Shipwrecks episode 1: Britain's Sunken History
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00:00We're all familiar with the story of how Britain conquered the sea.
00:21A story that rings with glorious naval victory and acts of heroism,
00:27which helped build a huge empire, but there's a less well-known maritime
00:33phenomenon that has shaped our history, our destiny and our national character.
00:39The shipwreck, the sailors ultimate nightmare, so terrifying but so much a
00:46part of the price paid for ruling the high seas and once so common an
00:51occurrence that it's always been lodged deep in our psychological makeup. As an
00:56historian, this has always fascinated me.
01:02I grew up with dramatic tales of ships dashed on the rocks and their crews lost
01:07at sea. As a child I saw these as just wonderful yarns to stir the imagination.
01:14Yet shipwrecks changed the course of our history and without them it's unlikely
01:20we'd be the same nation we are today.
01:26In this series I will uncover stories of wrecks in far-flung exotic seas that reveal
01:33Britain's rise as an imperial power.
01:37But my journey starts on our own coastline.
01:44These charts simply littered with thousands of shipwrecks. Yes we built the biggest maritime
01:52empire the world had ever seen, but we did so from an island which is surrounded by some
01:58of the most dangerous waters in the world.
02:04The combination of geography and global outreach would make Britain more prone to shipwrecks
02:10than practically anywhere else.
02:14Something that first became apparent 500 years ago when the Tudor navy began to flex its muscles
02:21at a time when King Henry VIII could only dream of ruling a maritime empire.
02:28Starting in the 16th century I'll show how one of the largest mass shipwrecks in history propelled us
02:35on our global adventure and how remote disasters at sea would inspire some of the most memorable
02:41literature and art. Join me for the story of the shipwreck and the extraordinary role it has played
02:48in the shaping of Britain's history.
03:00Outlook for the following 24 hours.
03:04The Maritime and Coast Guard Agency in Dover keeps watch over the English Channel,
03:09one of the most congested and potentially deadly shipping routes in the world.
03:14North Fallen to South Seville, 24 hour forecast,
03:18westerly or southwesterly veering northly for a time, three or four, occasionally five in east.
03:24I'm going to one infamous spot off the south coast where the remains lie of over 2,000 ships.
03:43Over there off the coast of Kent are the Goodwin Sands and it seems like the most
03:49innocuous stretch of coastline you can imagine, but this place is a graveyard.
03:55Under these waters lies the largest concentration of shipwrecks anywhere in the world.
04:06The Goodwin Sands has terrified sailors since the 16th century.
04:10It's even mentioned in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice as a place where the carcasses of many
04:18a sunken ship lie buried.
04:23Full of navigational hazards, the treacherous Goodwin Sands is the final resting place of a
04:29host of wrecked vessels, from Elizabethan galleons to U-boats.
04:34Many of these old historic wrecks have been located by the Alert, a rapid intervention vessel
04:45which pinpoints the precise location of shipwrecks in the English Channel.
04:51We're tracking up the eastern edge of the Goodwin Sands, trying to find the wrecks that are marked up on
04:57these screens here, and there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and just in a small area of sea,
05:07but we're hoping one of these wrecks is going to appear over there. What have we got over here?
05:11This is a multi-beam echo sounder, so a standard echo sounder would look straight beneath the ship
05:15and you just know exactly what was underneath your keel. This is looking out at 75 degrees either side of
05:20the vessel, so we've got a 360 degree view of the seabed, so we're able to get a picture of what's
05:26actually happening down there to determine whether the wreck is a danger.
05:31The Alert continues to patrol these waters because historic wrecks are liable to break up
05:37amidst the shifting seabed and tides, becoming a danger to shipping in this very busy trade route.
05:48If we cross a wreck, what's that going to look like on that screen?
05:50What is it going to look like? You're going to see some disturbances on the screen. If you imagine you're
05:54in a room and you shine a torch on a box, you get a shadow behind the box in a dark room,
06:00so we're looking for the shadow.
06:10Something's coming up now. Here we come now, so the wreck, we're going over the wreck now.
06:15There's a really, really big disturbance in this picture here. It's
06:18unmistakably something just lying on the seabed.
06:21This is an old wreck, so we don't know what it is.
06:25The shape of the shadows reveals a wreck that has begun to break up on the seabed,
06:30with its keel lying in two parts.
06:36We don't know the name of this vessel, but it could be part of one of the largest mass shipwrecks ever
06:42recorded.
06:51In November 1703, a massive storm tore across the south coast, destroying everything in its wake
06:59in a maelstrom of chaos, which spawned wind speeds of over 140 miles per hour.
07:13The only bona fide hurricane to ever hit our shores inspired writer Daniel Defoe to pen a famous
07:20journalist journalistic account.
07:25No storm was like this, either in its violence or its duration. The greatest, the longest in
07:31duration, the widest in extent.
