David Gibbins's Blog, page 2

Three Portuguese merchant’s weights of probable early 16th century date from the wreck of the Schiedam (1684), off Gunwalloe, Cornwall, UK

Gunwalloe Church Cove in heavy seas, with St Winwaloe’s Church visible behind the promontory in the centre. The wreck of the Schiedam lies in the cove of Jangye-ryn beyond, below Halzephron headland (photo: David Gibbins).

In September 2020 over the course of eight dives I excavated and raised the three 56 lb (25.4 kg) copper-alloy weights in this photo from the wreck of the Schiedam, a Dutch-built ship of some 400 tons that was ‘cast away’ near Gunwalloe off the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula on 4 April 1684. The wreck was discovered in 1971 by Anthony Randall, designated under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act and since 2016 has been investigated under my direction and that of Mark Milburn, the current Licensees from Historic England for the site. A report on our work has recently been published (Gibbins 2020b). On her final voyage from Holland, the Schiedam was captured by Barbary corsairs off Spain, captured again by the English ten days later and then put to use transporting guns, equipment, horses and people from Tangier in North Africa at the time of its abandonment by the English in 1684. Tangier had been given by the Portuguese to the English king Charles II as a dowry with his wife Catherine of Braganza in 1661, but proved too costly to maintain in the face of Moorish attack and did not live up to expectations as a trading port. The three weights - first spotted by Mark on a dive we did together at the site in 2017, but then deeply buried in sand for almost three years - are of great interest not only as objects in use in Tangier during this period, but also because they originated during the Portuguese occupation of Tangier (1471-1661) and are most probably of very early 16th century date. They are unique among surviving Portuguese weights for their age, size and decoration, and are among the oldest and most unusual artefacts to be recovered from a shipwreck off Cornwall.

Two of the weights as they were first seen on seabed, partly encased in ferrous concretion caused by the corrosion of tools and other iron objects that had surrounded them (photo: David Gibbins).

The Portuguese Royal coat of arms revealed on one of the weights moments after it had been freed from concretion (photo: David Gibbins).

David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).

David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).

David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).

The most striking feature of the weights is the Portuguese royal coat of arms cast in relief on the side, comprising a shield surmounted by a helmet and dragon crest and flanked by armillary spheres, the symbol adopted while still a prince by the future King Manuel 1 (reigned 1495-1521) that became associated with Portuguese maritime domination in the Age of Discovery. The other markings visible on the weights are small symbols of a ship stamped above and below the coat of arms. It seems most likely that the weights were cast in a gun foundry, where expertise in bronze casting would have been found at a time when many cannon were made of bronze. The steps in gun-founding described by Biringuccio (1540) give an idea of how the weights may have been formed. Whereas each gun was unique, with the forming of the mould requiring the destruction of the model inside, the wax and clay models for the weights would have been created with a reusable wooden mould that would have allowed many castings, as is seen in the identical shapes of the three weights. Similarly, the decorations would have been created in wax in reusable wooden moulds, as is evidenced in the identical appearance of the armillary spheres and the coats of arms but with slight differences in their alignment resulting from the wax models being applied individually to the surface of the weight models. Expertise in casting ornamentation such as this existing in the cannon foundries, with many Portuguese bronze guns of the 16th century having similar relief decoration, as well as in the casting of rings similar to the carrying handle on the weights, with many guns of the period having lifting-loops (Kennard 1986: 11).

The coat of arms of King Manuel I of Portugal (ruled 1495-1521) on one of the weights, comprising a shield surmounted by a helmet and dragon and flanked by armillary spheres. The shield contains five ‘escutcheons’ arranged as a quincunx and is bordered by fourteen small castles (the castles are thought to represent the vanquished fortresses of the Moors during the Reconquista). The dragon - a symbol of the Royal House of Avis of Portugal (1385-1580) - has its wings swept to the right and its tongue extended. The armillary sphere (esfera armilar in Portuguese), showing the movement of celestial bodies (armilla is Latin for bracelet or arm ring), has the line of the ecliptic going from lower left to upper right, a less common depiction than the other way around (photos: David Gibbins).

The weights are of octagonal shape 19 cm across the base and 33 cm high, with the base tapering to narrow shoulders and a large carrying ring on top, all formed as a single bronze casting. The Museu de Metrologia at Lisbon has three octagonal weights of similar shape and size but from different moulds and weighing 29.3-29.4 kg, corresponding to two arrobas (half a quintal, a meio-quintal) in the Portuguese weight system. Several of these weights in the museum have a small stamp of an armillary sphere and one (MM 408) has a relief moulding of the shield on the side, surmounted by a crown. That weight is also stamped with the ‘gauging’ dates of 1688, 1772, 1811 and 1818, showing when the weight was tested and revealing the potential longevity of a weight of this type. The date of manufacture of this weight is unknown, but the gauging date of 1688 is the earliest recorded for a weight of this type in the museum; many earlier weights and standards were lost in the catastrophic earthquake of 1755 that destroyed much of Lisbon. No other weights are known with the relief decoration of the two armillary spheres and the crested shield seen on the Schiedam weights (Antonio Neves, pers. comm.).

The weight of the Schiedam weights, 56 pounds (24.4 kg), corresponds to half a hundredweight (cwt) in the English avoirdupois system. In the Portuguese system, the nearest equivalent to the hundredweight was the heavier quintal; accordingly, the Schiedam weights at their time of manufacture should have been half-quintal weights like those in the Museu Metrologica of about 29.3 kg, just under 4 kg heavier than their present weight. This inconsistency is explained by a 1663 Proclamation by the Governor of Tangier, Lord Teviot, to the inhabitants of the city, ‘to establish weights, measures and coinage as used in London’ (British Library, Sloane mss 3299, July 1663, F.85b). As the Portuguese weights in Tangier at the time would have been larger than their nearest English equivalent, it would have a straightforward if time-consuming matter to cut and file them down to size. One of the Schiedam weights shows evidence of filing at the shoulder for weight adjustment, though the main technique for removing nearly 4 kg of bronze would have been to saw about half an inch off the base. Two of the weights have smoothed bases but one has clear saw marks, of the type that anyone used to sawing wood will be familiar with from making slight adjustments in the direction mid-way. A comparison can again be made with bronze gun manufacture, in which it could take several days for a team of men using a thin saw with small teeth to cut off the ‘feeding head’ of the gun after casting, where bronze had solidified outside the muzzle (Kennard 1986: 16).

The top of one of the weights showing where damage or a casting flaw had been filled in with copper (David Gibbins).

The base of one of the weights showing saw marks, almost certainly caused when the weight was being cut down from its original Portuguese size to the English half hundredweight. Width of base: 19 cm (David Gibbins).

A large balance beam scale in the Museu Militar in Lisbon with an 18th century date on the beam (photo courtesy of Harold A. Skaarup).

Remarkably, an account of weights at Tangier of this size exists in the diary of John Luke, secretary to the Governor Lord Middleton in the early 1670s. On 23 March 1672 he wrote that soldiers of the garrison suspected that they had been short-changed in their provisions, leading Lord Middleton to go ‘ … in person and see all the weights tried, which were found right, but one half hundred weight that had been used of late could not be found’ (Luke 1670-3: 111). This shows how weights could be used for purposes other than purely commercial transactions, especially at Tangier where adequate victualling of the garrison was a constant issue. Half-hundredweight or half-quintal weights were especially useful as they could be managed by one man, but were sufficiently heavy that only a few of them might be needed on a large balance beam scale (called by the Portuguese a cabrilha) to weigh a typical cargo consignment, with the exact calculation being reached with the addition of smaller weights from a set.

The weights were probably stored either in the old Portuguese harbour area or on the newly constructed great Mole, perhaps in one of the buildings that can be seen in the etchings of Tangier made by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1669. The Schiedam was specifically tasked to take the workmen, tools and other stores from the Mole back to England, so it seems most likely that the weights – and perhaps others of different sizes yet to be discovered at the wreck, or salvaged soon after the wrecking – came from there. They were probably being taken back to England with a view to the bronze being recycled; weights emblazoned with the Portuguese coat of arms may have been acceptable for continued use in English Tangier, but are unlikely to have been so in England itself.

‘Prospect of Tangier from the S.E.’ by Wenceslaus Hollar, who went to Tangier in 1668 to draw the town and fortifications. The ‘Old Mould’ (sic), the mole or pier from the Portuguese period, can be seen in the centre of the image, with the new mole built by the Engish extending out to the right (Wenceslaus Hollar Collection, Fisher Library, University of Toronto).

Left and centre, two examples the identical small stamp (1 cm across) that appears above and below the coat of arms on each of the weights. The image to the right is the identical stamp on a one-arroba nested weight of the Manueline issue (1499-1503/4) in the Núcleo Museuológico de Metrologia/Casa da Balança, Évora (Lopes 2018, Fig 9). The image shows a ship of late mediaeval appearance with a single mast and raked yard, with four rolls of waves below and a large crow perched on the stern and another on the forecastle, both facing inwards (photo: David Gibbins).

The small stamp above and below the coat of arms may be the best dating evidence for the weights. It shows the symbol of Lisbon – a ship with crows facing inwards on the stern and forecastle, in a scene from the story of St Vincent, patron Saint of Lisbon. This particular stamp is only seen elsewhere on the so-called ‘Manueline’ nested cup weights issued by King Manuel I to all Portuguese cities in 1503-4 as part of his reform of the weights system (Lopes 2018, 2019). The nested weights, of which at least 128 were issued, were ordered from Flanders in 1499, and those for Lisbon would have been stamped on their arrival in the city. It is clear that the same stamp was used in Lisbon on the Schiedam weights. The stamp could have remained in use for some time after this date, but in the capacity standards of King Sebastian, dated to 1575, the Lisbon mark – while showing the same symbolic content – is of a different design (Luís Seabra Lopes and Antonio Neves, pers. comm.). The evidence of the stamp therefore strongly suggests a date for the weights in the first half of the 16th century, with the possibility that they were issued at the same time as the nested weights as part of the Manueline reform during the early part of his reign.

Manuel’s coat of arms with flanking armillary spheres in the Foral (Charter) of Lisbon, 1500 (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa).

The shield flanked by armillary spheres on the Torre de Belém in Lisbon, built by Manuel I in 1514-19 to guard the entrance to the Tagus river.

Shield with 14 castles in the Livro Carmesin of 1502 (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa).

Shield with 14 castles, flanking armillary spheres and a dragon on the Manueline charter for the city of Évora, 1501 (Arquivo Distrital de Évora).

Shield with 14 castles and flanking armillary spheres in the Leitura Nova of 1504 (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo).

The Royal coat of arms of Portugal on a seal attached to a letter dated 1507, showing the helmet and dragon crest very similar in configuration to the crest on the Schiedam weights (Sousa 1738, p 43 no LXXII and pl. O. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal).

Manuel’s reform of the weights was carried out in conjunction with his renewal of the municipal charters of cities and towns in Portugal. These new charters include the Royal coat of arms flanked by two armillary spheres, as on the Schiedam weights. The same arrangement is found on sculptural decoration on ‘Manueline’ architecture, including the Torre de Belém in Lisbon – the point of departure for Portuguese voyages of discovery – and the nearby Jerόnimos Monastery. This arrangement of a shield flanked by two armillary spheres appears to be particular to the reign of Manuel 1. From Manuel’s reign onwards the number of castles in the border of the shield was most often 7, but shields with larger numbers of castles are known from the early part of his reign - including two of the depictions shown here, on the Lisbon charter of 1500 and the royal seal of 1507, respectively with 11 and 13 castles. The only known parallels for the 14 castles of the Schiedam weights are also shown here, on the Manueline charter for the city of Évora (1501), on a shield in the Lisbon Livro Carmesin of 1503 and in the two frontispieces of the Leitura Nova of 1504 (Garcia 2005: 43). All of these examples and most later depictions of the Royal coat of arms have the shield surmounted by a crown, but the crest of the helmet and dragon as on the Schiedam weights is also seen on several depictions from the reign of Manuel shown here as well.

The Royal coat of arms of Portugal with the helmet and dragon crest as depicted by Antόnio Godinho, who was ‘Escrivão da Câmara’ (‘Clerk of the Chamber’) under King João III but began his heraldry in the final years of the reign of Manuel I (Godinho 1517-28, Fol. 6v. Arquivio Nacional da Torre de Tombo).

