Dan Snow's History Hit - The Royal Navy's Darkest Night & The Origins of Longitude

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

A mix of treacherous seas, navigation errors, and historical intrigue led to one of the Royal Navy's darkest nights. Dan travels to the Scilly Isles to tell the tragic tale of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and the 1707 naval disaster off the Isles of Scilly that caused a staggering loss of over 2000 men. Dan ventures out to the place where the ship went down to see this dangerous stretch of sea for himself. He discovers how this catastrophe spurred advancements in navigation and the quest to solve the problem of longitude.Written by Dan Snow, produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.

Oh dreadful accident, be silent fame, and tell us not how, nor by what chance it came. The shrieks and doleful cries forbear to name. A dismal fog obscured the dangerous coast, and on the rocks the association tossed where shovel and 800 souls were lost. That was a poem published in 1707 in the aftermath of one of the most dreadful disasters in Royal Navy history. A disaster caused not by the cannon of the enemy but by nature, by gales and reefs and rocks and

i'm here where it happened i'm here to the south of the isles of scilly and probably the most treacherous stretch of water on planet earth a 10 square mile box of sea riddled with rocks with reefs with shoals you can hear the waves breaking on some of them now. We've anchored just 20 metres or so off the western rocks. This is where the ship struck. I've got a seal just coming up to say hello here. So close I could almost pat him on the nose. And I am now really only metres away from where HMS Association mentioned in that poem,

founded, lost with all hands. It was one terrible night in 1707. Four warships were lost within seconds. Others escaped by the skin of their teeth. Some hit the rocks, were damaged and limped into port. And on that night, on the 22nd of October, 1707, the Royal Navy lost more sailors in a flash than they would at the Battle of Trafalgar.

This is the story of that terrible night. One particular person's name has become synonymous with that catastrophe, Sir Cloudsley Shovel, become synonymous with that catastrophe. Sir Cloudsley Shovel, one of Britain's first modern naval heroes. He was, in his own day, possibly as famous as Nelson was, a century later. What about Cloudsley? Where did he come from? Well, very like Nelson, he was born into a prosperous, certainly not wealthy family, near the coast in North Norfolk, a few miles away from where Nelson would spend his childhood. Like Nelson, he used family connection to get his first appointment at sea. He went as a boy, really, and he climbed the ranks very successfully until he was commanding English fleets in great battles with the French and other nations. Like Nelson, he would pay the

ultimate price, but he would not fall in battle. It was far bloodier than that. When Cloudsley's shovel and his men perished in the seas off Scilly, it was a worse toll than many British naval defeats. He had been a cabin boy at 13. We hear that he was likable. He rose quickly up through the ranks. He was made a midshipman a few years later, so he's on the path now to becoming an officer, perhaps one day an admiral. He transferred to the Duke of York's ship. That's Charles II's younger brother,

a man who had become James II. And he fought in engagements against the Dutch. He fought at the Battle of Sol Bay. At that battle, the ship's captain was killed. It was smashed in little more than a floating hulk, and James, the admiral, had to move his flag to command from a more seaworthy vessel. It sounded like a very, very traumatic apprenticeship. In the years that followed, he really made a name for himself in North Africa, attacking what we refer to as the pirate strongholds, which were effectively independent places in what is now Algeria and Tunisia that traded, but also preyed on European

ships and even some coasts carrying off slaves from Southern Europe and even as far north as Britain on some occasions. His actions in subduing these piratical nations earned him a reward from the king. By age 27, in 1677, he was a captain. And again, he found he was in North Africa a lot. One of the strange quirks of English and British history is that one of England's first colonies was actually at Tangier, England's first colonies was actually at Tangier in what is now Morocco. This little piece of African empire had arrived with Charles II's Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza. As you can imagine, the Moroccans fought constantly to get this back from the English, and it was a very difficult base to hold on to. It was a long logistical chain stretching all the way back to

England where the Moroccans were right next door and could launch attacks whenever suited them. The English hoped that Tangier would perform the role that would eventually be played by Gibraltar a generation later, which is sort of a toehold at the mouth of the Mediterranean, allowing them to have a safe haven to repair ships, to replenish, whilst engaging in trade and war in the Mediterranean, the valuable Mediterranean basin. But Tangier, in fact, became an ulcer for the English. A few hundred men struggling against illness and with huge supply issues constantly found themselves under attack. The port itself wasn't really good enough, so it wasn't even safe in all weather, so it wasn't much of a safe haven.

