J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Warship Anne

Other South American Rivers are Available

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I don’t usually plug other people’s books on this site, but occasionally, titles come along that really deserve a bit of a leg-up – especially if they fall within my usual very strict and narrow remits (i.e. seventeenth century, naval, seventeenth century naval, or absolutely anything else whatsoever that interests me), and/or if their publishers are slightly off the beaten track, and/or if I’ve got some sort of personal connection with them. Next week, for example, I’m hoping to have a guest post that fits several of these bills – watch this space – but this week, I thought I’d highlight some titles that can be found in the ‘available for pre-order’ categories of the proverbial tax-lite South American river, plus one that’s just come out.

The first is the intriguingly titled Lawson Lies Still in the Thames, by Gill Blanchard, being published by Amberley in May. This is a biography of one of the most intriguing admirals of the seventeenth century, Sir John Lawson, who moved from being an out-and-out radical under the Commonwealth to become a knight of the realm and staunch supporter of the restored monarchy. I’ve been interested in Lawson since I was working on my doctorate over thirty years ago, and he appears as a character in the third Quinton novel, The Blast That Tears the Skies. He was also the captain of the London, but wasn’t aboard when the ship accidentally blew up in the Thames in March 1665. I’ve blogged before on this site about the wreck of the London, and a lot more work has been done on the wreck since then, so having this book in print will be a big boost to those who are diving on and researching the site. I’ve exchanged emails with the author about aspects of Lawson’s career, and know that Gill has unearthed some previously unknown documents about her subjects, so I’m really intrigued to see what she says about this absolutely fascinating and historically important individual.

My next pick is Resolution: Two Brothers, A Nation in Crisis, A World at War, by David Rutland and Emma Ellis, being published by Head of Zeus in April. If you’re thinking that you’ve never come across Rutland as a surname, you’d probably be right; but the author in question is actually David, Duke of Rutland, and this is the story of one of his family members, an almost exact contemporary of Nelson (and son of the Marquess of Granby, of multiple pub names fame), who died at the age of just twenty-four. If you think Captain Lord Robert Manners sounds a bit insignificant to deserve an entire book, his contemporaries would have begged to differ. These days, one enters Westminster Abbey by the north transept, and pretty much the first thing you see is an unbelievably colossal baroque monument to Manners and the two colleagues who fell with him. I’ve talked to the authors about naval history on several occasions, supplied some research information for the book, and did some critical reading of drafts, so I know that this is going to be a really worthwhile and very readable study, drawing on the superb archives at Belvoir Castle and many other sources.

My final choice in the ‘forthcoming’ category has already been covered on this site, in a guest post from the author himself – so this is a gentle reminder to anyone who hasn’t ordered it yet that Richard Endsor’s book on The Warship Anne is being published in less than a fortnight’s time! The launch party took place at the wonderful Shipwreck Museum in Hastings last weekend; sadly, I couldn’t attend, but there are unconfirmed reports that the author is safe and well, and wasn’t led astray by the ‘usual suspects’ from the nefarious world of nautical archaeology.

And last of all, a book that’s just come out, and which I’ve just finished reading – Jacqueline Reiter’s The Late Lord: The Life of John Pitt, second Earl of Chatham. By coincidence, there’s a connection between this and Resolution, described above: the fourth Duke of Rutland, the second brother covered in that book, was one of Chatham’s closest friends. This is another case where I have to put my hands up and admit that I know the author, but this is a beautifully written, exceptionally well researched, insightful, and very balanced, analysis of the career of a man whose peculiar misfortune was to be the son and brother of far greater men, William Pitt the Elder and Younger. (Note: at this point, do not, under any circumstances, follow this link.) It’s particularly revealing about the controversial Walcheren expedition of 1809, which effectively wrecked Chatham’s career – and for a seventeenth century naval buff, it was fascinating to come across very familiar placenames that are so absolutely central to my own work, such as Vlissingen/Flushing, Middelburg, and Veere (Cornelia Quinton’s home town in ‘the journals of Matthew Quinton’).

Generally, though, my reading is on the back burner at the moment, which is always the case when I’m writing a new book. But the good news is that the next Quinton novel, The Devil Upon the Wave – set against the backdrop of the Dutch attack on the Medway, 350 years ago this June – is well on course, and should be finished quite soon! More updates as and when available.