Apart from the Manueline nested weights, the most extensive survival of bronze relief-cast Portuguese coats of arms and armillary spheres is on guns of the 16th century. These include 26 guns in the Museu Militar in Lisbon (itself housed in a gun foundry of the period)(Marzia 2014), several in the Museu de Marinha in Lisbon, several in the Museu de Angra in the Azores (Hoskins 2003), one in the British Museum (Smith 1995), several at the Portuguese ambassador’s residence at Bangkok, one at Tangier itself - datable to c. 1520, and undoubtedly a gun that arrived in Tangier with the Moors after the English had left (Kennard 1986: 106) - and a number from wrecks and other underwater contexts around the world, including the mid-16th century São Bento wreck off South Africa (Auret and Maggs 1982), a mid-16th century wreck in the Seychelles (Blake and Green 1986), a wreck recently discovered in the Tejo (Tagus) river in Portugal, and - the only other known example from UK waters - ‘an Old Piece of Ordnance, which some Fishermen dragged out of the Sea near the Goodwin Sands, in 1775’, reported in Archaeologia magazine by Edward King, Esq., F.R.S., in one of the first scholarly accounts of an underwater find in British waters (King mistakenly associates the letters CFR in a cartouche on the gun with a mediaeval Portuguese king, whereas in fact they are those of the gun-founder of the 16th century: see Smith 2000: 184 and Smith 1995: 198, 200).

Illustration in Archaeologia magazine from 1779 of the castings on a bronze swivel gun found in the Goodwyn Sands off Kent, by Edward King, F.R.S., F.S.A. Although possibly not an entirely accurate sketch - the escutcheons in the shield should number five, in a quincunx - the large number of castles shown in the border is of interest as a comparison with the Schiedam weights.

Of these guns that can be dated, either by a datable wreck context, a date on the gun itself, the known dates of the gun-founder or on stylistic grounds, all are of the 16th century. All have the shield capped by a crown rather than a helmet and dragon, and none of the decorations are from the same casting moulds as the Schiedam examples. Most have a single armillary sphere above or below the shield. Only three are known with two or more spheres flanking the shield, all in the Museu Militar in Lisbon (Marzia 2014): one (MML/01500) with the shield on the chase and the two spheres on the second reinforce, and a Manueline date (1495-1521) suggested on stylistic and decorative grounds; another (MML/0020), dated 1533, with two spheres flanking the shield on each side; and a third (MML/1510) with the characteristic Manueline arrangement of spheres flanking a shield, but dated to 1578. This is the only known example of that arrangement not of Manueline date and is the latest dated of these 16th century guns bearing armillary spheres, but it was on a highly decorative piece dedicated to King Sebastian in the year of the battle of Alcácer Quibir against the Moroccans - in which Sebastian disappeared, presumed killed – and the gun-founder may consciously have used symbolism that harked back to the achievements of Sebastian’s great-grandfather Manuel.

Another remarkable example of a bronze-cast shield and armillary sphere is on an astrolabe discovered in 2014 at the Sodré shipwreck site at Al Hallaniyah, Oman, where the Esmeralda and São Padre from Vasco da Gama’s fourth armada were wrecked in 1503 (Mearns et al. 2019). The shield, surmounted by a crown, appears to have 11 castles in the border, and the sphere has the ecliptic going from lower right to upper left. The certain date of the astrolabe – manufactured before the armada set off from Lisbon in February 1502 – puts it very close to the date of the Manueline nest weights as well as the new city charters with their shields and armillary spheres. In common with the Schiedam weights, the astrolabe is the earliest of that type of artefact known and unique in having these decorative embellishments characteristic of the reign of Manuel. The evidence reviewed here strongly suggests that the Schiedam weights are also of Manueline date, possibly from the early years of the 16th century - making them unique artefacts not only from English Tangier in the 17th century but also from the Portuguese Age of Discovery more than a century and a half earlier.

Note

For the association of Samuel Pepys with the wreck of the Schiedam see Gibbins 2020a and 2020b, and for discussion of Dutch weights found at the nearby Mullion Pin Wreck (1667) see Gibbins 2019a and 2019b. Frequent updates on our discoveries on wrecks off the Lizard Peninsula can be found on our Facebook page Cornwall Maritime Archaeology.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Hefin Meara, Maritime Archaeologist at Historic England, and to Alison James, formerly of Historic England, for granting permission for the recovery of these artefacts and for their assistance with this project. The weights have been declared to the UK Receiver of Wreck and are currently under conservation in preparation for museum display. For assistance in the identification of these artefacts, and for much comparative material and discussion, I am grateful to Antonio Neves (Curator, Museu de Metrologia, Lisboa), Luís Seabra Lopes (Associate Professor, University of Aveiro) and Ritzo Holtman (editor of the journal Meten & Wegen). I am also grateful to Harold A. Skaarup, Vittorio Serafin, Renato Gianni Ridella, Ruth Rhynas Brown and Gonçalo Bioucas of The Big Cannon Project for assistance in identifying guns bearing the Portuguese coat of arms, and to Harold A. Skarrup for allowing me to use his photo of a scale in the Museu Militar in Lisbon.

 

Click here to read this article by Dalya Alberge in the London Daily Telegraph on the discovery, published on page 3 of the print edition of the newspaper and online on 29 November 2020.

 

References

Auret, C. and Maggs, T., 1982. The Great Ship São Bento: remains from a mid-sixteenth century Portuguese wreck on the Pondoland coast. Annals of the Natal Museum 25.1: 1-39.

Biringuccio, V., 1540. Pirotechnia. Venice. Reprint, 1966, trans. C.S. Smith and M.T. Gnudi, Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

Blake, W. and Green, J., 1986. A mid-XVI century Portuguese wreck in the Seychelles. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 15.1: 1-23.

Garcia, J.M., 2005. As Illuminuras de 1502 do “Livro Carmesim” e a Iconologia Manuelina. Cadernos do Arquivo Municipal 8 (11): 38-55.

Gibbins, David, 2019a. A two-pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. www.davidgibbins.com

Gibbins, David, 2019b. Three more marked merchant weights from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. www.davidgibbins.com

Gibbins, David, 2020a. Samuel Pepys, English Tangier and the wreck of the Schiedam (1684). www.davidgibbins.com

Gibbins, David, 2020b. ‘The Schiedam: piracy, Samuel Pepys and English Tangier.’ Wreckwatch 3-4 (Winter 2020): 112-17.

Godinho, A., 1517-28. Livro da Nobreza e da Perfeição das armas dos Reis Cristãos e nobres linhagens dos Reinos e Senhorios de Portugal. Arquivio Nacional da Torre de Tombo.

Hoskins, S.G., 2003. 16th century cast-bronze ordnance at the Museu de Angra do Heroísmo. M.A. Thesis, Texas A&M University.

Kennard, A.N., 1986. Gunfounding and gunfounders. London: Arms and Armour Press.

King, E., 1779. An account of an Old Piece of Ordnance, which some Fishermen dragged out of the Sea near the Goodwin Sands, in 1775. Archaeologia 5: 147-59.

Lopes, Luís Seabra, 2018, As pilhas de pesos de Dom Manuel I: contributo para a sua caracterização e avaliação. Portvgalia, Novo Série 39: 217-51

Lopes, Luís Seabra, 2019. The distribution of weight standards to Portuguese cities and towns in the early 16th century. Administrative, demographic and economic factors. Finisterra LIV (112): 45-70

Luke, J. 1670-3:  Kaufman, H.A. (ed), 1958. Tangier at High Tide: the Journal of John Luke, 1670-73. Geneva: Librarie E. Droz/Paris: Librairie Minard.

Marzia, E.M. de M.., 2014. Inventário da artilharia histórica dos séculos XIV a XVI do Museu Militar de Lisboa: bases para uma proposta de salvaguarda e valorização. Universidade de Évora.

Mearns, D.L., Warnett, J.M. and Williams, M.A., 2019. An early Portuguese mariner’s astrolabe from the Sodré wreck site, Al Hallaniyah, Oman. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 48.2: 495-506

Smith, R.B., 2000. A comparative study of 16th century Portuguese and East Mediterranean artillery. Anatolia Moderna 9: 183-210.

Smith, R.D., 1995. A 16th century Portuguese bronze breech-loading swivel gun. Militaria. Revisto de Cultura Militar 7. Servicio de Publicaciones, UCM, Madrid, 197-205

Sousa, A.C. de, 1738, Historia genealogica de Casa Real Portugueza: desde a sua origem até o presente, com as Familias illustres, que procedem dos Reys, e dos Serenissimos Duques de Braganca: justificada com instrumentos, e escritores de inviolavel fé: e offerecida a El Rey João V. Tomo IV. Lisboa. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.

Three Portuguese merchant’s weights of probable early 16th century date from the wreck of the Schiedam (1684), Gunwalloe, Cornwall, UK

Gunwalloe Church Cove in heavy seas, with St Winwaloe’s Church visible behind the promontory in the centre. The wreck of the Schiedam lies in the cove of Jangye-ryn beyond, below Halzephron headland (photo: David Gibbins).

In September 2020 over the course of eight dives I excavated and raised the three 56 lb (25.4 kg) bronze weights in this photo from the wreck of the Schiedam, a Dutch-built ship of some 400 tons that was ‘cast away’ near Gunwalloe off the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula on 4 April 1684. The wreck was discovered in 1971 by Anthony Randall, designated under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act and since 2016 has been investigated under my direction and that of Mark Milburn, the current Licensees from Historic England for the site. On her final voyage from Holland, the Schiedam was captured by Barbary corsairs off Spain, captured again by the English ten days later and then put to use transporting guns, equipment, horses and people from Tangier in North Africa at the time of its abandonment by the English in 1684. Tangier had been given by the Portuguese to the English king Charles II as a dowry with his wife Catherine of Braganza in 1661, but proved too costly to maintain in the face of Moorish attack and did not live up to expectations as a trading port. The three weights are of great interest not only as objects in use in Tangier during this period, but also because they originated during the Portuguese occupation of Tangier (1471-1661) and are probably of early 16th century date. They are unique among surviving Portuguese weights for their age, size and decoration, and are among the oldest and most unusual artefacts to be recovered from a shipwreck off Cornwall.

Two of the weights as they were first seen on seabed, partly encased in ferrous concretion caused by the corrosion of tools and other iron objects that had surrounded them (photo: David Gibbins).

The Portuguese Royal coat of arms revealed on one of the weights moments after it had been freed from concretion (photo: David Gibbins).

David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).

David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).

David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).

The most striking feature of the weights is the Portuguese royal coat of arms cast in relief on the side, comprising a shield surmounted by a helmet and dragon crest and flanked by armillary spheres, the symbol adopted while still a prince by the future King Manuel 1 (reigned 1495-1521) that became associated with Portuguese maritime domination in the Age of Discovery. The other markings visible on the weights are small symbols of a ship stamped above and below the coat of arms. It seems most likely that the weights were cast in a gun foundry, where expertise in bronze casting would have been found at a time when many cannon were made of bronze. The steps in gun-founding described by Biringuccio (1540) give an idea of how the weights may have been formed. Whereas each gun was unique, with the forming of the mould requiring the destruction of the model inside, the wax and clay models for the weights would have been created with a reusable wooden mould that would have allowed many castings, as is seen in the identical shapes of the three weights. Similarly, the decorations would have been created in wax in reusable wooden moulds, as is evidenced in the identical appearance of the armillary spheres and the coats of arms but with slight differences in their alignment resulting from the wax models being applied individually to the surface of the weight models. Expertise in casting ornamentation such as this existing in the cannon foundries, with many Portuguese bronze guns of the 16th century having similar relief decoration, as well as in the casting of rings similar to the carrying handle on the weights, with many guns of the period having lifting-loops (Kennard 1986: 11).

The coat of arms of King Manuel I of Portugal (ruled 1495-1521) on one of the weights, comprising a shield surmounted by a helmet and dragon and flanked by armillary spheres. The shield contains five ‘escutcheons’ arranged as a quincunx and is bordered by fourteen small castles (the castles are thought to represent the vanquished fortresses of the Moors during the Reconquista). The dragon - a symbol of the Royal House of Avis of Portugal (1385-1580) - has its wings swept to the right and its tongue extended. The armillary sphere (esfera armilar in Portuguese), showing the movement of celestial bodies (armilla is Latin for bracelet or arm ring), has the line of the ecliptic going from lower left to upper right, a less common depiction than the other way around (photos: David Gibbins).

The weights are of octagonal shape 19 cm across the base and 33 cm high, with the base tapering to narrow shoulders and a large carrying ring on top, all formed as a single bronze casting. The Museu de Metrologia at Lisbon has three octagonal weights of similar shape and size but from different moulds and weighing 29.3-29.4 kg, corresponding to two arrobas (half a quintal, a meio-quintal) in the Portuguese weight system. Several of these weights in the museum have a small stamp of an armillary sphere and one (MM 408) has a relief moulding of the shield on the side, surmounted by a crown. That weight is also stamped with the ‘gauging’ dates of 1688, 1772, 1811 and 1818, showing when the weight was tested and revealing the potential longevity of a weight of this type. The date of manufacture of this weight is unknown, but the gauging date of 1688 is the earliest recorded for a weight of this type in the museum; many earlier weights and standards were lost in the catastrophic earthquake of 1755 that destroyed much of Lisbon. No other weights are known with the relief decoration of the two armillary spheres and the crested shield seen on the Schiedam weights (Antonio Neves, pers. comm.).

