Dan Snow's History Hit - Discovered! A Royal Navy Shipwreck

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

The wreck of one of the most famous ships of the 17th century - which sank 340 years ago while carrying the future King of England James Stuart - has been discovered off the coast of Norfolk in the UK, it can be revealed today.Since running aground on a sandbank on May 6, 1682, the wreck of the warship The Gloucester has lain half-buried on the seabed, its exact whereabouts unknown until brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, with their friend James Little, found it after a four-year search. They join Dan on today's podcast along with maritime historian Professor Claire Jowitt to share the exciting news of their discovery and what it and the artefacts found still on board tell us about a time of great political and religious tension.Produced by Mariana Des ForgesMixed and Mastered by Dougal PatmorePhoto credit: Norfolk Historic ShipwrecksIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi buddy, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We've got some breaking news here. We finally can talk about this story. I've been sitting on it for years. I first met with these two wonderful divers ages ago now. I mean, it must be six years or so ago. And they told me about a remarkable discovery they've made. There's been a lot of work going on behind the scenes. I've been lucky enough to play a tiny part in it. It's been very, very exciting. And today the big announcement is taking place. A wonderful 17th century shipwreck has been found off the east coast of England. Not just any old ship, a Royal Navy vessel carrying the heir to the throne himself, James Stuart, the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral, naval veteran, and soon to be briefly King James II of England and Scotland.

This is HMS Gloucester. It was a 50-gun ship of the line, which on the morning of the 6th of May 1682 smashed into a sandbank off the Norfolk coast. Samuel Pepys, the great diarist, the great naval administrator, was watching the accident from a neighbouring ship and helped to pull survivors out of the water, including the heir to the throne. This ship has been found by a pair of brothers, Julian and Lincoln Barnwell.

They represent that great British tradition of eccentric, passionate amateurs getting out there and tirelessly searching and researching and digging into things and then being rewarded with great success. It's terrific news that they have found this ship. And today is a big moment in having that discovery recognised. And it's a springboard for future excavation research and interpretation. They're joining me on this podcast. The two brothers, the legends themselves are on the podcast.

I'm also being joined by Professor Claire Jarrett. She's a maritime history expert from the University of East Anglia School of History. And all three of them are going to talk me through this great discovery. It's great to be doing shipwrecks again after the endurance. This is the place you want to come. This is your one-stop shop for all things subsea, maritime archaeology. If you wish to go back and listen to those podcasts on the endurance and learn more about subsea operations listen to marine archaeologists the best place to do that is at history hit tv it's our history channel audio and video on there we've got lots of documentaries about the shakhtan expedition as well you just head over to history hit tv if you follow the link in the notes of this podcast it'll take you there straight away and you get two weeks free of your sign up day there's a very small subscription

less than the price of a pint of beer every month and that supports our team as we go out and try and make the world's best history audio video and much more besides so go and check out history at tv but in the meantime here are the very brilliant barnwell brothers and professor claire jower enjoy great to see you everybody and congratulations. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Dan. Great to be here. Hi, Dan. Thank you. I'm really pleased to be here. Well, first of all, it seems like a long time ago that we met. How long ago did we meet? How long has this project been going on for you guys?

Did we not meet in 2018, I believe? Something like 2017, 2018, would you believe? But we started originally in 2003, looking for the Gloucester, and spent four years in the North Sea, about 4,000 nautical miles, before we found her in June 2007. And we should say, I mean, you're not on some gigantic,

specialised subsea vessel there. I mean, what is searching for you to comprise of? We purchased a 40-foot long, what we call kind of work boat. So it's a fiberglass boat, more built for offshore than the typical kind of ribs. We set it up for survey work with a magnetometer and all the bits of kit you need with the vision and the dream to find the Gloucester. All right, let's go back to the beginning. You're both licensed divers.

You love history and you've lived in Norfolk all your life. Gloucester. All right, let's go back to the beginning. You're both licensed divers, you love history, and you've lived in Norfolk all your life. What about the story of the Gloucester? Is that something you grew up with, you're aware of? We grew up diving in the Norfolk Roads originally with our dad who got us into diving, and then it was World War I, World War II shipwrecks, which we've been doing for decades, there's thousands off our coast. But we really want to do something different. You're quite right, we right we were drawn to history we had no knowledge of the Gloucester until Lincoln started looking at in Richard Larnes volume the British Isles of shipwrecks and he was paging through the book one evening weren't you? Yes so as you do you're looking through the shipwreck books and

I thought well let's have a look at some old ones flicking backwards and nearly got to the oldest date possible and just saw the 1682 Gloucester and the wonderful word cannon which I have to say was my main interest other than the history at the time because we just didn't know about history so I picked the phone up spoke to brother to see if he'd be up for going further around the field and normal and look for an older wreck. And funny enough, he was a big yes. I expect you both came to have moments where you regretted that optimism, that conversation. But Professor Clare, tell me about the Gloucester. Let's go back into history. We talked about Canon, we talked about going back in the record there. When are we talking about and what kind of ship was she?

