ‘peace in our time’. The following year War broke out and Belfast became part of the 18th Cruiser Squadron operating from the Royal Navy’s great anchorage at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys.

Belfast comes alongside USS. Bataan off Korea, May 1952

The Royal Navy was trying to impose a blockade on Germany to stop it receiving’ war materials’ and constantly patrolled the Northern waters. An early success came when the Belfast intercepted the German liner S.S. Cape Norte, disguised as a neutral ship. She was full of armed forces reservists trying to get back to Germany to rejoin their units. Shortly after this success, came disaster, when Belfast hit a mine off the Firth of Forth. Mercifully casualties were slight but the ship broke her back and was so severely damaged that she seemed destined for the scrap heap. However naval architects were convinced that she could be repaired but it took nearly three years before she was ready to rejoin the Fleet. During her repairs she had been completely refitted with all the latest gear, including radar and a much improved fire control system and by the time she returned to active duty she was the most powerful cruiser in the Fleet.

Forward Gun Turrets.

In 1943 she spent most of her time in the icy waters of the Artic as part of the 10th Cruiser Squadron, protecting convoys taking vital supplies to Russia. At the end of that year, on Christmas Day 1943 the German battleship Scharnhorst accompanied by her escort of five destroyers, swept out into the north Cape to attack the convoys rounding the northern tip of Norway. Unknown to her captain, British Intelligence were deciphering all her signals which enabled the Royal navy to lay a trap for her. Whilst Belfast along with the cruisers Norfolk and Sheffield screened the convoys and thereby kept Scharnhorst in action, Admiral Frazer, in the battleship Duke of York, accompanied by the cruisers Jamaica and four destroyers tried to cut her off from the South.

Artic Conditions

Meanwhile, due to the extreme weather, Scharnhorst had sent her destroyers back to base and came across the British cruisers. Norfolk struck first with a direct hit from one of her eight inch shells causing Scharnhorst to retreat with Belfast and Sheffield in hot pursuit driving the enemy battleship towards Admiral Frazer’s Duke of York with her mighty fourteen inch guns. As soon as radar contact was established the Duke of York opened fire and hit the Scharnhorst with her first salvo. Severely damaged the Scharnhorst tried to flee but could not shake off the British vessels. Now hit by three torpedoes, the Scharnhorst was dead in the water and as the smoke cleared away Belfast and Jamaica were ordered to finish her. As the Belfast fired the Scharnhorst blew up and quickly sank into the icy waters. Of her crew of 1,963 men only 36 were saved.

Photo courtesy Bob Hanley

In March 1944, Belfast in company with a powerful force of Battleships and Carriers took part in ‘Operation Tungsten’. Their objective was the destruction of the Tirpitz, Germany’s last surviving battleship, which was holed up in Altenfjord in Northern Norway. Approaching to within 120 miles of the coast they launched a huge airstrike hitting the Tirpitz with 15 bombs. The battleship survived but was so badly damaged that it could not put to sea for many months. She was finally destroyed by heavy bombers from 617 Squadron R.A.F. in November 1944. On June 6th 1944 the D-Day landings started, with Belfast in the thick of the action as part of a Naval bombardment in support of the Canadians on Gold and Juno beaches. Over the course of the next five weeks Belfast fired thousands of rounds, and by July 1945 the Allies had moved well in land, out of the range of the Belfast.

My introduction to life aboard ship-broadside messing.

By the time she got there the Atomic Bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and flattened Japan into unconditional surrender. Belfast contented herself with peacekeeping operation and by helping to evacuate the survivors from the prisoner of war camps. By the end of 1947 Belfast returned to England for another refit and when that was finished she went back to the far east as the Flag Ship of the 5th Cruiser Squadron. China was now in great turmoil with the forces of Mao Zedong (he of the little Red Book) in ascendance over the nationalist government. Around this time the Yangtze Incident took place with H.M.S. Amethyst being disabled and blockaded by the Chinese Communists with heavy loss of life. She eventually escaped to win through back to a hero’s welcome in England, but not before she and H.M.S. Belfast had done another job.

Inside the gun turret.

By the start of 1950 the ancient kingdom of Korea was split between a hard line Communist regime in the North and a more moderate government supported by the United States of America in the South. The stage was set for another world war but some sort of reason prevailed, even though there was fierce fighting when China invaded, forcing the UN troops to retreat and by the Summer of 1951 both sides had settled down to a war of attrition along the line of the 38th Parallel. After two years of negotiations a Cease fire brought the fighting to an end in July 1953. Even so no formal peace treaty has ever been signed. H.M.S. Belfast was one of the first British ships to go into action bombarding in support of the retreating South Korean and American troops. On the night of 15 July 1952 Belfast teamed up with Amethyst to help capture the strategically important island of Changni-Do. After spending 404 days on active patrol during the Korean War, Belfast sailed for home, where she had another refit and extensive modernisation. Although the day of the big gun was passing, the Navy still needed ‘big’ ships, to show the flag around the world. However as the old Empire disappeared, the need for a large peacetime Navy dwindled. After a last exercise in the Mediterranean in 1963 Belfast was paid off into the Reserve and classified as a harbour accommodation ship.

Anti aircraft guns.

Thankfully Belfast was to be spared the indignity of the breakers yard, because as early as 1967 the Imperial War Museum had investigated the possibility of preserving the ship. As ever the Government of the day refused to help, so the Museum encouraged an independent trust, led by one of the ship’s ex captains, Rear Admiral Sir Morgan-Giles. Eventually she was brought in triumph to London and opened to visitors on Trafalgar day 21 October 1971. So what’s it like to visit? Well much to my surprise I loved it. I often find that this sort of exhibit is deadly dull, it’s as if all the life has been sucked out of it, but the Belfast is a revelation in how to do it. The ship itself has been beautifully preserved often with ex crew members helping out and the love shows. For me it was like stepping back in time and all my memories came flooding back.

Welcome to Belfast.

We spent over two hours there and still didn’t see it all because my wife bulked at climbing down into the engine room, which I must admit looked quite a long way down, so I saved it for another day. In the various parts of the ship, like the galley and hospital, they have very realistic dummies illustrating what’s going on, and quite often you see visitors asking them a question before realising their mistake. In various compartments they have more on the history of the ship with video and photos. Up on deck you can go into the turrets and look at all the gun machinery. There is plenty to see and it’s all been done wonderfully. The Belfast is moored near Tower bridge next to a galleria with lots of restaurants, pubs and coffee shops. You can also take a walk along the Thames on the new (to me) riverside walkways. It’s a great day out, and you will want to go back, because they have caught the essence of this great ship, she is still alive, and that is a great achievement.

Five thousand years ago when we were all running around trying to invent the mud hut, Egypt was the dominant World power and one of the earliest cultured civilizations of the ancient world. Amongst their many achievements were the earliest agricultural practices and by solar observation the invention of a 365 day year divided into months and weeks. Besides using a great variety of tools, for instance they used huge bronze saws with jewelled cutting points to cut the huge stones used for the Pyramids, the Egyptians also knew how to melt and form copper, mine gold and craft exquisite jewellery. However to most of us they are most famous for their fantastic funereal and burial rites. Nearly everyone has heard of the boy king Tutankhamun and the marvellous treasure placed in his tomb. But this pales into insignificance against one of the true wonders of the world, the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza.

The Great Pyramid with the Sola Boat museum in front.

Built around 2589 BC as the tomb of Pharoah Cheops, it was constructed to survive all humanity, to defy time itself. Although it’s a bit rough around the edges (originally the pyramid would have been sheathed in marble) its sheer monumental scale completely transcends its tacky surroundings at the edge of Cairo and truly awes the insignificant spectator.

This is the only known image of Cheops.

Not a lot is known about Cheops (he was also known as Kaufu) as his tomb was robbed long before archaeologist ever heard about him. He was the second Pharoah of the fourth dynasty and ruled from about 2589 BC to 2566 BC. He must have been extremely rich and powerful to organize such an undertaking as the pyramid, and contrary to popular belief most Egyptologists now think that much of the work was done by free craftsmen not slaves, as the level of workmanship is too great to have just been done by brutalizes slaves.

Chepren’s Pyramid and The Spinx.

Cheops had nine sons, and was succeeded by his eldest Djedefre who only reigned briefly, and in his turn was succeeded by Chephren who built another Pyramid next to his father’s and then created the largest and most famous sculpture of all time, the Great Spinx which has Chephen’s head on the body of a recumbent lion.

Kamal el Mallakn.

It was customary to bury funerary boats near the burial tomb so that the Pharoah in his afterlife could sail in his domain along the Nile, or in his incarnation as the Sun God, travel on his daily journey across the sky. Several empty ones were found scattered about but it was not until 1954, forty six centuries after Cheops built his Pyramid, that a complete boat was uncovered. The discovery was made by archaeologist Kamal el Mallakh and Inspector Zaki Nur. They found an air and watertight rectangular pit 31m long and 6m deep on the southern side of the Great Pyramid covered by 41 limestone blocks each weighing 16 tons.

The Boat pit

Inside the bit was a dismantled cedar wood boat, which when finally assembled was 13m longer than the pit it was found in. The boat was stored in 13 layers of planks and comprised 1224 separate pieces of wood, the longest being 21m and the shortest 10cm. The original builders had marked the main parts of the boat in hieratic script (bow, stern, bridge, etc) but even so all the pieces had to be laboriously recorded and still it took 14 years to reassemble the boat.

Front view of The Solar Boat. Photo Joyce Mitchell.