The weight of the Schiedam weights, 56 pounds (24.4 kg), corresponds to half a hundredweight (cwt) in the English avoirdupois system. In the Portuguese system, the nearest equivalent to the hundredweight was the heavier quintal; accordingly, the Schiedam weights at their time of manufacture should have been half-quintal weights like those in the Museu Metrologica of about 29.3 kg, just under 4 kg heavier than their present weight. This inconsistency is explained by a 1663 Proclamation by the Governor of Tangier, Lord Teviot, to the inhabitants of the city, ‘to establish weights, measures and coinage as used in London’ (British Library, Sloane mss 3299, July 1663, F.85b). As the Portuguese weights in Tangier at the time would have been larger than their nearest English equivalent, it would have a straightforward if time-consuming matter to cut and file them down to size. One of the Schiedam weights shows evidence of filing at the shoulder for weight adjustment, though the main technique for removing nearly 4 kg of bronze would have been to saw about half an inch off the base. A comparison can again be made with bronze gun manufacture, in which it could take several days for a team of men using a thin saw with small teeth to cut off the ‘feeding head’ of the gun after casting, where bronze had solidified outside the muzzle (Kennard 1986: 16).

A large balance beam scale in the Museu Militar in Lisbon with an 18th century date on the beam (photo courtesy of Harold A. Skaarup).

Remarkably, an account of weights at Tangier of this size exists in the diary of John Luke, secretary to the Governor Lord Middleton in the early 1670s. On 23 March 1672 he wrote that soldiers of the garrison suspected that they had been short-changed in their provisions, leading Lord Middleton to go ‘ … in person and see all the weights tried, which were found right, but one half hundred weight that had been used of late could not be found’ (Luke 1670-3: 111). This shows how weights could be used for purposes other than purely commercial transactions, especially at Tangier where adequate victualling of the garrison was a constant issue. Half-hundredweight or half-quintal weights were especially useful as they could be managed by one man, but were sufficiently heavy that only a few of them might be needed on a large balance beam scale (called by the Portuguese a cabrilha) to weigh a typical cargo consignment, with the exact calculation being reached with the addition of smaller weights from a set.

The weights were probably stored either in the old Portuguese harbour area or on the newly constructed great Mole, perhaps in one of the buildings that can be seen in the etchings of Tangier made by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1669. The Schiedam was specifically tasked to take the workmen, tools and other stores from the Mole back to England, so it seems most likely that the weights – and perhaps others of different sizes yet to be discovered at the wreck, or salvaged soon after the wrecking – came from there. They were probably being taken back to England with a view to the bronze being recycled; weights emblazoned with the Portuguese coat of arms may have been acceptable for continued use in English Tangier, but are unlikely to have been so in England itself.

‘Prospect of Tangier from the S.E.’ by Wenceslaus Hollar, who went to Tangier in 1668 to draw the town and fortifications. The ‘Old Mould’ (sic), the mole or pier from the Portuguese period, can be seen in the centre of the image, with the new mole built by the Engish extending out to the right (Wenceslaus Hollar Collection, Fisher Library, University of Toronto).

Left and centre, two examples the identical small stamp (1 cm across) that appears above and below the coat of arms on each of the weights. The image to the right is the identical stamp on a one-arroba nested weight of the Manueline issue (1499-1503/4) in the Núcleo Museuológico de Metrologia/Casa da Balança, Évora (Lopes 2018, Fig 9). The image shows a ship of late mediaeval appearance with a single mast and raked yard, with four rolls of waves below and a large crow perched on the stern and another on the forecastle, both facing inwards (photo: David Gibbins).

The small stamp above and below the coat of arms may be the best dating evidence for the weights. It shows the symbol of Lisbon – a ship with crows facing inwards on the stern and forecastle, in a scene from the story of St Vincent, patron Saint of Lisbon. This particular stamp is only seen elsewhere on the so-called ‘Manueline’ nested cup weights issued by King Manuel I to all Portuguese cities in 1503-4 as part of his reform of the weights system (Lopes 2018, 2019). The nested weights, of which at least 128 were issued, were ordered from Flanders in 1499, and those for Lisbon would have been stamped on their arrival in the city. It is clear that the same stamp was used in Lisbon on the Schiedam weights. The stamp could have remained in use for some time after this date, but in the capacity standards of King Sebastian, dated to 1575, the Lisbon mark – while showing the same symbolic content – is of a different design (Luís Seabra Lopes and Antonio Neves, pers. comm.). The evidence of the stamp therefore strongly suggests a date for the weights in the first half of the 16th century, with the possibility that they were issued at the same time as the nested weights as part of the Manueline reform during the early part of his reign.

Manuel’s coat of arms with flanking armillary spheres in the Foral (Charter) of Lisbon, 1500 (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa).

The shield flanked by armillary spheres on the Torre de Belém in Lisbon, built by Manuel I in 1514-19 to guard the entrance to the Tagus river.

Shield with 14 castles in the Livro Carmesin of 1502 (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa).

Shield with 14 castles, flanking armillary spheres and a dragon on the Manueline charter for the city of Évora, 1501 (Arquivo Distrital de Évora).

Shield with 14 castles and flanking armillary spheres in the Leitura Nova of 1504 (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo).

The Royal coat of arms of Portugal on a seal attached to a letter dated 1507, showing the helmet and dragon crest very similar in configuration to the crest on the Schiedam weights (Sousa 1738, p 43 no LXXII and pl. O. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal).

Manuel’s reform of the weights was carried out in conjunction with his renewal of the municipal charters of cities and towns in Portugal. These new charters include the Royal coat of arms flanked by two armillary spheres, as on the Schiedam weights. The same arrangement is found on sculptural decoration on ‘Manueline’ architecture, including the Torre de Belém in Lisbon – the point of departure for Portuguese voyages of discovery – and the nearby Jerόnimos Monastery. This arrangement of a shield flanked by two armillary spheres appears to be particular to the reign of Manuel 1. From Manuel’s reign onwards the number of castles in the border of the shield was most often 7, but shields with larger numbers of castles are known from the early part of his reign - including two of the depictions shown here, on the Lisbon charter of 1500 and the royal seal of 1507, respectively with 11 and 13 castles. The only known parallels for the 14 castles of the Schiedam weights are also shown here, on the Manueline charter for the city of Évora (1501), on a shield in the Lisbon Livro Carmesin of 1503 and in the two frontispieces of the Leitura Nova of 1504 (Garcia 2005: 43). All of these examples and most later depictions of the Royal coat of arms have the shield surmounted by a crown, but the crest of the helmet and dragon as on the Schiedam weights is also seen on several depictions from the reign of Manuel shown here as well.

The Royal coat of arms of Portugal with the helmet and dragon crest as depicted by Antόnio Godinho, who was ‘Escrivão da Câmara’ (‘Clerk of the Chamber’) under King João III but began his heraldry in the final years of the reign of Manuel I (Godinho 1517-28, Fol. 6v. Arquivio Nacional da Torre de Tombo).

Apart from the Manueline nested weights, the most extensive survival of bronze relief-cast Portuguese coats of arms and armillary spheres is on guns of the 16th century. These include 26 guns in the Museu Militar in Lisbon (itself housed in a gun foundry of the period)(Marzia 2014), several in the Museu de Marinha, also in Lisbon, several in the Museu de Angra in the Azores (Hoskins 2003), one in the British Museum (Smith 1995), several at the Portuguese ambassador’s residence at Bangkok, and a number from wrecks and other underwater contexts around the world, including the mid-16th century São Bento wreck off South Africa (Auret and Maggs 1982), a mid-16th century wreck in the Seychelles (Blake and Green 1986), a wreck recently discovered in the Tejo (Tagus) river in Portugal, and - the only other known example from UK waters - ‘an Old Piece of Ordnance, which some Fishermen dragged out of the Sea near the Goodwin Sands, in 1775’, reported in Archaeologia magazine by Edward King, Esq., F.R.S., in one of the first scholarly accounts of an underwater find in British waters (King mistakenly associates the letters CFR in a cartouche on the gun with a mediaeval Portuguese king, whereas in fact they are those of the gun-founder of the 16th century: see Smith 2000: 184 and Smith 1995: 198, 200).

Illustration in Archaeologia magazine from 1779 of the castings on a bronze swivel gun found in the Goodwyn Sands off Kent, by Edward King, F.R.S., F.S.A. Although possibly not an entirely accurate sketch - the escutcheons in the shield should number five, in a quincunx - the large number of castles shown in the border is of interest as a comparison with the Schiedam weights.

Of these guns that can be dated, either by a datable wreck context, a date on the gun itself, the known dates of the gun-founder or on stylistic grounds, all are of the 16th century. All have the shield capped by a crown rather than a helmet and dragon, and none of the decorations are from the same casting moulds as the Schiedam examples. Most have a single armillary sphere above or below the shield. Only three are known with two or more spheres flanking the shield, all in the Museu Militar in Lisbon (Marzia 2014): one (MML/01500) with the shield on the chase and the two spheres on the second reinforce, and a Manueline date (1495-1521) suggested on stylistic and decorative grounds; another (MML/0020), dated 1533, with two spheres flanking the shield on each side; and a third (MML/1510) with the characteristic Manueline arrangement of spheres flanking a shield, but dated to 1578. This is the only known example of that arrangement not of Manueline date and is the latest dated of these 16th century guns bearing armillary spheres, but it was on a highly decorative piece dedicated to King Sebastian in the year of the battle of Alcácer Quibir against the Moroccans - in which Sebastian disappeared, presumed killed – and the gun-founder may consciously have used symbolism that harked back to the achievements of Sebastian’s great-grandfather Manuel.

Another remarkable example of a bronze-cast shield and armillary sphere is on an astrolabe discovered in 2014 at the Sodré shipwreck site at Al Hallaniyah, Oman, where the Esmeralda and São Padre from Vasco da Gama’s fourth armada were wrecked in 1503 (Mearns et al. 2019). The shield, surmounted by a crown, appears to have 11 castles in the border, and the sphere has the ecliptic going from lower right to upper left. The certain date of the astrolabe – manufactured before the armada set off from Lisbon in February 1502 – puts it very close to the date of the Manueline nest weights as well as the new city charters with their shields and armillary spheres. In common with the Schiedam weights, the astrolabe is the earliest of that type of artefact known and unique in having these decorative embellishments characteristic of the reign of Manuel. The evidence reviewed here strongly suggests that the Schiedam weights are also of Manueline date, possibly from the early years of the 16th century - making them unique artefacts not only from English Tangier in the 17th century but also from the Portuguese Age of Discovery more than a century and a half earlier.

Note

For the association of Samuel Pepys with the wreck of the Schiedam see Gibbins 2020, and for discussion of Dutch weights found at the nearby Mullion Pin Wreck (1667) see Gibbins 2019a and 2019b. Frequent updates on our discoveries on wrecks off the Lizard Peninsula can be found on our Facebook page Cornwall Maritime Archaeology.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Hefin Meara, Maritime Archaeologist at Historic England, and to Alison James, formerly of Historic England, for granting permission for the recovery of these artefacts and for their assistance with this project. The weights have been declared to the UK Receiver of Wreck and are currently under conservation in preparation for museum display. For assistance in the identification of these artefacts, and for much comparative material and discussion, I am grateful to Antonio Neves (Curator, Museu de Metrologia, Lisboa), Luís Seabra Lopes (Associate Professor, University of Aveiro) and Ritzo Holtman (editor of the journal Meten & Wegen). I am also grateful to Harold A. Skaarup, Vittorio Serafin and Gonçalo Bioucas of The Big Cannon Project for pointing me to guns bearing the Portuguese coat of arms, and to Harold A. Skarrup for allowing me to use his photo of a scale in the Museu Militar in Lisbon.

References

Auret, C. and Maggs, T., 1982. The Great Ship São Bento: remains from a mid-sixteenth century Portuguese wreck on the Pondoland coast. Annals of the Natal Museum 25.1: 1-39.

Biringuccio, V., 1540. Pirotechnia. Venice. Reprint, 1966, trans. C.S. Smith and M.T. Gnudi, Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

Blake, W. and Green, J., 1986. A mid-XVI century Portuguese wreck in the Seychelles. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 15.1: 1-23.

Garcia, J.M., 2005. As Illuminuras de 1502 do “Livro Carmesim” e a Iconologia Manuelina. Cadernos do Arquivo Municipal 8 (11): 38-55.

Gibbins, David, 2019a. A two-pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. www.davidgibbins.com

Gibbins, David, 2019b. Three more marked merchant weights from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. www.davidgibbins.com

Gibbins, David, 2020. Samuel Pepys, English Tangier and the wreck of the Schiedam (1684). www.davidgibbins.com

Godinho, A., 1517-28. Livro da Nobreza e da Perfeição das armas dos Reis Cristãos e nobres linhagens dos Reinos e Senhorios de Portugal. Arquivio Nacional da Torre de Tombo.

Hoskins, S.G., 2003. 16th century cast-bronze ordnance at the Museu de Angra do Heroísmo. M.A. Thesis, Texas A&M University.

Kennard, A.N., 1986. Gunfounding and gunfounders. London: Arms and Armour Press.

