Rex Cowan, who has died at the age of 97, has been hailed as the UK’s most successful shipwreck explorer, certainly of historic wrecks at scuba-diving depths – and it was the maritime history that fascinated him more than the diving itself.
Cowan was born on 16 June, 1927 and brought up in north London. His father was a successful toy importer and he attended University College School before being evacuated to New York to live with relatives during World War Two. The family later moved to Los Angeles, where Cowan worked part-time at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.
Returning to England, he joined the RAF but his hopes of becoming a pilot were dashed by his colour-blindness. He went on to guard German prisoners of war.
After the war he studied law at King’s College London, and was also a Fulbright scholar at the University of Southern California to 1953 before becoming a criminal solicitor.
In 1967, however, he decided to abandon what had been a successful legal career for one hunting down hard-to-find shipwrecks – though many in the maritime archaeology establishment would come to consider him as something of an outlaw.
Cowan had a holiday home in the Scilly Isles and, when asked to write about the Royal Navy’s discovery of the early 18th-century Association man o’war there, found the work of the wreck-divers too absorbing to resist.
However, rather than becoming a diver he organised dive-teams and supervised operations from the boat. His low-overhead expeditions were financed partly through the sale of commonly found artefacts, while historically interesting and often valuable finds were donated to museums.
The Hollandia & Prinses Maria
Cowan’s late wife Zelide would also become an expert in historic shipwrecks. When she came across a 1794 account of a Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship, the Hollandia, that had sunk off the Scilly Isles, they put together a dive-team in an attempt to find the wreck – in the face of strong competition.
The 42m, 32-gun fluyt had been launched in 1742 and was wrecked on its maiden voyage to the East Indies the following year on Gunner Rock, west of the island of Annet. Lost with the ship were 306 sailors, soldiers and passengers and large quantities of trade coins.
The Cowans’ search began in 1968, as they scoured archives in England and the Netherlands and used, unusually for the time, a proton magnetometer to search promising areas of seabed. The wreck was found in September 1971 and they recovered a large quantity of silver coins as well as bronze cannon, mortars and other artefacts.
Maritime archaeologists were soon questioning Cowan’s methods and his balance between archaeological preservation and treasure-hunting but Cowan was set on finding more Dutch East Indiamen. He would be involved in the discovery of seven more such ships, including the Prinses Maria, a large VOC ship wrecked in shallow waters off the Scilly Isles in 1686.
King James II had sent salvors to retrieve the silver coins onboard, later denying any knowledge of the wreck to the Dutch, but Cowan found more coins, along with cannon, ship’s timbers and many artefacts.
The Vliegenthart & Rooswijk
In 1981 his team found the Vliegenthart (Flying Hart), complete with treasure chests full of Mexican silver and Dutch gold and silver coins and other items. It had been heading for the East Indies when a gale combined with a spring tide and pilot error led it onto a sandbank. From there it slipped and sank in 18m with the loss of all hands.
A map produced by unsuccessful salvors of the time was discovered and provided clues for Cowan, though it took him four years to locate the wreck and another two to find the first coins. His divers were still retrieving chests in 1992.
It was also in 1981 that Cowan complained in The Times, as recorded in Parliament, that the British government was “foisting on divers engaged in underwater archaeology and exploration the new and officious set of rules contained in their statutory instrument”, referring to the Protection of Wrecks Act. He lost few opportunities to champion the contribution amateur divers could make to maritime archaeology.
Another VOC ship, the Rooswijk, had sunk in early 1740 on its second trip east on Goodwin Sands, again with no known survivors.
It was discovered at a depth of 25m by an amateur diver in 2004 and in the summer of the following year a team led by Cowan secretly recovered much of the ship’s contents, including 1,000 silver bars and gold coins.
The finds were presented to a Netherlands government representative in Plymouth towards the end of 2005, but the salvage operation led to further criticism that international archaeological heritage conventions were being flouted. The Rooswijk is now a UK protected wreck site.
A gallery was however devoted to displaying Cowan’s VOC finds at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and he remained adamant that his wreck-hunting was motivated not by financial gain but by his love of history and adventure.
And over the course of his career he did win over a number of professionals who came to recognise his contribution and integrity. He sat on the British government’s Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck Sites for 23 years.
For many years Cowan was Diver magazine’s Wrecks consultant alongside Kendall MacDonald, and would often call in with news of his latest exciting project – as well as to express his frustration with the less-sympathetic members of the maritime archaeological establishment, or rival private explorers if he felt that they were amateurish in their approach.
Cowan lived in Hampstead, where he was well-known as an author, broadcaster, magistrate and community character. At one point he suggested to the local satirical magazine Hampstead Village Voice that it should make a splash on the occasion of his death, which came on 9 March.
The publication responded by putting up posters around that part of north London proclaiming “The King is Dead – Hampstonia Mourns its Much-Loved Monarch”. Cowan leaves his three daughters, Alex, Juliet and Annie and their children.
Also on Divernet: WRECK_DIVE PIONEERS CELEBRATED IN CORNWALL, WEAPONS & COINS: VIDEO EXPANDS ROOSWIJK STORY, VIRTUAL TOUR OF ROOSWIJK RELEASED, DIVERS FIND SMUGGLED COINS ON ROOSWIJK
