When it was announced last June that the wreck of the Gloucester<\/em> had been found, after more than three centuries beneath the North Sea, it was described as the single most significant historical maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose<\/em><\/a> in 1982. Considering that there are hundreds of shipwrecks lying beneath the seas around Britain, what makes this one so important?<\/p>\n The answer lies partly with the most notable passenger aboard the Gloucester<\/em> on its last voyage: Charles II<\/a>\u2019s brother James Stuart, Duke of York and Albany, who later ruled as James VII and II<\/a>. Yet the story of the wreck \u2013 the background to the voyage, its aftermath, and the tales of bravery and suffering \u2013 also reveals fascinating insights into the Restoration era<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Gloucester<\/em> wasn\u2019t just any ship. It was built during the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652\u201354). After distinguished service in a number of battles \u2013 in at least one of which it suffered significant damage \u2013 in 1678\u201380 it was comprehensively and expensively refitted. Its gun deck was almost entirely freshly laid, with new wooden beams provided for the orlop, upper and quarter decks, and its bulkheads, head, galleries and stern were remade almost entirely. Carvers added ornate wooden decorations, glaziers fitted glass works, and a new furnace was installed.<\/p>\n In short, the Gloucester<\/em> was virtually a new ship in 1682 when Captain Sir John Berry received orders to transport the duke and his party. Its final, ill-fated voyage was undertaken at a particularly sensitive political moment. As heir to the throne, James\u2019s Catholicism had provoked a major constitutional row between 1679 and 1681 \u2013 the so-called Exclusion Crisis.<\/p>\n A Protestant group called the Country Party \u2013 later the Whigs \u2013 attempted to exclude James from succeeding his brother as king, fearing that a Catholic monarch would make Britain subservient to France. In 1679, the House of Commons introduced the Exclusion Bill, which sought to debar James from the line of succession. To prevent it be coming law, Charles dissolved parliament.<\/p>\n At the same time, a number of conspiracies \u2013 real and imagined \u2013 were reported: plots to murder Charles and replace him with his brother. James was forced to leave London, first for the continent and then for Scotland. By March 1682, though, the dust had settled, and Charles invited James to return to court, with an eye to resolving the succession.<\/p>\n So on 4 May 1682, James transferred from a royal yacht to the Gloucester<\/em> off the Kent coast and sailed, accompanied by a small fleet, to collect his family and settle royal affairs in Edinburgh before returning to London. His wife, Mary of Modena, was pregnant \u2013 with a boy, it was hoped, who would be born in England and secure the Stuart succession.<\/p>\n Just two days later, the Gloucester<\/em> lay at the bottom of the North Sea. Because the ship sank so quickly, many people perished. No muster list for the voyage survives, so we can\u2019t be certain of numbers, but of some 330 on board probably between 130 and 250 died.<\/p>\n The event was significant as it raised the question: what does it suggest about the fitness to rule of a royal prince and a former Lord High Admiral \u2013 as James had been until 1673 \u2013 if he couldn\u2019t navigate his own ship? James risked being regarded as a commander unable to steer the \u201cship of state\u201d.<\/p>\n So the events leading up to and following the wreck were telling. On the evening of 5 May, an argument flared regarding the best route for the fleet to take to ensure that it cleared the north Norfolk sandbanks. The discussion involved the ship\u2019s pilot, James Ayres; senior officers including Berry and Master Benjamin Holmes; Captain Christopher Gunman of the yacht Mary<\/em>, which accompanied the Gloucester<\/em>; and the duke himself.<\/p>\n Ayres, experienced in sailing the coastal route, advocated navigating between the coast and the sandbanks. Holmes, without local knowledge, supported a deep-sea route beyond the sandbanks, the standard course taken by big ships heading north. James argued for a middle path between the two routes \u2013 which was agreed, and which the pilot was instructed to follow.<\/p>\n According to Berry, at 4am Ayres \u201cpresuming and confident, affirmed that this course would carry the ship out of all danger, and that we were past [the sandbanks]\u201d, and went to bed. Some 90 minutes later, the Gloucester<\/em> hit sandbanks about 28 miles north-east of Great Yarmouth.<\/p>\n Though James survived the wreck and completed his journey to Scotland on another vessel, the target of blame for such a major tragedy became a significant political and naval issue.<\/p>\n Two courts martial were held in June 1682 to determine responsibility. The first was brought against Ayres, who was condemned to life imprisonment. (A year later, when the scandal had died down, King Charles II ordered Ayres\u2019 release.) Gunman, who presented evidence against Ayres, was also subsequently accused of misconduct.<\/p>\n Together with his first mate, he faced a court martial for failing to follow admiralty orders requiring a ship to adequately warn accompanying vessels of impending danger. Strictly speaking, the Mary<\/em> \u2013 which had been sailing ahead \u2013 was required to alert the Gloucester<\/em> of shallow water by firing a shot. Gunman admitted that he had ordered flags to be waved instead \u2013 normal practice, he claimed.<\/p>\n The mate was acquitted, but Gunman was found guilty of misconduct, imprisoned, fined and dismissed from his post. He was furious. He claimed that witnesses who gave evidence against him had also attempted to intimidate others into giving false testimony about his neglect of duty. Gunman suggested that there was a conspiracy against him, alleging that the naval officer Sir Richard Haddock \u2013 who had presided over both courts martial \u2013 was prejudiced.