And it was a huge drain on resources. In fact, the people that benefited most were courtiers and senior officials in London who creamed off lots of the money which was supposed to be heading towards it to improve its port, to improve its defences. In the 1680s, it was finally evacuated and the Moroccans took over. But Shovel had shown dash and daring in the many campaigns to hold on to Tangier. He was getting more and more senior. A big moment came for him in a battle I've always been fascinated by. It's the Battle of Bantry Bay in Ireland. This was where British and French ships clashed in May 1689. Now in late 1688, James II had fled England after it was invaded by his son-in-law

and his nephew, William of Orange, who became William III. James and his supporters remained absolutely determined to reverse that so-called Glorious Revolution, take back the throne. But rather than invade England direct, what they thought they'd do is exploit Irish Catholic opposition to what was a very Protestant revolution in England. So Irish Catholics had risen up in support of the deposed James, and it was the start of a particularly brutal war in Ireland. People may recognise one of its most famous battles, King William's victory, his Protestant army's victory at the Battle of the Boyne, but logistics was going to be key to this. The Royal Navy worked to transport troops

and supplies across to Irish Protestants holding out in a few strongholds, and the French decided that they would support the Irish Catholic rebels. And that's why in May 1689, just a few months after James was deposed, a few months after the start of this Irish rebellion, that you have a French fleet in Bantry Bay unloading, disembarking supplies for these Irish Catholics. Bantry Bay wasn't a hugely important battle, not the size. The French had managed to unload their supplies and they did inflict some damage on the English fleet that tried to interdict them, but nothing was terminal. Why I'm fascinated by it is because actually it's the first clash between the English and the French in that long 1689, right the way through to the

Battle of Waterloo in 1815, what some historians call the second hundred years war. This was a series of wars starting right here, ending up with Wellington's victory at Waterloo, indeed his occupation of Paris and Napoleon being transported to St Helena. And Clowsley Shovel was there right at the start. He was commanding that fleet at Bantry Bay. Little did he know the shots fired that day were the first of over a century of titanic warfare that would stretch right across the globe with enormous consequences. Clousey Shovel was knighted, he became Sir Clousey, and he continued to prowl the waters between England and Ireland. He escorted William III across when William invaded Ireland to deal

with his father-in-law, to deal with his Irish subjects, and that would lead to the Battle of the Boyne, William's victory there. In 1690, Chovell was promoted to Admiral. He raised his flag on the Royal William and he continued to command in the Irish Sea. He helped with the capture of Waterford, so conducting amphibious operations and support operations to pacify Ireland. Rather usefully for his career, while he was doing that, he missed a very inauspicious event, a very rare event, a crushing French naval victory. They'd smashed the English at the Battle of Beachy Head in the summer of 1690, but shovel had not been present, so his reputation remained intact. You won't be surprised to learn, of course, that the British, with their Dutch allies, roared back in 1692, and they decisively

defeated the French in turn at a very strung-out battle in and around Cherbourg, which ended the French ambition to control the Channel and certainly closed the door on any French invasion plans. It's got the not-particularly-mem memorable name of the Barfleur-la-Hogue. It was fought in early June 1692. Winston Churchill later called this the Trafalgar of the 17th century. Shovel led his squadron, smashed them through the French line. He was wounded in the thigh and he was promoted again. He emerged a hero.

Shovel returned to the Mediterranean and won a huge success, more than making up for the loss of Tangier. He helped capture Gibraltar in 1704. He provided the naval component, and when the French sailed down the coast, he intercepted them at Malaga, and he defeated them and sent them heading back north. Gibraltar would remain British, well, until today. He was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet in 1705, highest rank you can get to as a non-royal, and he became an MP as well. He was at the very pinnacle of his career. His reputation was enormous. He commanded the British fleet in the Mediterranean. He captured Barcelona. He actually laid siege to Toulon, which was the French fleet's headquarters

on the Mediterranean coast. And he didn't capture itoulon, which was the French fleet's headquarters on the Mediterranean coast. And he didn't capture it, but he did prompt the French to sink their entire fleet. The poor old French, I'm often very cruel about this, but the poor French had to sink their fleet in Toulon in 1707, in 1793, and in 1942. Dispiriting, dispiriting. With that success at Toulon,

Chauvel was ordered to head home. He had 15 ships of the line, he had smaller vessels, and it was late September, so quite late in the season, when Shovel's 21 ships left Gibraltar, heading north. He was aboard HMS Association, his own flagship. As they headed out into the Atlantic, they hit terrible autumnal gales. To help me tell the next part of the story, the story of that terrible night in 1707, I have come to the Silly Isles. I'm walking through the beautiful streets of Hew Town in St Mary's now.

