David Gibbins's Blog

Lonely last resting place of the pride and joy of the Navy

Click here to read a pdf of this article by me on the Royal Anne Galley in the Daily Express on 7 February 2024:

‘Take, Sink, Burn or otherwise destroy them’: orders against pirates for His Majesty’s Ship Royal Anne Galley, 12 September 1721

ADM 2/50, The National Archives (photo: David Gibbins).

In my book A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, I include a summary of the orders given by the Admiralty to Captain Francis Willis of the Royal Anne Galley for her voyage to the Caribbean in 1721. We can never know for certain the wording of those orders, as they went down with the ship off Lizard Point in Cornwall on 10 November that year, but they should have been identical to the orders preserved in the Admiralty ‘Orders and Instructions’ book (ADM 2/50, The National Archives). You can read the full text of those orders, published here for the first time, by clicking on the images below.

They make fascinating reading. After delivering Lord Belhaven, the new Governor, to Barbados, Willis was to inform himself ‘whether any Piratical Ships or Vessels are hovering about that Government; and if so you are with the ships under your Command either singly or in conjunction with the Faversham … to proceed in quest of such such Pirates, and use your utmost endeavours to take, Sink, burn or otherwise destroy them.’ If none were to be found there, she was to go to the Leeward Islands to do the same, and then to Jamaica, and then ‘to range along the Coast of North America from North Carolina to Newfoundland and from time to time to inform yourself whether there are any Piratical Ships or Vessels hovering on any Parts of that Coast and if so to use your best endeavours to take or destroy them, either by proceeding after them with the Ships you command only or in conjunction with any Ships of his Majesty’s which are Stationed on the said Coast …’

The Royal Anne Galley was no stranger to hunting pirates; she had been designed as a galley specifically to counter the oared vessels of the Barbary pirates of North Africa, and on her previous voyage in 1719 she had ranged along the Guinea coast of West Africa hunting pirates of the Caribbean who had sailed there to prey on slavers and other merchant ships. Had she not been wrecked, she might have contributed significantly to the suppression of piracy in the Caribbean – her oars would have been an advantage in the estuaries and inland waterways where pirates held out along the eastern seaboard of North America – and, conceivably, the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ might have come to an end earlier than it did, with Caribbean pirates still being hunted down until the late 1720s.

Click on the images to enlarge:

Orders from the Admiralty to Captain Willis of the Royal Anne Galley, 12 September 1721, first page (ADM 2/50, The National Archives) (photo: David Gibbins).

Orders from the Admiralty to Captain Willis of the Royal Anne Galley, 12 September 1721, second page (ADM 2/50, The National Archives) (photo: David Gibbins).

Orders from the Admiralty to Captain Willis of the Royal Anne Galley, 12 September 1721, third page (ADM 2/50, The National Archives) (photo: David Gibbins).

Orders from the Admiralty to Captain Willis of the Royal Anne Galley, 12 September 1721, fourth page (ADM 2/50, The National Archives) (photo: David Gibbins).

A bird arrow from the Rumpa Rebellion, south India, 1879-81

A bird arrow from the Rumpa Rebellion. Bamboo, length 70 cm (As1896,-.1184. © Trustees of the British Museum)

In 2009 I discovered that the British Museum held a bird arrow acquired by a British army officer during the Rumpa Rebellion, a tribal uprising in India in 1879-81 that was countered by a force from the Madras army - Indian troops with British officers - eventually numbering more than 2,500 men. Among the officers involved was my great-great grandfather, Lieutenant Walter Andrew Gale, Royal Engineers, and at the time I was carrying out research in the India Office Records of the British Library in order to tell the story of this little-known expedition – a project that eventually bore fruit in my novel The Tiger Warrior and also resulted in several accounts on this website linked below. The arrow is one of very few artefacts associated with the rebellion and I paid the museum to have it professionally photographed. This photo is one of almost two million released by the museum in 2020 for free download under a Creative Commons license, and I am very pleased to be able to show it here.  

The museum register for the arrow reads as follows:

'India. S.E. Bamboo arrow, nocked, with six black feathers bound with bark fibre and a thick roughly cylindrical piece of bamboo fitted to the upper end instead of a point. "Bird arrow. Trophy taken from the natives in the late Rumpah rebellion. Presented by Lieut. A.C. Macdonnell R.E.". The Rumpahs inhabit the lower reaches of the Godavery & Kistna Rivers. Purchased, Christy Fund. 4th November 1896. [United Services Institute].'