 

The Warship Anne

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This week, I’m delighted to welcome Richard Endsor as my guest blogger! Richard will be known to many of you as the leading authority on the design and construction of seventeenth century British warships. His book The Restoration Warship, focusing on the Third Rate Lenox of 1677, has justly become a classic, and has, indeed, inspired an ongoing campaign to build a modern replica of that great ship at Deptford, on the site of the dockyard where the original was built. He has a new ‘big book’ coming soon, as he explains at the end of this post, but he’s also found the time to produce a new work about the Lenox‘s sister ship Anne, the remains of which, exposed at particularly low tides at Pett Level on the Sussex coast, constitute the largest survival of King Charles II’s navy. I’ve visited the site myself and have blogged about it more than once on this website – have a look here and here. So now, over to Richard to explain more about his new book on the Anne!

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Inspired by David Davies’s recent blog about his new book, Kings of the Sea, I asked him if he would be so kind and gracious enough to allow me to do a similar bit of blatant self-promotion for my own new book about the seventeenth century navy. Although we have long been friends with a similar interest, we are in no way rivals. He will, in his new book, brilliantly grasp the overall view of the Navy as if he were himself, a long serving Lord of the Admiralty. [Note: I’ve paid him absolutely nothing for this bit, honestly – D] I on the other hand, am down in the dirty dockyard worrying about scarphing of futtocks and how ships were built. Our previous non-fiction works, Pepys’s Navy and Restoration Warship, which came out at about the same time a few years ago, complemented each other.

My new book, The Warship Anne, will similarly complement Kings of the Sea. Work started on it a couple of months after a conference “All about the Anne” was held in July last year at St Clement’s Church, Hastings. Needless to say, David Davies attended and was a sparkling speaker at the event. [Nor for this bit – D] The Warship Anne book is 160 pages long and 250mm square, or nearly 10 inches in old fogies’ terms. It contains about images 150 images, all in full colour of which about 100 were created by me.  I completed the book in only nine months and my publisher, Bloomsbury, with whom it has been such a pleasure to work with, reckon they will have it on the bookstands by 25 February next year. Please don’t gasp in admiration at this remarkable productivity as I have been researching and painting the Anne over a period of some 25 years. I am involved in the Anne as the technical historian for the Warship Anne Trust which owns her, a subsidiary of the Nautical Museum’s Trust. The Trust also runs the Shipwreck Museum in Hastings. The book was written to publicise the surviving remains of the ship as widely as possible. I am so grateful to Bloomsbury who have helped a great deal by keeping the retail price down to only £25 a copy.

The Anne is sometimes visible at low tide at Pett Level, near Hastings and is one of the most important shipwrecks along the southern coast of England. The whole of the lower hull survives intact, as shown in the second image, and is the most substantial known remaining shipwreck from the Navy of Charles II and Samuel Pepys. She was lost in 1690 after the Battle of Beachy Head, while defending the country from invasion. Sadly, her remains and the men who died aboard her are now largely forgotten. The battle prevented a French invasion which, had it been successful, would have dramatically and permanently changed English and European history.  The exiled Catholic King James II would have been restored to the throne, his Catholic faith almost certainly imposed and the country dominated by the French.

Although the importance of Beachy Head ranks alongside the Armada Campaign and the Battle of Trafalgar, it was not a glorious victory to celebrate and be remembered. In fact the outnumbered English and Dutch allies were forced into ignominious retreat during which the dismasted Anne was run ashore between Rye and Hastings.  She became the only English loss when she was burnt to prevent capture.

