The Fourteenth-Century Merchant Ship from Sandwich: a Study in Medieval Maritime Archaeology

THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY MERCHANT SHIP FROM SANDWICH: A STUDY IN MEDIEVAL MARITIME ARCHAEOLOGY GUSTAV MILNE with contributions by M. Bridge, J. Cole, J. Flatman, W. Honey, C. and B. McNaughton, J. Trussler, R. Varrel and T. Wood-Davies Sandwich was once one of the principal medieval towns in Kent and a leading member of the Cinque Ports federation, although much of its ancient harbour is now silted up. During the re-laying of a main sewer here in 1973, a quantity of ship's timbers was uncovered by a mechanical excavator in the bed of a former inlet. The timbers were clearly of late medieval date, and were recovered over a distance of c.30m, arguably giving a general indication of the length of the vessel represented. Study of the material recovered has shown that it is a clinker-built ship that had been abandoned in a creek known to have silted up in or by the late fifteenth century. The discovery of such a large, medieval merchantman is of considerable significance for British and European archaeologists, but surprisingly this neglected find has not been researched or published in any detail. This report therefore provides a summary of the circumstances of the vessel's discovery, and a description of the surviving elements initially recorded by Joe Trussler and William Honey at the Deal Maritime Museum in 1973-4. In conclusion, an evaluation of the vessel is provided, based largely on research conducted by a team from University College London in 1997-2000. The remains in Sandwich were disturbed at least three times in the twentieth century, during sewer trench excavations in I 930, 1973 and 1980. This account of the circumstances of the discovery and excavation of the Sandwich Ship has been compiled from the interim article published in Kent Archaeological Review (Trussler I 97 4) together with other reports, letters and diaries written by W i II iam Honey (Deal Maritime Museum), Joe Trussler (Sandwich Historical 227 GUSTAV MILNE Society) and Reg Yarrell (National Maritime Museum). Access to the unpublished material was kindly provided by Jon Iveson (Dover Museum) and Gillian Hutchinson (National Maritime Museum). The account of the later 1980 excavations is taken from the summaries published in Medieval Archaeology 25 (1981, 209) and by Brian Philp (2002, I 36). It now seems that the remains of the ship were first encountered in the mid-l 930s, when the first sewer trench was dug out by hand. Joe Trussler who recorded many of the timbers in 1973, was familiar with the layout of the sewerage system in the area, and was puzzled why the line of the main sewer laid in the 1930s made an arc when it should have followed a straight path to the eastern outfall. The watching brief on the renewal of the system 40 years later answered the question, showing that the original trench had been dug around an obstruction, the mass of timbers representing the port side o f an abandoned ship. In June 1973 work began on a new sewer (Fig. 1). The location of the trench was in the Parish of St Clements in an area known as the Bulwarks (Bragard et al 1999, 42-45), a reference to the medieval defensive earthworks around the north-eastern corner of the town sketch map. Hl to ,nk ... ,., f • "d OWII Fig. I Medieval Sandwich Ship: plan showing general location of the trench from which the timbers were recovered in 1973 (after Trussler 1974). 228 THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY MERCHANT SHIP FROM SANDWICH (NGR TR 335/581 ). At that point both the town wall and its ditch are approximately 50m from the present-day course of the River Stour and run at right angles to it. The sewer trench broadly followed the line of the old defensive ditch and, at the outer or eastern side of it, was some 1.5m wide and 3-3.5m deep. It was not anticipated that the remains of a medieval ship would be uncovered, but as the excavation of the trench progressed into July, the machine hit timberwork between 60 to 70m south of the modern river bank. The largest elements proved difficult for the machine to remove within the confines of the narrow trench, and the excavators had to resort to the use of axes and chain saws to clear impediments, which were piled up on both sides of the cutting. It was these piles of discarded wood which were spotted by Joe Trussler, perhaps as much as a week after they had been exposed. It was not at first clear what the timber represented, but it was subsequently identified as the remains of a clinker built ship, and tentatively dated to the early fifteenth century by William Honey. He was then the Director of the Deal Maritime Museum, a new institution that had opened in 1972. An inspector from the Department of Environment also visited the site in Sandwich, but seemed more interested in