No.86 Waterloo 200

June 18, 2015May 24, 2018 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

What links Walmer Castle and Amsterdam, by way of Waterloo?

This week, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, my guest blogger Abigail Coppins looks at how a lucky find while researching the appearance of Wellington’s bedroom at Walmer Castle led to the discovery of some correspondence between Wellington and potential salvors of the wreck of the Amsterdam at Hastings, lost 80-odd years previously. In his capacity as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, resident at Walmer, Wellington fielded a copious correspondence with these salvors throughout the 1830s, a historic connection adding to the interest of what is today the Designated wreck site of a Dutch East Indiaman.

Colour photograph of Wellington's bedroom, restored to the colour scheme in his day. — The Duke of Wellington’s bedroom at Walmer Castle 20/05/15
Picture by Jim Holden. English Heritage

The Duke of Wellington and the Wreck of the Amsterdam

Abigail Coppins

I was actually looking for the Duke of Wellington’s bedroom, particularly anything that might solve the knotty problem of his carpet. But you never know what you might come across when you’re in the archives. I drew a blank on the carpet but found some other things relevant to the Waterloo 200 project at Walmer Castle. Then this caught my eye. At the time I didn’t know anything about the Amsterdam but I figured that it was worth making a note of the facts just in case it was a known (or unknown) wreck. Someone somewhere might be interested.

The Amsterdam in July 2006. — The *Amsterdam* in July 2006.

It started in 1830 when 42 labourers from the Parish of Bexhill wrote to the Duke of Wellington complaining that they had been prevented from digging out the ‘…Dutch ship Amsterdam which was wrecked on the Coast of Sussex…in the year of 1740’ [sic – the wreck took place in 1749]. The labourers were unemployed and had taken it upon themselves to open up the wreck in search of ‘remuneration for their labours’. All had been going well. They had managed to retrieve some timber and glass, but unfortunately the Customs Officer from Hastings turned up and called a halt to the proceedings.

Having spent £28 on some equipment, including a couple of chain pumps, the labourers decided to petition the Duke of Wellington for his assistance in the matter. The Duke, as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, oversaw the administration of wrecks and salvage rights in the area. Wellington ordered enquiries to be made and the labourers were given permission to carry on their work – with certain stipulations. Wellington’s clerk in Dover Castle, Thomas Pain, pointed out that another local wreck had been stripped of ‘Block Tin’ and ‘purloined by the finder’ and he was keen to stop this happening again. The Bexhill labourers were told that they could keep the value of any goods found up to a value of £100. After that the usual rules of salvage would be applied.

Then things went quiet.

Sepia print of a seated Wellington writing at a desk, with a man standing behind him. — APSLEY HOUSE Print of “Wellington Writing His Despatches” by D Wilkie © Historic England Photo Library. Note Wellington’s special reading lamp, one of the features Abigail was hoping to learn more about in her researches when she found the material on the *Amsterdam*.

In May 1833 a Thomas Wood from St Leonards-on-Sea wrote to Wellington asking to be allowed to recover the wreck of the Amsterdam. In June the same year he wrote again, this time about another wreck in the area. Then he sent a letter asking what proportion of salvage he would be entitled to. By August, Wood was trying to arrange a meeting with Wellington.

Then it all went quiet again.

In August of the following year, 1834, Thomas Pain wrote to Wood asking if the salvage project had been abandoned. Wood wrote back asking about Thomas Telford’s work at Dover instead. Was Wood perhaps interested in that as well?

By August of 1835, a James Bungay of St Leonards was also interested in the Amsterdam wreck and by the following February wanted details of any lien Wellington might have over it. He also wanted a meeting. Bungay then wrote that he was going to petition the Treasury to allow him ‘…possession of all or any part of the Amsterdam or cargo.’ Unsurprisingly the Treasury refused Bungay’s request to raise the cargo ‘free of duty’. Undeterred, Bungay then suggested that a customs officer should be on site to record what got taken off the wreck. Pain replied that Wellington had no objection to this proposal.

The various salvage plans seem to have rumbled on. In 1837 Thomas Pain suggested that Bungay should be allowed to sell parts of the Amsterdam’s hull in order to recover his costs. Then all the documents went missing and it all got a bit messy. What happened next is unclear. I kept meaning to go back and find out, but other research projects got in the way: more remains in the archives for us to discover, despite the gaps in the documents.

Oil painting of Wellington in his red uniform against a plain, dark background. — APSLEY HOUSE “Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington” c.1815 by Sir Thomas LAWRENCE (1769-1830). WM 1567-1948 © Historic England Photo Library

With very grateful thanks to Abigail for sharing her research thus far and establishing an important historic connection between Wellington and the Designated site of a wreck which happened before he was even born.