My book follows the history of the Anne in chronological order. The first chapter deals with the events that led up to her building in 1678 as part of a new fleet of 30 ships. A fleet that would see the start of the British Navy’s domination the world’s oceans until the end of the days of sail. The ships were built a few years after the end of the third Dutch war. A war that was pursued by King Charles after the Dutch made their famous raid on Chatham dockyard at the end of the second Dutch war. The Dutch raid on Chatham followed the less famous English attack on the Dutch merchant fleet in the Vlie, known as Holmes’s bonfire. If you’re Dutch, it might be best if you skip the rest of this chapter as I found, to my surprise, that the damage done by Holmes’s bonfire was much greater than the damage done by the Dutch raid on Chatham. Not only that, but it caused the enraged Charles II to join the French and pursue the third Dutch war to the ruin of the Dutch economy. I reckon the Chatham raid was the Dutch ‘Pearl Harbor’ and it turned out to be as much a disaster for them as it was for the Japanese. A controversial view I know, but I examined the losses in terms of the well documented value of ships, something which appears not to have been done before.

In the second chapter, Phineas Pett II who built the Anne, offers himself as a character whom a fiction author would have difficulty inventing. [We’ll see! – D] A likeable rogue who lets his perceived success go to his head to the annoyance of all those about him: except King Charles, with whom he has much in common. He receives an amusing come-uppance came at the hands of Mrs Elizabeth Brooker to whom his wife owed money. Just as interesting is the building of the Anne. The delays and difficulty Pett had in finding keel pieces were found in the extensive historic record as were many, many other details of the ship’s construction. The most rewarding discovery for me, was recently finding and being able to interpret the actual recorded lines of a sister ship of the Anne, built by Pett to the same draught. From them a reconstructed draught of the Anne was made, which is of course included in the book.  Also printed across two pages is an image of the contemporary model of another sister ship, probably the Elizabeth. The image is photographic but all the distortions of perspective have been removed so that it is a true draught. Also included are the ship’s recorded hull lines traced from the models frames. The book also includes the complete draughts of another of the 30 ships made by Thomas Fagge in about 1680.

Chapter three and four takes the reader through the history of the Anne up until 1688. After launch, she and all the other new ships suffered from decay and repairs were made led by a commission under Samuel Pepys. There followed a voyage in 1687 when she acted as the flagship of a small fleet taking a German princess to Lisbon to marry the King of Portugal. From there she went on into the Mediterranean to confirm peace treaties with the Barbary States and negotiate the release of slaves. With the serious business finished, she visited the Grand Harbour, Malta, a view of which is shown on the book cover painting. During her voyage all sorts of stories emerge: King James’s fascination with Anne’s troublesome experimental pumps, special moveable steps made for the queen to leave Anne with dignity, John Shaw from the Pearl being tried aboard for murder, and a girl slave named Sarah Hawkins freed and her name entered into the Anne’s pay book. The most significant series of events for the ship was the continuing failure of her rotten masts and rigging. Some of the most important ropes stretched and became an inch thinner in circumference. The tops of the masts split for which special iron hoops had to be made to strengthen them. Pepys was ultimately responsible as his commission had supposedly repaired the ship. It resulted in a bitter dispute between him and Cloudesley Shovel, the Anne’s captain, which reveals how devious Pepys could be. He set up his own enquiry, which unsurprisingly found that no ship could be better fitted out.

The following chapter, chapter five, concerns the Battle of Beachy Head. It is painful to read of the damage inflicted on both the French and English ships near the head of the Blue squadron where the Anne was stationed.  Exposed and outnumbered, she was gradually shot to pieces until her masts were lost. Twenty nine men were killed while awful wounds were inflicted on 41 others. Even after all this time, some of the sadness suffered by the men’s families can still be felt. Barbra Cunningham from Jarrow was pregnant when her husband, Thomas, joined the Anne as an Able Seaman. He was killed in the battle before Barbra gave birth. Barbra named her baby daughter Thomasin, in honour of her dead father.

I was lucky in that so much documentation remains concerning the guns of the Anne. Magnificent brass guns were given to her when she went to the Mediterranean with a reduced armament of 62 guns. The 70 iron guns used at Beachy Head are also recorded and I have produced many drawings showing them and their gun carriages, as well as drawings showing where the guns were mounted. Two guns survive today that probably served aboard her.

Finally, the last chapter deals with the Anne today, the archaeology and the hopes for preserving her. I also cover the extent of her remains and ownership by the Warship Anne Trust. Lengthy appendices give details of all the timbers used in ships of her type, together with the transcription of a contract for building a similar ship.