It was worth the wait because what they got was a 43.5m long boat, flat bottomed, with a massive flared hull. The planks were ‘sewn’ together with a system of ropes looped through holes that met on the inside and on the deck was a small forward cabin with the royal cabin amidships. Propulsion was by ten oars and the boat was steered by means of two large oar rudders. The soaring bow and stern posts were in the form of papyrus bud finial which gave the whole boat its regal air. It also looks curiously familiar to anyone who followed Thor Heyerdahls’ epic adventure in Ra, as this cedar wood boat is a wooden copy of a papyrus reed boat dating back to the pre-dynastic period.

Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra.

Conserving the boat caused huge problems, but the museum to display it caused even more. It’s a huge glass and concrete structure slap bang in front of the great Pyramid and right from the start nobody liked it, and it failed to do its job properly. The huge double glazing kept the direct sunshine out, but the special sun screen created a hot house effect which raised the temperature to nearly 40c.

View underneath the boat. Photo Joyce Mitchell.

It was dangerous for the boat, the heat caused it to expand and contract,and the tourists hated the heat and humidity. Fans were installed but did little except move around the turbid air. Air conditioning was installed but was either to hot or cold and the way the visitors were controlled caused some damage to the boat. The wrangling in committee went on for years and although things are much improved (I saw it 2009) experts are still not happy and so a digital map of the boat is being made to try and keep tabs on its deterioration.

Side view showing cabin and oars. Photo Joyce Mitchell.

Inside you certainly get a good view of the boat from all angles as the galleries are built on different levels. There is plenty to see on the discovery and how the boat was put together and conserved, they also have the pit where the boat was found. The boat is orientated as it was found with its bow pointing to the west to follow the sun god Ra on his daytime journey westward across the skies, and during his night time journey beneath the earth. Analysis of the water content of the wood suggests that the boat might well have been used to transport Cheop’s body on his funeral procession down the Nile from Memphis to Giza ( in those days the course of the Nile was much closer to the Pyramids)

The bow showing a smaller cabin, possibly for the Capt. Photo Joyce Mitchell.

Whist you can’t really call this marine archaeology, I have included this boat because it is the oldest boat ever found, some 4500 years old. Its story, plus its proximity to the last great wonder of the ancient world, The Great Pyramids makes it a fascinating artefact to see, and brings all those Wilbur Smith novels to dramatic life.

The stern is like a papyrus stalk. Photo Joyce Mitchell.

One of the most controversial persons of all time was the man they call Jesus of Nazareth, better known to his millions of followers around the world as Jesus Christ. For over two thousand years the religion that he founded has given hope and peace to many, but has also been the cause of countless wars with men, often on opposing sides, gladly laying down their lives in His name. On the plus side, churches and art of aching beauty have been created over the centuries in His honour, and His creed of peace, forgiveness, and love have become the cornerstone of most civilized nations. Believe in Him or not, what I have always found fascinating is that behind all the miracles and myths, Jesus of Nazareth was a real person. You can actually track him in the historical record. He did exist. The Romans thought He was a revolutionary, and they did put Him to death.

The Sea of Galilee from the Mount of Beatitudes

Some of Jesus’ most famous sermons and miracles were carried out around the Sea of Galilee, and often he would use a small fishing boat as a platform to address the multitudes on the shore and to traverse parts of the lake. None of these types of boat had ever been found until 1986, when two brothers, Moshe and Yuval Lufan from the Kibbutz Ginosar went for a stroll along the shore of the Lake. Due to an exceptional drought, areas of the Lake that were usually underwater were now exposed, and it was then that the brothers saw the unmistakeable outline of a small boat. They immediately rushed back to inform the head of the Kibbutz who after taking a detailed look decided to inform the Israel Dept of Antiquities.

Moshe and Yuval.

An initial examination discovered that the boat had mortise and tenon joints, a method of construction used in the Mediterranean as early as the Second Millennium BCE, to the end of the Roman period. In order to disturb the boat as little as possible, a probe excavation was carried out which revealed that because the boat had been submerged in mud for so long, its wood was preserved in pretty good condition. Another exciting discovery were two cooking pots near the prow that could be tentatively dated to the mid first century CE. However it was impossible to say if they were off the boat or had just washed up nearby and therefore had no connection.

Cooking pot and nails found near the boat.

The boat seemed to be 8.2 metres long and 2.3 metres wide, and although preserved in good condition, the wood was completely waterlogged and spongy and could not possibly support its own weight if the Dept wanted to lift it. Lifting the boat was becoming a priority as the drought had lifted and the water level was now starting to rise threatening to renumbered the boat. The answer was to build a dyke around the boat to keep the water out, excavate around the clock, and come up with a way of lifting the boat without destroying it. As the boat emerged from the mud it had to be sprayed continuously with water and protected from direct sun in order to stop the wood from drying right out and crumbling. The aim was to excavate and lift the boat as quickly as possible and then plunge it straight back into water under controlled conditions.

Getting ready to lift the boat.

The trouble was nobody had figured out how to lift the boat. One way was just to completely dismantle the boat and then rebuild it. Nobody liked that idea, so in the end a rather ad hoc scheme of off fibre glass ribs inserted between the original frames was adopted, and then the boat was filled with polyurethane foam. Tunnels were dug underneath the boat and more fibre glass ribs were inserted which were joined to the other ribs and a cage of the same material was constructed along the upper edge of off the boat. The tunnels were then filled with more foam, which when it hardened, served as the external supports for the boat. The remaining mud was dug out and then the whole craft was sprayed again with polyurethane foam. It had all taken eleven days.

Just a blob of foam.

The dyke was broken and the boat took its first journey for two thousand years, floating on the sea of Galilee and being towed the three hundred metres to the Kibbutz Ginosar ready for its conservation. Although it had taken only eleven days to excavate the vessel, it was to be fourteen long years of treatment before the boat was ready to be displayed. The initial study of the Galilee boat reinforced the first assessment that they had got something special, and whilst elements of its construction were the same as other Mediterranean boats of the classical period, some were unique to boats from this inland lake. Most of the planks that make up the boat were of cedar and about 3cm thick. The keel and planking had been edge joined in the classical manner using mortise and tenon joints, locked in place with tapered hardwood pegs. The transverse support frames were made from naturally curved oak branches (much like our wooden warships, albeit on a smaller scale) and the planking was fastened to them with iron nails.

This is what the complete boat would have looked like.

The boats design, a deep rounded stern and a fine bow seem different to anything else recorded archeologically, although there are plenty of artistic representations of boats that look exactly like this one. While all of this was fascinating, what really sparked the most interest was the fact that whilst this boat had been initially made by skilled shipwrights, over its long life maybe as long as two or three generations, it had been repaired many times with all sorts of wood (twelve different types) with different degrees of skill, and often the planks had been refastened with just ordinary domestic nails. In the end the boat became worthless and was abandoned where it was discovered, after its stem, stern and most of any superstructure had been removed for use elsewhere.

Drying out the boat.

The conservation process which was to take fourteen years, was complicated by the different types of wood and their water content. It was decided to use polyethylene glycol, a sort of synthetic wax which is available in a variety of molecule sizes. A two stage process using relatively small molecules,PEG6000, which would penetrate the wood cells and largely replace the water bonds with the cell walls would be started first, and when this stage was thought to be complete, the use of larger molecules, PEG0400, would then penetrate the wood cells, coating its surfaces and even filling them.

Front view of the boat in its cradle.

In order to do all this the boat was placed in a tiled reinforced concrete pool, the protective coat of polyurethane was carefully stripped away and the pool was filled with water at a temperature of 60f. The PEG was gradually (it required nearly forty tons of the stuff) introduced and the hole thing left to soak. Because of the iron nails and other bits and pieces an inhibitor had to be used to stop the P.E.G corroding them, and during the second stage an anti- oxidant was used to protect the molecular chains. Unfortunately this prompted a Bacterial attack which clouded the water and started to ferment it. The stink was appalling but after extensive research a pesticide was found that did the job and sterilized the pool. After years of soaking with the pool so dark that you couldn’t see the boat, the moment of truth finally arrived. The pool was drained and there at the bottom was the still intact boat.

Side view of the boat.

It took a full year for the boat to completely dry out and the fact that it did with no cracks or distortion is a tribute to the skill and care of all concerned. In order to display the boat, the fibreglass ribs which were holding her in shape, were replaced with a stainless steel cradle which is not in the least intrusive. The boat is now the centre piece of the Man in Galilee exibition at the Yigal Allon Center where a new wing has been specially built to house it.

The outside of the hall is a bit brutal, but its great inside.

Although this cannot compete, with the Vasa or even the Viking Longship, this boat is worth seeing and worth preserving. Wheather you are a religious person or not, the fact that this boat was around when Christ walked the earth makes it special. Nobody who goes to the Sea of Galilee can fail to be moved by its beauty and its historical associations, and this boat gives you a tangible link with those far, far of days.

The Mary Rose is probably the most famous shipwreck to be discovered in British waters. Named for Henry VIII sister Mary in 1510, the Mary Rose was the Kings flagship and served in the fleet for thirty five years before she sunk off Southsea in 1545. The tale of her discovery in the 1970’s, subsequent lifting and preservation in a museum has all the elements of an Agatha Christie novel, with the Mary Rose cast as the victim. Treachery, betrayal, ridicule, vaunting ambition, and of course the English disease, complete cock up. (well maybe in this case just a partial one).

The ship was named for Mary Tudor.

The hero in all this is the fantastic Alexander McKee, author of loads of popular history books back in the 60’s and 70’s, who’s stubbornness and dogged determination in the face of ridicule and contemptuous dismissal by the so called experts, finally triumphs seventeen years later, only to be elbowed out of the limelight by those same people that scorned him in the first place. You could hardly make it up.

And what of the corpse, the victim in all this melodrama? Well after a botched salvage, the remains now lie rotting in a so called state of preservation behind plastic sheets in a dank shed in Portsmouth, and is a disgrace to the memory of this hugely important Tudor ship.