No. 85 The Menace beneath the Sea – the Minelaying Submarine (Diary of the War No.11)

June 10, 2015May 24, 2018 ~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

New Developments in the War

This month sees the centenary of the sinking of two torpedo boats on 10 June 1915 as the war entered a new phase. Increased enemy activity around the entrance to the Thames between June 1 and June 9, 1915, was a cause of concern: one of the ships lost during this period was another interned German vessel now serving as a British collier, the Erna Boldt, on June 9 (see last month’s post on the Horst Martini).

The source of this activity required investigation and triggered a ‘vigorous submarine hunt by the Nore Defence Flotilla’, which included torpedo boats TB 10 (Greenfly) and TB 12 (Moth). (1) These two vessels belonged to the Cricket class of torpedo boat, their names redolent of their intended function as small, light, fast, darting attack vessels.

TB 12 was the first to sink, 2 miles NE of the Sunk Light Vessel, ‘when an explosion wrecked her fore-part and killed her commanding officer.’ TB 10 closed in to assist and take her in tow, when she herself succumbed to an explosion which broke her in two. The apparent track of a torpedo was seen heading towards her by a vessel in company, the Vulture, which set off in the direction of the torpedo’s trajectory.

It was later suggested, however, that the flotilla saw what they were expecting to see, namely a torpedo fired from a submarine: ‘they were, as on so many occasions, deceived.’ There was certainly U-boat activity in the area, but it was clear that the U-boat threat was no longer merely from attack submarines armed with torpedoes: there was a new, and worrying, threat. ‘Their loss represented the first fruits of the new German policy of laying minefields from specially built submarine-minelayers.’

Crew of a German UC-1 class submarine. Geiser Theodore (Mons) Collection. © IWM Q 20220

UC 11 was the first of these new submarines to become operational, joining the Flanders Flotilla. She was nearly lost on her first mission to sow 12 mines in the Dover Barrage. Although she avoided the British defensive mines of the barrage, she fouled a buoy which she could not shake off, leading to a hunt by two successive British patrols, which she successfully managed to evade to fulfil her deadly mission.

On her next voyage, she also managed to break free of a British defensive net to deposit another deadly cargo of mines near the Sunk Light Vessel, which were those that accounted for the Erna Boldt, TB 10 and TB 12. (2)

Had she succumbed to British defences on either mission, it is conceivable that this month I would be writing about the loss of the first operational UC-class submarine, rather than the first ships claimed by this new development in warfare: indeed, there were investigations into how UC-11 had literally slipped through the net not once, but twice. It was to be 1918 before UC-11 was sunk in her turn: reflecting her chief field of operations, less than a hundred miles from her Flanders base, she too now lies off the Sunk Light Vessel near her first victims.

(1) Naval Staff Monographs (Historical) Vol. XXIII, Home Waters – Part IV, from February to July 1915. Admiralty, London, 1925, pp253-5, from which all quotations are taken.

(4) ibid; uboat.net

No.83: The London, No.3: A Conservator’s Tool Kit

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015 ~ Serena ~ 2 Comments

This week Angela Middleton, Archaeological Conservator at Historic England, is my guest blogger, explaining the tools of her trade in conserving some of the objects recovered from the London.

A conservator’s tool kit: air brush, hammer and chisel

As a conservator you may spend many hours peering down a microscope, using a scalpel and slowly removing layers and years of dirt or corrosion: a painstakingly slow process; just like watching paint dry or grass grow. Progress can be hard to measure and to the untrained eye is often barely noticeable.

So why bother, you may ask?

During conservation, the conservator and the object go through a couple of stages. You normally start off with an assessment, where the condition of the object is evaluated, allowing a picture of the artefact’s composition, construction and state of preservation to emerge. Following that you devise a treatment according to the artefact’s condition and its purpose.

The ultimate goal is always to stabilise the object, preserve it for the future and to understand it: and by doing this a conservator also helps others to understand and appreciate it. This is often difficult when the surface is obscured by corrosion products or discoloured due to centuries of being buried. Removing these obscuring and distracting layers will help to reveal the object.

Lately I have been working on artefacts from the London, a shipwreck which sank off Southend-on-Sea in 1665. After their initial assessment (see Heritage Calling: Looking Inside) and a lengthy programme of desalination* (remember this is like watching paint dry…), artefacts can be actively conserved, without obscuring fine surface details or allowing layers of dirt to be consolidated onto the surface.

So this is where the pressure washer comes in. I have been using an air-brush system to clean off loose surface dirt on some of the leather from the London. It works just like a conventional pressure washer, albeit on a smaller scale, with the advantage of being able to regulate the pressure down and work with a really small outlet, enabling you to focus on small areas.