It's a third-rate speaker class built as part of one of the Cromwellian building programs in the 1650s, launched in 1654. The ship has an illustrious and varied career, takes part in Cromwell's Western design in the 1650s in the Caribbean, and then in various naval battles, including the Battle of Sol Bay. It's a ship that needs refitting in the 1670s. It's largely based in Portsmouth being refitted. This is a period of financial difficulty in the Navy. So getting the appropriate tools, the appropriate materials to refit an overextended navy takes a lot of

logistics and a lot of money. And the Gloucester, by the late 1670s, has got the money and the wherewithal to be being refitted. So by 1682, it's largely a new ship. It's deployed because it's ready to take James to Scotland, not for any particular political reason, but the ship has got the appropriate crew, it's got the appropriate victuals on it and ready to go. And we should say, James, Duke of York, he was the brother of Charles II, who had many, many, many children, but no legitimate ones, so he was the heir to the II who had many many many children but no legitimate one so he

was the heir to the throne. That's quite right in 1682 he was newly confident in his position as heir to the throne in the late 1670s after the popish plot in particular and from 1673, the knowledge that he was a Catholic, he was unpopular. And the Whig party, in particular, had tried to secure the succession for a Protestant. And Dan, as you say, Charles has numerous children, but none of them are legitimate. But the Duke of Monmouth is often seen as the rival heir to the throne. There's old Jemmy and there's young Jemmy and the Whigs really favour the Duke of Monmouth, the natural child of Charles II. So this is a moment that could have changed history

without various battles and revolutions that came at the end of the 17th century because what happens on this journey taught me through the journey from Portsmouth up to the north via the the lovely coast of East Anglia. Of course so the Gloucester leaves Portsmouth it rendezvous off Margate Road with James and his entourage who have traveled down by barge and then by yacht to meet the Gloucester. This is an enormous amount of baggage. It takes hours to transfer the Duke and his friends' baggage. And then the ship sails off heading north. By the 5th of May, it's clear that there is an argument on board over how to navigate the treacherous North Norfolk sandbanks with the pilot, the person charged with that navigational

job, arguing to take the Colliers route, hugging the coast, but that would take a bit longer. The naval officers are suggesting the deep sea route, but again, that would take a bit longer. James knows these waters well, having fought in the Battle of Sol Bay and other battles off the East Anglian coast. And he favours the middle path. And it's the middle path that they follow. It's clearly James is enjoying himself at this moment in history. As I said before, he's newly confident in his position. And there's a lot of wine on board and a lot of partying going on. Charles is old and ageing and the court is starting to gravitate towards James. So they're clearly carousing. Everybody goes to bed and then disaster strikes at 5.30 in the morning on the 6th of May, just after first light.

It's strange to be living on the Channel where if you're 45 kilometres off the coast, you're reasonably confident you're in deep water. But it's very different around there, isn't it, lads? There's lots of navigational hazards. Very much. Our coast is scattered with sandbanks, which makes it very interesting from diving, from that point of view. But unfortunately unfortunately what happened on this particular day they struck one of the very few places which was shallow enough for them to hit the bottom and then they bounced over the sandbank and tried to save her within 45 minutes the Gloucester sank so it's a very from a diving point of view it's a very tight compact site there's no debris field so we're only looking like 50 metres in length.

Also, the whip's only about 30 metres. So really compact dive site. And I think it's the speed at which the Gloucester sinks that really exacerbates the significance of the tragedy. If there had been several hours for them to evacuate, that would have meant that less lives would have been lost. But by the same token, the Gloucester is accompanied by a number of yachts, by a number of other vessels who are able to put out lifeboats. So all those in the water, a large number of people very sadly die that morning. But also there's quite a number that are pulled out of the water by those lifeboats and i remember when i met with you lads and we talked about this first of all lots of toffs on board

aren't there it was like a sort of traveling shadow court wasn't it including the future duke of marlborough but all sorts of it's a bit like a who's who of late stewart england and scotland very much and with claire's help what we've been finding the personal items we've been doing lots of research and that's one of the most rewarding things about diving is actually not only have you got a wonderful artifact but what's behind it who owned it what's the story and Claire and her team have identified one of the bottles it's got a special seal on which is linked to Colonel Legg and it turns out through Claire and Ben's work Colonel Legg has got relatives related to Washington so we've got a connection to George Washington.

