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posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 22 2022, @05:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the breaking-news-from-ten-years-ago dept.

The wreck of one of the most famous ships of the 17th century has been discovered off the coast of Norfolk:

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.

Due to the age and prestige of the ship, the condition of the wreck, the finds already rescued, and the accident's political context, the discovery is described by maritime history expert Prof Claire Jowitt, of the University of East Anglia (UEA), as the most important maritime discovery since the Mary Rose.

The Gloucester represents an important 'almost' moment in British political history: a royal shipwreck causing the very near-death of the Catholic heir to the Protestant throne - James Stuart, Duke of York and Albany - at a time of great political and religious tension.

[...] Prof Jowitt, a world-leading authority on maritime cultural history, is a co-curator of the exhibition. "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," she said. "The discovery promises to fundamentally change understanding of 17th-century social, maritime and political history.

[...] The Gloucester was commissioned in 1652, built at Limehouse in London, and launched in 1654. In 1682 it was selected to carry James Stuart - who later became King of England and King of Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII - to Edinburgh to collect his heavily pregnant wife and their households. The aim was to bring them back to King Charles II's court in London in time, it was hoped, for the birth of a legitimate male heir.

The ship had set sail from Portsmouth with the Duke and his entourage joining it off Margate, having travelled by yacht from London. At 5.30am on May 6, the Gloucester ran aground some 45km off Great Yarmouth following a dispute about navigating the treacherous Norfolk sandbanks. The Duke, a former Lord High Admiral, had argued with the pilot for control over the ship's course.

[...] Together with their late father Michael, and two friends including James Little, a former Royal Navy submariner and diver, the Barnwell brothers found the wreck site in 2007, with the Gloucester split down the keel and remains of the hull submerged in sand.

The ship's bell, manufactured in 1681, was later recovered, and in 2012 it was used by the Receiver of Wreck and Ministry of Defence to decisively identify the vessel.

Due to the time taken to confirm the identity of the ship and the need to protect an 'at risk' site, which lies in international waters, it is only now that its discovery can be made public. As well as the Receiver of Wreck and Ministry of Defence, the wreck has been declared to Historic England.

Accompanying review article putting the ship in historical context: Claire Jowitt, The Last Voyage of the Gloucester (1682): The Politics of a Royal Shipwreck [open], The English Historical Review, 2022. DOI: 10.1093/ehr/ceac127


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2022, @09:08PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2022, @09:08PM (#1255456)

    I could have sworn I saw a snarky comment posted to this story. Are we deleting comments now? Has it come to this?

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday June 23 2022, @01:31AM (4 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 23 2022, @01:31AM (#1255495) Journal

      No, there are 2 identical stories in the story queue at the same release time - this shouldn't happen and, to be honest, I am not sure how it has been achieved. When we process a story it disappears from the submission queue to the story queue and so we cannot process the same story twice.

      However, an editor had to enable one copy and disable the other. As a result the comments that were already made on one version suddenly become non-displayable. As this should never happen there is no easy way to merge the comments from 2 separate (but identical) stories.

      If we can find a way to merge the comments without corrupting the database we will do so. Now I must go back to scratching my head on how to do that.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 23 2022, @07:01AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 23 2022, @07:01AM (#1255534)

        Or so the Bonnie Prince Charlie? Jacobites by day, eh, janrinok! No mention of the Storming of the Parliment building, and the attempt to make William Cromwell the king, eh? And we don't deal with poliitics, eh? Roundheads versus Cavaliers! Sic semper regis!

        Oh, and Guy Fawkes did nothing wrong.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Thursday June 23 2022, @08:47AM (2 children)

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 23 2022, @08:47AM (#1255543) Journal

        All that was 'lost' is 1 comment moderated as 'Troll' and 3 x apk spam. Now, go and play somewhere else, ari.

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @06:25AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @06:25AM (#1255996)

          And now you have brought down upon us the triumphant anti-abortion Runaway. Do you Brits just not know what you are dealing with in the American political arena? It is like you never expected the Tea Party, the anti-Obama Tea Party, that could not abide a Black man in the White House, so they supported an Orange Man (Northern Ireland insanity, yeah?) just to fuck up the entire show.

          And our eds never saw this coming, even though aristarchus warned you, when The Mighty Buzzard tried to censor his warnings way back when. King Charles? You blimey bastards deserve it. But don't fuck over America just because. It will blow back on you.

          • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday June 25 2022, @07:03AM

            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 25 2022, @07:03AM (#1256001) Journal

            We are not responsible for the content of journals. They are there for the community to use to discuss issues that we do not think meet the site's aims and interests and which will not be published on the front page.

            aristarchus keeps telling us he does not exist. He doesn't. It is the name of an defunct account. However, we will continue to refer to him as 'aristarchus' because the only other way would be to divulge personal information which we will not do. aristarchus has a journal. You have one if you care to log in. It is your choice.

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