The example shown below is a leather sole from one of the many shoe finds. It is contaminated with iron compounds, which are commonly found in the burial environment (iron compounds originate from naturally occurring minerals or from corroding artefacts in the vicinity). They settle on the leather surface and do not only obscure fine surface details but also discolour the artefact. If not using an air-brush system, I would be cleaning them with sponges, which can sometimes be too harsh on sensitive surfaces such as leather, which can be easily marked and damaged. The air-brush is a much more gentle method of cleaning.

Here is the mini pressure washer in action:

However, sometimes ‘gentle’ is just not good enough, especially for maritime finds. They often become covered in huge and unsightly concretions. A concretion is formed when a corroding iron object interacts with the surrounding environment, encapsulating marine organisms, surrounding sediments, corrosion products and even other artefacts in a lump. In most cases the artefact cannot be recognised at all. In order to stabilise and understand the object, these concretions have to be removed. And yes, as the name suggests: they can be as hard as concrete. There is little choice but to use a hammer and a chisel to remove them: tools you don’t often find used by an archaeological conservator.

The example below is a concretion containing a multitude of artefacts. Visible at the top was a copper alloy artefact, half embedded in the concretion. A conservator would normally take an X-ray to visualise the embedded artefact(s). However, the concretions are often so dense that X-radiography is of limited use. So in this case I used the shape of the object partly showing at the top to guide me and started chiselling the concretion away. Once again it was a slow process, but totally worth it. What I managed to reveal and finally remove from the concretion was a pair of callipers: the only one from the wreck so far and in near perfect condition. Callipers were used to check the diameter of shot. By also knowing the material and the density the weight can be calculated. In our example it looks like the diameter is engraved on one side of the scale and the weight on the opposing side. The anaerobic conditions on the seabed and inside the concretion have preserved the markings on the calliper and it showes very little corrosion.

Left to right: Concretion as found, the callipers are visible at the top; callipers after being removed from the concretion. — **Left to right:** Concretion as found, the callipers are visible at the top; callipers after being removed from the concretion.

The other example is an iron cannonball which was also covered in concretion. It was important to remove it, not only to reveal the true size of the artefact, but also to reduce treatment times. The thick layer of concretion forms a barrier and will hinder passage of water during desalination.

After the concretion had been removed the cannonball diameter could be determined as roughly 15cm, making it a 30-pounder, suitable for a demi-cannon.

Each conservation task requires a specific set of tools, depending on the job in hand and the nature of the artefact. The gadgets an archaeological conservator uses are very different to what a paintings or textile conservator would use. However, the similarity is that each conservator strives to preserve the object and enable others to study and enjoy it.

*Desalination: During burial salts from the burial environment accumulate inside artefacts. If such an artefact is simply dried, salt crystals will form, which expand in volume on drying, which can cause surface layers of the artefacts to flake off, or the whole artefact can actually fall apart. Also salts are hygroscopic, which means they attract moisture from the air. This moisture can cause further corrosion. This is especially true for metal artefacts.

During desalination artefacts are immersed in tap water, and then in de-ionised water, to remove water-soluble salts. This is achieved by regularly changing the water and measuring the chloride level or the conductivity of the storage solution. Once these readings remain sufficiently low, the artefact is considered desalinated and can be treated as in the case of wood or leather, or can be dried as in the case of glass or ceramics.

To catch up with previous posts on the London, here is a post commemorating the anniversary of her loss in March 1665 and another on recent archaeological work.

No.82 Condemned as a Prize (Diary of the War No.10)

May 1, 2015May 24, 2018 ~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

Hard on the heels of last week’s Gallipoli blog comes this week’s contribution, featuring May’s First World War wreck on the centenary of her loss on 1 May 1915. The circumstances were neither unusual – sunk by collision in fog off Beachy Head – nor a result of wartime action, but her background provides the opportunity to illustrate a lesser-known aspect of the war at sea between 1914 and 1918.

The First World War saw huge technological advances and the mechanisation of combat as aircraft took to the skies, tanks rolled across landscapes, and submarines prowled the seas. Yet, given the century that had elapsed since the last major pan-European conflict ended in 1915, it was perhaps unsurprising that older practices and technologies were still retained in many respects: we may think, perhaps, of the cavalry regiments who saw action on the Western Front.

Many a Lloyd’s List of the 18th century lists details of vessels ‘taken’ by enemy warships or privateers and subsequently ‘condemned’ as prizes. Condemnation as a prize did not mean that the ship was intended for destruction, but rather that it was adjudged a lawful prize by an Admiralty court, and would sail again under a new flag.

