For the 34 years since it was discovered by scuba divers, a vessel sunk off the Dorset coast has been referred to only as the “Pin Wreck” – but now the 27m-deep mystery boat has been identified as an Admiralty mooring lighter built in 1866 and lost 37 years later.
Found off St Albans Head south-west of Swanage in 1990, the 24m metal-sheathed timber vessel had been named after the hundreds of yellow metal bolts surrounding it on the seabed. The wreck included a steam-driven capstan with boiler at the stern, along with Admiralty mooring buoys, chain and anchors.
A team from Bournemouth University Maritime Archaeology has been working on the puzzle since 2019, after being shown objects recovered from the site by diver Nigel Bryant in the 1990s. These included a pulley block attached to a ceramic fragment marked “Portsmouth Dockyard”.
After diving the wreck themselves, the archaeologists concluded that it was likely to be a mooring lighter, a vessel that would have been towed by a tug.
“These mooring lighters were designed by the Admiralty to lay and cover the heavy moorings needed to support the changing 19th-century Navy,” say the team. “They were also used in salvage and the early days of diving, highlighted by the diver’s boot found on the site in the 1990s and contemporary images of ship salvage.”
In the National Archives the team found plans of two identical Portsmouth Dockyard Yard Craft lighters named YC5 and YC8 that seemed to fit the bill – but they could find no record of either having been lost.
Now, however, they have found a report in the Shipping Gazette of 11 September, 1903 that a mooring lighter sank off St Albans Head in rough weather while being towed from Portsmouth to Portland. The 30 men onboard had all been transferred safely to the tug.
A further archived reference confirmed the lost lighter to be YC8, which is thought to have been used to help salvage HMS Eurydice off the Isle of Wight in 1878. The loss of the corvette had been one of Britain’s worst peacetime naval disasters at the time.
A record of loss was later found for YC8’s haulage gear off St Alban’s Head in September, 1903.
The archaeologists have applied for YC8 to be designated a Protected Site. “This is a rare example of a type of service vessel which was essential for maintaining the operations of Britain’s ports in the 19th century, so it is vital that we preserve it,” said team-leader Prof Dave Parham of Bournemouth University Maritime Archaeology.
“Its identity has remained a mystery for three decades but what we observed on our dive meant we could find the clues that could reveal the secrets of the wreck and understand how it ended up on the seabed. The materials the vessel is made from suggest a high-quality build, possibly linked to a Royal dockyard.”
Also on Divernet: 750-YEAR-OLD WRECK FOUND OFF DORSET – TIMBERS AND ALL, DORSET SHIPWRECK WITH WORDSWORTH LINKS PROTECTED, POLICE PROBE DAMAGE TO STAR-DIVE VALENTINE TANK, FAME AT LAST: POOLE WRECK MYSTERY SOLVED