07:37Of all the tempests and storms that history gives any account of since the beginning of time,
07:42confusion seized upon all, whether on shore or at sea.
07:54For the many ships sailing the channel that night, there was no shelter from this hurling gale.
08:00Sailing vessels, built from wood and barely a hundred feet long,
08:04were no match for the fury of what became known as the Great Storm.
08:14The bulk of the ships lost that night sank here on the Goodwin Sands.
08:21Thirteen warships and 40 merchantmen were driven onto the Goodwin Sands by the Great Storm.
08:29Men from the Port of Deals struggled out in open boats to try and save who they could.
08:35But 2,000 men lost their lives here.
08:40The remains of those ships sunk that night in the Great Storm are still here beneath these waters.
08:51This mass shipwreck became the most obvious testament to the destruction wrought on the whole country.
08:58A day of fasting was called and church pulpits hosted sermons
09:03describing the disaster as a punishment from God for the sins of the whole nation.
09:12Across the coast of Britain, so many ships were sunk
09:16but one in five sailors from the Royal Navy were lost and with them thousands of men from merchant ships.
09:23One of the ships which was caught in the Great Storm was HMS Mary,
09:36which now lies a hundred metres west of the Goodwin Sands.
09:41Commanded by Rear Admiral Basil Beaumont, it suffered the single largest loss of life on that terrifying night.
09:49Two hundred and sixty-eight men were killed, with only one solitary survivor.
09:55The loss of the Mary and Admiral Beaumont along with it was recorded in a remarkable painting now held at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
10:09In this painting, Rear Admiral Beaumont stands with a hand on his anchor,
10:18while in the background, the Mary, the ship that he actually went down on, struggles to stay afloat during the Great Storm.
10:26It's a haunting image, part portrait, part visual document of his death.
10:33And it's a powerful reminder that the Great Storm left deep psychological scars on our island nation.
10:40Yet, while the wrecking of so many British ships was unprecedented,
10:55the remains of these vessels are only a small contingent of the thousands of wrecks,
11:01which litter almost every mile of our coastline,
11:05from the Isles of Scilly to the north of Scotland.
11:10But they lie out of reach, hidden from us,
11:15in the murky depths of the seas that surround our island.
11:19And over centuries, the majority of historic wrecks disintegrate on the seabed.
11:25But 30 years ago, something remarkable happened.
11:40An event that entranced the nation, gave me my first ever glimpse of a real shipwreck.
11:49A stricken flagship of Henry VIII's Tudor Navy.
11:53I remember seeing a longbow, and, even more remarkably,
12:09what seemed to be the bones of the bowman it belonged to.
12:13And then, one of 39 cannons being lifted from the seabed.
12:22I watched, captivated, along with the rest of Britain,
12:31as the Mary Rose returned to the surface after over 400 years.
12:36There is the wreck of the Mary Rose.
12:42It has come to the surface.
12:44There is the first sight of this flagship of Henry VIII.
12:49It's the first time we have seen this in 437 years.
12:55Today, the wreck is held in a specially built dehumidifying chamber,
13:00where conditions are controlled to maintain the right air temperature to preserve the timbers.
13:11From the moment that she was raised in the 1980s,
13:15the Mary Rose became one of our greatest national treasures.
13:18But the harsh truth is that, by the time that she sank,
13:21she was a badly designed and dangerous ship.
13:24And the men that we really need to thank for giving us this time capsule of Tudor life
13:29were the shipwrights and designers of Henry VIII's navy.
13:34Their construction plans miscalculated the ship's sea handling capability.
13:44The Mary Rose may have embodied the very character and physical stature of Henry VIII himself.
13:51Powerful, imperious and swaggering.
13:53But there were fatal flaws in her design, which meant her sinking was almost inevitable.
14:05Weighing over 700 tons and decked out with dozens of cannons, colourful flags and high turrets.
14:14To her enemies, the Mary Rose would have been a magnificent maritime fortress.
14:19On the 19th of July, 1545, the French fleet entered the Solent and the Mary Rose was prepared for battle.
14:38Men, arms and guns were readied for action.
14:42From the moment that the last of these cannon were loaded on board, the Mary Rose was dangerously top-heavy
14:52and her gun ports were too close to the waterline.
14:55She was doomed.
14:56Attempting a simple manoeuvre, the Mary Rose listed sharply to her starboard side and suddenly sank,
15:14taking almost 400 men to their deaths.
15:20She had been fitted with a new gun deck that had destabilised her.
15:26It was an alteration that proved costly.
15:40This ship is the product of a nation, the England of Henry VIII, that was not yet a true maritime power.
15:47Henry's was a navy built for flag-waving and prestige more than it ever was for fighting.
15:52Henry's maritime ambitions took a knock that day in the Solent.
