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In 1682 a royal ship carrying the inheritor to the English throne ran aground and sank off the Norfolk Coast. The wreck was found by two brothers in 2007 and has remained a intently saved secret till now.
At 5:30 am on the morning of Might 6, 1682, a ship known as the Gloucester ran aground on a sandbank off the coast of Norfolk and sank inside the hour. Among the many passengers was James Stuart, Duke of York and future King James II of England, who escaped in a small boat simply earlier than the ship sank. Had he perished, British historical past might need performed out fairly in another way. Yesterday we realized that the wreck of the Gloucester was found by a pair of brothers in 2007, though it took a number of extra years to confirm that the wreck was certainly the Gloucester. Its discovery has been a intently guarded secret till now.
“Due to the circumstances of its sinking, this may be claimed as the only most vital historic maritime discovery for the reason that elevating of the Mary Rose [Henry VIII’s favorite warship] in 1982,” mentioned maritime historical past professional Claire Jowitt of the College of East Anglia (UEA). “The invention guarantees to essentially change understanding of Seventeenth-century social, maritime and political historical past.” Jowitt is the creator of a brand new paper revealed within the journal English Historic Assessment, outlining the importance of the discover.
This was a very fraught historic interval, rife with political intrigue and spiritual tensions. In January 1649, King Charles I was executed and Oliver Cromwell got here into energy as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Eire, and Scotland. The executed king’s sons, Charles (the inheritor) and James, fled to France the place they lived in exile.
Charles II regained the English throne when the Commonwealth collapsed in 1660, naming James (a religious Catholic) Duke of York and his presumptive inheritor. This didn’t go down effectively with English Protestants, who fashioned the Nation Celebration (later the Whigs) and tried to exclude James from the road of succession, making a constitutional disaster. The vilified James ended up residing in Scotland for a number of years. Nonetheless, the “exclusion disaster” ultimately ended, and James was topped king when Charles II died of apoplexy in 1685.
![Sinking of the <em>Gloucester</em> in 1682.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/gloucester7-640x422.jpg)
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Three years earlier than his coronation, the longer term King James II set sail on the Gloucester along with his closely pregnant second spouse to fulfill with the Scottish Parliament. Different passengers included the Earl of Roxburgh, John Churchill (future Duke of Marlborough), and Colonel George Legge, an ancestor of George Washington.
The English diarist Samuel Pepys was a passenger on the royal yacht crusing alongside the Gloucester within the royal fleet and recorded the harrowing expertise of the sinking for posterity in a letter to a buddy. He thought the occasion would “turn out to be the speak of the city,” and described victims being pulled from the water half-dead.
There are not any data on how many individuals died, per Jowitt, however she estimates it was between 130 and 250 of the roughly 330 passengers on board. And Pepys believed it may have been a lot worse. “Had this fallen out however two hours sooner within the morning, or the yachts on the normal distance that they had on a regular basis earlier than been, the Duke himself and each soul had perished,” he wrote.
![Lincoln and Julian Barnwell with the ship's bell, which helped confirm the wreck was the <em>Gloucester.</em>](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/gloucester10CROP-640x586.jpg)
Norfolk Historic Shipwrecks
In keeping with Jowitt, the night time earlier than the sinking, James had quarreled with the Gloucester‘s pilot about the most effective course to take with a purpose to keep away from operating aground the Norfolk sandbanks. He thought that they had already cleared that area. “It was James’ course they had been following when catastrophe occurred, however he accepted no duty, scapegoating others, and making certain that the pilot was imprisoned by a courtroom martial,” she mentioned throughout a press convention.
The person who presided over that courtroom martial suspected there had been a cover-up, and different essential witnesses to the sinking—together with Churchill, James’ closest adviser—”apparently began to suppose much less of James after the Gloucester foundered,” Jowitt mentioned. Moreover, per survivors’ accounts, James stubbornly stayed on board till the final doable second, successfully dooming many others to loss of life, since protocol dictated they may not abandon ship earlier than royalty. Later accounts alleged that James positioned the survival of his canines and monks above the survival of others on board.
![(L-R) Lincoln Barnwell, Claire Jowitt (UEA), Benjamin Redding (UEA), and Julian Barnwell look at some of the items found in the shipwreck.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/gloucester12-640x426.jpg)
College of East Anglia
That reputational injury tarnished James II’s reign from the beginning. A number of eyewitnesses to the sinking got here to view him as unfit to rule and later performed a job within the profitable plot to take away him from the throne in 1688, often known as the “Superb Revolution.” His sister, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange (each Protestants), assumed the throne, and the remaining is historical past.
The Gloucester remained half-buried within the seabed for greater than 300 years till Julian and Lincoln Barnwell got here alongside. The brothers are printers based mostly in Norfolk and avid licensed divers. Lincoln Barnwell mentioned he had watched the lifting of the Mary Rose from its watery resting place as a toddler, and that have impressed the seek for the Gloucester. They began looking out in 2003 and endured for the following 4 years, protecting some 4,000 miles of terrain.
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