And that seal's got the stars and the stripes on the bottle, which is just magnificent. Well, speaking of objects, when we last talked, there was this remarkable moment where James Stewart, the heir to the throne, leaps back on board, tries to go and save something back on board. Tell me about that story and how you found that in the sources. One of the big charges laid against James is that there was avoidable delay in him abandoning ship and that less people would have died if he had abandoned ship earlier. And there's a lot of fuss about taking off his

strong box, which is believed to have contained his memoirs, because he was a man that was very concerned about his reputation and how he was going to be seen by posterity. And that also, to get it onto the boat, took a significant amount of time and a significant amount of effort. And of course, in this period in history, nobody else can abandon ship until the most noble of the passengers has left. So that again, exacerbates the number of people that are left on board. You listened to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about the wreck of the Gloucester, which has been found. More coming up. which has been found. More coming up. but most definitely also the Tudors. research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings

and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So, gents, you're out looking for the Gloucester. On a nice day, I imagine it's all right, but you mentioned it's a rib, so you're exposed to the elements. You're financing this yourself, you're burning a lot of fuel. I mean, what was it like searching and are we talking about primarily sonar tell me about the process so we would um often leave lowest off in the morning in the dark travel for four and a half five hours to get to the site this was in our larger boat we'd reach the site the weather as

you know could just change you know within those hours. So often we'd be up against the elements, but we still would set our equipment up. And the key to the discovery was the magnetometer, an underwater kind of metal detector, which you tow behind a boat. It's what we call the fish, connected to a laptop, and that would pick up anything metallic on the seabed. Obviously, if you have a large reading the larger

the shipwreck, small reading the smaller and on this particular day we had the perfect size magnetometer reading and we didn't get many of them and it was unusual to have it and you're just sort of ready to dive as soon as you get that kind of mark. So you then were given a position with the software where you then take the boat back to and you put the anchor over basically and get the kit on as soon as possible and often waiting for the tide for the slack water. And normally, Lincoln being the better helmsman

would be up top. He'd be in control of our survey boat and I'd be the one to go diving. And as it happens, I had a hernia. I had stitches in my groin. I got all my twin tanks on ready to go stood up and I could feel a tear and I said Link I'm sorry I can't go in so he got to borrow all my diving gear and find the Gloucester so I lost out on that it's just uncanny really. I seem to remember him screaming actually uh Link and I can't go in but

anyway yeah bless him he was always the diver and on the day we found her you know I had an opportunity to borrow his kit. I was honestly thinking, should we call it a day? Because it was a messy day. The boat was really tipping. I didn't really want to leave the boat in anyone else's hands. But Julian was more capable of doing that. So we took the opportunity, kit on, over the side, beautifully quiet,

lovely, tranquil moment where the wind's gone green water and um yeah you know head down um let's go on the job done the descent and suddenly saw some large shadows appear so i knew we were on wreckage and three four meters later i'm kneeling on the seabed surrounded by cannons and faced with this most incredible sight so the cannons are. It's the metal in the cannons that were the indicators. Yes, very much. Just iron, it just picks up iron. And as someone who's recently been involved in a bit of a wreck find,

there's an amazing window, isn't there, just from the second of discovery until the rest of the world knows, when you feel like you are in possession of a very, very exciting secret. There's a rare moment in your life, isn't it, where you just think, no one else knows about this find. And the nice thing from us down is we had our dad with

us you know who got us into diving in the first place he was on board on the day and our great friend james little so the group of us were just like wow this is so special so unique so obviously it felt like the gloucester what did you have to do to check it unfortunately unlike the endurance you didn't have a nice big stern sticking out the seabed with the brass lettering still on how did you go about um well how do you take it from there well there was another wreck in the area um potential which this could have been that was the Kent so we came away that day not knowing for sure it it was a Gloucester. It must have been one or the other. So we were obviously really excited about the find.