16:07The recovered wreck of the Mary Rose continues to fascinate us,
16:11though its actual sinking is far more significant.
16:17It tells us that Britain was not yet ready to sail the seven seas and conquer the world.
16:24In fact, it would take a highly fortuitous act, 40 years later and just up the coast, to change our destiny.
16:32This is Plymouth Hough, where Sir Francis Drake famously finished his game of bowls before sailing off to defeat the Spanish Armada.
16:44It's become part of our traditional story of the Armada,
16:47a story that tells of how nimble English ships sailed out and defeated the cumbersome Spanish,
16:54saving England from invasion.
16:56But there's another way of thinking of the events of 1588,
16:59and that's to see it not as an English naval victory,
17:03but as one of the greatest mass shipwrecks in history,
17:07caused by the terrible dangers of the British coastline and by the awesome power of the weather.
17:12In July 1588, a huge amphibious invasion force appeared off the southwest coast of England.
17:30The Spanish Empire had sent over 120 ships to land, invade and conquer the country.
17:42It was Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII,
17:45who had to stand up to the massed ranks of Spanish power
17:49in a war fought over empire and religion.
17:54A small Protestant island nation versus a colossal Catholic superpower.
18:04The propaganda machine cracked up.
18:07The Spanish were coming to hang everybody over the age of seven.
18:10They were going to kill every man, woman and children.
18:12There was a shipload of hangman's nooses.
18:16They had special whips to deal with flogging women.
18:23The powerful Spanish fleet swept confidently from the Bay of Biscay along the southwest coast.
18:31If Elizabeth hoped they would founder on one of the many navigational hazards
18:36that lay in these offshore waters, she was to be disappointed.
18:44The Armada steered clear of the Scilly Isles,
18:48narrowly avoided running aground on the Isle of Wight
18:50and evaded the notorious Goodwin Sands.
18:53They were now on course to land troops off the east coast and march on London.
19:05And the only thing standing in their way was the Tudor navy.
19:10But although Elizabeth could call on the services of Sir Francis Drake,
19:14her navy was not yet the world-famous fighting force we would come to know.
19:19People often make the mistake of assuming that the English navy then
19:27was like the navy in Nelson's time.
19:29It wasn't at all.
19:32I'm sure Francis Drake and John Hawkins and the others were all patriotic Englishmen,
19:36but their prime motivation for all the voyages they made,
19:39and indeed for joining the battle against the Armada,
19:41was not patriotism, it was the profit motive.
19:44They were there to try and capture Spanish ships and take them as prizes
19:48and claim the value of all the ordnance, all the treasure and everything else on board.
19:53A Spanish ship at the bottom of the ocean was a disaster,
19:56not just for the Spaniards, but for the English too,
19:58because a ship at the bottom of the ocean couldn't be looted.
20:00The two fleets finally engaged off the Flanders coast at Graveline.
20:20And during an eight-hour confrontation,
20:24the English succeeded in scattering the Spanish fleet.
20:27But this was not a killer blow.
20:40The Spanish had only lost three ships and were still a potent fighting force.
20:46The Spanish commander then took a fateful decision
20:59to retreat from the English navy and head up the North Sea towards Scotland.
21:06As the Spanish fleet edged northwards, the weather began to close in.
21:12A natural defence of gale force winds, huge breaking waves
21:19and a deluge of freezing rain dashed any last hopes the Spanish had
21:25to land their forces.
21:27A moment when they lose the status of a fighting force
21:33and become frightened men fleeing for home
21:36comes off Newcastle when they throw the horses
21:39and the artillery mules over the side
21:42because they haven't got enough water.
21:46And that's saying, we aren't ever going to land.
21:50The Spanish admiral, the duke of Medina Sedona,
21:55then issued his final orders
21:57to flee for home around the west coast of Ireland.
22:02He added what would turn out to be a prophetic warning
22:06to avoid the perils of the jagged Irish coast.
22:10Whereupon he ordered full sail
22:14and the slower ships, he coldly and calculated, said,
22:19you're on your own.
22:20This Mediterranean invasion force sailed blind along the coast of Scotland,
22:38trying to avoid the north-west of Ireland.
22:43Lost in foreign waters, with no local pilots to guide them safely,
22:47the fleet began to be split up, blown off course.
23:01By September 1588, the Armada was a broken, battered and motley collection of ships
23:07and they began to appear here in Ones and Twos
23:10off the coast of Northern Ireland.
23:13This entire scenario was completely unexpected.
23:16The duke of Medina Sedona had specifically ordered his captains
23:20to avoid the coast of Ireland
23:22and the Spanish chart actually ended at the Moray Firth
23:26on the north-east coast of Scotland.
23:29And so the Spanish captains had no detailed knowledge
23:32of this terrible coastline
23:33and they were entirely unprepared
23:35for the tempestuous weather of the North Atlantic.