Alexander McKee

Only the artefacts and cannon lovingly displayed in a museum nearby make you realise how fantastic this whole project could have been. A Tudor time capsule is what McKee called it, and even with all its faults, there is still that resonance about it. This was supposed to be Britain’s answer to the Vasa. It does not even come close.

1. John Deane
2. How I found the Mary Rose
3. The Hunt for the Mary Rose

Apart from my own recollections, most of the facts are taken from these two great books.

In 1782 the Royal George capsized at Spithead and sank with the loss of nine hundred men women and children. All salvage attempts on the ship failed so she was left to rot. Now fifty years on the wreck had become full of silt and mud and was proving to be a bit of an obstruction. Working on her at the time were the Deane brothers, Charles the eldest, and John. Since 1832 they had managed to recover three bronze 18 pounder’s, nineteen bronze 24 pounder’s, and eight 32 pounder’s. The Admiralty was only paying them half of what the guns were worth but the Deane’s were after the contract to blow the wreck up, so suffered the low fees with good grace.

Working on the Royal George.

The Deane brothers were by now extremely well known as they had invented the first really practical diving apparatus which almost any one could use. John had had the idea when he was passing a farm with a barn full of horses on fire. The farmer had a pump and a small hose which hardly let out any water, and the smoke was such that no one could get into the barn. Rushing into the farm house to find some buckets, he came across an old suit of armour. Suddenly inspired, he grabbed the helmet and rushed out to the fire, pushed the farmer out of the way and shoved the hose into the helmet. As the hose could pump air as well as water John was able to breathe fresh air and enter the barn and save all the horses. John was all of eighteen at the time. The two brothers secured a patent on ‘an apparatus to be worn by persons entering rooms filled with smoke’ and thought that their fortunes would be made.

John Deane at the bow of the Royal George.

The apparatus consisted of a lightweight copper helmet with a short breastplate riveted to a leather jacket. The helmet had three glass windows and a vent to allow speech. Two hoses were fixed to the helmet at the back, one supplying air which was pumped in by bellows and the other hose ran down the body to the ankles to take away the exhaled air. When the Deane brothers took their invention to the Fire Insurance Companies and the Admiralty they were shown the door. Nobody was interested. This was a serious setback, but John suddenly had a brainwave. If the helmet could be used in smoke filled rooms then it should be capable of being used underwater. At the time most salvage work was done with diving bells and they were extremely cumbersome. However diving bells were all the rage because of the exploits of the young Isambard Kingdom Brunel who had made a series of dives to the bottom of the Thames to try and find out why the tunnel his father was building at Rotherhide kept flooding.

I.G.Brunel

But imagine if the diver was free to just go just where he wanted and in relative comfort.It would be so much more efficient and people would queue to buy the helmets. The Deane brothers set too and modified their smoke hood but the results were not promising, so they redesigned the whole thing, and by 1828 had it more or less perfected. The helmet was now much heavier with narrower windows and the corselet was married to a short sleeveless jacket. The helmet now had only one hose supplied by a pump instead of bellows and the exhaled air bubbled out around the bottom of the jacket. Essentially it was a personal diving bell. Because of the need to keep warm and dry, Deane designed a waterproof one piece suit that the diver clambered into through the neck, the excess material being tied off. As long as the helmet was full of air no water could seep in through the neck. Bandages around the wrists stopped water getting in there, and lead weights slung around the chest stopped the diver popping up to the surface. When all this was finished, John and Charles became in effect the first professional hard hat divers and were soon extremely busy salvaging all sorts of ships and their cargo’s.

Deane’s Patent.

Soon their diving helmet was attracting a lot of interest and Deane teamed up with Augustus Siebe a Prussian engineer who had set up in London as a precision machinist. He made the helmets and John wrote out the instructions for their use. ‘A person equipped in this apparatus being enabled to descend to considerable depths, from 20 fathoms(120ft) to probably 30 fathoms(180ft) and to remain down several hours having the perfect use of his arms and legs and is freely able to traverse the bottom of the sea to seek out the hidden treasures of the deep.’

Over the next few years the Deans were kept very busy, and it was whilst salvaging cannon from the Royal George that they made another discovery, the wreck of the Mary Rose. Whilst they had been working down below a fishing smack had got her lines entangled on an obstruction quite near the Royal George. Deane went down to have a look and there he found another wreck with a large bronze cannon. When this was lifted it had this inscription on it that showed it was a bronze demi cannon cast by an Italian foundry in 1542 for King Henry VIII. The Deanes brought up many more cannon with Tudor Roses on them and lots of artefacts, but it cut no ice with the Admiralty.

The Inscription on the Gun

Whilst they had been busy lifting cannon others had been stealing a march on them. The job of blasting the Royal George went not to the Deane’s, but to Charles Pasley a Colonel in the Royal Engineers. One of the reasons that he got the job was because he had a much better diving suit that the Deane’s. John Deane’s suit suffered from a major drawback, in that when the diver bent down he was in danger of getting the helmet flooded. Augustus Siebe had been experimenting with a new design and by 1837 he had perfected the first closed diving suit. He made his helmet in two parts the main part of the helmet separate from the corselet. The suit was clamped to the corselet by bolts thus making a water tight seal and one the diver was inside the helmet was screwed on. Fresh air was pumped from the surface and the exiled air vented through a valve. It was far superior to the Deane brother’s suit.

Deane in the new Open Dress

While Charles Deane furiously argued his case to the Admiralty, Pasley was getting ready to blow up the Royal George with two tons of explosives. As the wreck was scattered to pieces on the sea bed a plume of water shot high into the air taking with it any hopes John had of the Admiralty ever adopting his suit. Augustus Siebe got the contract and his diving suit was adopted as the standard equipment for Naval divers and remained so in almost identical form for the next 150 years.

Deane’s watercolour of some of the cannons he found on the Mary Rose.

So Siebe won the contracts and the glory, John became Britain’s most eminent underwater engineer, and Charles Deane went mad, the result, so the Morning Chronicle said, of over taxing his brain with study. Over the years Deane became forgotten, and this was a great shame. Besides salvaging all these wrecks John Deane realized even then, that all this stuff had some historical importance and started to write a book describing his adventures and illustrated it with beautiful watercolours and drawings. Alas the book was never published, the manuscript was lost, and the water colours dispersed amongst his family. However some still remain, and can be seen in Portsmouth Museum.

Yes, that’s right, I found the Mary Rose. Well that is to say me and Able Seaman Swinfield did, and actually we didn’t know we had discovered the most famous shipwreck in Britain until months later. Even so, there I was at the start of the greatest marine archaeology project of the 20th Century. So how did I get involved I hear you ask. Well it all started in 1968 with a direct order from our diving officer Lt. Commander Bax (of Bovisand fame) I was then a Royal Marine ships diver on H.M.S.Rhyl then stationed at Portsmouth on Channel Guard duties. Bax had invited this bloke Alexander McKee on board to talk to us about the Mary Rose, and unknown to us had volunteered us to do some diving for him the following weekends.

The Dive Team.

Now we had all heard of McKee, and knew about his project. In fact just about everybody on the South Coast did. He had been banging on about discovering the Mary Rose for years and everybody, including us (who had never met him before) were quite happy to write him off as a harmless bore. However to spend a rare free evening listening to him droning on about the Mary Rose was not a very inviting prospect, and we all trooped into the lecture room that evening in low spirits. On came McKee, big hair, big beard, tweed coat, and launched straight in without even a good evening, as if frightened we would scarper if he gave us the slightest chance. It was a revelation. He was supposed to speak for forty minutes but ended up staying most of the evening to answer our questions. He told the story of the Mary Rose as if it had happened yesterday and brought the whole period to life. He was passionate in his belief that he knew where the wreck was (which turned out to be exactly where all those experts told him it could not possibly be) but he didn’t rant about the unfairness of it all, just exuded a determination to find and raise the wreck.

A bit faint, but its there. (somewhere)

Sometimes you hear somebody speaking, and you just know that he understands absolutely what he is talking about. Thats what we all felt that night about McKee, and we all volunteered to help. The next weekend we were out in an open whaler whilst McKee and his mates pored over a sonar chart that Bax had got the Navy to help compile. The weather was dreadful. It rained all the time and there was a sick making swell. The idea was to stick an instrument into some of the mounds that the sonar had found, to see if they contained any wood or were just silt and mud. I carried the fatefull instrument and Winfield stuck it in the mound (under my direction of course) Up top the machine whirred and beeped and bits of paper went round and round. Much later it was found that that mound contained some wooden wreckage.

Able Seaman Swinfield (dive storeman) and actual finder of the wreck. (under my supervision)

Yes its true, I can now reveal that it was I (well alright, we) that found the Mary Rose. I did not know of my triumph for some time as by then H.M.S.Rhyl had crossed the Atlantic and was chasing Cuban rebels all the way down the Bahamas chain. But eventually we were told. Of course our part was down played, even forgotten. Fame was not to come calling. But McKee, who was keen on what we had done had kept in touch with Lt.Commander Bax and had given us a copy of the trace, showing the fateful mound.

Royal Marine Mitchell.(director of operations)

When the Mary Rose was finally raised all those years later, I was watching it live on the telly with my Mum. As it started to break the surface I turned to her and said, ‘I was the first one to find that wreck you know’ ‘Did you son’ she replied absently. ‘What would you like for your tea?’

H.M.S.Rhyl

McKee is long gone now, but that chance encounter gave me a lifelong fascination with shipwrecks and their stories, and made me realise, that whilst the glory is nice while it lasts, the stories go on for ever.

