PREVIEW

**EMBARGO: 00:01 Thursday 31 July 2025**


The remains of a 17th Century warship sunk during one of Britain’s biggest naval disasters has been found to be largely intact after being preserved by sand and sediment.


Surveyors have been assessing the condition of the Protected Wreck Site of the Northumberland, and found that a remarkably large section of the vessel survives on the seabed.


The Northumberland was a Third Rate 70-gun warship built in Bristol in 1679 as part of Samuel Pepys' regeneration of the English Navy.


It sank during the ‘Great Storm’ on 26 November 1703 on the treacherous Goodwin Sands off the Kent coast, with three other warships the Restoration, the Stirling Castle and the Mary – the location of which is still to be determined - lost nearby.


The Great Storm of 1703 was one of the most severe storms or natural disasters ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain. It hit the Royal Navy particularly hard, as in addition to those losses, HMS Vanguard was wrecked at Chatham and the HMS Association was blown from Harwich to Gothenburg in Sweden. Thousands of sailors’ lives were also lost in the storm.

Working with the Licensee of the Northumberland wreck, Dan Pascoe and contractors MSDS Marine, surveyors showed that organic material such as wooden decks, wooden chests - some including cannon balls and the ship’s rope - have survived particularly well. This is due to being covered by sand and seabed sediments for hundreds of years.


Paul Jeffery, Marine Team Leader at Historic England said: “The completeness of the Northumberland wreck site is remarkable. Historic England’s diving work is so important to ensure we continue to record what we can of this site. It is a race against time as more of the Northumberland wreck becomes exposed.”


Shifting sands, strong currents and wood boring sea creatures, which burrow into and damage wooden structures on the seabed, continue to make this fragile Protected Wreck Site unstable, putting it at high risk of deterioration. It lies over a large area of the seabed between 15-20 metres deep and is covered by concretion or marine deposits, however more of it is being exposed every day.


Dan Pascoe, Licensee of the Northumberland, added: “The Northumberland has the potential to be one of the best-preserved wooden warships in the UK. However, at 20 metres underwater and 9 miles offshore it is out of sight and mind to most people.”


The latest survey work by Historic England reveals evidence of extensive hull structure on the seabed possibly lying on its port side, multiple wooden decks, exceptionally well-preserved organic material such as coils of rope on a timber deck, multiple wooden chests, 13 cannons, part of a wooden gun carriage, swords and muskets, and copper cauldrons.

Historian Dan Snow, founder of streaming service, History Hit, also visited the Protected Wreck Site and has produced a film about the latest survey work.

Explaining the importance of the wreck, Snow said: “Northumberland is the missing link. Built roughly halfway between the Mary Rose and HMS Victory, this wreck can fill in crucial details of shipbuilding and life at sea at that pivotal moment in our history. We have the Mary Rose, the ‘Tudor time capsule’, well here’s a Stuart time capsule to sit alongside it.”

Future work on the site may include taking wood samples or dendrochronological sampling to find out more about the ship’s construction.

The History Hit film, ‘Shipwreck Northumberland and the Great Storm’, airs on Thursday 31 July to subscribers and will later be more widely available.