Shipwreck and Coastal Heritage Centre
Famous Shipwrecks
The centre's main exhibit
The prehistoric wreck at Dover, about 1000 BC
The evidence of the oldest discovered shipwreck in British waters was found just east of Dover Harbour in 1974 by members of the local subaqua club. In the area of the chalky sea bed close to the cliffs, they found bronze axes, swords and many other items. Unfortunately, no trace of the ship's structure had survived. It may have been a raft of logs lashed together, perhaps with a square leather sail and a deck-house but it was likely to have been plank built, the planks having been literally sewn together as in three Bronze Age boats of about 1500 BC that have been found at Yorkshire.
Whatever the Dover ship looked like, it's reasonable to suppose that it possessed a stone anchor. One of those, recently found in the English Channel a mile off Hastings and now exhibited in the Shipwreck Heritage Centre, is roughly triangular in shape with a hole for a rope at top.
The Roman wreck at Blackfriars, London, about AD 180
When Julius Ceasar invaded North-Western Gaul in 56 BC, he found the native people of Veneti tribe using a type of sea-going ships that was very different from those he knew in the Mediterranean.
Nobody knew what they were like until 1962-63 when a vessel of this type, dating from the second century AD, was found in the bed of the river Thames at Blackfriars, London. The ship was apparently at the end of a long voyage down to the Thames Estuary when disaster struck. She was involved in a collision and was sunk close to the waterfront of the Roman city. Clues suggest she was rammed by another ship on her starboard side and heeled over to port so violently that her heavy stone cargo was thrown to that side. Once she'd sunk to the river bed she began to decay but soon the vessel was buried in sand and preserved.
The owner of the ship had tried to ensure a long, useful life by placing a worn Roman coin, bearing the figure of Fortuna (goddess of luck) in the single mast. Parts of the ship are displayed at the London Museum and at the Shipwreck Heritage Centre. Other Roman wrecks have yet to be found in Britain and concentrations of pottery and coins found by divers on the seabed off the isle of Wight and the Channel Islands probably indicate where wrecks will be found.
The Saxon ship at Sutton Hoo
In 1939 archeologists excavating a Saxon burial mound of early seventh century at Sutton Hoo (near Woodbridge in Suffolk) unearthed an enormous ancient ship of great size and complexity. It was evidently a royal ship for it was the centre-piece of a pagan Saxon royal grave. It contained a fabulous wealth of gold jewellery and silver plates. The ship could never have been raised, however, for its oak timbers had decayed away.
The ship was an open rowing vessel whose pointed end rose upwards to form an extremely elegant banana-like shape. Saxons and Vikings had created ships that were extraordinarily refined in form andconstruction. In the British Isles traces of their vessels have been found both as corroded iron rivets in burial mounds and as broken planks in the waterfronts of London and Dublin.
The Mary Rose, 1545
When the warship Mary Rose sank in the Solent between Southsea and the Isle of Wight early in the aftenoon of Sunday July 19 1545, Henry VIII was only one mile away in his recently completed Southsea Castle. Horrified, he heard a long wailing cry from the hundreds of men trapped in the ship, as the pride of the Tudor navy slipped beneath the waves.
A nearby enemy French fleet believed they had sunk her but it seems that they were out of gunshot range and that the disaster was caused by seawater entering open gun ports. It's not clear if the vessel had gun ports cut into her sides from the beginning but we can be sure that when she was rebuilt in 1536 gun ports were cut into her carvel planking.
The Mary Rose was raised from the seabed in 1982 and taken to a dock next to HMS Victory in Portsmouth Naval Dockyard. It gave historians a unique opportunity to study a Tudor warship. Historically, the Mary Rose lies on the watershed between ancient and modern naval construction. Archeologists also found 138 long bows and over 2000 arrows together with bronze and iron guns.