potential damage to the historic town wall than in the ship remains, according to comments made in a contemporary diary compiled by Reg Varrel. None of the timber was observed or recorded by archaeologists in situ in the closely-shuttered trench. Indeed, given the relatively small quantity of timber recovered and its disjointed condition, it seemed debatable whether it would be possible to gain any clear conception of the original form and construction of the ship. Nevertheless the apparent age and construction of the vessel represented rendered the remains of considerable importance and consequently a programme of recovery and recording was established. The decision was therefore taken to transport the discarded remains to the museum yard in Deal where archaeological recording could be undertaken more easily than on the spoil heaps at Sandwich. However, there were further delays in obtaining permission to remove the timber, since the quantity of woodwork had first to be assessed by the surveyors, as its excavation had substantially delayed the sewer installation programme, and thus increased its cost. By the time the timbers were lifted and transported to Deal they had been ex.posed for nearly a month of hot dry weather, which resulted in some deterioration in their condition. The excavations at Sandwich were also visited by Reg Varrel, from the National Maritime Museum. He recorded that the charge hand sh􀁲wed him the approximate position of the wreck on the ground. This he describes as some 33m long (109ft) with its stern pointing 229 GUSTAV MILNE towards the river at a position where new and old town meet in a straight line some 18-19m from the wall. One floor timber, presumably one of the elements seated over the rising deadwood at the stern of the vessel, apparently lay only 0.6m (2ft) from the surface. However a substantial part of the vessel must still survive on the site, since the new pipe had been laid for at least part of its length over 'deck beams' (sic), presumably floor timbers lying at a depth of 3-4m (10-13ft) This locational information is broadly corroborated by data tabulated by Mr Crouch the site agent. His table, which records the frequency with which timbers were found over a c.60m-length of the sewer trench excavation, was not compiled for the benefit of the archaeologists but to provide an indication of how the excavation's progress was impeded by the discovery and removal of timberwork. It thus only notes the larger members that could only be removed by the mechanical excavator after the timbers had been manually axed or sawn through. Between the old manhole no. 64a and the new manhole no. 181, a distance of some 44m, over forty timbers were listed. Of these, twelve seem to have been located in the first 24m of trench, apparently before the rudder was exposed. The latter seems to have appeared between the 28m and 30m mark, according to marginal note added to the list. Given that the so-called 'Sandwich Ship' was orientated with its stem (i.e. its rudder) towards the present-day course of the river, this suggests that another structure (perhaps a second ship?) had been disturbed during the previous 20m of the sewer excavation. Following the exposure of the rudder, many more timbers were encountered, of which some thirty-six were listed on the agent's table as having been recovered from the trench up to the 43.5m mark. Beyond that point, a further 16.5m beyond the new manhole no. 181, at least six more timbers are listed. In sum, over thirty-six substantial timbers were noted as having been sawn or axed from a 32m-length of the sewer trench following the discovery of the rudder. Many more fragmentary pieces were no doubt removed during the work, but are not listed by Mr Crouch since they did not unduly delay the progress of the excavations. To minimise further deterioration of wood at the museum, a rudimentary soaking tank was constructed by covering the floor of a brick shed with a thick layer of soft sand over which some sheets of hardboard were laid. A sheet of heavy polythene covered the hardboard and was fastened to the wall. By this means all the timbers could be immersed and allowed sufficient room for manoeuvring, albeit very carefully. Thereafter, the majority of the recording was undertaken by William Honey and Joe Trussler. There were few analogous projects 230 THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY MERCHANT SHIP FROM SANDWICH or recording manuals available in 1973 to provide guidance for the Sandwich Ship team. Although the Graveney Boat had been successfully recovered in Kent just two years earlier for example (Fenwick 1978), that was a far more coherent and much smaller vessel than the ship represented by the eighty disparate fragments which now filled the museum yard at Deal. A closer parallel was probably the site at Rye in neighbouring Sussex, where a major sewer