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
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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unpublished material was kindly provided by Jon Iveson (Dover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).
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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
shwed him the approximate position of the wreck on the ground.
This he describes as some 33m long (109ft) with its stern pointing
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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
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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
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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
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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