The thing to remember about the sixties is that virtually nothing was known about underwater archaeology at all. Nobody really knew how wooden shipwrecks decomposed, and preserving artefacts was a very hit and miss affair. Most of the underwater archaeology sites were in the Mediterranean and they were mostly run by people who had never dived. Because of all this people stuck to outmoded practises and often made ludicrous statements about underwater shipwrecks in order to protect their positions and reputations.

The Mary Rose

By the time the Mary Rose project came along in 1965 there were a lot of so called experts, but not one who knew anything about the Tudor Navy. Various committees were formed, all convinced that they knew best, and all keeping their distance from each other in case they gave something away. Some included the Navy, and others were made up from local BSAC clubs. All tried to plot the others downfall, and of course none actually knew where the Mary Rose was. Enter Alexander Mckee arguing in essence that when the Royal George was levelled in the 1840’s,the subsequent explosions had not destroyed the Mary Rose. McKee passionately believed that she was largely intact, and that the mud would have by now buried her, and thus preserved her. Howls of derision greeted this announcement.

The Mary Professor Harold Edgerton and one of his ‘Pingers’ in 1968

The opposition contended that the Royal George was nowhere near where McKee said it was, and that the Mary Rose, if she was anywhere, it was not there. McKee grew tired of all the shouting and decided to go back and look at all the old charts. He and the opposing factions ended up in the Hydrogpher’s office and compared charts. McKee had been using a copy of a 1784 chart called the Mackensie Survey and worked out his positions from that. The opposition had another chart, Sheringhams survey of Spit head 1841. This was a huge chart and when it was unrolled, there in the middle, more or less where McKee thought it should be, was a red cross with the words Royal George. Nearby was another cross with the legend Mary Rose. Unbelievably the Navy had completely over looked this obvious clue. X really did mark the spot. It was game set and match to McKee (who to his credit didn’t crow). The Navy and the rest more or less gracefully conceded, and McKee was once more in a position to direct the hunt for the Mary Rose.

At last, a Tudor Gun.

Over the next few years a dedicated team of local divers and helpers with almost no money or resources sifted and dug away in the mud using an airlift, sonar scanned the whole area, and finally in 1970 unearthed a Tudor cannon that was the same as the one in Southsea Castle that was know to be of the same period. This proved beyond any doubt that this was indeed the site of the Mary Rose. Now the work to unearth the Mary Rose from her mud tomb could begin in earnest. Sport divers came from all over England to help, businesses donated funds and gear. The Prince of Wales became a patron and actually dived on the site, and a protection zone around the site allowed a diving barge to be stationed permanently over the wreck. Things were looking up, but there was still a huge amount of work to do.

Conservation

For a start, how much of the Mary Rose was still there? Over the next couple of years it emerged that most of one side of the wreck was still intact. In effect, over half of the wreck was still there, lying in the mud on her starboard side, remarkably well preserved. The mud had also preserved most of the ships equipment and personal remains. More guns were raised, long bows and arrows, stone moulds for casting lead shot, a shoe, a pocket sundial and a lantern were all amongst the early finds. But overshadowing all this was the sheer excitement of unearthing a ship that was last seen in 1545. The team were by now beginning to understand that the Mary Rose was more than just a shipwreck. She was an almost perfectly preserved Tudor time capsule.

Diagram of what was left of the ship.

One of the most frustrating problems, was that McKee and his team still were not sure what they were looking at. The Mary Rose was to some extent the missing link in ships architecture. No sooner had they settled on what they thought was what part of the ship when another discovery would seem to contradict it. All they had to go on was a very old painting and a model of what they thought it should look like. In the murky waters off Spit head it became increasingly difficult to identify each piece and fit it into the jigsaw. But slowly and patiently they did just that. Fighting storms, currents and poor visibility, month by weary month, year by year the team worked solidly on, and slowly and carefully unearthed the Mary Rose and her treasures, showing what life had been like on board all those centuries ago.

A theoretical model of the Mary Rose commissioned by B.P.

But it was not only treasures that they unearthed, but some of the crew as well. Skulls were found in the mud, and the bones of over a hundred and sixty crewmen were disinterred, some still with their leather jerkins. One, an officer, was found lying on his sword near the stern castle with his pockets still containing some gold coins. Finally in 1982, seventeen years after it all started the end was in sight. The ships bell dated 1510 had been found and the big lift to raise the Mary Rose had started to be organized. By this time the project had become ‘the’ thing to be involved in, in the underwater archaeology world, and had gained a life of its own. McKee was elbowed out of the way so that others could make their reputations, and a lot of big talk ended up with very little actually being done in preparation for the housing of the Mary Rose.

Every Diver’s Dream

However before the lift could take place, a few hundred tons of ballast and thousands of firebricks from the oven hearth had to be removed. A cradle to support the wreck, whilst the lift was taking place, had to be manoeuvred into place and a million and one other things had to be organised before the operation was carried out before the watching gaze of millions glued to their television sets. Although an extremely complicated undertaking, the lift went off with only one hitch, a sickening lurch halfway through in which you could hear the sound of wood snapping. How much damage it did was glossed over and the Mary Rose was triumphantly carted off to Portsmouth Dockyard were she had started all those centuries ago.

The Big Lift.

But was she safe and sound? Well the answer is maybe. The artefacts certainly are, beautifully restored in a great museum. But the ship itself was left in a temporary berth with a bit of a botched conservation regime. The money to make a proper show home for her never really materialised, and she now languishes in a rather tatty shed. Conservation of such a fragile artefact as the Mary Rose requires a ton of money and dedicated expertise. One gets the feeling that the ship itself has become less important as the problems mount, and no one seems to have the will to push this project to a final, glorious conclusion like the Swedish did with the Vasa. However, carping aside, this is still a wonderful project, and a must see for any one interested in shipwrecks. One day it will be completed, I just hope I live to see it.

When the vasa was hauled out of the sea she had to be drenched in a solution called polyethylene glycol, P.E.G. This became the standard for later salvage attempts like the mary Rose. How does it work? Well this extremely interesting article published in the New Scientist tells you all you could wish to know.

New Scientist Article

IT WAS one of the great finds of the 20th century. The Vasa, the pride of the Swedish navy, heeled over and sank on its maiden voyage in 1628, drowning about a third of the 150 crew – and the ship’s cat – in the catastrophe. Yet when the warship was discovered over 300 years later it was almost completely intact. Conditions at the bottom of Stockholm’s harbour where it sank were perfect for preserving the ship’s timber. The Vasa was salvaged in 1961 and has been carefully preserved in its own museum. Today this stunning ship – complete with masts, over 700 wooden sculptures and the world’s oldest sail – is Stockholm’s biggest tourist attraction.

But despite years of careful preservation, archaeologists have suddenly discovered that the warship is under attack from an enemy just as destructive as those it was originally designed to face. The very chemicals being used to preserve the ship have helped trigger a reaction in its timbers that is generating sulphuric acid on a vast scale. The ship’s oak planks and beams may already have 2 tonnes of acid in them, and if the reaction continues unchecked, the vessel could eventually begin to crumble away. And this problem isn’t unique to the Vasa. Recent studies show that other wooden ships salvaged from the seabed, including the Mary Rose at Portsmouth and the Batavia in Fremantle, Western Australia, are suffering the same problem. The discovery raises fundamental questions about the conservation of waterlogged wood. How can we hope to save the ships around the world that are threatened by acid attack? Is there a better way of conserving waterlogged wood so it can be exhibited in museums? Or would it be better to excavate a wreck, examine it where it lies and then simply rebury it with silt and sand? These are hugely important questions.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) there are 3 million undiscovered wrecks on the ocean floor. Most of them are wooden ships and all of them contain valuable wooden artefacts. This is an enormous slice of human history, the rotting remains of thousands of swashbuckling yarns. The Queen Anne’s Revenge, for example, thought to be the flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard, was found off North Carolina in 1996. The Spanish Main is littered with similar hulks. About 850 ships have foundered around the Azores alone since 1522. And there are ancient vessels dotted all over the Mediterranean. While many of these wrecks have been smashed by storms or eaten away by shipworm – the creature that rapidly destroys submerged wood – the Vasa was more fortunate. It had settled gently into the sediment at the bottom of the harbour and the Baltic’s brackish waters aren’t salty enough to sustain shipworm. The only real damage was caused by motorised anchors which had clawed away some of the ship’s timbers.

The Vasa was also the first major shipwreck to be treated with what was then a new technique for conserving wood. Wood that has been submerged for centuries is very fragile because the cellulose in the cell walls of the timber is eaten away by bacteria. It is also saturated with water: when the Vasa was raised every kilogram of wood contained 1.5 kilograms of water. However, the structure could have collapsed had it been allowed to dry out, so the water was replaced with polyethylene glycol (PEG), which takes the place of the missing cellulose and helps to strengthen the wood. Small artefacts can be simply soaked in a bath of the stuff. Larger objects need a different approach – a slow drenching that gently removes all traces of water. So the Vasa was sprayed with a solution of PEG for 17 years. The treatment proved so successful that it has now become the standard way of conserving waterlogged wood.

The first signs of a problem appeared in 2000. After a humid summer, museum staff noticed powdery deposits on the surface of some of the ship’s planks. So they called in Magnus Sandström, professor of structural chemistry at Stockholm University. He discovered that an unexpected reaction in the timbers was generating sulphuric acid (see “The acid test”). From samples of the ship’s timber, Sandström estimated that the timbers already contained 2 tonnes of acid. And if the reaction continues unchecked, he adds, it will eventually generate a further 6 tonnes of sulphuric acid, which would eat away at the wood. We don’t know how fast it’s breaking the wood down, says Sandström. “It may take 5, or who knows, 50 years before the damage is too severe for the wood to be treated.” Sandström’s immediate concern is to neutralise the sulphuric acid that has built up in the Vasa and to halt the reaction so that no more is formed. Wood does not naturally contain high levels of sulphur. The problem began on the seabed when bacteria in the sediment ran short of oxygen. “If they do not have oxygen,” says Sandström, “they take it from sulphate ions in seawater.” The bacteria reduced the sulphate ions to hydrogen sulphide, which worked its way into the timber and ended up as sulphur.