‘Rumpah’ was more commonly rendered ‘Rumpa’ at the time, though since then it has usually been spelled Rampa. It refers to a remote jungle tract around the upper reaches of the Godavari River in southern India. The local inhabitants, referred to in the register as ‘Rumpahs’, were Hill Reddi people who lived a largely hunter-gatherer lifestyle with limited slash-and-burn agriculture. The spark for the rebellion was a tax on toddy – the alcoholic palm drink – but set against a backdrop of increasingly oppressive rule by the local feudal chief and the corruption of the native police. The scale of the rebellion, the military measures taken against it and the outcome for the tribal people are discussed in my earlier blogs here.

Journal of the United Services Institution XXV (1882), xxxi.

Lieutenant Alfred Creagh Macdonnell commanded one of two companies of the Madras Sappers and Miners sent to Rumpa as part of the field force; the other British officer in the company was Lieutenant Gale, aged 23 at the outset of the rebellion and the most junior officer in the Madras Sappers at the time. Further research revealed that the arrow had originally been part of a collection donated by Macdonnell to the museum of the Royal United Services Institution in London in 1882, the year after the last troops had been withdrawn. The Journal of the Institution for that year records the following acquisitions:

‘Two Matchlocks, two Swords and a Scabbard, two Bamboo Arrows, a Bird Arrow, a Shield, four Arrow Heads; trophies taken from the natives in the late Rumpah Rebellion. Lieut. A.C. Macdonnell, R.E.’

The Madras Military Proceedings, the main source for the military history of the rebellion, gives some hints as to how these items might have been acquired. In a despatch from the field force commander on 27 October 1879, he described how

‘Lieutenant Gale, R.E., with a party of Sappers, examined several villages and discovered many matchlocks. They are no use to them, as they never attempt to protect themselves, but could be taken by the rebels when they visit them or be used against us by the villagers …’

On 15 January 1880, after an attack that killed six rebels, the troops confiscated ‘one percussion gun, seven matchlocks and a dagger’. A month later after another rebel was shot the troops recovered ‘two police carbines, one matchlock, a sword and some bows and arrows’, and on another occasion a rebel wounded a policeman with an arrow before cutting his own throat rather than be captured. The arrow in the British Museum could not have been used for these purposes, being an arrow with a flat end for stunning and bringing down birds, but is nevertheless of great interest for revealing the skills of the tribal people in hunting with the bow.

It is possible that the arrow was acquired in 1896 by the British Museum as more appropriate to their ethnographic collections than those of the Royal United Services Institution Museum, and that the other more warlike items remained in the RUSI Museum until it closed in 1965. The whereabouts of these items is unknown, with many of the objects being disbursed among museums and private collections. Certainly during the lifetimes of Macdonnell and Gale they would have been readily accessible, with both men working later in their careers at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham and able to visit London and see some of the few reminders of the rebellion and their role in suppressing it – a campaign overshadowed by the Afghan War in those years but arduous for the troops involved, with a virulent form of malaria exacting a large toll, the jungle presenting a formidable challenge for those charged with policing it and the hope that their efforts might result in a better administration for the tribal people in which the grievances that had led to the uprising could be addressed.

Click here for my three other blogs on the 1879-81 Rumpa Rebellion, including quotes from my novel The Tiger Warrior.

Wreckwatch Magazine

I’ve been very pleased to contribute a number of articles to Wreckwatch magazine since its foundation in 2020, allowing me to write about some of my current projects off Cornwall in England and to look back on my career as an archaeologist and writer. Wreckwatch is an exciting innovation conceived and edited by Dr Sean Kingsley, who brings his expertise in publishing and his own extensive background in wreck archaeology to the project. I’m grateful to Sean for providing this opportunity not only to me but also to my daughter Molly and my brother Alan, both themselves wreck divers - Molly wrote ‘Getting started’ in issue 11 and Alan created the illustration you can see here in an article by Dirk Cussler in Issue 13-14. You can read all of these for free by clicking on any of the images and going to the Wreckwatch website - all you have to do is give your name and email.

