When HMS Gloucester sank, she was half buried in the seabed. There was no formal passenger register, but it is estimated that 130 to 250 crew and passengers drowned.
Stuart, who was crowned King of England and King of Ireland almost three years later and King of Scotland almost three years later under James VII, was almost one of those victims.
At the time of the tragedy, the then Duke of York was a Catholic heir to the Protestant throne at a time of both political and religious tension. His near miss stands out in British history, as does the significant loss of life.
“Due to the circumstances of her sinking, this can be described as the most significant historic marine discovery since the Mary Rose was raised in 1982,” Claire Jowitt, professor of English and history at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.
“The discovery promises to fundamentally change the understanding of 17th-century social, maritime and political history.”
Artifacts have already been collected and preserved on the site, including clothing, shoes, navigational and naval equipment, and many wine bottles – including some that are unopened.
One of the wine bottles bears a glass seal with the coat of arms of George Washington’s ancestors, the Legge family. And the design of this crest predated the US Stars and Stripes.
An exhibition of finds from the shipwreck will open at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery in the spring. Jowitt is co-curator of the exhibition and author of a new study on the shipwreck.
The shipwreck’s discovery has only just been announced, but it was originally found in 2007. The delay was caused by the time required to confirm the ship’s identity and protect the vulnerable site in international waters off the Norfolk coast.
Historic England, a UK Government public agency that oversees England’s historic sites, will protect the shipwreck.
In search of a shipwreck
Brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell decided to search for the ship after being inspired by raising the wreck of the Mary Rose on television as children. The brothers are printers in Norfolk, as well as licensed divers and honorary fellows at the University of East Anglia’s School of History.
The Barnwell brothers and their late father Michael, along with their friend and fellow diver and former Royal Navy submariner James Little, found the shipwreck after a four-year search. The Gloucester was split along the keel with parts of the hull still buried in the sand.
“It was our fourth season of diving in search of Gloucester,” Lincoln Barnwell said in a statement. “We started to think we wouldn’t find them, we had dived so much and only found sand. As I descended to the seabed, the first thing I spotted was large guns Set on white sand it was impressive and truly beautiful. We were the only people in the world at that point who knew where the wreck was.”
The ship’s bell, dating from 1681, was recovered from the wreck. The recipient of the wreck and the Ministry of Defense used the bell to identify the wreck as that of the Gloucester in 2012.
A wreck with many consequences
First launched in 1654 as a 50-gun warship, Gloucester became a Royal Navy ship in 1660. When it came time for the Duke of York to sail from England to Scotland on royal business and to collect his daughter Anne and his heavily pregnant wife, Mary of Modena, in 1682, the Gloucester received the commission. The Duke of York and his family resided at the court of Charles II.
“It was politically advantageous for Mary’s baby to be born in England; the royal family hoped the child would be a prince to further secure the Stuart dynasty,” Jowitt wrote in her study.
By 1682 Charles was getting older and had already suffered a stroke. In some respects power was already passing to the Duke of York. On his journey were prominent courtiers from England, Ireland and Scotland.
At 5:30 a.m. on May 6, the ship ran aground 45 kilometers off the coast of Great Yarmouth. The Duke, a former Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy, feuded with the pilot over control of the ship’s course, and they argued over how best to navigate the notoriously treacherous sandbars of Norfolk.
The ship sank within an hour, and the Duke hesitated until the last minute to abandon ship, believing it could be saved. Protocol dictated that others could not be evacuated before the royal family, which contributed to the tragedy. With the Duke and one boat loaded with his cash box of memoirs and political documents, only one other boat managed to escape.
High-profile nobles, the Duke’s relatives, and many of the Duke’s domestics were among the dead. According to Jowitt, only a fraction of the victims’ identities are known at this time.
The Gloucester was part of a squadron of ships, so there were many eyewitnesses to the tragedy. The Duke had influenced the dangerous route, but took no responsibility for the accident, blaming the imprisoned pilot.
Some saw the shipwreck as a way to question the duke’s judgment under pressure and his suitability to rule as a future monarch, Jowitt said. His reign was short, lasting from 1685 to 1688, before being ousted during the Glorious Revolution and replaced by Protestants – his daughter Mary Stuart and her husband William of Orange.
A historical research project accompanying the exhibition examines the failures that led to the sinking, as well as conspiracy theories about the causes of the tragedy and the long political shadows it cast.