It's a sunny day. There's just a little tickle of sea breeze. I'm walking down to the port, which I can already see is very low tide. Huge tidal ranges here. There's lots of the dinghies and boats sitting on the sandy bottom. I'm walking down to the harbour now, past the Sandpiper, a provision merchant, a pub called The Mermaid. You can buy all your beach accoutrements here.

And the town is full of old Nauticalia bits of shipwrecks that have been collected by the predecessors of these islanders and incorporated into the facades of buildings or windows and i'm just heading down to the port now the harbour has a long breakwater stretching out it's very low tide so lots of the dinghies lots of the boats are resting on the sandy bottom but i think there's just enough water for us to get out on our beautiful little 18th century sailing boat. It's the Bounty's End. It's owned by Conrad Humphreys. He's one of the world's great sailors.

He's done the Vendée Globe single-handed around the world. He captained the remarkable Channel 4 TV reconstruction of Captain Bly's journey across the Pacific, sailing in Bounty's End for thousands of miles. He really is one of the best of the best. He's stood there looking at the noonday sun on a pitching deck, hoping to take a reading and calculate his latitude and longitude in the traditional way. So he is going to take me out to the site of this tragedy.

You listen to Dan Snow's history. There's more coming up. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings.

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I'm just coming down the steps now and there on the deck Conrad Humphreys the man the legend how you doing bud I'm doing great mate how you doing good to see you can I come aboard come yeah it's all yours jump them down and then we're gonna head out to the western rocks and we're gonna head far as far west as we can maybe we'll see Bishop Rock all right well i have been on once before so you have told me in the past but remind me this is the halyard of the mainsail isn't it i'll give that a pull yeah yeah you can just pull that one up so conrad we've chosen a strangely calm day to come out to one of the most fearsome stretches of water on the planet haven't't we? Yeah, we certainly have. But probably just as well because we've had an absolute bird's eye view of some of the most dangerous rocks in the British Isles. You've sailed all over the world. You've literally sailed around the world.

You've sailed across the Pacific in this reconstructed 18th century boat. I mean, how does this 10 square miles of ocean compare to many places you've been? I'd say it's really similar to the Swedish archipelago and all the rocks around between Åland and Finland they're really remote, they're jagged there's lots of wildlife around them but of course we're seeing it in the luxury of a calm day whereas normally western approaches here some of the most fearsome storms lashing this place in fact you probably don't get as close

a view as we've had and also this is a really strategic point of the world map because any traffic coming from the americas or from the mediter the South Atlantic into the great ports of Northwest Europe it's got to come past here. It's got to come past here and it almost provides a sort of protection to the UK coast you know whether it's from the north from the west or even from the south because coming into the channel is still quite a challenge. So strategically, really important set of rocks. But too easy to hit. But yeah, too easy to hit. And there's been hundreds, if not thousands of wrecks on Sydney,

which is testament to how challenging it is to sail around here. Today we've got GPS, we've got super accurate charts. Why was it just so difficult to know where you were in 1707? Why was it so difficult to know where you were in 1707? Well, largely because we hadn't really figured out longitude. The instruments and the tools that they were using to navigate with were basic. And the theories behind navigation were still really only just being discovered. So you could go along and measure the depths with soundings these boats were quite slow but they're also quite cumbersome to sail in all the directions that you need to to

get out of situations like this i mean these rocks where if you find yourself in amongst them it's quite difficult to sort of navigate drop the sails you know we can't just switch on an engine and motor out to safety so you know they would have been really nervous about any sort of rendezvous with an island or a headland that's where the dangers are at open ocean open sea no real dangers as soon as you're within five ten miles of the land that's when the dangers occur you dead dead reckoned yourself across the Pacific for this Channel 4 show when you reconstructed Bly's epic open boat journey. What's dead reckoning mean? Dead reckoning is really you've got to have a good measure of your speed