With The Warship Anne book completed, I have returned to my long term project. This is The Master Shipwright’s Secrets, a work dealing with the practices used by the master shipwrights when designing ships. The book is very nearly finished and with any luck, will also be out next year.

The Return of That Other Guy

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Conference season again. Last week – ‘Statesmen and Seapower’ at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth. This week – Naval Dockyards Society conference at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Next week – hitting my head slowly and repetitively against a wall in yet another attempt to remind myself that agreeing to give papers at two conferences just a week apart is a staggeringly stupid idea. Looking further ahead, though, I’ll also be speaking at a ‘conference by any other name’ in Hastings on 4 July, of which more anon, and will also be off to the big conference on the Tudor and Stuart Age at the National Maritime Museum later in July, albeit this time as a common-or-garden delegate.

A couple of years ago, I posted a delegate’s guide to maritime history conferences, so here’s my summary of the ‘Statesmen and Seapower’ conference using the criteria that I set out there.

  1. Purpose – all boxes ticked and principal criterion met, i.e. ‘academic historical conferences exist solely so that delegates can meet up again with people they met at previous conferences, and to bitch about the people who haven’t turned up to this one’.
  2. The Conference Programme – ‘One of the most abiding laws of conferences is that the programme is never, ever, right.’  Well, this time it was, thanks to the excellent organisation by Duncan Redford and Simon Williams, although it was unfortunate and beyond the organisers’ control that several speakers had to withdraw at the last minute for personal reasons.
  3. The Graveyard Shift – Tell me about it; I was speaking in the last session of the day, when delegates were keen to get to HMS Victory for drinks on the quarterdeck. No pressure on timing at all, then.
  4. Sleep – Less of an issue at this conference than at many I’ve been to in the past, except during the one paper that overran. And overran. And overran some more.
  5. Victuals – Dinner on the lower gun deck of Victory, on mess tables slung in between the cannon. Let’s face it, for an experience like that, it wouldn’t matter if you were eating rancid pigeon burgers – not that the caterers’ splendid fare resembled them in any way.
  6. That Guy – You know the one I mean. He’s the one who always asks a question, whatever the topic is. He usually sits at or near the front. The question will be very, very long, and will often bear no relationship to the topic. Or else it won’t be a question at all, and will be an extremely long-winded anecdote based on the individual’s own experience, which, again, usually has no relevance whatsoever to the topic under discussion. Yes, he was there.
  7. That Other Guy – Yes, so was he. (See the original post.)

My own paper was entitled ‘The British Navy under the Later Stuart Monarchs: Royal Plaything or Instrument of State Policy’. It looked at the role of Charles II and James II in naval affairs, and drew in part on some material I’ve previously published in this blog – notably in my three posts (this one, this one, and this one) on the naming of Stuart warships. I was on a panel with Alan James, who was looking at very similar questions in relation to Louis XIV’s France, and Gijs Rommelse, who examined the use of the navy in the ideology and imagery of Dutch republicanism. By coincidence, these papers dovetailed remarkably well with a couple of those in the previous session: Beatrice Heuser’s on the sixteenth century origins of English naval strategy, which covered aspects of the ‘sovereignty of the sea’ and the importance of the ‘myth’ of the Anglo-Saxon king Edgar that I then continued in my talk, and Benjamin Redding’s on aspects of English and French naval policy from the 1510s to the 1640s, which raised the question of the political importance of ship names that I continued to develop in my paper. I’ve never known such completely coincidental dovetailing to work so well at a conference!

Anyway, I’m looking at a completely different theme on Saturday, at a NDS conference focusing on the royal dockyards during the Napoleonic Wars. I’m talking on ‘The Strange Life and Stranger Death of Milford Dockyard’ – an odd tale of xenophobia and political skullduggery during the brief history of the short-lived predecessor of Pembroke Dockyard, featuring such figures as one of the principal characters from The Madness of King George, Sir William Hamilton, and, yes, Horatio Nelson himself. My paper is also a bit of a ‘detective story’, in which our intrepid hero sets out to discover whether anything actually remains of undoubtedly the least known royal dockyard in the British Isles.