23:38The retreating armada ran into a month-long wall of stormy weather,
24:03which drove the ships and their crews to their deaths.
24:06In one day alone, six of them were wrecked.
24:17The magnificent El Gran Green,
24:21a 1,200-tonne behemoth,
24:23was smashed to pieces off the coast of County Mayo.
24:27Within a 200-mile stretch of the west coast of Ireland,
24:31over 20 Spanish ships were lost.
24:41In the aftermath,
24:43there were horrific scenes all along the shoreline.
24:47On one beach,
24:49the bodies of 1,500 drowned sailors were found
24:53and any survivors faced an equally heartless fate.
25:00Those who had survived the wrecks of their ships
25:03and who were lucky enough to have made it ashore
25:05now faced a new set of dangers.
25:08English soldiers were garrisoned all along this coast
25:10and the Spanish didn't know how the Irish,
25:13their brother Catholics, would react.
25:15It often hinged on the question of money.
25:18The rich Spaniards were held captive and ransomed,
25:21while many of the ordinary soldiers and sailors,
25:24the men who had survived fleet battle, storm and now shipwreck,
25:28were either murdered by the Irish
25:30or executed by English soldiers.
25:32History has taken a harsh judgment
25:40on the Irish population for what had happened.
25:44I think that's unfair.
25:46I believe at that time in the 16th century,
25:50in the west of Ireland,
25:53there was a very prevalent superstition
25:56that the sea always claims its own.
25:58And if you allowed someone to be saved,
26:04then the sea would later wreak vengeance
26:06either on you or on one of your own kin.
26:09And that's what drove them.
26:11That's what made them seem to be so cruel.
26:14It was this fear of retribution by the sea.
26:20But hundreds of Spanish sailors were rescued from the sea
26:23by the Girona, one of their own ships.
26:26As it made its way along the coast
26:29towards the Giant's Causeway,
26:32it arrived here at La Carta Point,
26:35a notorious headland full of jagged rocks
26:38hidden just beneath the surface.
26:42On the night of October the 28th,
26:44the Spanish galleas Girona
26:46smashed with incredible force into the rocks behind me.
26:49She was fatally overloaded with more than a thousand men on board
26:56and her rudder had already been broken by the storm.
27:00She split into two, sank immediately,
27:03killing nearly all of the men on board.
27:05The Girona was wrecked within a few miles of Dunluce Castle,
27:19home to the wonderfully named Sawley Boy Macdonald,
27:23a firebrand Irish chief who was himself entangled
27:27in his own bloody territorial conflict with the English army.
27:31Macdonald retrieved over 200 bodies from the wreck
27:38and ensured they received a Catholic burial.
27:48Local tradition claims that the victims of the Girona
27:51were buried here at St Cuthbert's Churchyard.
27:54We don't know exactly where.
27:56It's one of those details that's been lost to history.
27:59But it's just one of several traditions and folk stories
28:02that are linked with the wreck of the Girona.
28:04One claims that some of the survivors
28:07were actually taken in by the Macdonalds of Dunluce Castle
28:10and another that some of the Spanish soldiers and sailors
28:14actually stayed, married local women
28:16and merged into the local population.
28:19The most tangible trace of the Armada that remains today
28:28is a treasure trove of gold
28:30recovered from the Girona in the 1960s.
28:42The divers who discovered the Girona
28:45found a huge hall of treasure
28:47that had lain untouched for almost 400 years
28:50and you can see it today here
28:53in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.
29:02Now this little guy is fantastic.
29:04It's a gold salamander brooch.
29:07A salamander is a reptile that's native to Mexico.
29:10We know that the gold came from South America
29:14and that the rubies, of which there are three
29:17and there are spaces for six more
29:19actually came from Burma.
29:22It's a wonderful piece of jewellery
29:24that says so much about the wealth
29:26and also the outreach of the Spanish Empire
29:29in the middle of the 16th century.
29:31And just look at these gold coins.
29:40There are 20 or so here
29:41but they recovered hundreds of gold and silver coins
29:45from the wreck of just one ship alone.
29:49These Spaniards were carrying the wealth
29:50of the Empire with them.
29:54But my favourite piece
29:56is this amazing gold chain.
29:58It weighs about the same as a bag of sugar
30:01and it's six feet long.
30:07It would have gone round someone's neck
30:09three or four times.
30:11These guys were going to war
30:13but they were going to look good
30:14while they were doing it.
30:15This coastline shattered the Spanish Armada.
30:31A third of the fleet was wrecked here
30:34and more ships were scuttled
30:36or lost in the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea.
30:39Eventually, five months
30:42after they had first set out from Spain
30:4563 ships limped back home
30:48half of the original contingent.
30:52Over 20,000 Spanish soldiers and sailors
30:55had lost their lives.