through the water and you've got to have a very good compass. And you're really setting yourself up to follow that compass course, taking regular measurements of your speed, and simply that's it. It's an equation of distance, speed and time, and you're trying to work out how far you've covered over that length of time. The problem is you don't know about things like ocean currents and you can't accurately gauge how, when the wind's pushing you forward, yes, but it can push you in a kind of vector,

a slightly sideways direction as well, right? So that dead reckoning can let you down. Exactly that. And of course, in the open ocean, less tide, less drift from these sorts of things. But as soon as you are trying to navigate back into the British Isles, you've got some of the strongest tides in the world here. I mean, that's the terror of it. It is.

And for the captains of these vessels, you know, they were, navigation was really the most important thing for them. And they felt almost foolish if they ran their boat. I mean, I think at times, you know, they faced court marshals for losing their ship. But so easy to make a mistake. And I think in some ways we've judged them quite harshly because they were incredible mariners to get these boats,

many of them, safely around the world. I completely agree. I think we should not be saying how stupid they were. We should be saying how intelligent they were. And the fact that there was this tragedy shows how difficult the challenge was absolutely the one thing i learned from sailing this little boat is that in the modern world you can take quite a lot of risk whereas back then you really can't take risk but of course for them the risks were infinitely greater because they didn't really know where they were and navigation has evolved now to not asking the question of where are we?

It's now very much where do we want to be? We use the sophistication of satellite technology to avoid storms, to put ourselves in much easier circumstances. And of course, for those poor souls, they didn't have the weather models. They had to take what was coming towards them difficult to maneuver and the boats were slow so they couldn't really outrun some of these conditions so they had to be incredibly resourceful so you dead reckoned your way across the pacific in this little boat that we're on now big success or did you commit

any absolute howlers and arrive from the wrong island by mistake? So we had a few issues, a few challenges. There was one point as we were going up through Fiji, the weather was terrible, impossible to get any sun sites and we were dead reckoning between the islands. Now the great thing about some of the South Pacific atolls is they're really high.

They're 1,400, 1,500 metres high. islands now the great thing about some of the south pacific atolls is they're really high they're 14 1500 meters high so you can see these islands from 70 80 miles away on a good day and actually that form of navigation where you head to the island you work out where you are we had the luxury of charts of course bligh didn't have charts he did it all from memory from previous voyage with cook and as we're navigating up between these fijian islands i was convinced that we'd got through this gap and we were in bligh water and actually as it turned out we weren't quite through the gap and we found ourselves 100 yards from a breaking reef which was terrifying And that's exactly what the ships that survived that fateful night in October 1707,

they describe running along the edge of the breakers, just able to steer a course to the wind that they could almost reach out and touch the rocks on their leeward side. Terrifying. And we've arrived at the Western Rocks. We've been through shoal strewn waters past jagged rocks sticking up it's low tide now so we can see quite a lot of them above the surface at high tide most of these are covered so sailors had even less of an inkling what lay just beneath the water and unlike Sir Cloudley Shovel's fleet we've had fantastic weather very strange weather given that

the usual reputation this isles are silly it's flat calm we've got great visibility whereas when they approached in October the weather was poor on most days it impossible to take the readings they needed to try and calculate their latitude how far north or south they were there was one thing they could do and that is drop a rope over the edge with lead on the bottom some wax attached to that and a lead line it was called and you just have to see how far it is before you hit the bottom out in the atlantic you can't hit the bottom it's too deep but when you enter the channel it's you say you come into the soundings it means when you take those soundings when you enter the channel, you say you come into the soundings. It means when you take those soundings, when you take those measurements of the depth, you can actually hit the seabed.