Finally, to Hastings on 4 July, and what promises to be a fascinating day entitled ‘All About the Anne‘ – the wreck of an important Third Rate man-of-war of Charles II’s navy, lost during the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690, and the subject of several previous posts (here, here, and here) on this site. This study-day-cum-conference is taking place under the auspices of Hastings’s splendid Shipwreck Museum, and will feature a number of talks about the ship herself and her times. I’ll be speaking on ‘Pepys’ Navy’, and will also be reading Frank Fox’s important study of the ship losses during the battle, which first appeared in this blog and provides an almost certainly definitive identification of the so-called ‘Normans Bay wreck’. So if you fancy a day at the seaside, complete with ice cream, Punch and Judy, and some seventeenth century naval history, then head down to Hastings in July!

 

 

A Gun From the Warship ‘Anne’

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I’m delighted to welcome this week’s guest blogger, Richard Endsor. Richard is acknowledged as the leading authority on the design and construction of later Stuart warships, and is the author of the seminal book The Restoration Warship, which focuses on the Lenox, the first of the ‘thirty new ships’ built under the auspices of King Charles II and Samuel Pepys. Unsurprisingly, Richard is heavily involved with the project to build a replica of the Lenox on the historic dockyard site at Deptford, and he has also been actively involved in the work on the wreck of Lenox‘s sister ship, the Anne, at Pett Level near Hastings. Richard, who serves as the technical historian for the team working on the Anne, has chosen to blog about an intriguing discovery relating to the ship, so I’m delighted to hand the cyber-floor over to him!

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This year, a new notice board was erected by English Heritage and the Shipwreck Museum, Hastings, on top of the sea defences near The Smuggler Inn at Pett Level, a few miles to the east of Hastings. It indicates the position and tells the story of the 70 gun warship Anne, whose remains can be seen at very low tides. (See my previous posts about the wreck, here and here – JDD)

The Anne in her prime during a visit to Malta in 1687 [Richard Endsor]
The Anne in her prime during a visit to Malta in 1687 [Richard Endsor]
The Anne was built at Chatham Dockyard by the well known Master Shipwright, Phineas Pett, and launched on 7 November 1678. She was part of the great thirty ship building programme organised by Samuel Pepys on behalf of King Charles II. The story of her loss begins in early 1690 when the French fitted out a large fleet to enter the English Channel to pave the way for an invasion. To oppose them, the English and their Dutch allies prepared their own fleet which included the Anne. In March 1690, as her guns were made ready for war at Chatham, Stephen Bassett of the smack Stephen and Anne brought her gunpowder and some shot down to her from the Tower of London. At the same time, John Berry was employed drilling, clearing some of the vents of the guns which were cloyed up with stones.  He would have found many of the gun carriages rather posh, as three years before those in the gunroom had been painted in veined white while the rest were wainscot coloured. They were decorated like this for the occasion when she was employed to transport a German princess to Portugal followed by a cruise in the Mediterranean. Her allocation of guns was not altered during her career and was last recorded less than five months before her loss.

The 70 guns belonging to the Anne

Type of Gun  Number Length of Gun (Feet) Weight of Shot (Lbs)
Demi Cannon  22  9 ½  32
Culvering   4 11  18
12 Pounder   2 10 ½  12
12 Pounder  24   9  12
Saker    2   9 ½   5 ¼
Saker  12   7   5 ¼
3 Pounder   4   5   3

The French met the smaller combined fleet of English and Dutch ships off Beachy Head on 30 June, and although the allies suffered a defeat, they prevented an invasion. The Anne became the only English casualty in the battle when she was dismasted and run ashore at Pett Level. With the French closing in and the possibility she would be captured, the Anne was burnt on 5 July destroying all her structure above the water, all that is except her ironwork and ironwork was an expensive commodity in the seventeenth century especially when most of it came in the form 70 guns weighing 120 tons.