King, E., 1779. An account of an Old Piece of Ordnance, which some Fishermen dragged out of the Sea near the Goodwin Sands, in 1775. Archaeologia 5: 147-59.

Lopes, Luís Seabra, 2018, As pilhas de pesos de Dom Manuel I: contributo para a sua caracterização e avaliação. Portvgalia, Novo Série 39: 217-51

Lopes, Luís Seabra, 2019. The distribution of weight standards to Portuguese cities and towns in the early 16th century. Administrative, demographic and economic factors. Finisterra LIV (112): 45-70

Luke, J. 1670-3:  Kaufman, H.A. (ed), 1958. Tangier at High Tide: the Journal of John Luke, 1670-73. Geneva: Librarie E. Droz/Paris: Librairie Minard.

Marzia, E.M. de M.., 2014. Inventário da artilharia histórica dos séculos XIV a XVI do Museu Militar de Lisboa: bases para uma proposta de salvaguarda e valorização. Universidade de Évora.

Mearns, D.L., Warnett, J.M. and Williams, M.A., 2019. An early Portuguese mariner’s astrolabe from the Sodré wreck site, Al Hallaniyah, Oman. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 48.2: 495-506

Smith, R.B., 2000. A comparative study of 16th century Portuguese and East Mediterranean artillery. Anatolia Moderna 9: 183-210.

Smith, R.D., 1995. A 16th century Portuguese bronze breech-loading swivel gun. Militaria. Revisto de Cultura Militar 7. Servicio de Publicaciones, UCM, Madrid, 197-205

Sousa, A.C. de, 1738, Historia genealogica de Casa Real Portugueza: desde a sua origem até o presente, com as Familias illustres, que procedem dos Reys, e dos Serenissimos Duques de Braganca: justificada com instrumentos, e escritores de inviolavel fé: e offerecida a El Rey João V. Tomo IV. Lisboa. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.

Samuel Pepys, English Tangier and the wreck of the Schiedam (1684)

‘Prospect of Tangier from the East’ by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77), who was sent by King Charles II in 1668 to draw the town and its fortifications. The great ‘Mole’ can be seen under construction to the right, with workmen visible at the end, a gun battery facing seaward and various buildings. In early 1684 the Schiedam was tasked to bring back the ‘Molemen’ and their families as well as equipment and stores from the Mole (Wenceslaus Hollar Collection, Fisher Library, University of Toronto).

A view of four of the guns on the wreck of the Schiedam, still aligned muzzle to breech as they had been in the hold of the ship. With the ship tasked to transport material from the Mole at Tangier, it seems possible that these guns were from the battery on the seaward side of the Mole visible in the Hollar etching above (photo: David Gibbins).

The Schiedam, more fully ye Groette Schedam van Horn (the ‘Great Schiedam of Horn’), was a ship of some 400 tons built at Hoorn in Holland and wrecked near Gunwalloe off the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall on 4 April 1684. She was a fluyt, called by the English a ‘flyboat’, a type of wide-bellied cargo vessel with minimal armament and a small crew. The wreck was discovered in the shallow cove of Jangye-ryn in 1971 by Anthony Randall, was designated under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act and since 2016 has been investigated under my direction and that of Mark Milburn, the current Licensees from Historic England for the site. Much of the interest of the Schiedam stems from her remarkable final voyage. Having left Holland in late April or early May 1683 with cordage and anchors, she discharged her cargo at Ribadeo on the north coast of Spain and took on timber for Cadiz. On 1 August she was captured by Barbary corsairs, and then ten days later by Captain Cloudesley Shovel in the Royal Navy galley the James. He took her as a Prize to the English colony of Tangier, where she was put to use transporting fresh water from Spain for the English fleet - Tangier was poorly provided with water - and then taking equipment, stores and people back to England when Tangier was abandoned in early 1684. At the time of her wrecking, therefore, she was no longer a merchantman but was a transport vessel of the Royal Navy, termed ‘His Majesty’s Flyboat Scedam (sic) or ‘Schiedam Prize’, with a crew taken from a hulk at Tangier and considered the equivalent of a 6th rate naval ship.

A Dutch fluyt by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77), who also etched the image of Tangier above. This is one of the best images of a fluyt and probably gives a good impression of the appearance of the Schiedam, including the minimal armament - the Schiedam had only four small guns, and here you can see one gun and two closed gun ports (Wenceslaus Hollar Collection, Fisher Library, University of Toronto).

A fascinating aspect of the story of the Schiedam is the involvement of Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist who served as Secretary to the Admiralty in London during the reigns of King Charles II and King James II. In early August 1683, the same month that the Schiedam was taken as a Prize, Pepys embarked with a fleet at Portsmouth to help oversee the destruction and evacuation of Tangier. Over the next few months while the Schiedam was often in the harbour Pepys busied himself with his task of compensating the English merchants and other people of the city for their loss of property caused by the evacuation. On the departure of the Schiedam for England, in late February 1684, she had on board Pepys’ friend Henry Shere, while Pepys himself sailed in another ship that weathered a gale and passed the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall on 30 March, five days before the Schiedam was wrecked. Pepys’ direct involvement with the ship begins then – once back in London he concerned himself with the court-martial of the Schiedam’s captain and with the disposal of salvage. Among the letters in the National Archives regarding the Schiedam are several signed by Pepys and Charles II, a remarkable testament to the involvement in this story of two of the most significant figures of the age.

Samuel Pepys circa 1690, some six years after his return from Tangier (attributed to John Riley, National Portrait Gallery, London, reproduced here under License).

Pepys’ role in English Tangier has been the subject of extensive scholarly appraisal (Routh 1912; Lincoln 2014). His involvement began twenty-two years before the evacuation when he was appointed to the Tangier Committee, set up to oversee the new English garrison after the town had been handed over by the Portuguese as part of the dowry of King Charles’ wife Catherine of Braganza. At the time, there were high hopes for Tangier as a trading port – in his diary entry of 28 September 1663 Pepys wrote that it was ‘likely to be the most considerable place the King of England hath in the world’. As Treasurer of the Committee he profited personally from the enterprise, describing it as ‘one of the best flowers in my garden’ (26 September 1664), by taking presents from merchants vying to supply the garrison and from those to whom he had awarded contracts. However, it soon became clear that all was not well in Tangier. There was corruption in the governance, and the town failed to attract the type of entrepreneurs who were needed. It developed a reputation for debauchery and vice; by 1667 Pepys was calling it ‘that wicked place.’ The Great Fire of London, the plague and the Anglo-Dutch war meant that there was little money available to invest in it, a particular problem because of the huge cost of building the ‘Mole’ or breakwater that was thought necessary to create a protected anchorage. Moreover, it was under constant threat of Moorish attack, culminating in the great siege of 1680 – an event that made many realise the impossibility of defending the city in the long term without a greatly strengthened garrison, something for which there was little political will.  

Another factor which may have sealed the fate of Tangier – as it nearly did Pepys – was the ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678-81, a fictitious but widely believed conspiracy to usurp the throne and replace Charles with a Catholic king. Pepys’ enemies tried to prove that he favoured Catholics, resulting in him losing his position as Secretary to the Admiralty and being imprisoned in the Tower of London accused of treason and piracy. The charges were soon dropped, but as the case never went to trial he was unable officially to clear his name. Tangier had come under suspicion as a possible Catholic stronghold because several of its governors had been Catholics and many of its garrison were soldiers of Irish Catholic origin. At the time of his appointment in 1683 as counsellor to Lord Dartmouth – who had been put in charge of the Tangier evacuation – Pepys was still under a cloud, and eager to regain his former position. This helps to explain the fervour with which he approached the task and his strong support for Dartmouth and the King in their decision to abandon Tangier.

While at sea Pepys started a new diary that is the main source of information about the final months of the English occupation. The Tangier Diary differs from his more famous diary of the 1660s because it is mainly a record of events and observations at a time when his career was in question, but the entries as well as his letters of the period still have touches of his exuberance and humour. Having boarded the Grafton in Portsmouth for the voyage, Pepys wrote to his fellow-diarist John Evelyn on 7 August 1683 that ‘I shall goe in a good ship, with a good fleete under a very worthy leader, in a Conversation as delightful as companions of the first form in Divinity, Law Physick, and the usefullest parts of Mathematics can render it, namely Dr Ken, Dr Trumbull, Dr Lawrence, and Mr Shere; with the additionall pleasure of concerts (much above the ordinary) of Voices, Flutes and Violins.’ ‘Mr Shere’ was Henry Shere, a major figure in the story of Tangier as he was the engineer who largely designed the Mole, and then had the unhappy task of supervising its destruction. Once at Tangier – where he carried out a risky reconnaissance outside the walls, close to the Moor encampments – Pepys kept up a considerable correspondence, writing on 14 October to his friend the merchant James Houblin in London that ‘Our sulphurmongers are preparing a doomsday for this unfortunate place.’

It is unclear whether Pepys would have known the Schiedam’s final captain, Gregory Fish, when they were in Tangier, but he certainly came to know of him in June 1684 back in London when Fish went on trial for negligence in losing the ship. Fish’s competence had been called into question in a letter from Colonel Kirke, the last Governor of Tangier, to Lord Dartmouth, on Kirke’s arrival at Pendennis Castle in Falmouth on 7 April, only three days after the wrecking (Dartmouth 1887-96: 115):

… Mr Fish lies abed and cries instead of saving any of the wreck, and if he would have promised the country people to pay them they would have saved the horses, for they stood but up to the belly in water for six hours; in short he is a greater beast than any of them, and as the lieutenant tells me knew now where he was, though he met a Dutch vessel that told him how the land bore, and his course was directly on it, he believed himself upon the coast of France, and so came ashore before he saw it. The lieutenant asked him why he would undertake to command a ship and understand it no better; he said that he was sorry for it and was against it himself, but was over persuaded to take it …

Letter from King Charles II regarding the Schiedam, signed by the King and by Pepys (The National Archives, ADM 106/58/6).

The outcome of the trial is revealed in one of the most informative documents concerning the Schiedam, signed by King Charles II and Pepys (ADM 106/58):

Charles R

Our will and pleasure is, That you cause Bills to be forthwith made out, and paid by the Treasurer of Our Navy for an allowance of Salary to Mr Gregory Fish, for the time it shal appeare to you, he officiated the Office of Master Attendant, for the Affaires of Our navy at Tanger … and forasmuch as Our Right Trusty and welbeloved Conceller George Lord Dartmouth, did commit the charge of bringing home the Scedam Flyboate, a prize taken by one of Our Ships from the Pirates of Sally, and employed for the transporting the Materialls and Stores, then belonging to the Service of Our Mole att Tanger, to the care and direction of the aforesaid Gregory Fish; Our further will and pleasure is, That in Satisfaction for his endeavours therein, (he having passed a Tryall, and being acquitted by a court Martiall, for any blame about the loss of Our Said Ship, upon our Coast of England in her returne home), you also cause Bills to be made out to him, and paid by the Treasurer of Our Navy, for an allowance of Wages, equal to that given by us, according to the Customs of our Navy, to the Comanders of Our Ships of the Sixth Rate, for the time which it shal appeare to you, he served in the Said Ship. For which this shal be your Warrant. Given att Our Court att Windsor this 30th June 1664.

To the Principall Officers and Commanders of Our Navy

By his Majesty’s Command

Samuel Pepys

Fish was acquitted probably because he had been appointed to the command by Lord Dartmouth, whose judgement would have been in question had there been a guilty verdict, and despite the fact that the horses – the only casualties of the wreck – were Lord Dartmouth’s personal property. Undoubtedly there would also have been a general impetus to resolve speedily and with minimal fuss the affairs of Tangier, something to which Pepys would have been party. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Fish, formerly ‘Master Attendant for the affairs of the Navy at Tangier’ with little seafaring experience, was ill-suited to the command – so Pepys would have seen him, and the wrecking, as a salutary example of the consequence of appointing inexperienced commanders that was later to be one of his main criticisms of the Navy, and a focus of reform.

Among the other matters dealt with by Pepys’ office was a petition of June 1684 by Henry Dale, ‘late Master Caulker at Tangier and Gibraltar on behalf of himself and six other Caulkers’ ‘ … returning to England on the Schiedam Prize, were on the 4th of April 1684 Cast away in Mount’s Bay by distresse of weather, to their very great detriment, they having not only lost their Clothes, Tooles, and other things then on Board, but had their wages abated …’ (ADM 106/58).