So then was the mission of identification, which did take some years because you need to be 100% sure, obviously. We had a few clues, but not enough. 2012, we were incredibly lucky and fortunate to find the ship's bell. On the ship's bell, the ship's bell we had the um date 1681 she sank in 82 the kent was um 1672 1672 so eliminated the kent for us and um we had the smoking gun and to find the bell the heart of the ship is just fantastic thing to do and it's sort of every diver's dream again and that was our smoking gum. And it's not all sitting on the seabed presumably something like the Mary

Rose was nearly every single bit was under what we'd call the seabed under the mud in that case was it a matter of moving sand out the way what does this excavation look like for you guys? So at the moment we've just been monitoring the site, surveying the site and just making decisions whether to rescue at risk surface elements so there's been no deep intrusive trench work and that's one of the main reasons for going public now is we need to do lots of fundraising moving forward. We've got a great maritime archaeological trust, Gary Monber and his team have been out and done some photogrammetry. They're going to come back this season and do some more work and the next stage is to put a management plan to get signed off by the mod and also i'd like to say we've got um general lord dannett as our chair in waiting because the idea is to get

this find this discovery into a charitable trust so we can then go out and start fundraising so there's many seasons worth of work to go so we've only just done the tip of the iceberg so it's great to hear gary mumber's involved He and I have worked together loads. He's been on this podcast. But talk to me about the fires. You've mentioned this amazing thing, this bottle with a glass seal, the crest of the leg family, did you say, and their ancestors of George Washington? That's quite right. New technology at this point is the use of glass seals on bottles, and gentlemen of distinction want to get their coat of arms or their initials on their bottles. And one of the most fantastic finds is this bottle with Legg's family's coat of arms. And as Julian said, Legg's grandmother is Elizabeth Washington,

and through that there is a direct link to the Washington family. But there are a number of bottles with these seals on them, some just with initials, some with other coats of arms. So the Coventry family, we've identified as well, had a bottle on board. And obviously it's fantastic to start to think about actually what they were drinking. The Frenchified court at this point favoured claret. So there's been ongoing work to try and identify the wine in these bottles. And claret is certainly present and potentially other wines too. So you can really tell an awful lot about the social life of these individuals on board

as they are sharing their wine at their party, really. Dan, we've got about 30 bottles still, which are our corked and they've got air in them and you can hear the glug, so you've got uncontaminated wine and there's a whole journey of exploration to research on this wine so that's the wonderful thing about these recoveries they lead you on to other stories so great opportunity to analyze 340 year old air i'm very excited this day has finally dawned and we can talk about it we've been sitting on this for years why has it taken so long to be able to get this point now where we can speak out and tell the world it's very good point and you know the identification took a long time but it's also working with the various government departments you know there's

lots of reassurance required from them that we've got the best intentions and they gave us a pretty tight criteria to go off and get the right team around us and i'm really pleased you know we've got the university of east anglia we've got the University of East Anglia, we've got the Norfolk Museum Service, we're working closely with the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth. And of course, we've got Gary Momber and his team. And then finally, we've got a charity in place, a shadow charity waiting to happen

with General Lord Dannett. And he's got some fantastic trustees all waiting to take this to the next level. So we've got an exhibition coming up in 2023 at the Norwich Castle. And that will show our finds and the key people on there but also we mustn't forget you know we had the sailors there and we want to tell their story as well so that will be our launch platform for fundraising and telling everybody as well as shows like this look what can be done and look at what's out there but

ultimately we're really keen to do this for Norfolk and the nation but we really want to try and make this a significant collection to be held in Norfolk for the future. And the exhibition focuses on two areas in particular so the history of the Gloucester so the ship is important and the history of the wreck but also Julian and Lincoln as finders and the kinds of conservation and archaeology and the scientific work that is needed and the possibilities that this unique discovery might have for revolutionising understanding of the 17th century navy. Exactly prof, I mean do you think this is up there, dare we mention the old Mary Rose comparison, how important do you think this could be? People keep asking us about the Mary Rose comparison, It's a valid one, of course it is.

This is a 17th century ship. The royal connection makes it very, very significant. But the Mary Rose, I think, has underlined Britain's history as an island nation and how important that is to all our people. And I hope that the discovery of the Gloucester will do that for the 17th century. I think our maritime history, our maritime heritage is a neglected area in this country and this really does offer a fantastic opportunity inspired by the work of the Mary Rose. Well, good luck, all of you. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. I am looking forward, gents, to getting out with you,

a little tank on the back and having a little swim. Yeah, we're looking forward to it as well, Dan. Great to see you. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you all very much indeed. All right, cheers, Jack. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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