On the declaration of war on August 4, 1914, a number of German and Austrian vessels were detained in British or Empire ports. A month later the London Gazette published the names of these vessels, which were to be brought before the Prize Courts and condemned as prizes, a fate that appears at first sight more redolent of the age of sail. Today’s vessel, the Horst Martini, was one of this group, detained in Newport, Wales. She had started out life as the British vessel Crosshill in 1883, but was sold into German service in 1900, initially as the Hugo und Clara, then renamed Horst Martini. With the judgement of the Prize Court, she was about to re-enter British service as a collier. (1)

While her prize status had no bearing on the wreck event, it did have an impact on the subsequent court case. The owners, master and crew of the Horst Martini brought a claim against the owners of the other vessel involved in the collision, the Runic:, who were not permitted to counterclaim against the owners of the Horst Martini, who proved to be none other than the ‘Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom’. As a concession, they were allowed to sue her master instead. Both vessels were found to have contributed to the accident, with three-quarters of the blame being assigned to the Horst Martini. (2)

Turning these prize vessels over to the colliery service made a significant contribution to the landscape of war since coal was the national fuel. The circulation of coal was based on well-established historical routes from the colliery to the consumer by sea, even for the domestic market. Routes to market were slow to adapt to wartime exigencies: with hindsight it is easy to wonder why recourse was not had to the less immediately vulnerable rail network. (There were many reasons for this, including the integration of the colliery and shipping industries under the coal magnates.)

In turn this meant that that sinking colliers was an effective way of striking at the British economy. The nation needed all the colliers it could get, and those German ships interned in British ports on the outbreak of war fulfilled an immediate need: the seemingly old-fashioned prize law plugged the gaps of a market that, to modern eyes, appears to have been slow to respond to the dangers posed by modern forms of warfare.

(We will follow the adventures of several other ‘prize’ German colliers over the course of the War Diary.)

(1) The Times, 22 January 1915, No.40,758, p34

(2) The Times, 20 May 1915, No.40,859, p3.

No.81 Gallipoli

April 24, 2015May 23, 2018 ~ Serena ~ 5 Comments

Diary of the War No.9

To commemorate the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, which commenced on 25 April 1915, today’s post takes as its theme two wrecks in English waters: one which participated in those landings, and another transporting Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), so closely associated with the Gallipoli campaign.

Colour poster of a swimming man, captioned 'It is nice in the surf but what about the men in the trenches' — ‘Win the War League’ poster promoting Australian recruitment during the First World War. IWM PST 12232. http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/25051

The Fauvette was constructed in 1912 for the General Steam Navigation Company, and employed on the London-Bordeaux run, from which she evacuated British nationals when war broke out. Like so many other civilian vessels, she was requisitioned for war service, becoming HMS Fauvette in February 1915, and heading straight for the Dardanelles. By April 1915 she was carrying stores for the Allied landings. On 21 April, the crew of HMS Fentonian, a requisitioned trawler, had difficulties offloading Fauvette‘s buoys: ‘the sinkers were enormous blocks of cement weighing 35 cwt.’ (1) Fauvette continued to see service in and around Gallipoli, Mudros and Suvla Bay until the following year.

On her return to England on 9 March 1916 she struck two mines laid by UC-7 approximately 1.75 miles NE of the North Foreland and sank with the loss of 14 lives. Her position has been securely recorded since 1916 and she was earmarked for post-war dispersal, achieved by 1921. She lies within half a mile of the Emile Deschamps, whose story is told in a previous post, also mined close to home but in a different war.

A few weeks later, 25 April 1916 saw the first Anzac Day commemorating the contribution of Australian and New Zealand troops in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign. Ironically, it was on the second Anzac Day on 25 April 1917 that today’s second featured wreck was lost. The Ballarat, a P&O liner built for the Australian emigrant service, was another requisitioned ship, serving as a trooper, shuttling to and from Australia.

On her final voyage the men were being mustered for an Anzac Day service when a torpedo, or “Tinned Fish” as one survivor put it, struck her aft on her port side, tearing off her propeller. (2) She began to settle by the stern, so the order was given to abandon ship, but when the engineer reported that the vessel was capable of limping on, the men were recalled and volunteers requested to man the stokehold. As luck would have it, the Ballarat was carrying men of the Railway Operating Division, who were well used to stoking steam engines, albeit on the rails rather than on the high seas!

However, the engine was flooded, so once more all were lined up to abandon ship. Well over 1,500 people were safely evacuated, including the hospital cases: the Times reported that the two nurses and three chaplains aboard assisted the men to fasten their lifebelts. The parade itself, and the continuous boat muster drill they had practised during the voyage, could be said to have prevented this from becoming another tragedy of the Great War. The men were allowed to take photographs, including one extraordinary view of serried ranks of soldiers awaiting evacuation and during the evacuation itself, leaving behind a well-documented wreck. Efforts to save the ship continued, and she was taken in tow, only to sink 7 miles SW of the Lizard, Cornwall.