By far the greatest concern, though, was the question of material salvaged from the wreck, the subject of eight of the ten letters in the Admiralty Papers signed by or received by Pepys regarding the Schiedam. Had the ship been a private merchantman her salvage would have been of no official concern to him, but as Secretary to the Admiralty he was responsible for the recovery of naval property which comprised both the ship itself and some of the stores brought as cargo from Tangier. Mr Richard Sampson of Gunwalloe, who had salvaged much material in the days following the wreck, presented a claim ‘For the Honourable Samuel Pepys Esq his Majesty’s Secretary for the Admiralty’, ‘For saveing and securing of Masts Yards Beams Anchors Cables of his Majesty’s Flyboat the Schiedam cast away in Mount’s Bay near the Parish Church of Gunwalloe in the County of Cornwall on the 4th Day of April in the year of Our Lord God 1684’ (ADM 1/3554). The King was also apprised of the matter, having signed a letter regarding ‘the Stores brought from Tangier in our Flyboate the Scedam (sic), lately cast away in Mount’s Bay saved near that place’ (ADM 106/58/6). The following two letters are in Pepys’ own hand (ADM 108/58/10 and 60/2):

My Lord and Gentleman,

Letter from Samuel Pepys regarding the Schiedam, 16 January 1685 (The National Archives, ADM/106/60).

Having procured his Majesty’s warrant to the Master of Ordnance, in pursuance of your desire therein, in your letter to me of the 25th July, for his takeing care to being the Anchors from Mount’s bay, which were saved out of the Scedam lately cast away there, with some other stores belonging to his Office which were also saved at the same time, and to be brought unto the River, My Lord Dartmouth has been pleased to acquaint me that the said Anchors are ordered by him to be brought with the stores belonging to his Office, to Portsmouth, and there delivered by Mr Richard Beach’s order; which I intimate to you, that you may please accordingly to give advice of it to said Richard Beach.

I objure with you mention of those charges attending the salvage of the aforesaid Goodes, but because you doe not deliver your opinion whether the same be reasonable and fit to be allowed to Mr Sampson, I shall forebear moving his Majesty in it, till I receive from you such your opinion, and then I shall, and give you his Majesty’s own directions in it, remaineing Your most humble servant

Samuel Pepys

Derby House, 7 August 1684

My Lord and Gentleman,

Upon your letter to me of 15 December, I have signified to my Lord Dartmouth, his Majesty’s pleasure for his directing of delivery of the anchors and other stores proper for the service of the Navy, of lately saved out of the Scedam (sic), which have been lately brought from her Wreck to Portsmouth and I doubt not but you will find his Lordship’s order issued therein very speedily. I remain your most humble servant,

Samuel Pepys

16 January 1685

The last of Pepys’ letters concerning the Schiedam, dated 16 April 1685 – and signed by the new king, James II - counts among Pepys’ final words on Tangier, but the experience of dealing with the evacuation of Tangier, both in the detail at which he excelled and also on a wider canvas, continued to shape his thinking and career. His part in bringing English Tangier to a conclusion had led to his reinstatement as Secretary to the Admiralty, which allowed him to address deficiencies in naval organisation, discipline and other matters that he had noted during the expedition, something that lets us see English Tangier not as an isolated and rather odd episode in British history but rather as a stepping stone to British naval hegemony and imperial expansion in the years to come.

Note

For an account of three unique Portuguese merchant’s weights of probable early 16th century date from the wreck of the Schiedam, see Gibbins 2020. Frequent updates on our discoveries on wrecks off the Lizard Peninsula can be found on our Facebook page Cornwall Maritime Archaeology.

References

ADM: The Admiralty Papers, The National Archives

The Dartmouth Papers, Staffordshire Records Office

Chappell, Edwin (ed.), 1935. The Tangier Papers of Samuel Pepys. The Navy Records Society.

Dartmouth 1887-96:  Royal Commission on Historic Manuscripts, 1887-96, The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Davis, Lieut.-Col. J., 1887. The History of the Second Queen’s Royal Regiment. Vol. 1: The English Occupation of Tangiers from 1661 to 1684. London: Richard Bentley & Son.

De la Bédoyère, G. (ed.), 2006. The letters of Samuel Pepys. Woodbridge.

Gibbins, David, 2020. Three Portuguese merchant’s weights of probable early 16th century date from the wreck of the Schiedam (1684), Gunwalloe, Cornwall, UK. www.davidgibbins.com

Latham, R.C. and Matthews, W. (eds), 1970-83. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: a new and complete transcription. London: Bell.

Lincoln, Margarette, 2014. Samuel Pepys and Tangier, 1662-1684. Huntingdon Library Quarterly 77.4: 417-34

Routh, E., 1912. Tangier, England’s Lost Atlantic Outpost. London: John Murray.

A Merchant Navy gun crew in action, Part 2: Convoy FS.12, Methil to Hull, 15-17 February 1941

 

Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins, second left, Second Officer and Gunnery Officer of SS Clan Murdoch from 1939 to 1941, with his gun crew on the ship. The other men are ship’s officers with the exception of the Royal Marine at the rear. The gun is a Quick-Fire 12-pounder on a High Angle mount. For more on this gun see Part 1 of this blog (Photo: Collection of Captain L.W. Gibbins).

 

Several years ago I wrote a blog about this photo of my grandfather Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins with his gun crew on SS Clan Murdoch in 1940-1. He told me that he had been in action with this gun against German aircraft that machine-gunned and bombed his ship off north-east England early in 1941, towards the end of a long voyage recounted in the Clan Line history In Danger’s Hour in which the ship had also encountered a surface raider. I was able to pinpoint the date of the air attack from the Ship Movement Card, which records that Clan Murdoch was ‘damaged by aircraft’ on 17 February 1941 off the Humber Estuary following a short but dangerous convoy from Methil Roads on the Forth of Firth. Since then I’ve developed a more detailed picture of that convoy and the circumstances of the attack, and rather than add them to the existing blog I’ve extracted the section on the convoy in that blog and edited it into this new one, and called it ‘Part 2.’ The first blog is now mainly about the gun and its operation. The present blog is a work-in-progress, as I have not yet been able to see the Convoy Commodore’s report in the National Archives and would expect that to add significantly to this account. My sources are primary where possible, in particular the Ship Movement Cards in the UK National Archives, but include Arnold Hague’s Convoy Database as well as collations of U-Boat and E-Boat operations.

SS Clan Murdoch (5,930 grt), taken before the war. My grandfather Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins was her 4th Officer in 1929-30 and 2nd Officer from 1937 to 1941, and her Gunnery Officer from 1939-41. The gun in the photo above would have been mounted in the bow. She was launched in 1919 on the Clyde and spent twenty years plying the Clan Line’s main routes to Africa and India before being requisitioned by the Ministry of War Transport in 1940. She was considered something of a charmed ship, surviving many near-misses - in February 1942 while carrying 1,000 tons of bombs to Rangoon a Japanese torpedo missed her by 150 yards, and two months later she survived the Japanese aerial attack on Colombo in Ceylon - but she finally did sink in 1953 off Portugal when under new ownership, having been sold first to the South American Steam Navigation Co in 1948, renamed Halesias, and then to a Panama registered company in 1952, renamed Jan Kiki, when her cargo of phosphate shifted and she capsized. This photo shows her in her pre-war Clan Line livery, which was painted over with wartime grey in 1939 (source: Clan Line: Illustrated Fleet History)(Photo: Collection of Captain L.W. Gibbins).

The Clan Murdoch had undertaken a five-month voyage to ports in India and Africa, having left Liverpool on 4 August 1940 in Convoy OB.193 and been to Cape Town, Durban, Colombo, Trincomalee, Madras, Vizigapatam, Calcutta and Chittagong, and returning by the same route. On 10 January 1941 she joined Convoy SL.62 in Freetown for Liverpool with a cargo of pig iron. On 30-31 January the convoy lost three ships in the space of 24 hours to air attack off Ireland – the Belgian Olympier, the Norwegian Austvard, from which there were only 8 survivors, and the British Rowanbank, lost with her entire crew of 68 British officers and Lascar ratings.  Two days after that Clan Murdoch arrived on the Clyde, and a week later she set off in Convoy WN.83 around Scotland towards Methil.

Three of the other ships in that convoy were the Coryton, the Scottish Trader and the tanker the Virgilia, all of them also at the end of Atlantic voyages – the Coryton having left Halifax in Nova Scotia with a cargo of grain on 22 January in Convoy SC.20, which lost five ships to U-Boat attacks. Once at Methil they joined the Norwegian Vigrid and the collier Daphne II to form Convoy FS.12, Phase 5 (named thus as the FS convoys were numbered 1-100 in repeating phases).  The Daphne II carried the convoy commodore, Commander W.J. Rice, R.D., R.N.R. The FS convoys ran from Methil to Southend on the Thames and were the main conduit for goods from the Atlantic convoys destined for ports in eastern England and London. The route was close inshore and was protected by minefields and by aerial cover, but the ships were vulnerable to U-boat, E-boat and aerial attack, including mines laid from the air, and many ships in these convoys were sunk or damaged. They were also open to attack from German aircraft returning from bombing raids on Hull, Newcastle and other coastal targets adjacent to this route.

The convoy set out from Methil on Saturday 15 February. Fortunately, poor weather that day prevented the German E-boats from leaving port; they normally patrolled close to the edge of the British minefields waiting for the southward (FS) and northward (FN) convoys. However, the incident reports for the north-east of England show that the coast from Berwick to Hull was under aerial attack that night, with bombers and minelayers ‘coming over in waves’ and being met with intensive anti-aircraft fire, amounting to several thousand heavy AA rounds. Considerable damage and casualties were caused in Northumberland and especially in South Shields, where one Heinkel 111 (6/KG-4) was brought down by AA fire. At least 45 aircraft are thought to have been involved in this attack on the north-east that night, many of them dropped mines between St Abbs Head close to Methil and Flamborough Head off Hull some 180 miles to the south.

It seems likely that these bombers or their fighter escorts were the aircraft that machine-gunned and bombed the convoy that evening several miles north-east of the Farne Islands. The Coryton was badly damaged, and her master, Captain J.R. Evans, decided to run her aground just south of Lindisfarne, ‘Holy Island’. The report of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute provided a detailed account:

 





















































































 

Captain Josiah Raymond Evans, aged 48, received his in 1914 and was also an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve. He received the War Medal and Mercantile Marine Medal for service at sea during the First World War and his family claimed his Second World War medals (the 1939-45 Star, the War Medal and the Atlantic Star). He is commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission though not on the Tower Hill Merchant Navy Memorial, as his body was recovered.

SS Coryton (4,553 grt), launched in 1928 at West Hartlepool for John Cory and Sons, Cardiff. By the time of her sinking she had taken part in 18 convoys during the war, including crossing the Atlantic four times from Halifax (Photo: Leslie W. Hansen. National Museum of Wales Collection).

The Clan Murdoch’s Ship Movement Card showed that she reached the Humber Estuary on the 16th, and that she was ‘damaged by aircraft’ on the 17th. The incident reports for that night note that ‘approximately 90 aircraft were employed in minelaying activity off Flamborough Head and further southwards’, the head being at the mouth of the Humber Estuary (the note of damage was not written on the Card until 7 March on her arrival back on the Clyde, where she underwent repairs, so it is possible that the recording clerk got the date wrong and in fact it refers to the action in which the Coryton was damaged, on 15 February). The Card for the Scottish Trader shows that she was under repair at London on 27 February and at Newcastle on 27 March, so she too may have been damaged in these attacks. The Clan Murdoch left the Humber on the 19th for Methil and did not finally depart from there until 4 March, as part of Convoy EN.81 bound for the Clyde. During this period the E-boats became active again, with S102 attacking Convoy FN.11 on 19 February and sinking the Algarve with all hands, and German bombing and minelaying activity continuing on a daily basis.

The Ship Movement Card for Clan Murdoch in February-March 1941, noting that she was ‘Damaged by Aircraft’ on 17 February (National Archives).

The Clan Murdoch was the only ship in Convoy FS.12 not to be sunk in 1941; more than half of the men in that convoy did not survive to the end of that year. Daphne II was torpedoed by E-boat S-102 on 18 March while accompanying the return convoy FN.34, sinking off the Humber though fortunately with no loss of life.  Vigrid was torpedoed on 24 June by U-371 some 400 miles south-east of Greenland; the master, 33 crew, 3 gunners and ten passengers (American Red Cross nurses) abandoned ship in four boats, two of which were never heard of again and the other two picked up on 8 July and 13 July, with 21 survivors. Virgilia was torpedoed and her fuel oil cargo set alight on 24 November by S-109 off Great Yarmouth, with 23 of her 44 crew perishing in the flames, and Scottish Trader was sunk on 6 December by U-131 some 300 miles south of Iceland. She was a straggler from Convoy SC-56, and zigzagged in an attempt to avoid the six torpedoes that were fired at her. There were no survivors from her 43 crew.

The Coryton’s Ship Movement Card records salvage attempts in August-September 1941, when a survey indicated that the forward end might be refloated, but all attempts were abandoned after heavy seas caused both ends to collapse. Today the wreckage lies partly buried in sand and shale a few hundred metres off Ross Sands in Budle Bay, with the boilers standing proud of the seabed and other structure visible. A photo of the wreck taken soon after her grounding can be seen here, as well as photos of the site underwater in this 2007 report by the Tyneside branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club.

