Found! The wreck of HMS Calamity
Doomed ship that almost claimed the life of James VII is biggest discovery since Mary Rose 50 years ago
dIveRS have found the wreck of a warship which sank and nearly killed the future King James vII – in what is being hailed as the biggest maritime discovery for half a century.
hMS Gloucester was spotted by amateur shipwreck hunters off the Norfolk coast in 2007 but the find was kept secret until now to conserve the ship.
The 60-gun frigate ran aground 28 miles off Great Yarmouth on the morning of May 6, 1682 and went down within an hour. It was carrying the heir to the throne James Stuart, the duke of York, who would be Britain’s last Catholic king.
he barely survived after not abandoning ship until the last minute – which may have led to the deaths of between 130 and 250 people on board who were unable to leave before him due to royal protocol.
The disaster was witnessed by diarist Samuel Pepys, who was on another vessel in the fleet.
he wrote a harrowing account of victims and survivors being picked up ‘half dead’ from the water.
historians said the discovery
‘Matter of great historical debate’
was the biggest since that of the Mary Rose in 1971.
But the vessel’s sinking is a matter of great historical debate.
Some accounts blame a dispute between James, a former lord high admiral, and the ship’s pilot James Ayres about the best route through the treacherous Norfolk sandbanks.
It lay, split in half and semi-buried in sand, until it was discovered on a mission led by Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, with their late father Michael and friend James Little.
The brothers, printers by trade, hid the find for 15 years to keep it safe from treasure hunters as it was in international waters.
Lincoln Barnwell, 51, said they had decided to hunt for the vessel after reading about it in a book in 2003.
But they were beginning to give up hope after four fruitless years and travelling 5,000 nautical miles.
‘It was our fourth dive season looking for Gloucester,’ he said.
‘We were starting to believe that we were not going to find her. We’d dived so much and just found sand.
‘On my descent to the seabed, the first thing I spotted were large cannon laying on white sand. It was aweinspiring and really beautiful.
‘It instantly felt like a privilege to be there. It was so exciting.
‘We were the only people in the world at that moment in time who knew where the wreck lay. That was special, and I’ll never forget it. Our next job was to identify the site as the Gloucester.’
The key evidence was the ship’s bell, manufactured in 1681.
In 2012, it was used by the Receiver of Wreck and the Ministry of defence to decisively identify the vessel as hMS Gloucester – but this was kept a closely guarded secret.
The wreck was also declared to
Historic England. No human remains have been found.
Artefacts were salvaged including clothing, naval equipment, personal posessions and wine bottles.
One of the bottles bears a glass seal with the crest of the Legge family – ancestors of George Washington, the first US President.
The Legge family crest was a forerunner to the Stars and Stripes. As well as James, HMS Gloucester carried prominent courtiers including John Churchill, later the 1st Duke of Marlborough.
Professor Claire Jowitt, a maritime history expert at the University of East Anglia, said: ‘Because of the circumstances of its sinking, this can be claimed as the single most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982.
‘The discovery promises to fundamentally change understanding of 17th-century social, maritime and political history.
‘It is an outstanding example of underwater cultural heritage of national and international importance.’ James went on to reign as James VII of Scotland and King James II of England and Ireland from 1685 until he was deposed by the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Had he perished in the wreck, Professor Jowitt said, it would have paved the way for his Protestant nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, to ascend the throne. The duke later led a rebellion against James II, which was crushed.
There are as yet no plans to raise HMS Gloucester from the seabed.
An exhibition is scheduled for Spring 2023 at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery to display finds from the wreck and share ongoing historical, scientific and archaeological research.