Wreckwatch 3-4 (Winter 2020), 112-117" data-lightbox-theme="dark" href="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5179a19ee4b06ea9dd760b54/1693500378226-YTYWA0U5MCRDP53TI30B/Schiedam+wreckwatch+front+page+of+article.jpg" role="button" class=" image-slide-anchor js-gallery-lightbox-opener content-fit " > View fullsize
Wreckwatch 3-4 (Winter 2020), 112-117 View fullsize
Wreckwatch 5-6 (Spring 2021), 145-153 View fullsize
Wreckwatch 11 (Spring 2022), 93 View fullsize
Wreckwatch 11 (Spring 2022), 94-8 View fullsize
Wreckwatch 11 (Spring 2022), 99 View fullsize
Wreckwatch 11 (Spring 2022), 100-1 View fullsize
Wreckwatch 13-14 (Sept 2023), 60-67 View fullsize
Wreckwatch 13-14 (Sept 2023), 21

A copper-alloy cooking kettle tap from the wreck of the Royal Anne (1721)

Copper-alloy tap with lead sheath from the wreck of the Royal Anne (1721). Scale 25 cm.

In June 2022 Ben Dunstan and I discovered this heavy copper-alloy tap on the wreck of the Royal Anne (1721), in a gully not previously recorded on the site that also contained cannonballs and musket shot. Because of the exposed position of the artefact and the risk of damage by the sea or of illicit recovery a decision was made to remove it for preservation and study. It weighs 15.8 kg and measures 39 by 20 cm, including the thick lead sheath that sealed it to a pipe leading from one of the ship's cooking kettles. Taps such as this - used to drain off water from the kettles - can be seen in several of Thomas Phillips' cross-sections of warships of the 1680s and early 1690s, and similar taps have been recovered from the Coronation, a second-rate warship launched in 1685 and wrecked of Plymouth in 1691, and the Northumberland, a third-rate warship wrecked off the Goodwin Sands in 1703. With the Royal Anne having been launched in 1709, this may provide a good timeframe for this type of kettle fixture on Royal Navy ships – mid-way between the simple cooking cauldron seen on the Mary Rose and the complex ‘Brodie’ stove installed on HMS Victory in 1765. As well as being a rare discovery for this period the Royal Anne tap is the largest artefact to have been recorded from the wreck other than the two surviving guns.

The Royal Anne is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, and we are Licensees under the aegis of Historic England along with Mark Milburn. The tap has been declared to the Receiver of Wreck and is destined for museum display. For a detailed account of the Royal Anne, click here.

I am grateful to Kevin Camidge of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archaeology Society for helping with the initial identification, and to Ginge Crook and Peter McBride for allowing me to see a photo of the Coronation tap.

Ben Dunstan after recovery of the tap, with the site in the background (click on images to enlarge).

The gully from which the tap was recovered, showing concreted cannonballs and lead shot.

Copper-alloy tap from the wreck of the Royal Anne (1721). Scale 25 cm.

 

Detail of a ship cross-section of a first-rate ship by the gunner and engineer Thomas Phillips (d. 1693) showing a galley kettle with a tap similar to the Royal Anne example. In 1683 Phillips accompanied Lord Dartmouth to Tangier, at the time when the Schiedam was employed there to remove guns and other material from the harbour during the abandonment of the colony. Samuel Pepys, also there on government business, recorded that Phillips 'views on many topics, including the improvement of navigation skills, the need to study the world's currents, the importance of mathematics in the educational curriculum of children intended for careers at sea, the simplification of the rigging of ships, and the needlessness of discovering the means of calculating longitude, which he believed would only bring about miscarriages at sea.'

The Schiedam (1684): Piracy, Samuel Pepys and English Tangier

This article on the wreck of the Schiedam was published in the December 2020 edition of Wreckwatch magazine, which you can read in full for free here (in high resolution). It complements three other blogs here on the wreck: a report with more detail of the historical documentation here, a report on the unique 16th century merchant’s weights here and links to 3D models of several of the artefacts at the site here.

The wreck of the Royal Anne, off Lizard Point, Cornwall: the 300th anniversary of a shipwreck from the Golden Age of Piracy

The site of the Royal Anne in 40 mph winds and driving rain, looking south-west towards the open Atlantic. I took this photo from Lizard Point close to low water in order to show the very dangerous Mulvin rock in the background. I was about 350 m from Man O' War rock, to the left, and the distance between Man O' War and the Quadrant rock to the right is about 230 m. The ebb tide running out to sea between those rocks encounters the flow before low water and creates a gyre, turning the flow back on itself and sending it out in different directions through the rocks. Being caught in the sea at this place at virtually any time of the tide would have been lethal for shipwrecked mariners and is very dangerous for divers who are not closely familiar with the time of the tide when the wreck site can be visited - and even then for less than an hour, at only one time in the monthly tidal cycle and when sea conditions are optimum (photo: David Gibbins).

One of two guns visible in a gully on the site. Her normal complement was 40 guns, half of them 9-pounders - including this gun - and half of them 6-pounders. This photo was taken early in 2021 while the site was still free of kelp, so gives an unusually clear view in exceptional visibility (photo: David Gibbins).