The wreck of the Fortune (1653), off Rame Head, Cornwall, England

The first page (fol. 35) of the deposition in the High Court of Admiralty manuscripts HCA 13/68 regarding the wreck of the Hamburg ship the Fortune off Cornwall. The name of the captain and the ship can be seen in the first sentence upper right and the date of the deposition at the top. The scan is reproduced from the Marinelives website.

Following on from my last blog, the Marinelives project has revealed another previously unknown shipwreck off Cornwall among the High Court of Admiralty (HCA) manuscripts of 1627-77 held in the National Archives at Kew. In this case the location of the wreck is more precisely recorded, leading to the possibility that it may one day be found. Of particular interest is the richness of the cargo, including a silver ingot and many pieces of eight, and the fact that she was bringing goods largely procured from the Spanish New World. The following extracts are from a transcription made by Colin Greenwood in 2013 of more than 3,700 words related to the wreck in HCA 13/68, a volume of witness statements (depositions) to the High Court of the Admiralty in 1653-4. The extracts here retain his spellings and punctuation (for his complete transcription, go here).

The deposition (HCA 13/68, folios 35-7) was made on 8 October 1653 by several ‘merchants of Spayne and subjects of the King of Spayne for their goods lately laden on att the Island of Palma in the Canaries and Cast on shoare in the ship the ffortune whereof Phillip Duncar was Master upon the Coast of Cornwall.’ Their intention was to show that the goods were Spanish rather than Dutch, an issue at the time of the first Anglo-Dutch War (1652-4). The merchants included Joseph Markes (probably Marques), John (Juan) Baptista Margarita (also spelled Mogarita and Magherrita), Pedro (Petro) Soramo (Soranno, Saranno, Sararma) of Seville, Juan and Diego de Valetta of Dunkirk and Palma, John (Juan) Sallazar (Salazar) of Palma, Antonio Riche (or Reg(los?)), Don Juan de Monteverde and Juan Gomez Brito. Of these men, ‘El capitan’ Don Juan de Monteverde was a regidor (councillor) at La Palma in 1669, and Juan Gomez Brito is almost certainly the captain of that name who was wrecked in his ‘frigate’ La Gallardino off the coast of Cuba in 1660.  

The first statement in the deposition was by the ship’s master, Philippe Doncker (here spelled Dunker or Danker), ‘aged four and twenty years or thereabouts’, ‘of Antwerp in Brabant Captaine or Commander of the sayd ship the ffortune’, which he had bought ‘for ready moneyes a yeare ago at Hamburg.’ A biography by a descendant shows that Philippe, who also styled himself ‘Doncker de Formestraux’, was probably born in Lille in France in 1629, the son of a prominent Antwerp merchant named Louis Doncker and his wife Marguerite de Formestraux.

A closeup of the second page of the deposition in the High Court of Admiralty manuscripts HCA 13/68 regarding the wreck of the Hamburg ship the Fortune off Cornwall. The word ‘Ramhead’ can be seen fifth line down. The scan is reproduced from the Marinelives website.

Having begun her outward voyage at Dunkirk in May 1653 and being ‘att or near the Island of Palma’ in August, the merchants in Palma ‘did Lade and putt on board the sayd ship, in addition to several barrels of ‘Tortle shells’,

… three thousand and seven hundred hides or thereabouts, one large barr of sylver the certayne value whereof he knoweth not, and a good quantity of moneyes in pieces of 8/8 but how much in certaine he knoweth not, four barrells of Spanish Tabacco, a great quantity of dry ginger loose and about four barrells and one Potaco more of Varinaes Tobacco, and forty Ratacos more of varinases tabaccoes, thirteen pipes of sugar or thereabouts, eighteene baggs of ginger, a great quantity of Brazil and Camp[?o]cha wood …

The statements that follow by several of the merchants show that she had been freighted for her outward voyage at Dunkirk with ‘linnens and piece goods of fflanders’, and that her return cargo from Palma included three Church bells, belonging ‘ to a Church in Palma … to be new cast and founded in fflanders.’ The ‘sayd sylver moneyes hides Tobaccoos ginger and Tortle shells were by the sayd merchants bought in the Indies where none but Spaniards doe usually trade’, the ‘Indies’ here referring to the Caribbean and Spanish America. Juan Gomez Brito stated that the silver comprised ‘one barr of sylver of the weight of eight hundred peices of 8/8 or thereabouts, and about one thousand peices of eight in moneyes,’ and Juan Salazar  ‘one barr of sylver of the weight of about 900, pieces of 8/8 about 1500, pieces of 6/6 in moneys.’ The estimated weight of the bar, about 50 pounds, is consistent with the weight of silver bars found in 17th century wrecks such as the Atocha of 1622.

Having all the ‘sylver moneyes and goods aforesaid about her’, the ship set sail from Palma towards Dunkirk, with several of the merchants on board as well:

…and in her Course thither upon or about the first day of September last past the sayd ship neere unto a place called Ramhead upon the Coast of Cornwall mett with an exceeding great Storme and tempest and in the same was cast away. And saith that this deponent and the Mariners of her Company were saved and came safe on shoare upon the Coast of Cornwall, or neere thereabouts. And otherwise cannot depose, saving that the merchants passengers were alll likewise saved two only excepted.’

Thornton’s chart of Plymouth Sound from the early 18th century showing Rame Head on the coast lower left. Rame Head and Penlee Point mark the eastern extremity of the county of Cornwall along the coast, with Plymouth in Devon.

Juan Gomez Brito, himself on board at the time of the wrecking, and in all likelihood an experienced mariner – if he is indeed the man later described as a captain – and therefore a reliable judge of distances, stated that

… about a league from Plymouth mett with a violent tempest about the sixth day of September last past and in the same was cast away and the master of her and all her Company and passengers aboard three psons onely excepted were saved and came safe to shoare about a league from Plymouth the place otherwise he knoweth not And saith he knoweth the prmisses being a passenger aboard the sayd ship the voyage in question and aboard her when the sayd wrack hapned.  

One league – three nautical miles – is the distance from the Plymouth waterfront to Rame Head (‘Ramhead’), so these accounts are mutually consistent. Doncker states that upon the casting away of the ship ‘a great part of the sayd lading of hides Tobacco wood money and plate came safe on shoare and was saved and preserved’, and Brito that ‘ … some of the English that came to the Strand upon the sayd wrack say that they had found some baggs of peices of 8/8’ and ‘he hath heard two of the sayd bells came safe to shoare’. Much was therefore salvaged, but this may leave one bell unaccounted for, as well as an unknown quantity of silver and other material, in a wreck lying close inshore somewhere off Rame Head near Plymouth. 

Note

This vessel is not to be confused with the Fortune of 1652 listed in the South Cornwall section of The Shipwreck Index of the British Isles (R. & B. Larn, Lloyd’s, 1995), based on a document in the Cornwall Record Office. That ship was also of Hamburg but her captain was John de Val and she was wrecked in Mount’s Bay. Fortune was a common name for ships of the period.

The wreck of the Hope (c. 1637), off the Lizard peninsula, Cornwall, UK

A previously unknown shipwreck of the 17th century, ‘by extremity of stormes and crossewindes driven uppon the Rockes neere the Lizard uppon the coast of Cornwall’, has been revealed through the work of the Marinelives project, an effort to transcribe High Court of Admiralty (HCA) manuscripts of 1627-77 held in the National Archives at Kew. The following transcription was made by Colin Greenstreet in 2017 from HCA 13/54, a volume of witness statements (depositions) of 1638-9 comprising over 500 folios. The version here retains his transcription of the spelling and punctuation but with some omissions where the text is unclear or in Latin (for his original transcription, go here).

The deposition (HCA 13/54, folios 470-1) was made on 18 February 1638 by Claus Vabreton of Hamburg, ‘nauta’ (sailor), aged about 41, regarding the ship the Hope of Hamburg, and was made on behalf of Michaell de Cassera, one of the merchants concerned with the ship. Vabreton was Master and also had cargo of his own on board. The ship appears to have been outward bound from Hamburg, and heading towards Spain:

The first page (fol. 470) of the deposition in the High Court of Admiralty manuscripts HCA 13/54 regarding the wreck of the Hamburg ship the Hope off the Lizard in Cornwall. The name of the ship can be seen in the margin upper left and the date of the deposition at the top. The scan is reproduced from the Marinelives website, which contains a wealth of similar material on 17th century shipping.

… the arlate (said) shippe the Hope of Hamborough arrived at Haverdegrace in ffraunce, and whilst that shippe remained at Haverdegrace aforesaide with in the tyme aforesaid, the arlate (said) Anthony George and Michaell de Cassera who were the sole freighters of the said shippe for that voyage togeather with some other Merchants who were laders under the said Anthony George and Michaell de Cassera did lade aboard the said shippe certaine Linnen cloth and other goodes to bee transported from Haverdegrace aforesaid to Cadiz in Spaine for the use and accompte of the said Anthony George and Michaell de Cassera and the other Merchants aforesaid And thhis hee affirmeth upon his oath to bee true whoe was Master of the said shipp the voyage aforesaid and llett her to freighte to the said Anthony George and Michaell de Cassera for that voyage and firmed bills of Ladeing uppon the receite of the foods aforesaid into her at Haverdegrace aforesaide …

… That the said shippe with the goodes aforesaide in her followeing her course from Haverdegrace … Cadiz aforesaid was by extremity of stormes and crossewindes driven uppon the Rockes neere the Lizard uppon the coast of Cornwall and there … but this examinate and one and thirty more of his Company came on shore out of her and were saved, and a greate part of the said Linne cloth and other goodes were taken and saved, And this hee affirmeth uppon his oath to be true who was in the said shippe when shee strucke uppon the Rockes aforesaid and gott to shoare out of her uppon a Cable …

… That all the Lading of the said shippe the Hope aswell the Linnen cloth taken upp and saved as aforesaid, as all the rest of that shipps Ladeing did and doe really belonge unto the arlate Anthony George and Michaell de Cassera and severall other Merchants Laders under them, and were Laden for their Accompts onely hee sayeth that hee this examinate did Lade into that shippe for his owne accompte three barrelles of Canvas and fower barells of Linnen cloth, and those fower barrells of Linnen cloth hee saith are saved and Laid by them selves apart from the Merchants goodes which are saved, And this hee affirmeth uppon his oath to bee true …

the Laders of the said goodes were some dutch, some french, Spaniardes ad Portugalls, and as hee thincketh some Englishe …

(National Archives, HCA 13/34 fol. 470-1, trancription by Colin Greenstreet on Marinelives)

The use of ‘aforesaid’ and ‘said’ may indicate the existence of earlier depositions about this ship in the same HCA volume, much of which remains to be transcribed. As yet it has not proved possible to find certain reference to this ship elsewhere, for example in the Calendar of State Papers. However, the Amsterdam Notarial Archive, only in 2020 made accessible online, contains several entries of c. 1635-40 regarding a ship or ships named ‘De (Der) Hope’, one of them - from 25 January 1640 - a judgement in England on the skipper of a ship with that name that may refer to this wreck (Amsterdam, Notarial archives, archive number 5075 , inventory number 523). Although ‘de Hamburg’, the fact that she had consignments from Dutch merchants strongly suggests that she would have taken on cargo in Amsterdam or Tessel on her outward voyage.

What makes this ship particularly interesting is the suggestion that it may have been a richly laden cargo, involving numerous merchants and consignments of valuable textiles. Although the account suggests that much of this was salvaged, the same could be said from the contemporary references to the Santo Christo de Castello (1667), the ‘Pin Wreck’, and yet much remained archaeologically at the wreck site. We know of several sites close inshore off the Lizard peninsula that have produced coins of the 1620s and 1630s, and it is possible that one of these was the Hope.

Three more marked merchants’ weights from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England

 

Three weights from the Mullion Pin Wreck (photo: David Gibbins)

 

Several blogs back I reported on my discovery of a 2 pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion Pin Wreck, an important find in its own right and also because the date of 1665 stamped on the weight provides additional evidence that the ship was indeed the Santo Christo de Castello from Amsterdam (Gibbins 2019a). In this blog I’m reporting on three more weights with markings, one of them – a large cup weighing over 3 pounds - found only last week. As in my previous blog I’m indebted to Ritzo Holtman, editor of the journal Meten & Wegen and one of the leading authorities on historic Dutch weights, for his help in identifying these weights and for taking the time to provide me with much invaluable reference material and images.

The workshop of a weight-maker by the engraver Christoph Weigel (1654-1725), who was based in Nuremberg. Several lidded cup-weights can be seen in the foreground. This comes from a book of professions and trades published in 1698 (Weigel 1698: 330-1).