30:59As soon as the shadow of the Armada
31:01departed our shores
31:02the story of this mass shipwreck
31:05was retold as a stirring victory
31:07for Elizabeth's Protestant island.
31:10It was proof that the nation
31:12could rely on divine intervention
31:14to save them from Catholic invaders.
31:18Tudor propagandists even coined a new term
31:21that summed up this righteous victory.
31:24They said that England had been saved
31:26by a Protestant wind.
31:28This was only the beginning of the myth-making
31:36that has shaped our understanding of the Armada.
31:40What we now know today
31:41as Elizabeth's most famous speech
31:44made to her troops at Tilbury
31:47where she is said to have declared
31:49I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman
31:52but I have the heart and stomach of a king
31:55was, in fact, part of this strategy
31:59to repackage the Armada
32:01not as a lucky escape
32:03but as a glorious victory
32:05led by a monarch backed by God.
32:10We think that Alistair Campbell and Tony Blair
32:13invented spin-doctoring and image control
32:15and it's absolutely not true.
32:17Queen Elizabeth was a past master at it.
32:20The famous speech she made at Tilbury
32:21when she inspired her troops
32:23allegedly to defeat the Armada
32:24was only made when she knew
32:26the Armada had already been defeated
32:28and was being driven away up the North Sea
32:30and the proof of that
32:31is that when the Armada was off the coast
32:33Queen Elizabeth was actually at Hampton Court
32:35surrounded by a 10,000-man bodyguard
32:38and the speech she gave at Tilbury
32:40which has come down to us through history
32:42isn't actually the one she gave.
32:44The only witness to record a version of that speech
32:46recorded a very different one
32:47but it was then taken back to Whitehall Palace
32:49worked on to give it a much more Shakespearean tone
32:52and it was then disseminated
32:54through the only mass media there was at the time
32:56church pulpits.
32:59So the great myth of Queen Elizabeth
33:01as the inspiration of her troops
33:03and the Protestant wind
33:04came down to us that way.
33:09A heavily mythologised version
33:11of the sinking of the Armada
33:13was commemorated in art too
33:15as in this allegorical painting of Elizabeth
33:18presiding over the victory.
33:22And it shows Elizabeth
33:24an imperial splendour.
33:31Behind her on one side
33:32are the English fire ships
33:33destroying the Spanish fleet
33:35on the other side
33:36there's a portrayal of the Spanish Armada
33:38being dashed to pieces on the rocks.
33:40But on the chair
33:43there's a mermaid
33:44that's all about
33:45feminine wiles
33:47luring unwary sailors
33:49to their deaths
33:51and that's what she felt
33:52she wanted to portray.
33:54She may have had
33:55the body of a weak and feeble woman
33:57but she could defeat
33:59the Spanish Armada
34:00just by sticking her fingers.
34:01Fortuitous or not
34:20the wrecking of the Armada
34:22was a turning point
34:23giving an island nation
34:25the confidence
34:26to expand its maritime operations.
34:31This was the beginning
34:39of a new exciting global era
34:41just a decade after the Armada
34:44had smashed itself to pieces
34:45Queen Elizabeth
34:46granted a charter
34:48to a group of ambitious
34:49London merchants
34:50to pursue trade around the world.
34:53This group would become known
34:54as the East India Company
34:56and they were in the vanguard
34:57of an ambitious scramble
34:59to beat our European rivals
35:01conquer the new world
35:02and bring exotic goods
35:04like tea and sugar
35:06back home
35:06and where the East India Company
35:09went
35:09the British Empire
35:10would follow.
35:13Our ships
35:14subsequently went
35:16south and east
35:17to Africa
35:18India
35:19and China
35:19and west
35:21to North America
35:22and the Caribbean.
35:28The rewards were high
35:29but so were the risks.
35:33Venturing into remote
35:34and unexplored waters
35:36one in five ships
35:38never returned
35:40wrecked
35:41in far-flung seas.
35:43It's not surprising
35:49that so many ships
35:51are shipwrecked.
35:52Wood itself
35:53is a vulnerable material
35:55but also
35:56and more profoundly
35:57there is no reliable
35:59charting
36:00of most of the waters
36:01of the world
36:02so nobody knows
36:03where there are large rocks
36:04just underneath
36:05the water's surface
36:07and a wooden ship
36:08goes on that
36:08and it rips the bottom out.
36:10Most people in those days
36:11couldn't swim
36:12so a ship would go
36:13to the bottom
36:13and most of the crew
36:14would drown.
36:23Shipwrecks
36:24were costing
36:25the wealthy merchants
36:26and aristocrats
36:27who backed
36:28the East India Company
36:29serious money.
36:32They needed
36:33to be able
36:34to guarantee
36:35a safe passage
36:36beyond home waters.