This month marks the 300th anniversary of the wreck of the Royal Anne, an English warship ‘cast away’ off Lizard Point in Cornwall on 10 November 1721. Discovered by local diver Rob Sherratt in 1991 and designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, the site was extensively investigated under the direction of Rob Sherratt with Kevin Camidge acting as archaeologist. In 2005-14 a marine archaeological assessment commissioned by English Heritage was carried out under the direction of Kevin Camidge (Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archaeology Society) and Charles Johns (then Senior Archaeologist for Cornwall Council), and renewed diving at the site under license from Historic England began in 2021 under my direction. The ship had been carrying John Hamilton, 3rd Lord Belhaven, to his new position as Governor of Barbados, and is of great interest as the only known wreck of a ‘galley frigate’ used in the suppression of piracy and for the rich array of finds representing Lord Belhaven and the other wealthy passengers on board.

Launched at Woolwich in 1709, the Royal Anne had been specifically designed to counter the threat of Barbary pirates – the corsairs from North Africa who had captured English ships and raided the coasts of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, taking many English people as slaves. Designed as a sailing ship but with a bank of oars on each side beneath her gun deck, she had the manoeuvrability and speed to match the pirate galleys and greater firepower – helping to tip the balance not only against the Barbary pirates but also against the other scourge of the seas, the ‘pirates of the Caribbean’ who had been having their greatest success against English shipping at this period.

The ship had a colourful history in the time following the War of the Spanish Succession when British naval supremacy was being established. In late 1712 she was ordered to the coast of North Africa to protect vessels against the ‘Rovers of Sallee’, pirates operating from the port of Salé near present-day Rabat in Morocco. A year later she delivered presents from Queen Anne to the Emperor of Morocco, and in early 1716 she was sent to blockade the east coast of Scotland in an attempt to prevent James Stuart from escaping after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.  

She was then under orders from the Admiralty in September 1719 to sail to the west coast of Africa, where one of the most notorious of the Caribbean pirates, Bartholomew ‘Black Bart’ Roberts – originator of his own ‘Pirate Code’ - had captured his first ships that year. Over eight months in 1720 The Royal Anne patrolled from Gambia to present-day Benin on the Gulf of Guinea, ranging as far south as Cape Lopez in present-day Gabon following a report of a pirate vessel there in June that year – taking her just south of the Equator. The slaving ships going to and from West Africa were sought by the Caribbean pirates for their size and provisions, and were then used to prey on rich cargoes coming from Brazil and the Indian Ocean. The crews of slavers provided easy recruits for the pirates; in a letter to the Admiralty, Francis Willis, captain of the Royal Anne Galley, described slaver crews as ‘ripe for piracy’, whether a result of ‘the Masters ill-usage’ of the crews or ‘their natural inclinations’.

Willis reported to the Admiralty that he could ‘gett no Intelligence as yet of any Pyrates being in these Parts; nor of any that has been seen here for a Considerable Time.’ With the hull deteriorating due to shipworm, the crew suffering from sickness and depleted provisions - the ‘Heat of the Climate & the Vermin destroying it’ - and there being no easy way of replenishing in Africa, he sailed across the Atlantic in early 1721 to Jamaica and Barbados to refit. On her return voyage to England she ‘brought over from Barbadoes’ a person to be tried ‘at the Court of Admiralty at the old Baily for selling 11 Christians to the Moors, who murdered most of them.’ Her crew faced the prospect of further action against pirates: after delivering Lord Belhaven to Barbados she was under orders to sail on to Jamaica and then to Carolina and Newfoundland to hunt pirates, at a time when ‘Black Bart’ had returned to east Africa to prey on slave ships but there were other pirates still active in the Caribbean and western Atlantic.

A chart of about 1720 showing the entire area of the Royal Anne’s activities, including the North Sea, the north-west coast of Africa off ‘Salle’, the coast of west Africa between Gambia and the Equator, Barbados in the Leeward Islands and to the west of that Jamaica, and then back to the English Channel and her final destination off the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. Had she survived, she was due to return to Barbados and the Caribbean and then to continue hunting pirates up the eastern American coast towards Newfoundland (A General Chart of the Sea Coast of Europe, Africa & America, according to E. Wrights or Mercator’s Projection. By H. Moll, Geographer) .