 Cup-weights were originally part of ‘nests’ of incremental sizes in which the weight of the cups inside equalled the weight of the outer cup and lid, known as the ‘house’ (for cup-weights in general, see Homer 1963-4; Kisch 1965: 122-9; especially Houben 1984). All of the weights under discussion here were made of brass, a less durable material than bronze but easier to handle and work. Most blokgewichten were from Amsterdam, whereas most cup-weights were from Nuremberg; only one Amsterdam maker, Guilliam de Neve, tried to break this monopoly after being granted a license for 12 years to produce them in 1626, but his weights are rare (Houben 1984: 65). Because the Nuremberg makers produced weights for many different weighing systems across Europe – in which the pound could vary from as low as 350 gr to 560 gr – they probably had several stock standards, for example producing sets for the Amsterdam and Brabant pounds (see below) but leaving it for the verifiers at places with other systems to adjust or ‘calibrate’ the weights as needed by filing away or drilling out the metal, or increasing the weight by punching holes in the base and filling them with molten lead. Weights would presumably be discarded once they became too worn to be calibrated or were damaged by mishandling or accident.

Nagel (2013) presents an excellent summary of the weight systems in use in Amsterdam at the time of the Pin Wreck. Following the conquest of Antwerp by the Spanish in 1585 and the closure of the Scheldt to Dutch shippers, Amsterdam developed as the main trading city in the Netherlands. Three different weight standards are evidenced among brass weights in use in the city in the 17th century: the Amsterdam pound of 494.04 gr, the Brabant pound of 469.09 gr and the troois (troy) pound of 492.168 gr. From about 1630 the Amsterdam pound became the main standard for the wholesale and retail trade in Amsterdam, including the weighing of spices brought in by the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (the Dutch East India Company). The Brabant pound, the ‘Light Pound’ of the southern Netherlands so-named after the region of Brabant - then under Spanish control, and including Antwerp – came into more extensive use in Amsterdam after the fall of Antwerp, when Amsterdam merchants began trading with the Brabant hinterland for dyes, mercury, flax, yarn, silk, lace and other products. The troois pound was used exclusively for weighing gold and silver, and by the Mint houses.

As we saw in the previous blog, Amsterdam weights were stamped by the verifier with the crowned coat of arms of Amsterdam flanked by his initials. The Amsterdam verifier also calibrated weights to the Brabant pound, stamping the weights in the same way with the upturned hand of Antwerp – the symbol of the Brabant pound – also flanked by his initials (the hand derives from a legend in which a giant living beside the Scheldt exacted a toll on passing boatmen by chopping one of their hands off and throwing it in the river, until he himself was overcome by a Roman soldier who inflicted the same penalty on him). The presence of the Antwerp hand alone, without initials, means that the weight was not used in Amsterdam but elsewhere, either in Antwerp itself or in one of the other cities in the Netherlands that used the Brabant weight system.

All three of these systems could have been present among the equipment of a ship from Amsterdam such as the Santo Christo de Castello. Any sensible sea merchant would have been prepared for transactions using different systems in his home port as well as on his journey, which in this case was to include England and Iberia as well the destination port of Genoa in Italy. Even if most of the weights were scrap, as seems likely, this picture is valuable in showing how scrap weights collected in Amsterdam could have included examples of these different standards. Whether they were scrap or in use, the weights that we have discovered are all consistent with the ship being from Amsterdam. From the perspective of research into the history of weights, archaeological sites are important for providing closed, datable contexts for finds (Holtman 1999), and in the case of wrecks for providing contexts in which the mercantile use of weights may be better envisaged.

Large cup-weight showing interior line decoration (photo: David Gibbins)

Large-cup weight showing stamped numeral 4 and upturned (right) hand, with the thumb on the right (compare with better preserved stamp on the weight illustrated below) (photo: David Gibbins)

Large cup-weight showing embedded eroded pin for attaching the lid hinge (photo: David Gibbins)

The first weight under discussion here, part of a ‘house’ of nested cup weights, measures 10.0 cm across the top, 7.5 cm across the bottom and 6.9 cm high, and weighs 1415.15 gr (3.12 English pounds). The ‘house’ originally comprised the cup and a lid, which together weighed 4 Brabant pounds. We can be certain of this weight because the cup is stamped on the inside with the hand of Antwerp as well as with the numeral 4. As we have seen, the ‘house’ functioned as the heaviest weight of the set and equalled the weight of the smaller cups inside, meaning that the complete set would have weighed 8 pounds. The absence of the verifier’s initials shows that this weight was not in use in Amsterdam. The weight can be dated after about 1650 because it was from then that the Nuremberg makers began stamping numerals such as this one into the cups to denote the number of pounds (or for smaller weights lood, half-ounces). It seems likely that they would have roughly adjusted this set for the Brabant pound, with the weights on the high side (as was commonly practiced by the Nuremberg makers); the verifier would then only have needed to file away the excess mass and confirm the weight with his stamp.

A weak point in these ‘houses’ was the hinge that connected the lid to the cup by means of two or sometimes three pins attached to the cup below the rim; a single pin protruding from the opposite side of the cup secured the hinged lug that kept the lid closed. Only faint impressions remain in this cup to show where the broken pins remain in place. Whereas the lids for smaller sets were light, those for larger sets were heavy – this one would have weighed almost a pound – and could be embellished with elaborate figural metalwork on the hinge and clasp lock plates as well as engravings of concentric bands around the cup, as can be seen in the interior of ours. Whether or not this cup was scrap or shipboard equipment is impossible to tell, but the distortion and wear could have been caused during the wreck process, and the date of manufacture for the weight - no more than 17 years before the wrecking - suggests that it may still have been in use.

1/8 lb cup-weight showing interior line decoration (photo: David Gibbins).

1/8 lb cup-weight showing stamped letters B,X, A and O, and the stamped Antwerp hand of the Brabant weight system. The hand is only 5 mm long (photo: David Gibbins).

The second weight is another cup, though much smaller – 32 mm across the top, 25 mm across the base and 17 mm high, and weighing 52 gr. It too is stamped with the Antwerp hand, which means that it must equate with the nearest weight in the Brabant system, two Antwerp ounces (4 lood) or 1/8 pound (about 58.43 gr), taking into account loss of mass through damage and erosion. This cup too was almost certainly made in Nuremberg, but unlike the larger cup is not stamped with a number for the weight so must date before about 1650. It does, however, contain four letters – X, A (with horizontal line on top), B and O – stamped by the verifier in the city in which it was used. As these are year stamps representing alphabetical sequences – with a new alphabet started once the previous sequence had ended – they show that the weight had been in use for a number of years. At present it is not possible to date these verification letters. One suggestion is that the weight had been damaged and was then deliberately distorted to create a spout to allow it to be reused as a crucible for melted lead, which the verifiers used to adjust weights upwards (see below).

Small block-weight showing stamped letter V, signifying the date 1635 (photo: David Gibbins).

Small block weight showing line decoration and upper gripping ridge (photo: David Gibbins).

The third weight is another Amsterdam blokgewicht like the 2 pound weight in my previous blog, though again much smaller – 19 mm across the top, 23 mm across the base and 18 mm high, and, like the weight just discussed, weighing 52 gr and equating to a 1/8 pound weight, though in this case the slightly larger Amsterdam standard (where 2 ounces equalled 61.76 gr). Unlike the heavier weight, this one has a protruding rim to make it easier to carry. The top is stamped with the letter V, the Amsterdam verification stamp for the year 1635. Underneath the weight a hole has been punched and filled with lead to adjust the weight upwards. The damage to the top of this weight may have been caused by mishandling or by a casting error that got filled by the weight maker but later fell out. Either way, this shows clearly that the weight was present on the ship as scrap. The larger 2 lb blokgewicht provides a date much closer to the documented date of 1667 for the loss of the Santo Christo de Castello, but this smaller weight is nevertheless important for giving another archaeological terminus post quem for the wreck.

Copyright © 2019 David Gibbins

 

Acknowledgements

I am again very grateful to Ritzo Holtman, editor of the journal Meten & Wegen (www.gmvv.org) and webmaster of www.muntgewicht.nl, for his assistance.

A full report on our investigations at the Mullion Pin Wreck in 2018-19 is currently in preparation. For the latest finds follow www.facebook.com/CornwallMaritimeArchaeology. Two other blogs on material from the wreck are Gibbins 2019a and 2019b.

References

Gibbins, David, 2019a. A two-pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. http://davidgibbins.com/journal/2019/10/14/a-two-pound-amsterdam-blokgewicht-block-weight-from-the-mullion-pin-wreck-a-mid-17th-century-merchantman-off-cornwall-england

Gibbins, David, 2019b. A copper-alloy crucified Christ from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. http://davidgibbins.com/journal/2019/10/23/a-copper-alloy-crucified-christ-from-the-mullion-pin-wreck-cornwall-england-1667

Holtman, R.J., 1997-8. Laatmiddeleeuwse sluitgewichten in noordwest-Europa. Meten & Wegen 97 (March 1997) – 101 (March 1998)

Homer, R.F., 1963-4. Nests of weights. The Antique Collector, Feb 1963: 26-8, Aug-Sept 1964: 145-7 (two parts)

Houben, G.M.M., 1984. 2000 years of nested cup weights. Zwolle, Netherlands: G.M.M. Houben.

Kisch, B., 1965. Scales and weights: a historical outline. Yale University Press.

Nagel, J.H, 2013. Blokgewichten. Meten & Wegen 162 (June 2013): 3862-6

Weigel, C., 1698. Abbildung der gemein nützlichen Haupt Stände: von denen Regenten und ihren so in Friedens als Kriegs Zeiten zugeordneten Bedienten an, biss auf alle Künstler und Handwercker, nach jedes Ambts und Beruffs Verrichtungen, meist nach dem Leben gezeichnet und in Kupfer gebracht, auch nach dero Ursprung, Nutzbar und Denckwurdigkeiten, kurtz, doch grundlich beschrieben, und ganz neu an den Tag gelegt. Regensburg: Christoff Weigel.

A copper-alloy crucified Christ (Corpus Christi) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England

 

The crucified Christ (Corpus Christi) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (photo: David Gibbins).

 

A photo of the crucified Christ (Corpus Christi) a few minutes after its discovery at the Mullion Pin Wreck, in the shingle and rock below the cascable of the cannon in the background (photo: David Gibbins).

I discovered this copper-alloy figure of the crucified Christ (Corpus Christi) in 2019 on the Mullion Pin Wreck, a mid-17th century merchantman off Cornwall so-named for the abundance of brass clothing pins found at the site. The wreck has been identified as the Santo Christo de Castello, a Genoese-owned ship built in Amsterdam and wrecked on her maiden voyage in 1667. She was carrying a rich cargo of cloth, spices, lead ingots and other material, including a consignment of brass scrap made up of damaged and broken items up to two centuries older than the wreck. The site was discovered in 1969 and partly excavated over several seasons in the 1970s (McBride et al. 1972, 1974, 1975); this blog is one of several arising from renewed excavations carried out since 2018 under my direction (see also Gibbins 2019a and 2019b).

This figure is a unique find on a wreck and one of our most important discoveries. Its surviving height is 7.8 cm and width across the arms 5.3 cm; originally it was about 12-14 cm high. The arms and legs appear to have been deliberately sheared off, with the right arm bent perhaps in the process. Despite being eroded by more than 350 years underwater – the figure was discovered loose in shingle – it is still possible to see the quality of the afterwork in the chiselling of the hair and the drapery, as well as the excellence of the anatomical study in the musculature and emaciation of the torso, the facial features – executed according to the precepts of the Counter-Reformation, showing Christ without pain or suffering – and the wound on the right side of the chest where the spear was thrust in after death, following the account in the Gospels.

Three view of the crucified Christ (Corpus Christi) from the Mullion Pin Wreck. The red line points to the spear wound. Click to enlarge (photos: David Gibbins).

The figure was created after a larger original of circa 1569-77 by the Italian artist Guglielmo della Porta (died 1577), who drew inspiration from Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer of 1519-20 (Coppel 2012a, b; Avery 2012; Gramberg 1981; Middledorf 1977). Guglielmo was greatly influenced by Michelangelo’s anatomical studies as well as by the art of classical antiquity, both of which can be seen in this figure. He was drawn in his later years to creating figures of Christ in this manner as a result of the religious iconography dictated by the Council of Trent (1545-63), which set out the terms of the Counter-Reformation. Their edicts emphasized private devotion and personal communion, resulting in an interest in small portable figures of Christ such as ours. The idealised, athletic body, the torsion of the figure and the lay of the loincloth is closely matched by several larger figures attributed to Guglielmo, including the one illustrated below in the Convent of Porta Coeli in Valladolid, Spain. These figures, mostly in the 35-40 cm range, would have been the models from which the workshops created smaller copies. Whether our figure was made in the Italian workshops of Guglielmo himself during his lifetime, or in those of his pupils such as Gentili or Giambologna – or elsewhere, for example in the Netherlands of Germany – is unknown, but it is most likely to date from the final quarter of the 16th century. Few of these figures have survived and ours is the only one known to have been discovered archaeologically, as well as being one of the more important works of art of this period to have been found in a shipwreck.

Copyright © 2019 David Gibbins

An interim report on our investigations at the Mullion Pin Wreck in 2018-19 is currently in preparation. For the latest jresearch follow www.facebook.com/CornwallMaritimeArchaeology. Two other blogs on artefacts from the site are Gibbins 2019a and 2019b.