trench excavation had cut through two hulks in May 1963: the battered remains of the enigmatic vessels were admirably and promptly assessed by Captain Lovegrove (1964, 115-122). However, the detailed and thorough publication of the vessel fragment studies and methodologies compiled by Arne Emil Christensen from Bergen (1985), Sean McGrail from Dublin (1993) and from London (Goodburn 1994; Marsden 1996) lay far in the future; even the recovery of Mary Rose from the Solent seabed was a further decade away (Rule 1982; Marsden 2003). For Honey and Trussler, the most appropriate benchmarks were the Burlesdon wreck project, a massive and somewhat idiosyncratic late medieval hulk abandoned on the foreshore of the River Hamble in Hampshire (Friel et al. 1993), the medieval finds from the silted up harbour at Kalmar in Sweden (Delgado 1997, 219-221), and the rather later Woolwich Ship which had been recorded in London in 1912 (Garrod & Philp 1983). There were other projects such as the enigmatic ship excavated in 1822 from an infilled channel of the River Rother on the southern border of Kent: this remarkable project saw the complete excavation and lifting of a late medieval merchantmen (Rice 1824; Fenwick 1978, 258-260; Rosa 1982) but no fragments had survived or had been recorded in sufficient detail to inform the team assembled at Deal in 1973. Advice was thus taken from other quarters, including the National Maritime Museum who dispatched one of its conservators to the site. Reg Varrel spent a fortnight with them discussing recording systems amongst many other matters, as his diary shows. In the event, a programme of scale drawing was abandoned owing to the time the timbers would have been kept out of the tank. Instead, a system of direct tracing on to polythene sheeting was resorted to but the roll of polythene tracings was misplaced and cannot now be found. However, Honey did make extensive notes, measurements and very precise, insightful observations and those most useful records have survived, together with his photographic catalogue. That part of the project archive is now held by the Dover Museum. The ultimate fate of those timbers is not precisely recorded, and only a proportion of them were still visible in the yard of the maritime museum at Deal a quarter of a century later. Some timbers presumably dried out and were discarded; some may have been loaned or 231 GUSTAV MILNE otherwise donated to other museums. The Shipwreck Rescue & Heritage Centre in Charlestown, Devon, for example, has plank and futtock fragments from a late medieval clinker-built ship on display reportedly 'excavated at Sandwich, Kent' (pers comm. D. Goodburn), although the Museum Director has been unwilling to confirm the provenance. Third sewer trench excavation: Sandwich 1980 In 1980, the Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit (KARU) conducted a watching brief during the excavation of another pipe-laying project just to the east of the Bulwarks. The main trench began close to the Sandown Gate, passing through the area in which the vessel was thought to lie. Although the trench reached a depth of 5m, cutting through waterlogged estuarine silts, there was no evidence of the keel and only small pieces of wood were found. However, a subsidiary trench did cut through a feature thought to represent the 'eastern side' (possibly the port side?) of the vessel, which was recorded as still standing some 2 to 4m tall. Although working conditions precluded detailed recording, two substantial futtocks and some associated hull planking were observed in situ, together with evidence of treenails and seam-waterproofing (Philp 2002, 136). UCL recording project: Deal Maritime Museum 1996-7 Prompted by an enigmatic reference to the Sandwich Ship in Gillian Hutchinson' s Medieval Ships & Shipping ( 1994, 196) a student studying maritime archaeology at University College London was despatched to Deal Maritime Museum to assess whatever remains survived of the vessel for his undergraduate dissertation. James Cole discovered that a number of major timbers had survived, and were still being stored there, over twenty years after their initial exposure. His report (Cole 1997) renewed interest in the timbers and Dover Museum took responsibility for them, subsequently moving them to their own store in Deal. UCL recording project: Dover Museum store, Deal 1999-2000 (Plates I and II) In 1999 a larger UCL team assessed the timbers at Deal for the Dover Museum, and recorded the better-preserved, more diagnostic elements by scale drawings and photography. The timber was sampled 􀁯or species identification and for dendrochronological dating, while 232 THE FOL"RTEE!\TII-CEITTURY MERCHANT SHIP FROM SANl)WICII PLATE I Medieval Sandv. ich Ship: <.howing rudder and sternpost being recorded in 1999 (photo S. MillerJ 233 l'L\ll:11 Mcd,.:,al Sand"ich Ship: rccnnkd in 199Q, ,h