In the Vasa’s case this was compounded because the growing city of Stockholm treated the harbour as a sewer. In common with other wooden ships the Vasa contained a lot of iron, from bolts and nails to the metal fittings of muskets and cannon balls. Most of the metal corroded when the ship was on the seabed, leaving iron deposits that turned the ship’s oak planking black. When the vessel was restored, the 5500 one-metre-long bolts that held it together were replaced with new iron bolts. But PEG corrodes iron and the continuous spray treatment helped carry the iron deeper into the timber, where it catalysed a reaction between sulphur and water (from moisture in the air), forming sulphuric acid. “It was an unfortunate combination,” says Sandström. “They didn’t know that at the time.” The result is that some parts of the Vasa are extremely acidic: tests in April this year found pHs between 1 and 3.5 at 850 points around the ship. Sandström has already tried spraying the timber to neutralise the sulphuric acid. However the problem is complicated because the museum does not want to close its main attraction, so any spray treatment cannot pose even the smallest threat to public health.

“Technically it can be done,” says Sandström. “We will do it in sections, one part at a time.” His priority is to find a way of halting the acid attack and preventing the rest of the sulphur in the ship from turning into acid. The museum plans to remove the new iron bolts from the ship, but they will only be able to take out about half of them, because as the ship settled down in its new environment the wood shrank and moved, locking many of the bolts in place. And removing even half the bolts will weaken the 60-metre-long vessel. “We will have to make a cradle for the ship to support it,” says Sandström. The bolts will be replaced, possibly with ones of titanium or carbon fibre. Sandström also hopes to stop the remaining iron compounds in the wood from catalysing the acid reaction by preventing oxygen reaching the sulphur. He is also considering using chelating agents – chemicals that lock up the iron as an inert complex. This should help stop the iron from catalysing the acid reaction.

The bad news for archaeologists is that the same problem almost certainly affects most wooden wrecks salvaged from the sea. Sandström has already discovered that the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship that sank in Portsmouth harbour in 1545, also contains high levels of sulphur. Its hull is still being sprayed with PEG in its Portsmouth museum. Problems down under High levels of sulphur have also been found in the wreck of the Dutch ship Batavia, which sank off the coast of Western Australia in 1629. Part of the wreck is now preserved in the Western Australia Maritime Museum in Fremantle. “The Batavia has a lot of sulphur in it,” says Sandström, who has analysed cores taken from the ship. The Batavia also has very high levels of iron. In all, Sandström has found signs of the problem in almost all the wrecks he has tested – including three still on the seabed. In fact the only one that he has found which is effectively free of sulphur is the Bremen Cog – a 14th century trader that sank in the freshwater of the river Weser.

Ironically, because only part of the Batavia survived, it will be easier to protect from sulphuric acid than the Vasa. The Batavia was salvaged plank by plank and only reassembled in the museum, while the huge hull of the Vasa is intact, and many parts of the ship’s structure are inaccessible. Currently the Western Australia Maritime Museum is keeping the Batavia stable by controlling humidity levels around the ship. “But this is a very expensive thing to do,” says Ian Godfrey of the museum. “For the Batavia the running costs are A$100,000 a year.” Meanwhile small objects from the Vasa will be soaked in an alkali such as sodium bicarbonate to neutralise the acid. Then they will be treated with either more PEG, or with silicone oil. This latter process has a number of variations. Essentially the wood is soaked in ethyl alcohol to remove the water and then acetone to remove the alcohol. It is then soaked in silicone oil with a “cross linker”, methyl trimethoxysilane, to promote polymerisation.

According to Wayne Smith of Texas A&M University, who developed the use of silicone for conserving wood, the result is an artefact that looks like wood, handles like wood and doesn’t need any expensive environmental controls to ensure its stability. The polymer should act as a barrier to oxygen, and computer modelling of accelerated wear tests carried out on silicone-treated wood show that it will be 250 years before it needs treating again, he says. However, the use of silicone oil on wooden artefacts is highly controversial. Many museum conservators dislike the technique because the silicone forms a permanent bond with the wood. Smith dismisses these concerns. He says that PEG also bonds with wood. “There is no such thing as a totally reversible process. Reversibility is never the issue. Retreatability and long-term stability is. Polyethylene glycol is a loose cannon.”

Unfortunately the silicone treatment isn’t cheap. It is roughly three-and-a-half times more expensive than the PEG treatment (which includes the cost of controlling the museum environment). And the size of the vat required to treat an object is also a limiting factor. The biggest thing that Smith has treated so far is a sea chest. Nevertheless he points to a success that would be difficult to emulate with any other technique. Researchers at the university treated a wicker basket full of cannon balls salvaged from the wreck of La Belle, a ship lost off the coast of Texas in 1686. The wicker was weak and the basket was full of silt as well as cannon balls. “It was a mess,” says Smith. So they soaked the lot in silicone and once it was stable, “we just brushed off the dirt”, says Smith, “and excavated the cannon balls.” In December 2001, UNESCO recommended that the best long-term solution for most wrecks was not to try and conserve them out of the water but simply to rebury them once archaeologists have explored the site and recorded the remains. This is partly because of the unresolved problems with conserving waterlogged timber, but also due to the sheer number of sites: conserving all these wrecks out of water would be prohibitively expensive.

“It’s a huge problem trying to raise the money to conserve ships,” says David Gregory, who leads a team at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen researching reburial techniques. The Western Australia Maritime Museum, for example, recently drew up a plan to salvage the James Miller, a former slave trader that sank outside Fremantle in 1841, but abandoned it when the project’s sponsors decided it was too expensive. “Until the problem of conservation is resolved, it is probably best left where it is,” says Godfrey. Yet leaving shipwrecks where they are has its drawbacks. Shipworm, as well as divers searching for buried treasure, can damage sites. Even attempts to clean up the environment can backfire: the heavily polluted waters of Stockholm’s harbour helped preserve the Vasa since the lack of oxygen killed the bacteria that would have eaten away its timbers. But since the 1940s the water quality of the harbour has improved dramatically. Salmon were reintroduced in 1970. If the Vasa had been left where it sank, the cleaner waters in the harbour would have accelerated its deterioration. Who knows how much of the ship and its precious contents would have been lost forever.

From issue 2363 of New Scientist magazine, 05 October 2002, page 38 The acid test The crucial breakthrough in the Vasa’s chemistry came when Farideh Jalilehvand at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in California analysed a series of 10-centimetre-long cores from the ship’s planks. By grinding up samples taken from different depths in the wood and subjecting them to X-ray spectroscopy, Jalilehvand and Sandström found prominent absorption peaks corresponding to elemental sulphur and sulphate ions – with a smaller peak probably due to iron sulphide. And where the sulphate peak was large the sulphur peak was correspondingly smaller. Things started to fall into place. Sulphur was being oxidised to form sulphuric acid (H2SO4): 2S + O2 + 2H2O = 2H2SO4 One of the reasons that the problem did not emerge sooner was that the Vasa was also sprayed with borax to kill wood eating bacteria. But borax is alkaline and helped to neutralise the sulphuric acid. The 5 tonnes of borax sprayed onto the Vasa would have neutralised about 1.3 tonnes of sulphuric acid.

Sandström realised that iron catalysed the oxidation of sulphur to sulphuric acid – and that polyethylene glycol was corroding the iron and spreading it throughout the vessel. To try and solve the problem, he is testing the long-term stability of two chelating agents – chemicals that form a very strong bond with iron and its compounds and effectively makes them inert. Both of the chemicals, EDMA and DTPA, are derivatives of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. EDMA, which is often used to control the take-up of iron by orange and lemon trees, is about a million times more effective than DTPA – but the iron-EDMA complex has a reddish colour. This may make it unsuitable for use on some objects whose appearance is important, although the colour change is a useful indicator that the iron has been chelated. “I think EDMA is the one we will use for the treatment of small objects,” says Sandström. “But we may spray the hull with DTPA.”

S-130

E boats were much more than just fast torpedo attack boats, they were in reality a scaled down warship. Heavily armed and extremely fast (in excess of 34 knots) they could cause immense damage to much larger enemy ships and escape unharmed. Called E boats by the British they should be more properly called Schenell-Boote or S boats. The last surviving seaworthy example of this class is at the moment (2008) languishing at Mashfords Yard near the Cremyll Ferry in Cornwall.

S-130 at Mashfords Yard 2007

I am not all that fond of preserving things just to do it. There is a perfectly good example of an E boat at Bremerhaven, but that’s a museum piece. This boat, the S 130 however has a fantastic history that would be hard to invent, and since the object of the exercise is to restore the boat so that it can once again take to the water, then I am all for it.

S-130 in the shed.

Built at the Johan Schlighting boatyard in Travemude, the S 130 was commissioned on Oct 21st 1943, under the command of Oberleutnant zur see Gunter Rabe, with the call sign Raven. At first she operated out of Rotterdam into the North Sea but soon switched to Cherbourgh to patrol the Western and Central Channel areas. During the beginning of 1944 she conducted many savage night actions and then became embroiled in the Allied, Operation Tiger, probably the biggest cock up that the British and Americans had so far made at sea. Operation Tiger was a full scale rehearsal for the American attack on Utah Beach during the forth coming D. Day landings. On the 27th April a German recognisance plane spotted the convoy off Slapton Sands in Devon and vectored two flotillas of E boats to the area. Meanwhile due to a communications mix up British escorting destroyers were removed from the convoy, leaving just a small force of M.T.B.s to cover the exercise. ( click here to read my article in ‘Tombstones’)

Looks like the Galley

At just after one o’clock in the morning in the pitch dark, the E boats, steaming at over 36 knots fell gleefully upon the convoy sinking two landing craft drowning over six hundred men and causing such chaos in the dark, that the Americans started shooting at each other’s landing crafts, killing and wounding soldiers who by now must have thought they were in hell with the night sky lit up by the burning ships and the cry’s of the wounded and dying. The E boats got away scot free leaving over six hundred and thirty nine Americans dead or missing, four times the casualty list when they did the real thing on D.Day. The dead washed in on the tide all along the coast and were buried in unmarked mass graves to hush it all up.