And so on the 21st of October, they discovered they were in depths of around 200 metres or so. That meant they were coming onto the edge of the continental shelf. A discussion ensued, where did they exactly think they were? Were they off the coast of France? Were they approaching the Scilly silly isles there are accounts of ships thinking they're entering the channel and ending up in the bristol channel according to investigation after the disaster at noon on the 21st they were also able to get a reading off the sun if you can tell how high the sun is in the sky you can work out how far north or south of the equator you are and they thought that they were about 200 miles west southwest of the isles of Scilly but that would be the last

time they were able to calculate their latitude the rest of the journey would be done on so-called dead reckoning at 4 p.m on the 22nd of October they stopped and they took soundings again so they measured the depth of the water they were happy with what they found and they decided to go on. In fact there was a gale blowing up the channel from the southwest and they seemed to have thought that they'd cleared the Isles of Scilly, they'd cleared the northern coast of France and they had a clear run up the channel. So they made sail and they surged up the channel thinking thinking that they'd be home, well, perhaps in 24 hours. But it was not to be. At 8pm that night, in pitch black, it seems the HMS Association, Cloudsley's ship, was in the lead and they fired a cannon to warn the rest of the fleet.

No sooner had men peered through the darkness towards their flagship, they heard a terrible sound, the sound of rending, splintering wood, as HMS Association piled onto the rocks where I am now, the western rocks of the Isles of Scilly. I think she actually hit the outer gillstone rock, which I can see, there's a breaker over there, white water crashing over a slightly submerged rock within seconds she'd found it she just simply rolled over 800 men aboard perished

we know this because following association was the St George they watched the flagship go down apparently it was in just a couple of minutes the St George also hit rocks and suffered damage to its stern but extraordinarily managed to sail clear and get ashore HMS Phoenix also smashed into some rocks but it managed just to limp into the Isles of Scilly a few hundred meters probably over to the west I can see now there's a big lighthouse there now, there wasn't then, HMS Eagle hit the terrifyingly named Tearing Ledge. Again, a big warship, almost as many men as HMS Association, every single one of them perished. A wreck has subsequently been discovered at the depth around 130 feet. Next was HMS Romney, she smashed onto where near very very near where the Bishop Rock lighthouse now stands. She went down with 290 crew lost. Only one person survived, a man called

George Lawrence. HMS Firebrand following HMS Association smashed into a rock following her flagship. Now amazingly Captain Percy managed to steer the damaged ship along the edge of the western rocks, but it would eventually founder about a mile inland, and perhaps something like half her crew were killed. The other ships in the fleet, you can imagine, were just gripped with terror. HMS Royal Anne was meters away, we understand, from breakers, the breaking waves signifying that the rocks were just beneath the surface. But her crew desperately scrambled above, set some sails, and they were able to claw their way along the edge of the rocks into deeper water. Of all the accounts I've come across, the journal entry of Captain Reddle of the Isabella comes some way to conveying the sense of terror that night.

We perceived ye rocks on both sides of us, we being very near them, we immediately wore our yacht and laid our heads to westward, crowding on all the sail we could to weather the rocks under our lee. We filled full and full and by God's mercy we got clear of them all, for which deliverance God's holy name be blessed and praised which caused a great separation the fleet for happy was he that could shift for himself so i think we can imagine that night every single captain taking matters into his own hands ships breaking formation desperately turning port and starboard crowding on sail ignorance of where the rocks were but just hoping for the best hoping that providence would rescue them and thankfully

for some of those ships that was enough they were able to escape admiral shovel perished along with his crew his body was interestingly found on saint mary's the following day about seven miles away from where we are now there's an old myth that his throat was slit by a local woman who was keen to steal his jewellery, but that's been disproved. His body was found by a soldier washed up on the shore. Alongside him was his flag captain and his two step-sons, so it's possible they managed to somehow get into a boat or they together grabbed onto a piece of floating wreckage, but eventually they perished. Queen Anne ordered that his body be dug up from where it was buried in the Scillies and reburied in Westminster Abbey.

As a sailor looking around these rocks today in broad sunlight with a flat sea it's scary enough. This is a chilling, chilling place and this is just one of the many disasters that have occurred on these shoals. The appalling loss of life that night, up to 2,000 men, helped to spur improvements in navigation that would eventually change seafaring forever. When news of the tragedy reached London and the printing presses, there was a public outcry. But it focused on the tragedy of the situation, the loss of ships and men, which might come as a surprise because in recent times we have been told that this catastrophe led directly to a parliamentary campaign to offer a reward to anyone who could fix the problem of longitude.

