London – When a schoolboy who was going for a race found the coasts of a wooden ship that crosses the dunes of a distant Scottish beach, she triggered a hunt by archaeologists, scientists and local historians to discover her history.
Thanks to a mixture of high -tech sciences and community research, they have an answer. The researchers announced on Wednesday that the ship is most likely the Count of Chatham, a 18th century warship which experienced an action in the American war of independence before a second life of hunts in the Arctic – then a stormy disappearance.
“I would consider him a lucky ship, which is a strange thing to say about a shipwrene ship,” said Ben Saunders, a senior marine archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, a charitable organization that helped community researchers conduct the investigation.
“I think that if it had been found in many other places, it would not necessarily have had this community conduct, this desire to recover and study this material, and also the community spirit to do so,” said Saunders.
The wreckage was discovered in February 2024 after a storm swept the sand covering him on Sanday, one of the accidents Orcades which releases the tip of the north of Scotland.
It has aroused interest in the island of 500 people, whose history is linked to the sea and its dangers. About 270 shipwrecks have been recorded around the island of 20 square miles (50 square kilometers) since the 15th century.
Local farmers used their tractors and trailers to transport the 12 tonnes of oak wood off the beach, before local researchers put themselves at work trying to identify it.
“It was really very fun, and it was such a good feeling about the community – everyone gathered to reappear it,” said Sylvia Thorne, one of the island’s community researchers. “Many people are really interested in this and become experts.”
Dendrochronology – The science of wood dating wood – showed that wood came from southern England in the middle of the 18th century. It was a little luck, said Saunders because it coincides with “the point where British bureaucracy is really starting to start” and detailed records were kept.
“And so we can then start to look at the evidence of archives that we have for the wrecks in the orcades,” said Saunders. “It becomes an elimination process.
“You remove those who are from northern Europe as opposed to the British, you remove the wrecks that are too small or operate in the north of England and you are really two or three … and the Count of Chatham is the last on the left.”
Additional research has revealed that before he was Count of Chatham, the ship was HMS Hind, a frigate of the Royal Navy with 24 weapons built in Chichester on the southern coast of England in 1749.
His military career has seen him play a role in the expansion – and the contraction – of the British Empire. He helped Great Britain to exhaust control of France from France during the seats of Louisbourg and Quebec in the 1750s, and in the 1770s, served as a convoy escort during the failed effort of Great Britain to keep its American colonies.
Sold by the navy in 1784 and renamed, the ship became a whale ship, chasing the huge mammals in the arctic waters off Greenland.
Whale oil was an essential fuel of the industrial revolution, used to lubricate machines, soften the tissues and the Light City streets. Saunders said that in 1787 there were 120 whale ships based in London in the Greenland Sea, the Count of Chatham among them.
A year later, while heading towards the whale soil, it was destroyed in bad weather off the coast of Sanday. The 56 crew members survived – more evidence, said Saunders, that it was a ship with luck.
The ships of the ship are kept in a freshwater tank at the Sanday Heritage Center while the plans are discussed to put it in permanent exposure.
Saunders said that the project is a model of community involvement in archeology.
“The community was so lively, was so eager to be involved and discovering things to learn, and they are so proud of that. It was to them that it was discovered, it was to them that it was recovered and it was stabilized and protected,” he said.
For the inhabitants, it is a link to the maritime past of the island – and the future. Finding long-term wrecks could become more common because climate change changes wind models around Great Britain and reshapes the coast.
“One of the greatest things I have obtained from this project is to achieve how much the past in Sanday is constantly with you – be visible or simply below the surface,” said Ruth Peace, another community researcher.