References

Copper-alloy Crucified Christ (Corpus Christi) attributed to Guglielmo della Porta in the Convento de Porta Coeli, Valladolid, Spain, showing the cross and Crown of Thorns that may originally have formed part of the Mullion Pin Wreck figure as well (reproduced from Coppel, R., 2012b. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, p. 70).

Avery, C., 2012. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 126-7.

Coppel, R., 2012a. Preface. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 10-11.

Coppel, R., 2012b. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 62-73.

Gibbins, David, 2019a. A two-pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. http://davidgibbins.com/journal/2019/10/14/a-two-pound-amsterdam-blokgewicht-block-weight-from-the-mullion-pin-wreck-a-mid-17th-century-merchantman-off-cornwall-england

Gibbins, David, 2019b, three more marked merchants’ weights from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. http://davidgibbins.com/journal/2019/10/29/three-more-marked-merchants-weights-from-the-mullion-pin-wreck-1667-cornwall-england

Gramberg, W., 1981. Notizien zu den Kruzifixen des Guglielmo della Porta under zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Hochaltarkreuzes in S. Pietro in Vaticano. Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 32, 1981: 95-113

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1972. A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove, Cornwall. An interim report. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 1.1: 135-42

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1974. A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove, Cornwall. Second interim report. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 3.1: 67-79

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1975.  A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove: 3rd interim report on the Santo Christo de Castello, 1667. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 4.2: 237-52

Middledorf, U., 1977. In the wake of Guglielmo della Porta. The Connoisseur 194, 780: 82-4.

A copper-alloy crucified Christ from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England

 

The crucified Christ from the Mullion Pin Wreck (photo: David Gibbins).

 

The crucified Christ a few minutes after discovery at the Mullion Pin Wreck in the shingle visible in the background, below the cascabel of the cannon (photo: David Gibbins).

I discovered this figure in 2019 while diving on the Mullion ‘Pin Wreck’, a mid-17th century merchantman off Cornwall so-named for the abundance of brass clothing pins found at the site. The wreck is almost certainly the Santo Christo de Castello, a Genoese-owned ship built in Amsterdam in 1666 and wrecked on her maiden voyage the following year from Holland via London towards Iberia. Documentary sources show that she was carrying a rich cargo of cloth and spices as well as iron and lead ingots, and archaeological investigations have revealed that she was also transporting a consignment of scrap copper-alloy objects. The first period of investigation at the wreck following its discovery in 1969 was described in a series of interim reports (McBride et al. 1972, 1974, 1975); this blog is one of several reporting on renewed excavations carried out since 2018 under my direction (see also Gibbins 2019a and 2019b).

This figure of a crucified Christ is a unique find at the wreck and one of our most important discoveries. It is made from cast copper-alloy and may originally have been gilt. The surviving height of the figure is 7.8 cm and the width across the arms 5.3 cm, with the original estimated height about 12.5-14 cm. The arms and legs appear to have been deliberately sheared off, with the right arm bent perhaps in that process. Despite being eroded by 351 years underwater – the figure was discovered loose in shingle – it is still possible to see the quality of the afterwork in the chiselling of the hair and the hammering of the drapery, as well as the excellence of the anatomical study in the musculature and emaciation of the torso, the facial features – executed according to the precepts of the Counter-Reformation, showing Christ without pain or suffering – and the wound on the right side of the chest where the spear was thrust in after death, according to the Gospels.

Three view of the crucified Christ from the Mullion Pin Wreck. The red line points to the spear wound. Click to enlarge (photos: David Gibbins).

This figure was created after a larger original of circa 1569-77 by the Italian artist Guglielmo della Porto (died 1577), who based his design on Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer of 1519-20 (Coppel 2012a, b; Avery 2012; Gramberg 1981; Middledorf 1977). Guglielmo was greatly influenced by Michelangelo’s anatomical studies as well as by the art of classical antiquity, both of which can be seen in this figure. He was drawn in his later years to creating figures of Christ in this manner as a result of the religious iconography dictated by the Council of Trent (1545-63), which set out the terms of the Counter-Reformation. Their edicts also emphasised private devotional exercises and personal communion, resulting in an interest in small portable figures such as ours. This design with its idealised, athletic body, the strong torsion of the figure and the particular lay of the loincloth is matched by several larger crucifixes attributed to Guglielmo, including the one illustrated here in the Convent of Porta Coeli in Valladolid, Spain. These larger figures, mostly in the 35-40 cm range, would have been the templates from which the workshops created smaller copies. Whether our figure was made in the workshops of Guglielmo himself during his lifetime, or in those of his pupils such as Gentili or Giambologna – or elsewhere, for example in Holland – is unknown, but it is most likely to date from the final quarter of the 16th century. Despite the popularity of these small crucifixion figures in Catholic Europe at the time, few have survived and ours is the only one known to have come from an archaeological excavation.

Like the Santo Christo de Castello, Guglielmo was Genoese, a coincidence that exemplifies the world at the time in which cities such as Genoa and Amsterdam acted as hubs not only for commerce but also for artistic production. Our figure could have been the belongings of a passenger or crew member, but is more likely to have been part of the scrap metal consignment – the arms and legs look as if they have been cut away to make the piece smaller, as can be seen on other scrap items from the site. At a time when Holland was violently anti-Catholic, it would be no great surprise to find old religious artefacts among a scrap metal consignment on a ship bound from Amsterdam in 1667, even one owned by a Genoese and destined for Spain and the Mediterranean as was the case with the Santo Christo de Castello.

Copyright © 2019 David Gibbins

A full report on our investigations at the Mullion Pin Wreck in 2018-19 is currently in preparation. For the latest finds and research follow www.facebook.com/CornwallMaritimeArchaeology. Two other blogs on artefacts from the site are Gibbins 2019a and 2019b.

References

Crucified Christ attributed to Guglielmo della Porta in the Convento de Porta Coeli, Valladolid, Spain, showing the cross as well as the Crown of Thorns that may originally have formed part of the Pin Wreck figure (reproduced from Coppel, R., 2012b. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, p. 70).

Avery, C., 2012. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 126-7.

Coppel, R., 2012a. Preface. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 10-11.

Coppel, R., 2012b. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 62-73.

Gibbins, David, 2019a. A two-pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. http://davidgibbins.com/journal/2019/10/14/a-two-pound-amsterdam-blokgewicht-block-weight-from-the-mullion-pin-wreck-a-mid-17th-century-merchantman-off-cornwall-england

Gibbins, David, 2019b, three more marked merchants’ weights from the Mullion Pin Wreck (1667), off Cornwall, England. http://davidgibbins.com/journal/2019/10/29/three-more-marked-merchants-weights-from-the-mullion-pin-wreck-1667-cornwall-england

Gramberg, W., 1981. Notizien zu den Kruzifixen des Guglielmo della Porta under zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Hochaltarkreuzes in S. Pietro in Vaticano. Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 32, 1981: 95-113

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1972. A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove, Cornwall. An interim report. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 1.1: 135-42

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1974. A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove, Cornwall. Second interim report. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 3.1: 67-79

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1975.  A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove: 3rd interim report on the Santo Christo de Castello, 1667. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 4.2: 237-52

Middledorf, U., 1977. In the wake of Guglielmo della Porta. The Connoisseur 194, 780: 82-4.

A copper-alloy crucified Christ from the Mullion Pin Wreck, Cornwall, England (1667)

 

The crucified Christ from the Mullion Pin Wreck (photo: David Gibbins).

 

The crucified Christ a few minutes after discovery at the Mullion Pin Wreck in the shingle visible in the background, below the cascabel of the cannon (photo: David Gibbins).

I discovered this figure in 2019 while diving on the Mullion ‘Pin Wreck’, a mid-17th century merchantman off Cornwall so-named for the abundance of brass clothing pins found at the site. The wreck is almost certainly the Santo Christo de Castello, a Genoese-owned ship built in Amsterdam in 1666 and wrecked on her maiden voyage the following year from Holland via London towards Iberia. Documentary sources show that she was carrying a rich cargo of cloth and spices as well as iron and lead ingots, and archaeological investigations have revealed that she was also transporting a consignment of scrap copper-alloy objects. The first period of investigation at the wreck following its discovery in 1969 was described in a series of interim reports (McBride et al. 1972, 1974, 1975); this blog is one of several reporting on renewed excavations carried out since 2018 under my direction (see also Gibbins 2019).

This figure of a crucified Christ is a unique find at the wreck and one of our most important discoveries. It is made from cast copper-alloy and may originally have been gilt. The surviving height of the figure is 7.8 cm and the width across the arms 5.3 cm, with the original estimated height about 12.5-14 cm. The arms and legs appear to have been deliberately sheared off, with the right arm bent perhaps in that process. Despite being eroded by 351 years underwater – the figure was discovered loose in shingle – it is still possible to see the quality of the afterwork in the chiselling of the hair and the hammering of the drapery, as well as the excellence of the anatomical study in the musculature and emaciation of the torso, the facial features – executed according to the precepts of the Counter-Reformation, showing Christ without pain or suffering – and the wound on the right side of the chest where the spear was thrust in after death, according to the Gospels.

Three view of the crucified Christ from the Mullion Pin Wreck. The red line points to the spear wound. Click to enlarge (photos: David Gibbins).

This figure was created after a larger original of circa 1569-77 by the Italian artist Guglielmo della Porto (died 1577), who based his design on Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer of 1519-20 (Coppel 2012a, b; Avery 2012; Gramberg 1981; Middledorf 1977). Guglielmo was greatly influenced by Michelangelo’s anatomical studies as well as by the art of classical antiquity, both of which can be seen in this figure. He was drawn in his later years to creating figures of Christ in this manner as a result of the religious iconography dictated by the Council of Trent (1545-63), which set out the terms of the Counter-Reformation. Their edicts also emphasised private devotional exercises and personal communion, resulting in an interest in small portable figures such as ours. This design with its idealised, athletic body, the strong torsion of the figure and the particular lay of the loincloth is matched by several larger crucifixes attributed to Guglielmo, including the one illustrated here in the Convent of Porta Coeli in Valladolid, Spain. These larger figures, mostly in the 35-40 cm range, would have been the templates from which the workshops created smaller copies. Whether our figure was made in the workshops of Guglielmo himself during his lifetime, or in those of his pupils such as Gentili or Giambologna – or elsewhere, for example in Holland – is unknown, but it is most likely to date from the final quarter of the 16th century. Despite the popularity of these small crucifixion figures in Catholic Europe at the time, few have survived and ours is the only one known to have come from an archaeological excavation.

Like the Santo Christo de Castello, Guglielmo was Genoese, a coincidence that exemplifies the world at the time in which cities such as Genoa and Amsterdam acted as hubs not only for commerce but also for artistic production. Our figure could have been the belongings of a passenger or crew member, but is more likely to have been part of the scrap metal consignment – the arms and legs look as if they have been cut away to make the piece smaller, as can be seen on other scrap items from the site. At a time when Holland was violently anti-Catholic, it would be no great surprise to find old religious artefacts among a scrap metal consignment on a ship bound from Amsterdam in 1667, even one owned by a Genoese and destined for Spain and the Mediterranean as was the case with the Santo Christo de Castello.

Copyright © 2019 David Gibbins

A full report on our investigations at the Mullion Pin Wreck in 2018-19 is currently in preparation. For the latest finds and research follow www.facebook.com/CornwallMaritimeArchaeology. For another blog on artefacts from the site see Gibbins 2019.

References

Crucified Christ attributed to Guglielmo della Porta in the Convento de Porta Coeli, Valladolid, Spain, showing the cross as well as the Crown of Thorns that may originally have formed part of the Pin Wreck figure (reproduced from Coppel, R., 2012b. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, p. 70).

Avery, C., 2012. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 126-7.

Coppel, R., 2012a. Preface. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 10-11.

Coppel, R., 2012b. Christ crucified. In Guglielmo della Porta: A Counter-Reformation Sculptor. Madrid, Coll & Cortés Fine Art, 62-73.

Gibbins, David, 2019. A two-pound Amsterdam blokgewicht (block weight) from the Mullion ‘Pin Wreck’, a mid-17th century merchantman off Cornwall, England. http://davidgibbins.com/journal/2019/10/14/a-two-pound-amsterdam-blokgewicht-block-weight-from-the-mullion-pin-wreck-a-mid-17th-century-merchantman-off-cornwall-england

Gramberg, W., 1981. Notizien zu den Kruzifixen des Guglielmo della Porta under zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Hochaltarkreuzes in S. Pietro in Vaticano. Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 32, 1981: 95-113

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1972. A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove, Cornwall. An interim report. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 1.1: 135-42

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1974. A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove, Cornwall. Second interim report. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 3.1: 67-79

McBride, P., Larn, R. and Davis, R., 1975.  A mid-17th century merchant ship found near Mullion Cove: 3rd interim report on the Santo Christo de Castello, 1667. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 4.2: 237-52

Middledorf, U., 1977. In the wake of Guglielmo della Porta. The Connoisseur 194, 780: 82-4.