Wartime censorship meant that the loss was only officially announced on 2 May. The press and the Australian High Commission praised the orderly evacuation, and the sang-froid of the survivors who sent ‘representatives to London to get a souvenir of the event printed in the form of the last number of the Ballarat Beacon, which was being distributed when the ship was torpedoed.’ (3) And a final word: the Times took care to note that 15 of those rescued were also survivors of the ordeal at Gallipoli.

More Gallipoli news: Historic England has just listed war memorials associated with Gallipoli.

Hand-drawn black and white magazine cover depicting the Ballarat steamship at sea, flanked by two beacons, and a cartouche in contemporary lettering with the title 'The Ballarat Beacon' — Front cover of the Ballarat Beacon, Vol.1, No.1, 1917, National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn3304869

(1) “Dardanelles: Narrative of Mine-Sweeping Trawler 448, Manned by Queen Elizabeth: the landing at “Z” Beach, Gallipoli” Naval Review, Vol.IV, No. 2, 1916, pp185-197. URL: http://www.naval-review.com/issues/1910s/1916-2.pdf

(2) Memoirs of Hector Creswick, 15 Company Railway Operating Division, http://www.australiansatwar.gov.au/stories/stories_war=W1_id=103.htm

(3) The Times, No.41,468, 3 May 1917, p6

No.80 The Strange Case of the Madonna del Rosario . . .

April 17, 2015May 23, 2018 ~ Serena ~ 4 Comments

Today’s wreck holds the record, I think, for having the longest name on our database of shipwrecks around the English coast: normalised to the modern spelling as far as I can make it, she was the Madonna del Rosario Sant’Antonio di Padova e la Stella delle Mare.

Ongoing research means that we often have to substantially revise our records for documented wreck events. This usually entails adding more detail or narrowing down the area of loss to a more specific location from the initial vague reports ‘near’ or ‘off’ a particular place. The length of the name in this case gave me room for some doubt since it is not unknown for the names of ships lost in company in the same location to be run together, particularly if they were foreign, and I had wondered if this long name masked more than one wreck event. It did, but not in quite in the way that I expected!

The first we knew about this wreck was a report that the ‘Catharina . . . and Madonna del Rosario and St Antonio de Padova e la Stella delle Mare, Captain Mellin, are both lost in Bristol Channel.’ (1) I had hoped that we would be able to revise their location to somewhere more specific, but what I was completely unprepared for was to find that the specific position for the Madonna del Rosario would be on the other side of the country!

She next turns up in the press in the Ipswich Journal, which states that a ship of that name (so we are clear that there were no multitudes of vessels hiding behind the one name), a Venetian, had struck on the Shipwash on 29 December 1781, on the approaches to the Thames off Suffolk, and that the crew had escaped and landed at Aldeburgh. (2) This was the preamble to an appeal to salvors from the area to come forward to receive ‘legal salvage’, but it also warned that there was a reward of ‘Five Guineas’ (£5 5s, or £5.25) for the discovery of any person concealing salvaged goods.

This is all very specific, so why did she end up being reported in the Bristol Channel instead? The confusion probably arose because of another Venetian vessel that was indeed lost off the Bristol Channel coastline of Wales, on Friday 28 or Friday 21 December 1781:

‘Extract of a Letter from Swansea, dated Jan. 5.

“Last Friday Se’nnight in the morning (3) a large Venetian Ship, laden with Cotton, Marble, and Coral, was stranded on the Skerr-Rocks, in this County. Soon after the Accident, the Country People commenced the barbarous Practice, usual on such Occasions, of plundering the Distressed and Helpless . . .’ (4)

I haven’t yet traced the Catharina in the contemporary press, although her voyage, also from Livorno to London or Ostend, suggests that she was also more likely to have been lost in the North Sea rather than the Bristol Channel, but there is the possibility that she can indeed be identified with the ship lost off Wales. There is no record of a Catharina or of a Venetian ship indexed in the region in the Shipwreck Index of the British Isles, Vol. 5: West Coast and Wales (Larn and Larn, 2006), nor are the arrivals and departures lists in Lloyd’s List any help (although often very helpful, they are selective at best, and the distinctive name of the Madonna del Rosario was absent).

Can anyone help with either vessel? If the Catharina is distinct from the Welsh wreck and was also lost on the east coast, then it would also be great to relocate the record for this wreck and help build up a more accurate picture of the archaeological potential around the English coastline. At the moment it looks as if she may be ‘lost’ in the other sense in the Bristol Channel . . .

