From the blog of the Oxford University Press, September 20:
News broke in 2022 that the royal frigate Gloucester that sank in 1682 had been located off the coast of Norfolk. The discovery excited marine archeologists and treasure hunters and drew attention to the scandal of the warship’s loss. It was bad enough that the ship hit a sandbank because of “the wrong calculation and ignorance of the pilot.” Worse was the behaviour of the Duke of York and other officers, who secured their own survival while hundreds of common seamen drowned. The episode is discussed in Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea, along with dozens of accounts of maritime disasters and their consequences from the reign of Elizabeth I to the age of George II. Well ballasted with evidence, and fully freighted with references, the book engages social, legal, and maritime history, and the politics of the water’s edge where, as the proverb said, it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good.
No book is the last word on its subject, and every study is in some sense interim. I finished Shipwrecks in the midst of the pandemic, far from England and heavily reliant on internet resources and the generosity of archivists and librarians. Only in the spring of 2022, when the book was in press, was I able to return to The National Archives at Kew for the first time in several years. Following the principle of chasing every lead and leaving no stone unturned, I examined manuscripts that had not been previously accessible. Produced by different offices and agencies, they illustrate the richness of English public records for exposing the social, legal, and economic history of the coastline.
Included in this new trawl are Star Chamber complaints from 1582 that one landowner “spoiled” the goods and chattels that another claimed by right of “wrecke de mere” and that each brought followers “in most riotous and warlike manner” to battle it out on the beach. Honour and privilege were at stake, as well as the profits from wreckage.....
....MUCH MORE