36:41But what kind of
36:42navigational aids
36:43were available
36:44to seafarers
36:45at the time?
36:46I'm going to test out
36:47some of the tools
36:48they used
36:49to sail through
36:50uncharted waters.
36:52To help me out
36:53I'm meeting
36:54Tristan Gooley
36:55a navigator
36:56and maritime adventurer.
37:00One of the first things
37:01that mariners need
37:02to understand
37:02is how fast
37:03they're going.
37:04What is this?
37:05This is called
37:06the chip log
37:07and in the 16th century
37:09this was the most
37:10accurate method
37:11of working out
37:11how fast
37:12the boat was going.
37:14How?
37:15Well it's very simple
37:16it's a board
37:16we've got the lead weight
37:17here which means
37:18this end is going to
37:19go and stay at the bottom
37:20it's going to be weighed down
37:21and think of it
37:22like a parachute
37:23it just
37:23it sits there
37:24and it breaks in the water
37:25and then the line
37:26runs out
37:27and we have knots
37:28marked
37:29at intervals
37:30yeah that's one
37:31and the number of knots
37:33that pass through our hand
37:34in 14 seconds
37:35it's going to tell us
37:36how fast this boat is going.
37:37Are you ready to give it a go?
37:39Let's do it.
37:39Right.
37:40Here we go.
37:48I'm now timing 14 seconds.
37:55That's five.
38:01Ten.
38:04And that's 14
38:05stop the line there
38:07okay we've got a knot
38:08just there
38:09absolutely right
38:10okay so that knot
38:12you've got there
38:13yeah
38:13we're going to count
38:14the knots back from there
38:16and that's our lot
38:19we're into the stray line
38:20as it's called now
38:21just the bit
38:22that goes out
38:22at the beginning
38:23to keep it clear of the boat
38:24so we reckon the boat's
38:25going three knots
38:26I think
38:26three and a bit
38:27because there was that
38:27extra bit of rope left
38:29before it came back
38:30to the reel
38:30yes three and a bit
38:31three and a bit knots
38:33let's check with Bob
38:34Bob what are we actually doing
38:35by the log
38:363.2 knots
38:37hey
38:37the bit that
38:39yeah
38:40the bit on the end
38:400.2 of a knot
38:41that's amazingly accurate
38:43it is yeah
38:43fantastic bit of kit
38:45when land is sighted
38:49a basic navigation trick
38:51is needed
38:51to stop the ship
38:52running aground
38:53this is known as
38:55depth sounding
38:56we've got one of the
39:00oldest lowest tech
39:01bits of navigation
39:02equipment in the world
39:03the lead line
39:04drop it over the side
39:05when it hits the bottom
39:06the line goes slack
39:07we know how deep
39:09the water is
39:10by how much line there is
39:11okay
39:20Here we go
39:21that's tense there
39:22тер
39:32so this knot
39:33you can see
39:34it's dry on one side of it
39:36wet on the other
39:37and if we work our way all the way back to this red one
39:41what does that red one mean? that red one means seven fathoms
39:45and that knot there will be one more fathom so we're in
39:48eight fathoms of water but that's not all this
39:52not very high-tech bit of kit will tell us hopefully
39:56here we go
39:59what have we got? there we go, let me just pass that over
40:03looks like we've pulled up some mud and sand to me, is that what it looks like to you?
40:08yeah let me just have a look, taste it, best way of doing it
40:12that's disgusting but it's definitely sandy
40:16it's not just mud and that's the key bit of information. sailors of the past would have used that to
40:20understand where they are
40:22what the land they're approaching is like and very importantly whether they could
40:26drop the anchor there
40:27because if the seabed isn't right for an anchor there's no point dropping it
40:30and this is one way of saving a lot of time and effort
40:35simple but effective
40:36however when it came to more difficult calculations
40:40like accurately measuring the altitude of the Sun
40:43which was needed to work out an exact position at sea
40:47a more complex and innovative solution was needed
40:50and it was provided by an Englishman named John Davis
40:54in 1594
40:56I'd say the vast majority of all navigational instruments anybody ever thinks of
41:02are concerned with measuring angles and in particular the angle of the Sun
41:06the Moon and the stars above the horizon
41:08and this is a very early tool which they used to do that and it's a particularly clever one isn't it?
41:13it is very clever, this is the backstaff
41:15how does it work?