Some original controls.

The S 130 helped to attack the Allied Fleet on D.Day, and as the Allies stormed ever onwards towards Germany she took part in the long retreat eventually ending up in Rotterdam as the War came to its final end. Taken as a British War Prize the S 130 was used for test purposes and re-engined to give a new top speed of 45 knots. It was then decided to deploy the vessel, with other captured E boats, to British occupied Germany to spy on the Russian Fleet. The boats photographed the Russian ships and gathered huge amounts of intelligence, and if they were spotted all they had to do was roar off at high speed. The Russians had nothing fast enough to catch them. Later in 1949, she was used to insert agents into the Baltic States.

There should be three engines.

During this time the British recruited ex German Navy officers to run the boats with mostly German crew. The most notable of these was Hans Helmut Klose who later commanded a unit that landed agents on the coast to link up with the local partisans who harried the Russians in Poland, Latvia, and Estonia. He was so successful that the unit became known in secret circles as The Klose Fast patrol Group. After its success in inserting and more importantly, retrieving agents, MI6 decided to create a more permanent organization in 1951 which it ran until 1955, when due to leaky intelligence within MI6 and others, over forty agents were caught by the Russians who either sentenced them or turned them into double agents.

Interestingly all this joint operations with the ex German officers laid the foundation of what is now the German Navy’s Schnellbootflotille. In the spring of 1956 the units were abandoned and the boats including S 130, were handed back to the Germans where they were used as high speed training vessels. Most of their crews joined the German Navy, including Klose who retired in 1978 with the rank of Vice Admiral. S 130 continued to be a training vessel until 1991 when she was paid off in Willemshaven. She then became a houseboat until she was acquired by her present owners for restoration in 2003.

If you want to know more about the subjects below, click the links

The Klose Fast Patrol Group

Restoration of S-130 prior to 2007

Lift of S-130 from Mashfords to Millbrook 2008

The SS. Great Britain, built in 1843 at the Great Western Docks in Bristol was a truly innovative vessel. Designed by the great I.K. Brunel, she was the worlds first iron hulled, steam powered, propeller driven ocean going ship, and was designed to serve the ever expanding trans-Atlantic luxury passenger trade. Originally conceived as a paddle steamer, the ships builders soon realized the enormous advantages of the new technology of screw propulsion and had her engines converted to power a sixteen foot iron propeller.

The Great Brunel.

When the SS. Great Britain was launched she was the largest ship in the world weighing in at a colossal 1930 tons. Her maiden voyage to New York on 26 July 1845 was completed in an astounding fourteen days and showed her ability to do safe and speedy passages. Although she could take up to 252 passengers served by 130 crew, her voyages did not generate much money for her owners as they had miscalculated the demand for their services. When the Great Britain ran aground at Dundrum Bay in Northern Ireland in 1846, her engines were ruined and the expense of re-floating her so drained the finances of her owners that she was sold to Gibbs Bright and Company, who used her to great effect on the Australian run.

S.S. Great Britain

Gold had been recently discovered over there and so the Great Britain was remodelled as a fast luxury emigrant carrier and her accommodation was rebuilt to accommodate 750 passengers. Between 1855 and 1856 the British Government chartered the ship to transport troops to and from the Crimea War. Over 44000 troops were carried during the course of the conflict. Later she was again chartered to carry troops, this time to quell the Indian Mutiny. In 1861 she carried the very first English cricket team to tour Australia. The tour was a great success with England playing twelve games of which she won six, drew four and only lost two.

Aground in Dundrum Bay

By the late 1870’s the SS. Great Britain was starting to show her age, and her owners could no longer keep their full registration as a passenger vessel. However because she had a sleek hull and low profile she could easily be converted to a three masted ‘clipper’ ship. With her engines removed and her spar deck torn off she was unrecognisable as the ship that had been launched all those years ago in 1843. Still she was still useful and could earn money for her owners and this she did by transporting coal from Wales to San Francisco. On her third trip she ran into trouble off Cape Horn and ran for the safety of Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Unfortunately for the Great Britain, the cost of repairing her was not deemed economic and so she was sold off for use as a coal and wool storage hulk and remained in Port Stanley.

Abandoned in the Falkland Islands.

Here she remained all through the First World War. Coal from her holds helped refuel H.M.S. Invincible and Inflexible before the decisive Battle of the Falklands in December 1914 which saw the destruction of the German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. By 1938 the Great Britain’s hull was no longer watertight and she was towed a short distance from Port Stanley to Sparrow Cove where holes were cut in her hull and she was abandoned.

But the story doesn’t end there. People always loved this ship and recognised her historic significance. Unsuccessful salvage attempts were mounted in the 1930’s and 1960’s and during the Second World War bits of her were raffled off to raise money to build Spitfires. 1967 saw the start of what in the end turned out to be the successful attempt, when a naval architect called Dr. Ewan Corlett wrote to the Times about his ambition to bring the great ship back to Bristol. After many false starts plans were laid and surveys done but money remained the biggest problem. In the end a millionaire philanthropist called Jack Hayward (known popularly as ‘Union Jack’) said that ‘he would see the ship home’, and so finally things started to move.

Being towed on the barge.

Unfortunately when the ship was fully surveyed prior to being towed home it was found that the hull was not strong enough to survive the journey. What to do? The salvors, Risdon Beasley came up with the idea of a submersible pontoon that could be placed under the ships hull then pumped out to lift the ship clear of the water. The pontoon would then effectively become a barge with the Great Britain stuck fast on top. On April 7 1970, most of the population of the Falkland Islands turned out to see the old ship start her epic voyage. At first the winds were savage and the sea exceedingly rough, but by the time the ship reached Montivideo all was calm.

Home at last.

As the tug Varius, commanded by Capt. Herzog, towed the barge with her precious cargo at a sedate five knots past Rio and onwards to Reciefe in Brazil the Atlantic Ocean beckoned. The weather remained kind to the Great Britain on the crossing and on June 18th she rounded Cape Finistere and was finally back in her home waters. On July 19th she triumphantly cruised up the Avon and slid into the dock where 127 years to the day, she was first launched by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s Consort.

In 1970,the BBC’s Chronicle programme, did a great report on how the ship was saved.Just click the link below to see it.

The Great Iron Ship

My first efforts at marine archeology were not particularly brilliant as they consisted of finding a bugle in a wreck near Bahrain (The Gulf) which was also full of whisky. I kept the bugle, drank some of the whiskey, but was transferred before I managed to find out what the wreck was. (still don’t know)

I was then lucky enough to meet Alexander McKee before he found the Mary Rose. He came on board H.M.S.Rhyl and gave us ships divers a talk on her and what he was trying to do. I thought I would be bored to tears, as McKee, then, was considered something of a bore on the subject. Well he wasn’t, and when he saw that we were all hanging on his every word, he told us the full story over a couple of hours, enlisted our help.(You can read about that later) and gave me an interest that has lasted years

Many people make this subject totally boring, but, at its simplest, its a lot of rattling good tales,a lot of luck, some heartache, and a lot of hard work to which many devote their whole lives too.

I have never done that, I have not got the commitment, but I have been on the sidelines of some big finds, and their stories are below.

Many of these discoveries happened a long time ago and now most are in museums.Some of the more interesting ones are detailed in this section.

• The Vasa
• Vasa and PEG
• The Edwin Fox
• The Cattewater Wreck
• S130 German E-boat
• Mary Rose
• SS Great Britain
• H.M.S. Belfast
• Sutton Hoo
• The Egyptian Sola Boat
• Trinity Marine
• The Cutty Sark

I first saw the Vasa twenty years ago. I had heard of her many years before that, and so when I was on a business trip to Sweden I made a six hundred mile detour to see her. Then she was in a temporary museum and I wrote the following article for Sub Aqua Scene. Since then she has been moved to her permanent home, the other side of Stockholm, nearer to the centre, where she is displayed with all her artefacts and cannons. Over 750,000 people visit her each year. The inside of the museum is very dark, and you have to go through air tight doors which control the humidity. The Vasa is there in all her glory, but to my mind she has lost some of the impact that she had in the old place, when it was still a bit rough and ready and not so many concessions had been made to the tourist trade.

Floating to her new home.

This feeling soon fades however as you walk around her. She is a fantastic ship, and the Swede’s have done a tremendous job of preserving her. She is supposed to be the largest relic ever recovered and preserved, but that’s not her claim to fame. Her main claim, in my view, is that she just is. By just being there she justifies all that effort and money, because she is a thing of wonder. Don’t ever think that marine archaeology is boring and meaningless. A lot of people, it seems to me, try to make it so, but the Vasa defies all that. She is a genuine time capsule, and we are all the richer for it.