The Anne, 1690
The circumstances of the loss of the Anne are part of a series of important international events which began on June 13 1690 when a large French fleet set sail from Brest under the command of Vice-Admiral Comte de Tourville. His aim was to destroy the English fleet in the Channel. The month of June was a good choice for much of the English navy was off Ireland and the Atlantic. The threatening French fleet was seen by watchers on the Isle of Wright on Sunday June 22 and its presence was soon reported to Lord Torrington, commander of the Anglo-Dutch fleet moored off St Helens. Hastily he gathered together his own much smaller fleet.
On Monday June 30, they went into battle against the superior French fleet. On that day, the Anne was engaging the enemy and the battle continued all day until the Anglo-Dutch fleet found itself so seriously damaged that it had to retreat eastwards. Several Dutch ships were lost but the Anne was the only English vessel. When the fighting was over that night, the Admiral ordered the Swallow and the York to tow Anne out of danger but without much success. The Anne had six feet of water in the hold and had lost her foremast.
On Thursday July 3, the wind returned and the York reported that they could not tow her so they took all soldiers from the Anne and beached her. The French ships attacked Hastings and Rye on the next day and, that aftenoon, the Anne's captain reluctantly decided to burn her so she could not be taken as a prize. Curiously, it was soon after this inconclusive stage in battle, when the French were winning, that they sailed back to France.
The burnt-out remains of the Anne faded from memory, though around Fairlight, local people never forgot her name. She was photographed in 1913 but in 1974 treasure-hunters took a mechanical excavator out to the ship at low tide and dug into her remains. In order to stop further vandalism, she was that day protected as historic monument, and ten years later the Ministery of Defence transferred her ownership to the Nautical Museums Trust which also owns the Shipwreck Heritage Centre.
The Coonatto, 1876
About two miles west of Beachy Head, Eastbourne lie the broken remains of the wool clipper Coonatto. She is particularly important historically because she was constructed at the time when the hull construction of large ships was being changed from wood to iron (and when sail and wind power was being superseded by engine power).
The Coonatto was a large three-masted ship of 633 tons. She was built in London at the shipyard of Thomas Bible in 1863. The ship's third and last captain, John Eilbeck Hillman, seems to have been a somewhat foolish young man for he wrecked two ships in his short life.
The ship itself was gradually broken up by the gales untill she reached her present condition with iron frames and pieces of teak scattered along the rocky shore.
The cause of her loss was given as faulty navigation and Captain Hillman's certificate was suspended for three months. There was some talk that she may have been wrecked for insurance money but this was not proven. Hillman returned to sea as master of the Inch Kenneth but he died in October 1877 when that ship, too, foundered.
Nowadays, the debris of Coonatto lies amongst the chalk boulders and gullies at the base of the Seven Sisters Cliffs, Eastbourne and can be reached by clambering along the shore at low tide.
The Barn Hill, 1940
At extreme low tide, visitors standing beside the Coastguard Station on Langrey Point (between Eastbourne and Pevensey) can see three large rounded objects and a scatter of metal debris just beyond the shoreline. These are the metal boilers of the merchant ship Barn Hill.
She was bombed by an German aircraft during the Second World War. The Barn Hill Was a British steamer of 5439 tons and was carrying a much needed cargo of copper and general goods (including tinned food).
On the night of Wednesday March 20, when she lay three miles South-South-West of Beachy Head, she was spotted in the moonlight by a lone German Dornier 17. Nobody on the Barn Hill reported seeing any aircraft so no defensive action was taken. The Dornier dived and one 550 pound bomb hit the stern of the Barn Hill. Unfortunately, a second went down her funnel. Within minutes the ship was ablaze. Four of the crew killed and eight more were badly injured.
Next morning, the people of Eastbourne saw the burning ship drifting past the seafront until she ran aground on Langney Point. It took several days for the firemen to put out the blaze... On the third day, the Barn Hill gave a sudden lurch as she broke her back but the firemen managed to escape just before she broke in two.
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