(1) Lloyd’s List, 4 January 1782, No.1,324

(2) Ipswich Journal, 12 and 19 January 1782, No.2,242 and 2,243, both p3

(3) Se’nnight, that is, ‘seven-night’, cf. fortnight, still in use. January 5 was a Saturday so it might mean either ‘a week [counting from] the Friday just gone’, i.e. ‘a week ago yesterday’, or ‘a week ago on Friday last week’ depending on local usage. Interestingly newspapers of this time often copied news items verbatim from other papers, and the date of loss can vary by a week or two depending on how many times it was copied, and whether or not the local editors changed the date accordingly, or how they understood ‘Friday last’!

(4) Oxford Journal, 12 January 1782, No.1,498, p3

No.79 James Eagan Layne

March 27, 2015May 23, 2018 ~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

In this week’s post, we commemorate the loss of the US Liberty Ship James Eagan Layne 70 years ago on 21 March 1945, torpedoed while bound from New Orleans, last from Barry in Wales, for Ghent with what was then termed ‘Government stores’. Translated, that meant military vehicles and other war materials destined for the liberation of Europe as the war was drawing to a close. Historic recoveries from this vessel have included numerous shell cases. (1)

The forward section of the James Eagan Layne wreck, using modern bathymetric imagery allowing a view into the ship — Forward section of the *James Eagan Layne*, by courtesy of MSDS Marine and Swathe Services. There is much scattered debris, evidence of extensive post-war salvage.

The James Eagan Layne was one of several Liberty ships and other vessels bound for Belgium in the spring of 1945, following the successful conclusion of the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945. The Allies had repulsed the German advance, or ‘bulge’ in their lines, with heavy loss of life, particularly among the US troops who bore the brunt of the fighting. Allied access to the Belgian ports was now secured, barring minefields and U-boats, resuming the communication links severed by the fall of Belgium in 1940.

The pattern of wrecks on the seabed mirrors the fate of those communication links. Ten ships, bound either to or from Belgian ports, were sunk in English waters following the declaration of war in September 1939. It was a similar figure in early 1940 prior to the fall of Belgium in May, with 11 ships sunk by mine or torpedo on the same route.

The aft section of the James Eagan Layne wreck, using modern bathymetric imagery allowing a view into the ship, and showing scattered debris — Aft section of the *James Eagan Layne*, by courtesy of MSDS Marine and Swathe Services. This image allows an insight into the box-like construction characteristic of the Liberty Ship.

Transport links with occupied Belgium were then severed and are reflected in the lack of corresponding wrecks from late 1940 to early 1945: then, as Allied ships were once more able to reach Antwerp and other ports, there was also a recurrence of wreck events. Between January and May 1945, 10 ships are known to have been sunk in English waters en route to or from Belgium: they included other Liberty Ships, the Henry B Plant and the James Harrod. The John R Park was also torpedoed the same day as the James Eagan Layne, albeit on a different route, bound from England for the United States.

For more on the James Eagan Layne, please have a look at the dedicated SHIPS (Shipwrecks and History in Plymouth Sound) and Promare Liberty 70 site.

(1) Receiver of Wreck droits.

With many thanks to MSDS Marine and Swathe Services for permission to reproduce these beautiful images.

No.78 U-8, Straits of Dover

March 20, 2015September 29, 2016 ~ Serena ~ 4 Comments

Diary of the War No.8

On 4th March 1915 the first confirmed loss of a German U-boat in English waters during the war took place with the capture of U-8 off Dover, the culmination of a hunt that began when she was spotted in the Channel by HMS Viking. Viking opened fire, forcing U-8 to submerge but not without returning fire with a torpedo which missed its target, and U-8 was lost to sight.

Black and white illustration of U-8 submarine on the surface being approached by a destroyer, the crew assembled on the conning tower appealing for help. — Postcard of a contemporary illustration of *U-8* being approached by a British destroyer. It is a work of subtle, as well as overt, propaganda, the text being complemented by the viewpoint from the side of a British destroyer, her lifeboat hanging from its davits, suggesting British humanity in coming to the rescue of an enemy crew appealing for help. By courtesy of Mark Dunkley

As the submerged U-8 continued on her way through the Straits of Dover, she became enmeshed in an anti-submarine net barrage. The requisitioned drifter Roburn spotted movement in the nets, and alerted the destroyers of the Dover patrol for assistance. The destroyer Ghurka* towed an anti-submarine sweep wire. These wires were fitted with explosive charges which detonated on contact with the target. Successful contact forced U-8 to the surface, whereupon Ghurka and Maori opened fire.

The crew were taken off and an attempt was made to tow the submarine back to Dover, but she foundered approximately one and three-quarters of a mile west of the southernmost tip of the Varne Bank, where she has now been positively identified by internal features.