The loss of the fleet spurred technological innovation. Longitude, folks, as I'm sure you know, is how far east or west of Greenwich you are. Latitude's easier because you can tell latitude by measuring the angle from the sun to the horizon at noon. That tells you how far up or down the Earth you are, north or south. Longitude's much harder because you have to know when noon in Greenwich is and you know where noon where you are is

because the sun's at Zenith. And then you have to work out the time difference between the two. And because the Earth revolves 15 degrees an hour, you can sort of work out the distance in miles. The problem with that is there was no way of knowing what the time in Greenwich was because time pieces, clocks, were far too primitive. You sail across the Atlantic, your watch is taking an absolute battering, it's sprayed with salt water, there's

no way it's keeping accurate time. Now in 1714, the British Parliament famously announced a prize, that's seven years after the wreck of the association and Shovel's Fleet. Anyone who could accurately determine long tube would get a load of money from the government. It's a wonderful story that with all sorts of characters that I'd like to tell another time. But if you look at the material, the debate around the passing of that bill, the creating of that act, actually Shovel's Fleet isn't really mentioned. In fact, there's one mention in a list that someone drew up of advantages that would come from better navigational techniques at sea. So there wasn't a direct, neat narrative link between the loss of Shovel and his ships

and the move towards establishing Longtitude. In fact, that's partly because it's not clear that Longtitude was actually to blame for this disaster. If anything, I think their latitude calculations were a bit off because they were much further north than they thought they were. And in fact, they had poor maps. I mean, the places on those charts were not where they actually are in real life. The weather was bad and the officers simply weren't good enough navigators. And improving people's ability to calculate longitude would be one response to

this. It was basically an era when oceanic trade was exploding. Navigational accuracy in all its senses would give the merchant fleet, the battle fleets, a massive advantage. And therefore, it's not surprising that Parliament announced a prize for longitude. It was always doing things to try and improve our ability to navigate around on the surface of the oceans. And in fact, other prizes of Longitude had been announced before, one by the Spanish and one by the Dutch in the years leading up to 1714. So I think it is true that the loss of Shovel's fleet contributed, of course, to the sense of urgency around improving navigation but it didn't lead directly to the solving of the longitude problem however neat that might be let's finish up with one last trip to the

sillies i'm walking through the magical the subtropical Tresco Abbey Gardens. The climate here in Scilly's is more akin to the Mediterranean, so this is described as a Mediterranean garden. It feels a very different world to the rest of Britain, with its palm trees and gigantic ferns. Gorgeous place. And I'm here because in the middle of these gardens is a very peculiar, internationally renowned collection of pieces, bits and pieces of thousands of wrecks that have piled into the Isles of Scilly over the years. In the late 19th century, the proprietor of Tresco, one of the Isles of Scilly, decided that he would start collecting objects that came from the wrecks to sort of commemorate each particular wreck. He

called it Valhalla. It's particularly famous for its collection of figureheads, those carved figures that were attached to the bows of ships. But it's also got other objects. For example, it's got the stern board of HMS Colossus, Nelson's ship fought with him at the Battle of the Nile that was sadly wrecked off the coast of Scilly on its return. Here I am now walking into this collection of very eclectic mix of carvings, of figureheads, one or two lifebelts. But the reason I'm here is because of one of the most important pieces of the collection.

It is a cannon. It's been weathered into a green colour. It's a bronze cannon and it came off one of Cloud's Leap Shovel's ships. It was on HMS Association and interestingly it's French you can tell immediately it's French it's got fleur-de-lis all over the barrel it's got an L for Louis it was founded during Louis XIV's reign and it's got the coat of arms of the French crown the French royal arms of France and Navarre the twin kingdoms of Louis and it's a very handsomely carved gun. It was probably captured in Vigo in 1702 or perhaps Toulon in 1707, both English victories. It's an 18-pound gun, maybe it fires an 18-pound cannonball

and it was being brought home aboard HMS Association. It was raised from the seabed during the archaeological investigations into the wreck of the association in the 1970s and the owners of this abbey in Tresco decided it ought to be here and secured it for the collection and so after a slightly circuitous route where this cannon was raised from the seabed taken back to the mainland for study auctioned and then it was brought back right here so within a couple of miles of the site where the association sank that terrible night.

Thank you for listening to this podcast of this forgotten naval disaster. See you next time. you