41:16ok, what we do is we create a shadow using what's called a shadow vein on this little window here
41:24and then looking through this sighting vein here we look at the horizon
41:29and that just forms a nice simple triangle from there to there back up to here up to the Sun
41:34and that measures the angle for us
41:36right let's have a go see how this works
41:38there you go
41:39I'm going to look through this to find the horizon
41:43yep
41:44and then adjust this
41:48until the shadow
41:49there we go
41:50there we go
41:50ok great
41:51so now we take it down
41:53and some very very simple calculations
41:55you've just got to add the number here
41:57to the number here
41:58and you've got the angle of the Sun above the horizon
42:01510 here
42:03and then 25 there
42:04so we're looking at 35 degrees
42:0535 degrees
42:05yeah we're not quite at the the midday point now
42:09but we have just taken an altitude of the Sun
42:11we have just worked out how high it is
42:13and that simple measurement could tell a sailor how far north or south they are in the world
42:17there are no mirrors
42:18there are no magnifying glasses
42:20there are no moving bits
42:21it's just a stick
42:22absolutely
42:22and it wasn't perfect
42:24otherwise we wouldn't have had things like the octant and the sextant coming along later and and displacing it
42:29but for approximately 130 years from about 1600 to about 1730
42:34this was cutting edge
42:38armed with this navigational equipment a fleet of seven ships left plymouth harbour on the 2nd of june 1609
42:50they were bound for jamestown virginia a settlement colonized only 20 years after the defeat of the armada
42:58led by its flagship the sea venture the flotilla consisted of boats typical of the period
43:12made from wood powered by sail and barely 70 feet long they would have to brave the weather of the americas
43:19the sort of tropical hurricanes that no englishman had ever witnessed off his own coast
43:32six weeks after leaving the devon shoreline the boat sailed into the eye of a ferocious storm
43:47separated from the rest of the group the sea venture was at the mercy of this tropical onslaught
43:54unable to master the elements and unable to maintain her course
44:02of course a wooden ship is far more vulnerable so it can literally be blown on a rocky shore where
44:08it can be shipwrecked even if it realizes it's in terrible danger
44:12you can have scenarios where you can see the danger the rocky shore you know you want to keep off that
44:23shore but the wind and the current is driving you on it and you cannot stop it
44:27the sea venture was smashed onto the rocky reefs of what proved to be the island of bermuda
44:43remarkably all 150 people on board survived this crash landing and now they found themselves shipwrecked
44:52on a beautiful but deserted island
44:57to us today the beach is paradise it's where we dream of going on holiday
45:02but that idea would have seemed like utter madness to anyone in the 16th and 17th centuries
45:09back then the beaches of the new world weren't paradise they were hell on earth
45:13and if you found yourself on one you wouldn't break out the sun lotion you'd sink to your knees in
45:18despair because the odds were that you were a shipwrecked sailor and you were almost certainly doomed
45:27so many of those marooned by the sea venture on the caribbean island of bermuda did die from starvation or disease
45:39but the remaining crew built two improvised craft after salvaging parts from the wreck
45:51they named them deliverance and patience and eventually some did make it back home
45:58finding a passage from their original destination of virginia
46:01and two of the crew published a gripping tale of their battle for survival
46:10for four and twenty hours the storm in a restless tumult had blown so exceedingly as we could not
46:16apprehend in our imagination any possibility of greater violence
46:20but fury added to fury and one storm urging a second more outrageous than the former
46:29nothing heard that could give comfort nothing seen that could give hope
46:36these testimonies were the first ever accounts of surviving a shipwreck in the new world sylvester
46:43jordain and william straki published their narratives in 1610 just months after returning to london and
46:51what they described captured the public imagination they detailed swimming in crystal clear waters
46:59foraging for exotic fruit and hunting brightly colored fish
47:02they bear a kind of berry black and round as big as a damson which about december were ripe and luscious
47:14other kinds of high and sweet swelling woods there would be and colors black yellow and red
47:20and one which bears a round blueberry much eaten by our own people
47:25we have taken 5 000 small and great fish at one hail
47:30i think that no island in the world may have greater store or better fish
47:38for many readers this was their first taste of global travel and adventure
47:46these books were widely read and you could just imagine people talking excitedly about jordain and
47:52straki's encounters with this strange environment
47:56the possibilities of exploring the exotic and otherworldly nature of these far-flung islands
48:02also fascinated the most famous playwright of the elizabethan age
48:08the travails of the sea venture inspired one william shakespeare to write a story that began with a
48:14shipwreck in a foreign sea
48:21the tempest opens with a ship battling to stay afloat amidst the uproar of a tropical storm
48:31shakespeare uses the shipwreck as a dramatic device
48:35to create a gateway to propel us into a fantastical world
48:47through the shipwreck and subsequent marooning shakespeare introduces us to the weird and wonderful
48:54characters who inhabit a strange island
48:58there is the spirit ariel who uses magic to conjure up the tempest which wrecks the ship at the start of the play
49:11and then there is caliban half demon half man a wild savage who fascinates and terrifies us
49:20shakespeare revels in disaster at sea as a means to take us away from civilization
