The wreck of the East India Company cargo sailing ship Earl of Abergavenny, an early example of a vessel incorporating iron in its construction, has been scheduled for protection.
The move by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, recommended by Historic England (HE), means that scuba divers can still dive the wreck but by law must leave its contents untouched.
Launched in 1796 in Northfleet, Kent, the vessel was one of 36 ships of 1,460 tons that formed a special class of the East India Company’s merchant fleet.
Carrying company employees and fare-paying passengers to Bengal and bases in southern India along with cargoes, ships such as the Earl of Abergavenny played their part in a profitable shift in focus of Britain’s trading operations from Indian textiles to China tea.
The vessel was also notable for being captained by John Wordsworth, who had become a seaman to help support his brother’s writing career.
William Wordsworth would go on to become a renowned Romantic poet, and based characters in a number of his works, such as Stepping Westward, on his brother. After John’s death when the ship sank off Dorset, his brother’s writing became markedly bleak.
An elder cousin of the brothers, also called John, had captained a previous Earl of Abergavenny launched in 1789, and made two voyages from London to China on the ship. It was converted to a 54-gun warship named HMS Abergavenny in 1795, but the captain also commanded the second Earl of Abergavenny for a time.
The younger John Wordsworth took the second Earl of Abergavenny to China twice but died along with 250 crew and passengers on his fifth trading voyage from Portsmouth to Bengal and China.
There were other Wordsworth family connections, too, including a Joseph Wordsworth, shown variously as second or third mate on the wrecked Earl of Abergavenny, who survived the incident. He was the son of the elder John and nephew of John and William.
Hit the Shambles
The Earl of Abergavenny hit the Shambles sandbank through a combination of human error and stormy weather and sank some 1.5 miles off Weymouth on 5 February, 1805. At the time the ship was carrying 62 chests of silver dollars valued at £70,000 (about £7.5 million today).
The 16m-deep wreck includes substantial structural remains of the hull measuring some 50 x 10m, with planking, frames, a chain water-pump and iron knees or brackets still in evidence. The wreck has yet to be fully excavated.
Artefacts were removed from the wreck-site during an excavation in the 1980s, including an initialled cufflink assumed to have belonged to Captain John Wordsworth. The items are kept at Portland Museum, which runs a Lottery-funded digital volunteering project called Diving into the Digital Archives of the Earl of Abergavenny.
Volunteers continue to produce 3D models of the artefacts, which include wooden dominos, a 13-sided glass condiment jar, a copper and glass hand-lamp, a wooden sword-handle and a brass rat badge, and these are publicly available.
“This wreck has an evocative story to tell about the life and sorrow of one of our most renowned poets, William Wordsworth,” says HE chief executive Duncan Wilson. “But it also has an important place in this country’s shared maritime history and how the East India Company’s fleet made its impact across so much of the world.
“Its protection is testament to the dedication and hard work of Chelmsford Underwater Archaeological Unit, Weymouth LUNAR Society and Portland Museum and their volunteers. Their efforts will help us all learn more about this vessel and its place in our shared past.”
“I’m delighted the Earl of Abergavenny has been granted protection – it played an important part in British history,” says museum trustee David Carter, a member of the Earl of Abergavenny amateur underwater archaeology project team.
“Being involved in the underwater excavations from the 1980s and seeing the artefacts conserved and finding a home at the Portland Museum has been a major achievement. I’m proud of our volunteer team, who make hundreds of finds from the wreck site digitally available and accessible to all.”
Only two other East India Company ships have been protected under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973: the Admiral Gardner, built in 1797, and the Loe Bar Wreck (believed to be the President), built in 1671.
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