The Article: Sunday August 10 1628, a beautiful sunny day and the crowds gathering on the small islands that surround Stockholm harbour were in festive mood, for they had come to see the maiden voyage of the Navy’s latest and most powerful fighting ship, Wasa. As the magnificent new ship left the quay, the crew and their families who had been allowed on board for the big day waved and cheered excitedly. Sails were unfurled, and as the ship gathered way the brilliant sunshine reflected off the exquisite gold leaf that had been used extensively on the great carvings that adorned the Vasa’s stern-castle. As her guns fired the Swedish national Salute, she looked every inch the power and glory of Sweden’s great naval ambitions. Only ten minutes later those ambitions were mere dreams as the Vasa, caught in a great gust of wind, heeled over, and with water pouring in through her open gun-ports turned right over and with all sails set, her flag still flying, sank swiftly to the bottom. After only fifteen hundred yards the Vasa’s maiden voyage was over. Thankfully most of the crew and their families were rescued by the multitude of small boats gathered to watch the spectacle.

The day the Vasa arrived.

In the aftermath of the disaster the contractors and builders immediately started blaming each other, secure in the knowledge that the evidence was now safe in over one hundred and fifteen feet of dark cold water. Still the Navy Board after conducting enquiries soon realised that bad design was the main fault. The Vasa had too little beam for her length, too much top hamper, and most damaging of all, not enough ballast. Within three days of the Vasa sinking, an Englishman called Ian Buller had arrived to try and salvage her. With the Vasa lying on her side in the mud, conditions to say the least were very difficult and in the end Buller had to give it up. However he did manage to get the Vasa into an upright position. How on earth he managed this nobody is quite sure, but by doing so he undoubtedly contributed to the successful lifting of the Wasa over three hundred years later.

The spraying continued night and day.

Nothing else much happened to the Vasa until 1653 when two Swede’s, Hans Albrecht von Treileben and Andreas Peckell managed to recover over fifty of the Vasa’s bronze cannon using a primitive diving bell. They also had a form of wetsuit made of leather to keep them warm, and seeing that each cannon weighed over one and a half tons and took hours of painstaking work to locate, they would really have needed them to help bring off this remarkable feat of salvage. After that however people lost interest, and the Vasa became a forgotten ship, forgotten that is until 1956 when Anders Franzen, a man dedicated to finding the warship, finally succeeded after a long and systematic search, with of all things a specially made core sampler. He didn’t dive, and anyway the mud was far to thick to see anything, so he thought that if he dropped his special core sampler in the area where he thought the Vasa was, he should come up with a bit of timber. It sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? But in August 1956 it delivered the goods, and overnight Frazen became internationally famous.

Some of her stern decoration.

Not content with finding the ship, he was now determined to get it up as well, and soon he had persuaded all sorts of people from King Olaf of Sweden, to Neptune, a huge salvage firm, that his ideas were a real possibility. Once again he was proved right, but even he was flabbergasted by the results. You see the Vasa was to all intents and purposes intact, completely in one piece. All that was missing were her masts, which had broken off when she had turned over and sunk. When the Vasa finally hit the surface after three hundred and thirty years on the bottom it was the most magnificent sight that any ‘shipwrecker’ could possibly hope to see, and Frazen was triumphant.

Inside the new museum.

Today the Vasa stands on a floating pontoon covered with an aluminium shell, and is part of Sweden’s National Maritime Museum. Although the raising of the Wasa had been an incredibly long and arduous task, the marine archaeologists soon realised that her preservation was going to be even harder. There were no experts, and no information on how to do it, as nobody had ever tried anything like it before. Still they had to do something. There was over thirty two thousand cubic feet of timber, most of it oak, and if they allowed it to dry out it would shrink to less than half its size, cracking the hull to pieces. There were also the more ‘minor’ problems concerning the restoration of over a thousand wooden carvings that had adorned the ship, and some twelve thousand individual items showing what life had been like aboard the ship. The problem was solved by using a substance called Polyglycol (P.E.G.).

Stern view of her fantastic carvings.

This penetrated into the timbers and stabilized its dimensions. Even so, in the first year (1962) over ninety tons of P.E.G. was sprayed onto the Vasa, and difficulties were discovered in the drying process. In the end the ship was sprayed day and night for the next ten years, until finally it could absorb no more of the P.E.G. solution. In 1972, a two-year after phase treatment commenced, but by then the scientists had realised that it would probably take another twenty years for the timbers to finally dry and properly condition.

Going towards the poop deck.

Now to me most Museums are dull unimaginative places, and it was more in hope than expectation that I went to see the Vasa on a recent trip to Sweden. The Museum outside is a drab windswept place looking somewhat like a disused aircraft hangar, but when you walk inside you don’t notice the bare surroundings because the Vasa takes your breath away. It almost fills its temporary home, and all around it is wooden and steel scaffolding that allows you to see the ship from every angle, both above and below. As you wander about looking and touching this three hundred year old relic of a bygone age, you can see why it has been on show. The Vasa has not been tarted up for the tourists; in fact she looks rather as if she is in a dry dock awaiting some minor repairs. All the original carvings have been put back, but the Museum decided to leave them and the ship in its natural colour, a sort of grey brown.

In order to show the vivid colours, they made copies of the carvings, especially the enormous stern-castle set pieces, and then painted them in their original colours. They have not done all of them yet, but the ones that are finished hang on the walls and are absolutely stunning. But it is the Vasa that is undeniably the star. She is so much bigger than you expect, and so well preserved that she looks almost ready to sail away. The smells and colouring that the P.E.G. have left in the wood, combined with the dim lighting (its all controlled for humidity) give the ship an almost magical ghostly quality, the sort of feeling that you sometimes get in great cathedrals. In a way I suppose that’s what this building has become, a cathedral that houses not only the last remains of a once great Naval power, but it also seems to symbolise to the Swedish their fervent national pride. Look at me the Vasa seems to say, for I was the Power and the Glory.

The Edwin Fox was built as a full rigged sailing ship by Thomas Reeves at Sulkeah, in the Bengal Province of India in 1853. She was the last ship built for East India Company, and was named for Edwin Fox a convenor in a financial company affiliated to the East India Company. He was also, and probably more importantly, related to Charles Fox the eminent politician. The Edwin Fox was just over 144ft on the waterline, had a beam of nearly thirty feet, with a gross tonnage of 747 tons. She was built with no expense spared, of massive planks of teak and saul. However she never sailed under the East India Company flag as her builder took her to England on her maiden voyage with a cargo of tea.

The Edwin Fox.

Once in England he sold her to Sir George Hodgkinson who kept her less than a year before he sold her at a hotly contested auction for ?0,000 to Duncan Dunbar, one of the most celebrated ship owners of the day. The Crimean War had just broken out a year before and Dunbar immediately chartered the Edwin Fox to the British Government as a troop transport. This employment lasted until the fall of Sebastopol, where upon she was discharged from service, having made Duncan Dunbar a fortune. Between 1855 and 1858 the Edwin Fox made three trips to India carrying pale ale, and tea back to England.

Under cover today.

Later that year the Government again chartered the ship, not for troops this time, but for convicts. Two hundred and eighty males guilty of so-called political crimes were transported to Fremantle in Western Australia. They were caged like animals in the holds and had to endure a dreadful voyage of eighty-nine days before the ship finally touched land. Between 1858 and 1862 the records are a bit sketchy but she did become stranded near madras on India’s east coast and only managed to get off by jettison all her cargo including 446 hogsheads of beer. In 1862, Duncan Dunbar died, and the ship was sold to Messrs. Gallatly, Hankey and Company of London. After making five voyages to Australian ports she had her sailing rig changed to that of a Barque.

Still with her copper bottom.

This meant fewer crew and less maintenance. In 1873 the Edwin Fox was charted by the Shaw Saville and Albion Line for use as an immigrant ship. Her first voyage from London to Lyttelton in New Zealand took 114 days and the ship was lucky to get there. When the ship sailed out of London the crew managed to breach a cargo of spirits and got roaring drunk. A violent gale sprang up and the ship developed a severe leak, which the crew were unable to stem because they were all still blind drunk, so the passengers had to man the pumps to keep the ship afloat. To make maters worse the ships doctor was impaled by a metal rod and died, as did a seaman helping to secure a lifeboat. In the end the Edwin Fox, was sighted by the American steamer Copernicus. She came along side and her Captain implored the passengers to jump to safety. When some of the crew tried to get in first he threatened to shot the lot of them. In the end the Edwin Fox was towed safely into Brest. All the crew were arrested and sent home in chains to receive six months hard labour.

Inside the hull which is in remarkable shape

It took six weeks to repair all the damage before the ship could resume her voyage, and for the passengers things went from bad to worse. The cramped and unhealthy conditions on board combined with the lack of a proper diet led to an outbreak of Scarlet Fever, which killed four people. One more died of consumption, and a child died from thrush. When the ship finally arrived in New Zealand waters she was forced to spend two weeks of Lyttleton Heads because of high seas and when they abated they were refused permission to land because of the fever. Finally after ten days of quarantine on Ripa Island, the passengers were able to disembark on 9th July.

Monkey blocks.

Her second voyage was almost as eventful. After leaving London on the 23rd of December 1873, the Edwin Fox got caught out in a storm and had to run for shelter in the lee of The Downs near Dover. As she was bedding her anchor in she collided with the schooner Westward Ho sinking her. Luckily all the crew were picked up by other boats but the Edwin Fox lost her jib boom and an anchor. Before she could get the spare anchor ready she drifted onto the rocks near Deal. The Ramsgate Lifeboat was called and managed to remove all the passengers. In the morning the storm had abated and the Edwin Fox was re-floated. She had no serious damage to her hull and was towed back to London.

The hull needs a lot of work.