Lord Belhaven, a ‘Gentleman of the Bedchamber’ to George, Prince of Wales, and one of sixteen Peers elected to represent Scotland in parliament, had fought on the government side in the 1715 Rebellion - he commanding the East Lothian Horse at the battle of Sheriffmuir - despite his father having been a staunch advocate of Scottish independence and a suspected Jacobite. Two of the other passengers known to have sailed on her final voyage and perished in the wrecking were also named Hamilton, though only sharing Lord Belhaven’s surname by coincidence: William Hamilton, 18 year old son of the Earl of Abercorn and a ‘Volunteer in the Sea Service’, and Thomas Hamilton, aged 26, a former student of Oriel College, Oxford and eldest son of Sir David Hamilton, Fellow of the Royal Society, physician to Queen Anne and famous as the diarist who wrote a detailed account of her final five years up to 1714. The newspapers at the time suggested that in addition to about 190 crew there may have been several dozen passengers altogether, a number of them with family or other interests in Barbados.

Ten days after setting off from Portsmouth the ship was caught in a south-westerly and blown back towards Cornwall, striking a rock ‘not above a pistol shot of the land of the Lizard’ and going to pieces in a matter of minutes. The place where she had struck, off the very end of the Lizard Peninsula – the most southerly point in England – was one of the most dangerous for shipping anywhere in the world, with numerous wrecks known among the shoals and jagged rocks that extend offshore. The shallows are swept by tidal currents of up to 5 knots, creating back-eddies and whirlpools among the rocks that would have been lethal for anyone cast into the sea at this point. The newspapers at the time contained vivid accounts of the wreck and its aftermath:

‘Elegy on The Deplorable Death of the Right Honourable John, Lord Belhaven, who was lost at sea, on the 10th of Nov. 1721’ , a broadside published soon after the wrecking. Click to enlarge (National Library of Scotland).

‘The Royal Ann Galley was cast away on the Lizard last Thursday Night, the Lord Belhaven Governor of Barbadoes, and all the Crew except two Men and one Boy, were all drowned. All the Effects are lost, and dead Men come ashoar daily, some in one place, and some in others, as far Westward as Porleaven: the Country People run daily to catch what they can find; and if a man with Jewels or Money drive ashoar, they bury him; if not they let him drive with the Tide.’ ‘It was supposed that the body of Lord Belhaven was found, the Country People having taken up a Gentleman at the Sea Side, having a rich Diamond Ring on his Finger, and his Shirt marked with the Letter, B.’

Despite the treacherous conditions the wreck was in shallow water and salvage was begun almost immediately, with a ‘newly invented diving Engine’ being used to raise many of the ship’s 40-odd cannon and other material. However, the location of the wreck was lost until its rediscovery in 1991 and the excavations that followed. Among the most exciting finds made by divers have been items of silver cutlery bearing the crest and motto of Lord Belhaven, clinching the identity of the wreck. Other finds attest to the status and wealth of the passengers on board, including gold chains, rings and watches - one of them bearing the name of David Hubert, a Huguenot refugee who was from the same family as Robert Hubert, watchmaker, who was unjustly accused of starting the Great Fire of London in 1666 and hanged for it. Hundreds of other artefacts give fascinating insights into the lives and occupations of the crew, including a pair of navigational dividers marked JD – possibly the possession of John DeGrushy, the ship’s sailing master, whose Will described him as ‘Master of his Majesty’s Ship Royall Anne Gally’ and who bequeathed a gold ring each to his two sons.

In conjunction with renewed diving at the site, further research in The National Archives has brought to light details that bring home the human cost of shipwreck. In Portsmouth a few days before departing, Thomas Whaley, ‘late of the City of London and now bound for Barbados’, made a Will in which he left everything ‘to Mrs Constance Moor of Hatton Gardens London Widow to whom I am engaged in a contract of marriage on my return and for whom I have the greatest affection and true sense of her inimitable worth and virtues.’ Another poignant discovery is the petition of Eunica, ‘widow of the late Lieutenant Joseph Weld of the Royal Anne Galley’, who ‘being wholly unprovided for and reduced to unfortunate circumstances’ hoped that the King would provide her with a pension – not only her husband but also their only son John, a Volunteer, having been ‘drowned upon the rocks of the Lizard.’ Her petition was turned down – only persons slain in action with the enemy were eligible, and being cast away at sea was apparently not enough.

Renewed investigations at the site of the Royal Anne are being carried out by Cornwall Maritime Archaeology under the aegis of Historic England, which administers the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 on behalf of the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The current team, licensed to dive on the site by Historic England, are David Gibbins, Mark Milburn and Ben Dunstan.