The Anne burning on 5 July 1690 after the battle of Beach Head [Richard Endsor]
The Anne burning on 5 July 1690 after the battle of Beach Head [Richard Endsor]
Although the guns were lying in the wreckage of the burnt out ship, the temperature of the wood fire would not be expected to damage them. Guns were not directly the responsibility of the Admiralty but of another body, the Board of Ordnance, and five days after the fire Robert Bennett, their Purveyor, went to Rye to make arrangements to save as much from the Anne that could be saved. He made two visits during 1690, staying until the end of July and returning again for another two weeks in September. During his time there he employed Robert Jefferson with nine men and Robert Robinson to save what shot they could from the wreck at low water.  He also hired Jacob Hall’s boat and two men to bring the shot and other stores from the Anne, while the wet and dirty job of putting the shot into the boat was done by John Kirby. Once ashore, William Yeames carried some of the smaller guns and shot in wagons to Winchelsea and Rye while John Hall’s “great boat” was used to take stores to Winchelsea nearly three miles away to the east in the direction of Rye. For security Robert Browne and three men then carried arms, in the form of muskets, pistols, swords, pikes and the like into the Church Hall from several other places. Two warrant officers from the Anne were involved; Thomas Adams the Gunner and his men spent three days helping the Purveyor sort out the stores  while Richard Penny, the Carpenter, stayed at Rye until the end of July helping William Yeames make a list of the goods he was holding, presumably on behalf of the Navy.

Account of Goods from the Anne in the possession of William Yeames 30 July 1690

Anchors, 2 at Rye & 3 at the hull of the ship

One mainsail and one main topsail, one spritsail topsail

One main topsail staysail & some pieces of new sails

The main shrouds, some whole and some in pieces

A piece of the mainstay & a piece cable about 6 fathoms

A parcel of rigging in pieces

A parcel of blocks great and small

Two pieces of the main mast, ½ the main yard & two pieces of (other) yards

One barge

Iron, about twelve ton and a half

Shot lead, eighty six pound

Two copper furnaces and two copper kettles & a copper funnel weighing six hundredweight & two quarters

Iron bound dead eyes, three

Futtock plates, eight and ¼ of a back of leather

Boats pintles & gudgeons, six pair

Chain plates five, nails as small and great one cwt, one qtr, fifteen Lbs

Judging by the relatively small sums of money involved in these operations, it is unlikely any of the 2 ½ ton Demi Cannon and 1 ½ ton 12 Pounders was removed from the wreck. Nevertheless, the ordnance that had been saved now needed bringing back to London, and William Reed of the Charity Hoy was paid seven pounds at ten shillings a ton for bringing guns, round shot and small arms from Rye harbour to Woolwich and the Tower. A similar task was also undertaken by Robert Bennet. On 1 August John Packman was paid for moving four of the Anne’s guns from the “crane”. These guns were all under 1 ½ tons indicating they were probably Anne’s smaller Sakers or 3 Pounders. The official recovery operation would seem to have ended during October as the cold weather closed in.

This did not seem to affect the local “country people” who, it was reported “do take all opportunity of pulling her to pieces and carrying away what may be of any use or value to them” Rather than employ people themselves to break her up and recover worthwhile timbers from the ship the Navy Board wrote to the Admiralty saying they thought it better to sell the wreck to someone else for that they may save the heavy timbers such as futtocks, floor timbers, floor riders, keel and keelson pieces, thick stuff and four inch plank not cleft or defaced by fire and to deliver the same into their Majesties stores at Chatham and Portsmouth as we shall direct at 40 pence per load. They treated with a shipwright, Joseph Bingham who employed himself in such affairs and agreed to let him have her for twenty pounds. However, all the timbers mentioned in the proposal remain in the ship to this day and no record has been found to show the agreement was ever carried out. Bingham’s will of 1709 also make no mention of the Anne,  making it safe to assume she was not sold.  Records do show that he delivered a good quantity of timber to Plymouth Dockyard in 1698 and that in later life he lived in Plymouth with his wife, Ann, and four children. After 1690 the Navy seems to have had no further interest in the wreck, although she remained the property of the Crown.

The sale of the Anne to Bingham for £20 may well have collapsed because most of her guns were still within her remains and were worth about £2200. They belonged to the Ordnance Board, and although the Navy lost interest the Ordnance Board certainly did not and soon made arrangements with the handy Joseph Bingham to recover the guns the following summer. He mounted a serious and professional operation, first laying skids to roll the guns up the beach then hiring teams of horses to pull them. A log resting alongside the port bow today may be part of the skid. He also bought new cordage and built a shed, presumably to store his equipment and provide for the men. He signed a contract 9 June 1691 to receive fifty shillings for every ton of guns recovered once certified by the Mayor of Winchelsea. Surviving bills show that on one occasion he recovered nine guns weighing in total 23 tons 6 hundredweight making the average weight of each gun 51 ¾ hundredweight which was the weight of her largest guns, the 9 ½ foot long Demi Cannon.