<\/p>\n No direct evidence survives to support these claims, though Haddock spoke favourably of Ayres\u2019 skills as a pilot while identifying Gunman as culpable for the wreck. Recent research has uncovered evidence of attempted witness tampering among members of Gunman\u2019s crew to increase the impression of the yacht captain\u2019s culpability. But if senior figures arranged this conspiracy, their identity remains a mystery.<\/p>\n One reason Gunman might have been made a scapegoat was his close relationship with the Duke of York, who was known to be reliant on him. It is possible that convicting Gunman sent a message to James about the dangers of royal interference in the navy. James\u2019s return to political power in the London court was likely to shake up naval policy, and senior admiralty officers feared he might attempt to influence future strategy.<\/p>\n In any case, Gunman did not languish in prison for long. James intervened on his behalf, and within 10 days Charles II reinstated him to his role as captain of the Mary<\/em>. What these intrigues suggest is that, despite the waning of the Exclusion Crisis, the Duke of York remained a controversial figure. There was clearly an effort by the Stuarts and their supporters to deflect blame for the tragedy away from James.<\/p>\n And many were seeking someone to blame, not least the families of several high-profile nobles who drowned in the wreck. These included Donogh O\u2019Brien, Lord Ibrackan; John Hope, laird of Hopetoun; Sir Joseph Douglas; and the young Robert Ker, Earl of Roxburghe, a rising Scottish politician aged just 23 or 24 at the time of the disaster. His story is particularly moving: a tale of loyalty and romance, and of tender relationships between servant and master as well as a man and his wife.<\/p>\n When the Gloucester<\/em> ran aground, the Earl of Roxburghe was still asleep in his cabin. The Duke of York, reluctant to abandon the sinking vessel until it was on the brink of foundering, was finally persuaded by his courtiers to leave in his rowboat, and called for the earl to evacuate with him. Roxburghe, though, could not be found in time.<\/p>\n Becoming aware of the problem, the earl offered 20,000 guineas for a boat \u2013 without success. Instead, he was forced to jump into the sea, but he couldn\u2019t swim. His servant, James Littledale, a more competent swimmer, took Roxburghe on his back and headed towards one of the rowboats sent out from the nearby royal yachts to rescue those in the sea. However, another desperate wreck victim pulled them all underwater, dislodging the earl from Littledale\u2019s back. Roxburghe drowned immediately; Littledale made it to a boat but was dead within an hour.<\/p>\n On receiving the news in Scotland, Roxburghe\u2019s young wife, Lady Margaret, ordered her servant Alexander Ramsay to travel to Great Yarmouth to try to recover the earl\u2019s body. Arriving in the Norfolk town on 14 May, Ramsay commissioned a fisherman to take him to the wreck site, where the Gloucester<\/em>\u2019s topmast was still visible above the water line.<\/p>\n The two men searched for Roxburghe\u2019s body for two or three days, without success. Ramsay then proceeded to scour the coast line, hoping to find news of the body being washed up, but the earl was never found. Lady Margaret survived her husband by more than 70 years, but never again married.<\/p>\n Roxburghe\u2019s elite social position ensured that his story is well-documented. At present, far less is known about his servant, or about the impact of Littledale\u2019s death on his family. Ongoing research about the history of the Gloucester<\/em> aims to piece together knowledge about all classes, races and nationalities of people on board \u2013 possibly including a number of women \u2013 to create as full a picture of the passengers and crew as possible.<\/p>\n Another striking story is that of Sir Charles Scarburgh, the royal physician, who was travelling north to attend on James\u2019s pregnant wife. He did not evacuate with the Duke of York, and had to jump into the sea as the ship sank, surviving the ordeal by clinging to a plank of wood. When he was picked up by the yacht Katherine<\/em>\u2019s rowboat he was \u201calmost dead\u201d according to Samuel Pepys<\/a>, who viewed events from the safety of the yacht.<\/p>\n Scarburgh was 66 at the time of the wreck, and took weeks to recover. Tales about his miraculous survival were swiftly satirised; he was described as having to compete for the plank with one of James\u2019s dogs, Mumper. These stories form only part of the overall picture.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also learning much from the ship itself and from the objects recovered from the wreck. Since running aground in 1682, the Gloucester<\/em> lay on the seabed, its exact whereabouts unknown, until June 2007. That was when the wreck was discovered by divers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell and James Little, marking the climax of a four-year, 5,000-nautical-mile search.<\/p>\n To find the Gloucester<\/em>, the Barnwell brothers bought a 12-metre boat suitable for use offshore and equipped it with a magnetometer, learning how to survey the seabed to measure magnetic fields and pick up the deviation caused by ferrous material such as iron cannons and anchors. When they detected a magnetometer reading indicating an early modern ship, the team dived the site \u2013 and realised they had found a historically important wreck. News of their discovery was initially kept under wraps to protect the site until jurisdiction over the wreck, and ownership of artefacts on and around it, could be established.<\/p>\nThe Gloucester<\/em>: decorated warship and royal taxi<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Was Prince James unfit to steer the \u201cship of state\u201d?<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Who was held responsible?<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>What can the wreck and its aftermath tell us about the Restoration era?<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> The Earl of Roxburghe was forced to jump into the sea, but he couldn\u2019t swim. His servant, James Littledale, a more competent swimmer, took him on his back… <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Full picture: the stories of those on board<\/h3>\n
The discovery of the wreck and salvage of artefacts<\/h3>\n
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