Note on the name

The Royal Anne was variously rendered that way or as the Royal Anne Galley, with Royal sometimes spelled Royall and Anne as Ann, and Galley as Gally or Galy.

Sources

Detailed appraisals of the site as part of the marine archaeological assessment for English Heritage can be read here (2006 report, by Kevin Camidge, Charles Johns and Phillip Rees with other contributors) and here (2014 report, by Kevin Camidge and Charles Johns). The 2006 report lists the primary source material in The National Archives known to that date, as well as several newspaper accounts and the ‘Elegy on The Deplorable Death of the Right Honourable John, Lord Belhaven, who was lost at sea, on the 10th of Nov. 1721’ , a broadside published soon after the wrecking. Since that date the digitisation of documents in The National Archives has made more material readily available, including more than 30 wills of members of the ship’s company lost in the wreck (most in PROB 11/582) and the petition of Eunica Weld cited above (SP 42/17/197, 11 February 1723). The British Newspaper Archive, another new resource since 2011, has provided access to many more newspaper accounts that have allowed passengers on the ship to be identified. The quotes on the aftermath of the wrecking included here were widely reported in newspapers at the time. The role of the Royal Anne Galley in the policing of piracy off West Africa in 1720-21 has been clarified in a major new study, David Wilson’s Suppressing Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century: Pirates, Merchants and British Imperial Authority in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), including previously unknown references to the Royal Anne Galley in the Admiralty papers in The National Archives (ADM 1/2649, ADM 1/2650 and ADM 2/50, 139 and 154-7).

The results of an inconclusive archaeological investigation at nearby Pistil Meadow in 2012-2016 to determine whether or not bodies from the ship were buried there can be seen here.

The wreck of the Royal Anne Galley, off Lizard Point, Cornwall: the 300th anniversary of a shipwreck from the Golden Age of Piracy

The site of the Royal Anne Galley in 40 mph winds and driving rain, looking south-west towards the open Atlantic. I took this photo from Lizard Point close to low water in order to show the very dangerous Mulvin rock in the background. I was about 350 m from Man O' War rock, to the left, and the distance between Man O' War and the Quadrant rock to the right is about 230 m. The ebb tide running out to sea between those rocks encounters the flow before low water and creates a gyre, turning the flow back on itself and sending it out in different directions through the rocks. Being caught in the sea at this place at virtually any time of the tide would have been lethal for shipwrecked mariners and is very dangerous for divers who are not closely familiar with the time of the tide when the wreck site can be visited - and even then for less than an hour, at only one time in the monthly tidal cycle and when sea conditions are optimum (photo: David Gibbins).

One of two guns visible in a gully on the site. Her normal complement was 40 guns, half of them 9-pounders - including this gun - and half of them 6-pounders. This photo was taken early in 2021 while the site was still free of kelp, so gives an unusually clear view in exceptional visibility (photo: David Gibbins).

This month marks the 300th anniversary of the wreck of the Royal Anne Galley, an English warship ‘cast away’ off Lizard Point in Cornwall on 10 November 1721. Discovered by local diver Rob Sherratt in 1991 and designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, the site was extensively investigated under the direction of Rob Sherratt, Kevin Camidge and Charles Johns, and has been under renewed investigation this year by a team under my direction. The ship had been carrying John Hamilton, 3rd Lord Belhaven, to his new position as Governor of Barbados, and is of great interest as the only known wreck of a ‘galley frigate’ used in the suppression of piracy and for the rich array of finds representing Lord Belhaven and the other wealthy passengers on board.

Launched at Woolwich in 1709, the Royal Anne Galley had been specifically designed to counter the threat of Barbary pirates – the corsairs from North Africa who had captured English ships and raided the coasts of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, taking many English people as slaves. Designed as a sailing ship but with a bank of oars on each side beneath her gun deck, she had the manoeuvrability and speed to match the pirate galleys and greater firepower – helping to tip the balance not only against the Barbary pirates but also against the other scourge of the seas, the ‘pirates of the Caribbean’ who had been having their greatest success against English shipping at this period.

The ship had a colourful history in the time following the War of the Spanish Succession when British naval supremacy was being established. In late 1712 she was ordered to the coast of North Africa to protect vessels against the ‘Rovers of Sallee’, pirates operating from the port of Salé near present-day Rabat in Morocco. A year later she delivered presents from Queen Anne to the Emperor of Morocco, and in early 1716 she was sent to blockade the east coast of Scotland in an attempt to prevent James Stuart from escaping after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.  