Although the heat of the fire could not reach the melting point of iron, it may have caused some distortion, especially if the guns had fallen some distance – perhaps hitting each other as the Anne disintegrated. With the recovery operation successfully underway it was decided to proof test the guns at Winchelsea. To transport at least 15 of the guns, the byways for land carriage were mended. They weren’t the only guns taken as a further 27 tons of ordnance were moved from the wreck site to Winchelsea by Richard Thomas and John Chrenlow. George Potter, Master of the Bachelors Hoy, brought the necessary gunners stores for proof testing from the Tower of London to Rye. The shot and powder was brought the final two miles from Rye to Winchelsea by William Beats in his boat and a wagon hired to move stores and hay for wadding from the quay at Winchelsea. The proof firing itself was carried out by Captain Tokey’s men under the direction of Ordnance Officers Silvester and Hooper. Tents and their furniture were brought to the site from Tunbridge by John Slade, the Board’s Labourer and he stayed on site to help prove the guns. On its return to the Thames, the Bachelors Hoy took the gunner’s stores and small arms to the Tower and Anne’s proved ordnance to Woolwich. The re-proved guns would have entered the lists of spare guns waiting to be issued to other ships. There seems to be no record surviving of guns that failed the proof testing at Winchelsea but any condemned large guns would probably been sent back to gun founders for re-casting.

Recently a gun was seen at the Winchelsea Museum by Jacqui Stanford, local resident and Chair of the Shipwreck Museum, Hastings and English Heritage-appointed Licensee of the Anne. The Shipwreck Museum has a particular interest as it is the owner of the Anne, and as the gun was clearly very old and reportedly found locally she raised the interest of historians interested in the ship. In March 2010 it was examined by the respected independent gun expert, Charles Trollope. He identified the gun as an iron Saker of 77 inches long with the remains of an “F” cast on the end of the right trunnion identifying it as being cast at the Finspong foundry in Sweden in the middle of the seventeenth century. No other markings are now visible. He added that the guns were given the generic name “Finbankers” and were of high quality. When captured from the Dutch they were reamed out to English bore sizes, in this case 3 ½” then proof tested and issued to English ships. The button is missing at the rear and the outside surface shows evidence that it had been buried upright at a depth of about five feet. Some groves are visible in the bore suggesting an iron spike had been inserted to act as a fulcrum for a pivot gun as part of a traversing platform in a battery suggesting it may have been part of the canal defence system introduced in the 1790’s. Charles points out that a possible site for the gun would have been the battery constructed in the 1790’s at Winchelsea Beach where Rye New Harbour used to reach the sea. It would have been redundant with the completion of the Royal Military Canal and Martello Towers and removed by the landowners in about 1840. When the battery was constructed it was the local engineer’s responsibility to find a solid pivot for the guns and the likelihood is that he used an old gun that had failed proof at Winchelsea 100 years before. Although the gun is not exactly the length given in the Anne’s 1690 gun list, it is certainly near enough to qualify as one of her twelve seven foot long Sakers. Ten of these were mounted on the quarterdeck and the remaining two on the forecastle. The button may have been lost in 1690 and was the reason for its rejection or removed at the time the battery was constructed. Although it is not possible to say the gun was definitely from the Anne, it is highly likely.

The intact gun shown in the condition at the time of its operational service in 1690 [Richard Endsor]
The intact gun shown in the condition at the time of its operational service in 1690 [Richard Endsor]
Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Jacqui Stanford, Chair of the Nautical Museums Trust for bringing the gun to our attention, Charles Trollope for his expert opinion of the gun and its usage, Dr Peter LeFevre, the Historian for the Warship Anne Trust, for his immense support and finally Major John Freeman and Melvyn Pett of the Winchelsea Museum for allowing me to record the gun.