The rescued crew, now firmly in British custody, were lined up at Dover on arrival. As the Daily Telegraph for 6 March 1915 (p9) had it: “The Germans were for the most part sturdily-built fellows – no doubt the pick of the German naval service mans the submarines”. The prisoners were marched through the town, escorted by the garrison of the Castle, and a crowd of local sightseers curious to see the enemy, to the Castle itself.

A view of Dover Castle on top of the hill, with the town below. — Dover Castle viewed from the High Street, Dover DP049659 © English Heritage Picture Library

The official Admiralty communiqué quoted in the paper gave away few details, stating only that U-8 had been sunk in the Channel off Dover, but the human interest aspect of the prisoners’ reception more than made up for it, as did the speculation over the intelligence value of the submarine (p8) and what it was thought to reveal about the U-boat war.

As for Roburn and Ghurka, they resumed their successful patrols off Dover, but they, too, were destined to fall victim to enemy action in the Straits of Dover. Roburn sank on 27 October 1916, after being shelled in a Channel raid by German torpedo boat destroyers. She was lost together with a Tribal class destroyer, which formed the nucleus of the Dover Patrol (Ghurka, Maori and Viking, as their names implied, were also Tribal class ships). Ghurka herself was mined on 8 February 1917 off Dungeness, and is one of those vessels whose remains are designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act.

The seabed of the Straits of Dover reveals a common heritage of sunken British and German vessels, a memorial to the warfare on the surface a century ago.

*not a misspelling: she was indeed Ghurka, rather than Gurkha.

No.77 The London wreck today

March 9, 2015March 9, 2015 ~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

2015: Telling the story of the London today

A CGI reconstruction of the wreck of a wooden vessel lying on her side with holes blown in her structure. — A CGI reconstruction of the *London* wreck on the seabed. © Touch Productions

The ordnance, so crucial to the story of the lost London, as described in the previous post, and the salvage of the vessel in the aftermath, is also the theme of her more recent story. A gun was found on the site in 1962, and further investigation of the site in 1985 concluded that its iron content was too great to indicate a 17th century vessel (because the ordnance aboard the London was believed to be predominantly brass). Archaeological investigation in 2006, before dredging for the London Gateway project began, identified two discrete sites close to one another. In 2007 two bronze cannon said to be from the site were reported to the Receiver of Wreck, suggesting a threat sufficient to trigger an assessment of the site’s national importance as a candidate for designation under the Protection of Wrecks Act, which was achieved in 2008.

Local volunteers, under the site Licensee Steve Ellis, began monitoring the site in 2010. The Thames Estuary is a challenging environment for divers and for the wreck itself, which is also under threat from natural forces: the sediment mobility in the area and the effects of climate change, in which warm-water organisms have migrated northward with the potential to impact on wooden wrecks such as the London, leading to a noticeable loss of artefacts from the site.

Steve illustrates another major challenge facing archaeologists on the site, at the edge of a busy shipping channel:

A huge container ship dwarfs the dive vessel as it passes close by. — A large container ship passes close to the dive vessel near the *London* site. © Steve Ellis

These environmental threats in turn triggered a programme of finds recovery, with a very successful season in 2014 involving a collaboration between English Heritage, Cotswold Archaeology, Licensee divers, Southend Museums, and local volunteers, who sorted the recovered finds. Over 70 items were recovered, 41 by Cotswold Archaeology and 35 by the Licensees, a time capsule of life aboard a 17th century vessel, including bottles and personal items such as clay pipes and shoes.

A largely intact black leather latchet shoe viewed from above, next to an i — A well-preserved latchet shoe recovered from the wreck of the *London*. © Steve Ellis

Dan Pascoe, one of the site archaeologists, resumes the story with an account of recent archaeological activity concentrating on the guns:

‘The excavation thus far has revealed tantalizing clues towards determining which part of the ship survives on the seabed at site 2. The discovery of an intact gun carriage with the trucks situated against the remains of a deck, suggest the survival of parts of the gundeck. Directly either side of the carriage cheeks were the associated gun tackle, furniture and even gunner’s implements. The deck and carriage are situated on the vertical rather than horizontal, identifying that the remains of this part of the ship are on its side. Full excavation and recovery of the carriage this season will hopefully reveal the side of the hull and gun port.

South of the deck line, which would be below the gundeck, the excavation has uncovered numerous cut logs of fired wood, galley tiles and bricks. In large ships, like the London, built prior to the mid-1660s, the cook room was found on a partial deck or platform within the forward part of the hold. Also found have been sections of partition planking, probably related to the internal structures of the ship, such has cabins and storerooms. The litter of hundreds of musket and pistol shot points to a possible location near the gunner’s storeroom. The present thinking is that site 2 is part of the bow from at least the gundeck down to hold, which includes the remains of a partial deck or platform. The excavation continues this spring and will hopefully be able to confirm the team’s initial thoughts and theories.’