She was then under orders from the Admiralry in September 1719 to sail to the west coast of Africa, where one of the most notorious of the Caribbean pirates, Bartholomew ‘Black Bart’ Roberts – originator of his own ‘Pirate Code’ - had captured his first ships that year. Over eight months in 1720 The Royal Anne Galley patrolled from Gambia to present-day Benin on the Gulf of Guinea, ranging as far south as Cape Lopez in present-day Gabon following a report of a pirate vessel there in June that year – taking her just south of the Equator. The slaving ships going to and from West Africa were sought by the Caribbean pirates for their size and provisions, and were then used to prey on rich cargoes coming from Brazil and the Indian Ocean. The crews of slavers provided easy recruits for the pirates; in a letter to the Admiralty, Francis Willis, captain of the Royal Anne Galley, described slaver crews as ‘ripe for piracy’, whether a result of ‘the Masters ill-usage’ of the crews or ‘their natural inclinations’.

Willis reported to the Admiralty that he could ‘gett no Intelligence as yet of any Pyrates being in these Parts; nor of any that has been seen here for a Considerable Time.’ With the hull deteriorating due to shipworm, the crew suffering from sickness and depleted provisions - the ‘Heat of the Climate & the Vermin destroying it’ - and there being no easy way of replenishing in Africa, he sailed across the Atlantic in early 1721 to Jamaica and Barbados to refit. On her return voyage to England she ‘brought over from Barbadoes’ a person to be tried ‘at the Court of Admiralty at the old Baily for selling 11 Christians to the Moors, who murdered most of them.’ Her crew faced the prospect of further action against pirates: after delivering Lord Belhaven to Barbados she was under orders to sail on to Jamaica and then to Carolina and Newfoundland to hunt pirates, at a time when ‘Black Bart’ had returned to east Africa to prey on slave ships but there were other pirates still active in the Caribbean and western Atlantic.

A chart of about 1720 showing the entire area of the Royal Anne Galley’s activities, including the North Sea, the north-west coast of Africa off ‘Salle’, the coast of west Africa between Gambia and the Equator, Barbados in the Leeward Islands and to the west of that Jamaica, and then back to the English Channel and her final destination off the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. Had she survived, she was due to return to Barbados and the Caribbean and then to continue hunting pirates up the eastern American coast towards Newfoundland (A General Chart of the Sea Coast of Europe, Africa & America, according to E. Wrights or Mercator’s Projection. By H. Moll, Geographer) .

Lord Belhaven, a ‘Gentleman of the Bedchamber’ to George, Prince of Wales, and one of sixteen Peers elected to represent Scotland in parliament, had fought on the government side in the 1715 Rebellion - he commanding the East Lothian Horse at the battle of Sheriffmuir - despite his father having been a staunch advocate of Scottish independence and a suspected Jacobite. Two of the other passengers known to have sailed on her final voyage and perished in the wrecking were also named Hamilton, though only sharing Lord Belhaven’s surname by coincidence: William Hamilton, 18 year old son of the Earl of Abercorn and a ‘Volunteer in the Sea Service’, and Thomas Hamilton, aged 26, a former student of Oriel College, Oxford and eldest son of Sir David Hamilton, Fellow of the Royal Society, physician to Queen Anne and famous as the diarist who wrote a detailed account of her final five years up to 1714. The newspapers at the time suggested that in addition to about 190 crew there may have been several dozen passengers altogether, a number of them with family or other interests in Barbados.

Ten days after setting off from Portsmouth the ship was caught in a south-westerly and blown back towards Cornwall, striking a rock ‘not above a pistol shot of the land of the Lizard’ and going to pieces in a matter of minutes. The place where she had struck, off the very end of the Lizard Peninsula – the most southerly point in England – was one of the most dangerous for shipping anywhere in the world, with numerous wrecks known among the shoals and jagged rocks that extend offshore. The shallows are swept by tidal currents of up to 5 knots, creating back-eddies and whirlpools among the rocks that would have been lethal for anyone cast into the sea at this point. The newspapers at the time contained vivid accounts of the wreck and its aftermath:

‘Elegy on The Deplorable Death of the Right Honourable John, Lord Belhaven, who was lost at sea, on the 10th of Nov. 1721’ , a broadside published soon after the wrecking. Click to enlarge (National Library of Scotland).