49:35so what the shipwreck in that context enables you to do is to think outside the imaginative chains
49:43of your own society you can imagine a world without religion of the form that you might have in europe
49:49you can imagine a world which isn't dominated by human beings
49:57one can imagine in short the opportunity to put yourself in a context in which you and your imagination
50:08are interacting with anything that you can take and derive from this new environment and that was really potent
50:22shakespeare stretched our imaginations through his shipwreck in the tempest and he did so in an age
50:29when britons were taking their first tentative steps in a new era of travel and adventure
50:36the tempest was more science fiction than reality but throughout the 17th century as the british empire
50:43expanded into uncharted waters more and more real life accounts of shipwrecked sailors began to emerge
50:51and they sparked an appetite for maritime stories that were so believable
50:56that few people could tell the difference between what was fact and what was fiction
51:06fact and fiction collided here at this pub the land ogre trow in bristol two men sat at the bar deep in conversation
51:15one of those men was a scottish sailor and he was telling his story of how he had been marooned on a tropical island for four and a half years
51:24the other man hung on his every word scribbling down details of the tale in his notebook
51:31that man was a journalist named daniel defoe and this barroom conversation went on to inspire one of the
51:37greatest of all english novels the life and strange surprising adventures of robinson crusoe
51:53the adventures of robinson crusoe was presented as a real account told in the first person
52:04with defoe's name redacted from the earliest edition
52:08the novel detailed the daily battles crusoe faced such as the search for fresh water and it revealed
52:19the psychological effect of being shipwrecked alone when he is shipwrecked on the desert island he's
52:27initially of course absolutely shocked and he spends time looking for water and getting himself sorted out
52:32in terms of basic survival so he's instantly a very pragmatic figure and it's only subsequently that
52:37he starts to break down psychologically and we hear about his traumatic psychological breakdown as the
52:43reality of his loneliness and isolation dawn upon him
52:50through the process of writing a journal notching up the days in other words bringing european time onto a
52:56timeless island he recovers a sense of self-possession
52:59and interestingly that translates into a possession of the island so he literally takes possession of
53:04the island that he finds himself on it was rare that any fictional writings had presented a human
53:10predicament with that kind of psychological intensity and that attention to detail the man defoe was talking
53:18to in this pub that night was a sailor named alexander selkirk he had been traveling on a ship the sank
53:26ports and had expressed grave reservations about the vessel's seaworthiness after a dispute with the
53:34captain selkirk was abandoned on a pacific island 400 miles from the coast of chile and this inspired
53:43robinson crusoe's epic survival tale
53:46selkirk was set ashore with his sea chest with powder and shot for his musket and just two days
53:57worth of food and just as the captain was preparing to leave selkirk apparently changed his mind but the
54:04captain now completely fed up with selkirk's behavior refused to take him back on board leaving him marooned
54:10the strangest thing about the whole story is not that selkirk survived four years of hardship and
54:26solitude but that he was right about one critical detail the sank ports the ship that he had said was
54:33unseaworthy the ship which had sailed away abandoning him did sink taking with her much of her crew
54:45selkirk's four years and four months on the island ended when he was picked up by an english ship
54:51he sailed with her for a further two years before finally arriving home in october 1711
55:03soon after selkirk would have his famous meeting with daniel defoe
55:07in the land auger trough and a literary legend was born
55:11but defoe didn't just detail crusoe skillet's survival the novel also works as a powerful metaphor
55:22for britain's rise as a colonial power
55:29crusoe is depicted as the enlightened man importing western civilization to the barbarous and exotic island
55:37he builds a home rears animals and cultivates the land
55:45as the self-styled governor of the island crusoe is the arch colonist a symbol of britain's outreach in
55:53this era this is most evident in his relationship with man friday the native he rescues from cannibals
56:01and who becomes his faithful servant this isn't an equal relationship between two men
56:12crusoe is very much the master of man friday pious enlightened a natural leader crusoe is the symbol
56:20not only of colonial conquest but of the racial politics that justified britain's increasing
56:26involvement in the atlantic slave trade it's no coincidence that crusoe was wrecked on the way to
56:32collect slaves for his own plantation and so through this fictional shipwreck we catch a glimpse of the
56:40course that britain was plotting through the 18th century robinson crusoe was published in 1719 at the very
56:52beginning of the georgian period an era that would transform an island nation once terrified of its own
57:00treacherous coastline into the world's most powerful trading empire policed by the increasingly dominant royal navy
57:13but with more british ships at sea and greater fortunes at stake the shipwreck would loom even larger
57:21in the national consciousness the georgian's global adventure came at great human cost more than ever
57:31the shipwreck was britain's achilles heel threatening to ruin its now grand ambitions
57:37next time mutiny slave rebellions and murderous wreckers how the shipwreck turns the order and hierarchy
57:55of georgian britain upside down
58:04so
58:06so
58:08so
58:25so
58:32so
58:34so
58:36so