A warship carrying around 330 people – including James Stuart, the future king of England – ran aground and sank on May 6, 1682. Now, the location of the wreck has finally been revealed off the coast of the country, 340 years later.
When HMS Gloucester sank and was half buried under the sea. There was no formal passenger manifest, but an estimated 130 to 250 crew and passengers drowned.
Stuart, who would be crowned James II as King of England and King of Ireland and James VII as King of Scotland nearly three years later, it was almost one of those casualties.
At the time of the calamity, the then Duke of York was an heir Catholic of the Protestant throne during a period of political and religious tension. His near miss stands out in British history, as does the significant loss of life.
“Due to the circumstances of her sinking, this can be claimed as the most significant historic maritime discovery since the uplift of the Mary Rose in 1982,” Claire Jowitt, professor of English and history at the University of East Anglia, said in a statement. UK .
“The discovery promises to fundamentally change the understanding of 17th-century social, maritime and political history.”
Artifacts have already been collected and preserved from the site, such as clothing, shoes, navigation and naval equipment, and many bottles of wine – including some that remain unopened.
One of the wine bottles bears a glass seal bearing the coat of arms of George Washington’s ancestors, the Legge family. And the design of that coat of arms preceded the stars and stripes of the United States .
An exhibition featuring finds from the wreck will open in the spring at the Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery. Jowitt is co-curator of the exhibition and author of a new study on the wreck.
the discovery of shipwreck has just been announced but was initially found in 2007. The delay was caused by the time needed to confirm the identity of the vessel and secure the hazard site, located in international waters off the coast of Norfolk.
Historic England, a public body of the British government that oversees England’s historic sites, will protect the wreck.
In search of a shipwreck
Brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell decided to search for the ship after being inspired by watching the rescue of the sinking Mary Rose on television as children. The brothers are printers in Norfolk, as well as licensed divers and honorary scholars at the University of East Anglia’s School of History.
The Barnwells and their late father Michael, along with friend and fellow diver and former Royal Navy submariner James Little, found the wreck after four years of searching. The Gloucester was broken at the keel, with parts of the hull still submerged in the sand.
“It was our fourth season of diving looking for Gloucester,” Lincoln Barnwell said in a statement. “We started to believe that we weren’t going to find it, we had dived so deep and we only found sand. On my descent to the bottom of the sea, the first thing I saw were large cannons lying on the white sand, it was inspiring and very beautiful. We were the only people in the world at that time who knew where the wreck was.”
the bell of ship was used to identify the Gloucester, which sank along the Norfolk coast, site of many shipwrecks in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The ship’s bell, made in 1681, was recovered from the wreck. The Receiver of Wreck and the Ministry of Defense used the bell to identify the wreck as the Gloucester in 2012.
A shipwreck with many consequences
Gloucester was first launched as a 50-gun warship in 1654, becoming a ship of the Royal Navy in 1660. When the time came for the Duke of York to sail from England to Scotland to conduct royal business and seek his daughter Anne and his pregnant wife, Maria of Modena, in 1682 the Gloucester received the designation. The Duke of York and his family would reside at the court of Charles II.
“It was politically advantageous for Mary’s baby to be born in England, the royal family expected the child to be a prince to further secure the Stuart dynasty,” Jowitt wrote in her study.
By 1682, Charles was aging and had already suffered a stroke. Power was already transitioning to the Duke of York in some ways. Along for his trip were prominent courtiers from England, Ireland and Scotland.
On 6 May, at 5:30 am, the ship ran aground 45 kilometers off the coast of Great Yarmouth. The Duke, a former admiral in the Royal Navy, argued with the pilot over control of the ship’s course, and they argued over how best to navigate Norfolk’s notoriously treacherous sandbars.
The ship sank within an hour and the Duke delayed abandoning the ship, believing it could be saved, until the last minute. Protocol dictated that others could not be evacuated before the royals, which contributed to the tragedy. When the Duke and a boat containing his vault of memories and political documents were loaded, only one other boat managed to escape.
High-ranking nobles, relatives of the Duke and many servants of the Duke’s household were among those who died. Currently, only a fraction of the victims’ identities are known, according to Jowitt.
Gloucester was part of a squadron of ships, so there were many eyewitnesses to the tragedy. The Duke influenced the dangerous route, but did not take responsibility for the disaster and blamed the pilot, who was arrested.
Some saw the sinking as a way to question the duke’s judgment under pressure and aptitude to rule as a future monarch, Jowitt said. His reign was short, lasting from 1685 to 1688, before being deposed during the Glorious Revolution and replaced by Protestants – his daughter Mary Stuart and her husband William of Orange.
An accompanying historical research project will explore the flaws that led to the sinking, as well as conspiracy theories about what caused the tragedy and the long political shadow it cast.
Source: CNN Brasil