The remains of a wooden gun carriage truck in poor visibility in the Thames — Gun carriage truck *in situ* in the Thames, which also illustrates the challenges of working in limited visibility. © Steve Ellis

Steve Ellis, the site’s Licensee, says:

‘It has been a fantastic experience working on such a fascinating wreck site, especially the discoveries we have come across to help us all understand more about life aboard a 17th century British naval ship. This would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the full support that we had from English Heritage, seeing that we are only amateur archaeologists.’

A photographic exhibition documenting the finds opens later this month at the Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, Essex; underwater investigations are due to resume in summer 2015 and can be followed via the Twitter hashtag #LondonWreck1665.

With many thanks to Dan and Steve, who have contributed so much to this post.

No. 76: The London Blows Up, 7 March 1665

March 6, 2015 ~ Serena ~ 1 Comment

To commemorate the 350th anniversary of the loss of the warship London in the Thames Estuary on 7 March 1665, I would like to take a look at the London in 1665 and in 2015, in a two-part blog. In this first part we look at the story of the wreck event in the words of those who were there at the time, and in the next part on Monday we will hear from those working on the London today.

1665

Pen and ink ship portrait of the hull of the London in broadside view, with flag at her stern. — The *London*, circa 1660, Willem van de Velde, © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Van de Velde was a Dutch marine artist and specialist in ship portraits, and played a role in documenting the battles of the Anglo-Dutch wars.

The London was a stalwart of the Commonwealth Navy, built in 1656 under Cromwell, but had also been part of the fleet accompanying Charles II on his return from exile in the Netherlands in 1660. On 7th March 1665, the London was bound from Chatham Dockyard to the Hope Reach in the Thames, a key location at a tense time, since war had just been declared between Charles II’s England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands on the 4th. The national mood was sombre, and it was also a cold day: thirty miles north, Ralph Josselin, vicar of Earls Colne in Essex, noted that his water pump had frozen that day. (1) Undoubtedly what happened next would have made headlines had there been such a thing as newspapers in England, but the first edition of the London Gazette would not come out until 7th November 1665. However, as Josselin’s journal shows, this was a time of assiduous diary-writing and administrative record-keeping, which allows us a window into the past.

Between Chatham and the Hope Reach lies the Nore: as so often, a safe deep-water anchorage, which was, and remained, a traditional assembly point for battle fleets and convoys up to and including the Second World War, lay next to a hazard, the notorious Nore sandbank. Yet it was not the Nore that was to claim the London.

A letter written on the 8th to Sir Joseph Williamson reported: ‘The brave ship London has blown up near the Hope’, leaving behind only her hull and stern. (2) On the same day Samuel Pepys, in his capacity as Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, provides us with more detail on the ‘sad newes of the London‘ in his personal diary: ‘a little a’this side the buoy of the Nower [that is, on the London side of the buoy, not the seaward side], she suddenly blew up.’ He tells us that only 24 persons were saved out of a complement of over 300, ‘the ship breaking all in pieces, with 80 pieces of brass ordinance.’ (3)

Portrait of Samuel Pepys in old age, wearing a wig and facing right against a dark background, in a gold frame. — Samuel Pepys, 1689, by Godfrey Kneller. © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Pepys was one of the key figures of the 17th century Navy and a very capable administrator. He had been asked to distribute the Articles of War to the fleet in the Hope just a few days previously.

Another letter, this time to Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, passes on coffee-house gossip, blaming the easy availability of gunpowder ’20s a barrel cheaper than in London’ and therefore by implication suspect in provenance and quality. (4) On the 9th, John Evelyn, the other famous diarist of the period, ‘went to receive the poor creatures that were saved out of the London frigate, blown up by accident, with above 200 men,’ for he had been appointed one of the Commissioners for sick and wounded seamen by Charles II. (5) The Dutch ambassador, Michiel van Gogh, had more specific intelligence on numbers than Pepys, or perhaps more details were known by the time of his letter on 10th March: ‘The London, prepared for Vice-Admiral Lawson, was blown up while sailing up the river, and only 19 out of the crew of 351 saved.’ (6)

On the 11th Pepys recorded the results of an inspection of the wreck by Sir William Batten and Sir John Mennes: ‘out of which they say, the guns may be got, but the hull of her will be wholly lost’. (7) Those guns continued to be the focus of administrative attention for a good 30 years afterwards: recoveries made in 1679 caused some wrangling that surfaced in 1694-5, as the salvor attempted to leverage payment of a debt. (8)

What happened next? Part 2 on Monday will bring the story of the London up to date.