‘The Royal Ann Galley was cast away on the Lizard last Thursday Night, the Lord Belhaven Governor of Barbadoes, and all the Crew except two Men and one Boy, were all drowned. All the Effects are lost, and dead Men come ashoar daily, some in one place, and some in others, as far Westward as Porleaven: the Country People run daily to catch what they can find; and if a man with Jewels or Money drive ashoar, they bury him; if not they let him drive with the Tide.’ ‘It was supposed that the body of Lord Belhaven was found, the Country People having taken up a Gentleman at the Sea Side, having a rich Diamond Ring on his Finger, and his Shirt marked with the Letter, B.’

Despite the treacherous conditions the wreck was in shallow water and salvage was begun almost immediately, with a ‘newly invented diving Engine’ being used to raise many of the ship’s 40-odd cannon and other material. However, the location of the wreck was lost until its rediscovery in 1991 and the excavations that followed. Among the most exciting finds made by divers have been items of silver cutlery bearing the crest and motto of Lord Belhaven, clinching the identity of the wreck. Other finds attest to the status and wealth of the passengers on board, including gold chains, rings and watches - one of them bearing the name of David Hubert, a Huguenot refugee who was from the same family as Robert Hubert, watchmaker, who was unjustly accused of starting the Great Fire of London in 1666 and hanged for it. Hundreds of other artefacts give fascinating insights into the lives and occupations of the crew, including a pair of navigational dividers marked JD – possibly the possession of John DeGrushy, the ship’s sailing master, whose Will described him as ‘Master of his Majesty’s Ship Royall Anne Gally’ and who bequeathed a gold ring each to his two sons.

In conjunction with renewed diving at the site, further research in The National Archives has brought to light details that bring home the human cost of shipwreck. In Portsmouth a few days before departing, Thomas Whaley, ‘late of the City of London and now bound for Barbados’, made a Will in which he left everything ‘to Mrs Constance Moor of Hatton Gardens London Widow to whom I am engaged in a contract of marriage on my return and for whom I have the greatest affection and true sense of her inimitable worth and virtues.’ Another poignant discovery is the petition of Eunica, ‘widow of the late Lieutenant Joseph Weld of the Royal Anne Galley’, who ‘being wholly unprovided for and reduced to unfortunate circumstances’ hoped that the King would provide her with a pension – not only her husband but also their only son John, a Volunteer, having been ‘drowned upon the rocks of the Lizard.’ Her petition was turned down – only persons slain in action with the enemy were eligible, and being cast away at sea was apparently not enough.

Renewed investigations at the site of the Royal Anne Galley are being carried out under the aegis of Historic England, which administers the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 on behalf of the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The current team, licensed to dive on the site by Historic England, are David Gibbins, Mark Milburn and Ben Dunstan.

Note on the name

The Royal Anne Galley was variously rendered that way or as the Royal Anne, with Royal sometimes spelled Royall and Anne as Ann, and Galley as Gally or Galy.

Sources

 A detailed appraisal of the site for English Heritage in 2006, by Kevin Camidge, Charles Johns and Phillip Rees with other contributors, can be read here. That report lists the primary source material in The National Archives known to that date, as well as several newspaper accounts and the ‘Elegy on The Deplorable Death of the Right Honourable John, Lord Belhaven, who was lost at sea, on the 10th of Nov. 1721’ , a broadside published soon after the wrecking. Since that date the digitisation of documents in The National Archives has made more material readily available, including more than 30 wills of members of the ship’s company lost in the wreck (most in PROB 11/582) and the petition of Eunica Weld cited above (SP 42/17/197, 11 February 1723). The British Newspaper Archive, another new resource since 2011, has provided access to many more newspaper accounts that have allowed passengers on the ship to be identified. The quotes on the aftermath of the wrecking included here were widely reported in newspapers at the time. The role of the Royal Anne Galley in the policing of piracy off West Africa in 1720-21 has been clarified in a major new study, David Wilson’s Suppressing Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century: Pirates, Merchants and British Imperial Authority in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), including previously unknown references to the Royal Anne Galley in the Admiralty papers in The National Archives (ADM 1/2649, ADM 1/2650 and ADM 2/50, 139 and 154-7).

Life: the defining enigma of biology, by L.N. Gibbins

This paper by my father appeared in The American Biology Teacher (University of California Press), Volume 61, Number 7, September 1999, pages 504-509, during his final year as a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada. Click on the image below to open a pdf of the entire article.

   

In conversation with David Gibbins: Wreckwatch magazine interview

Click here or on any of the pictures below to read an in-depth interview with me in the 2021 edition of Wreckwatch magazine, all about my novels and the inspiration for them in my real-life discoveries. You can read the magazine for free including many fascinating articles on shipwreck exploration simply by filling in your name and email address as indicated on the Wreckwatch hompage.