After she had been surveyed it was found that there was virtually no damage to her at all, a tribute to the sturdiness of her construction. She sailed once again for New Zealand on the 18 April with 225 passengers and arrived in Wellington with no further mishaps. Between 1874 and 1880 the Edwin Fox completed several other voyages but by now steam ships were starting to take the lions share of the passenger trade. By now she was starting to show her age and in the worldwide depression in the early 1880’s assisted immigration to New Zealand slowed to a trickle. A new lease of life came in the form of the frozen meat trade, the new revolution. Steam ships were expensive but frozen meat didn’t need to be quick. The Edwin Fox was kitted out with the necessary refrigeration kit salvaged from other damaged ships, including massive steam boilers mounted on the deck to provide the steam for the fridges. Her masts were reduced and she took on a most peculiar look. However she was efficient in producing profits for her owners, the Shaw Savill line. Were once 240 immigrants had travelled in much discomfort now 14,000 frozen sheep carcases could be shoehorned into the same space.

Basically a hulk.

Four years later the Edwin Fox was towed to Llyttleton to have her boilers repaired. She was then used as a freezer for a shore based meat company at Gisbourne and then Bluff. By !897 she was in Picton being used as a freezer hulk, but by now her machinery was obsolete, so all of it was removed and the ship was then used as living accommodation for the employees of the Picton Meat Works. By 1905 she was berthed behind piles below the Freezer works. Everything of value was removed from her and holes were cut into her sides to allow tramlines to be put in place to carry coal out to the freezer boilers. After all her proud service The Edwin Fox was reduced to being a coal hulk. Over the following years the ship became more and more dilapidated, and finally she wasn’t fit to even be a coal hulk. Worse, she was now just a derelict hull getting in the way. By the 1950’s the Edwin Fox was gently rotting, alone and unloved, but her spirit stayed intact. In 1965 a restoration Committee was formed, which bought the ship for one shilling. Over the years much was done but there was never enough money and of course bureaucracy got in the way and delayed the restoration with demands for permits and approvals.

Floating free.

Finally in 1986 everything was ready to move the ship to her permanent berth the other side of the harbour.. A channel was dredged from her silted up mooring, and at last the Edwin Fox floated free for the first time in twenty years. A month of hectic activity by a small army of volunteers shovelled out the 400 tons of shingle ballast and gave the outside woodwork a coating of Stockholm tar. The Edwin Fox was then towed across the shipping lane to the eastern side of Picton harbour where she was fitted snugly into her new berth. In 1999 a roof was built over the ship. This was a huge benefit as rainwater causes all sorts of damage. The main hull of the ship is in great condition considering its age, because it was effectively preserved in the mud for twenty years. At the moment the Edwin Fox is ranked as the world’s ninth oldest ship by the World Ships Trust, but because there is so much of her which is still original (unlike our Victory, which over the years has been completely rebuilt) she might go up to third.

John Sullivan.

A project like this takes a ton of money and heaps of enthusiasm and it’s going to be years before all the dreams for the Edwin Fox are realised. When I visited the ship I was shown around by John Sullivan, who has worked on the ship for years. He, like the rest of the ‘staff’ were contagious in their enthusiasm, and his knowledge and obvious love of the vessel was a joy. I had a great time.

If you want to help with donations, or just find out more, these are the contacts

Email edwinfoxsoc@xtra.co.nz

PO box 89 Dunbar Wharf, Picton 7372, New Zealand

Ever since Plymouth became established as a town in the 13th Century, the Cattewater has been a main anchorage. Indeed there is some evidence to suggest, that even before that, Mount Batten was a Celtic trading post. Over the years the anchorage has seen plenty of activity from pirates in the 15th Century using the Cattewater to strip and refurbish their prizes, to the Royal Air Force using the area to moor Sunderland flying boats, and later running their air sea rescue boats from the same location. In fact it was those same rescue boats that precipitated the finding of what was then one of the oldest shipwrecks in the country, and caused the formation of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973.

The R.A.F. was undergoing a restructuring of their rescue fleet and needed bigger boats. Up till then, because the flying boats and the current rescue craft drew little water, the channel had only been dredged to a depth of around six metres. The new boats would need a deeper channel than that, so in the summer of 1973, the then Department of Environment, made arrangements to have the channel dredged. On the 20th June the work on the Anglo Dutch Bucket Dredger Holland XV11 was proceeding a pace when up came some timber wreckage. The site agent, a Mr. Broekhoven reported this to the D.O.E officer in charge of diving in the area, who decided that the wreckage was of historical interest and so the dredging was stopped, and the Receiver of Wreck was informed.

Diagram of one of the Guns.

Over the next few weeks a series of dives were done which found fragments of what seemed to be a breech loading gun, and several pieces of glass and ceramic provisionally dated to the later half of the 18th Century. Deeper down however were more pieces of wood rather like Tudor floorboards. It was fairly certain that a very old vessel was down there somewhere, so the site was extensively plotted and discussion entered into with the D.O.E. as the channel still had to be dredged. It was decided to carry out a full site plan and remove any objects found into safe keeping, but a strict limit was put on the diving time. In the dives during August the keelson and a third gun were found but the team was frustrated in their efforts to completely define the boundary of the site as there was a great deal of old ballast in the shape of stone boulders of local stone and flint which was not local.

Diagram of one of the A mock up of one of the guns by A.Carpenter.

Ironically, the dumping of unwanted ballast was a real problem in the 16th and 17th Century’s, rather like fly tipping today, and although there were bye-laws to prevent it the dumping still continued. Also this was not the first time an archaeological site had been looked at in the Cattewater. In May 1886 a 90 ft Barque was found in the northern part of the harbour which was dated to the first part of the 17th Century, and a small cast iron swivel gun was also found. At the time it was assigned to the Civil War when the Royalists held the southern side of the Cattewater. If all that was there, then there is a strong possibility that a lot more is lying undisturbed on the bottom.

The dredging contract ended on the 21 August and the authorities became worried that all the divers in Plymouth would go and raid the site (although they later admitted that all the water users, including the various diving groups, had been most co-operative), so an order under the new Wreck Protection Act that had come into force in July was applied for and granted, making this the very first protected wreck in the U.K. The National Maritime Museum then applied for a licence to complete the survey. This was all finished by the end of 1974 and there the matter rested until further work could be carried out in conjunction with all the various bodies now involved. Far from (in my view) helping, the Wreck Protection Act seemed to cause a bit of paralysis whilst all involved interpreted what it meant, and the usual bureaucratic delays crept in. In the end it could not be excavated because the Government, who now owned the wreck said that excavation would cause damage to the remains.( didn’t stop them raising the Mary Rose) Still a notable effort by all concerned, in extremely trying conditions.

Ships Structure.

In 1976 the Underwater Research Group from the University of London carried out a four week project to survey the site and recover enough data to date the site. From 1976 to 1978 the U.W.G. received further funding from a group called Earth Watch and America non profit organization and continued with its work. Because the visibility was so bad, photography was not much use to them, and so none of the crew had much idea about the overall look of the boat, just the bits they happened to be working with. Basically nothing new was learned, but a lot of the technical problems were ironed out. The Group discovered that what remained of the wreck lay heeled over on one side. Various timbers were raised and stored in a tank in the Dockyard and then transferred to Bovisand Fort. Other frames were raised and stored at Mount Batten, but they somehow got lost. The dating of the ship and her sinking are all approximate as the data is still very sketchy.

The most likely date is anywhere between 1500 and 1550. The keelson is similar, though smaller than that of the Mary Rose, and the stratified pottery found around the site, probably from the ships ballast, is similar to cellar deposits found in London between 1495 and 1530. The best find was a leather purse pinned to a futtock in the hull. This seemed to be of Tudor pattern. The three swivel guns found were all the same make and of an early composite iron construction. They were considered to be obsolete by the 16th Century. So what have we got? Well a three masted ship of 2 to 300 tons burden in the first half of the 16th Century, with possible links to Holland and France. The ship is of international importance, as its one of the few ships of this period to remain unexcavated.

Site Plan.

This is a crucial period in understanding the development of naval construction. The period between say 1480 and 1525, produced a revolution in naval design, because for the first time it seems that mathematics was applied to all parts of the construction and rigging. Because of the obsolete guns this could mean that she was pressed into service as an armed merchantman by a navy desperate to use all the vessels it could. To give this ship a name is much more difficult. It could be almost any ship, but not a ‘great ship’ as its name would have lived on (like the Coronation or the Mary Rose). A Portugese ship hit the German Rock in 1540, but old charts put this at the mouth of the Tamar, not in the Cattewater. Another contender is the St. James of the Groyne, which on 17th January 1494, lost all her rigging in a great storm and broke up on the shore. She was described as a ‘ship of great value’ and her size is certainly consistent with the externals and the guns of the Cattewater wreck, but there really is not enough to make even a tenuous identification. It could be one of the Dutch ships that were confiscated in 1597, one of which ran aground in the Cattewater, or the Roebuck in 1694 which was also wrecked whilst forming up for an expedition to the Western Isles under the Earl of Essex. You guess is as good as anybody else’s.

Meanwhile after years of neglect the hunt has started up again.(2006) Under a new mantra that all excavation is destruction, a new project leader Martin Read has brought in some hi tech equipment that he hopes with uncover the wrecks secrets without anyone getting wet or disturbing the wreck The Sub-bottom Profiler from East Germany sends sound waves a metre into the sea bed and sends back information which shows the layer of sea bed including the wreck. The Side scan sonar from Plymouth uses sound waves which reflect off of the top of the sea bed. The Magnetometer from France, which was experiencing problems, detects changes in the earth’s magnetism and would pick up metal work from the ship.

The equipment has been described by experts as “top of the range” and archaeologists travelled from around the country to watch it in action. The information needs to be processed further before any results can be found. But Mr Read said “The data we have got is interesting, it’s all quite exciting.” Once processed the information will be used to “re-imagine” the wreck, producing a plan of the site and 3D images of the remains of the vessel. I will be very interested to see that.

Most of this information comes from National Maritime Monographs and Reports No 13-1974. and the excellent book The Cattewater Wreck -M.Rednap National Maritime Museum. ISBN 0860542858