Beauchief Wreck Divers

Monday, January 13, 2025

Achille

Lost 17/07/1883- 3miles to the West of the Sovereign light ship

NRCQ was the Achilles call sign

Captain of Achilles is L Negretto in lloyds. Captain Burnard is probably
the fishing vessel Captain. Achilles was Italian, not French!

Saturday, January 4, 2025

I think what we call Albert is in fact the SS Metropolitan. As ever I can't prove it but I have been hanging out until I found the one clue before saying what I think It is. Unfortunately I don't think I have enough years left diving. Even If I lived to 150 I don't think I'd find anything to positively identify it. Just the way It goes sometimes.

Metropolitan-...maybe!

It's not Mizpah, I think that's in deeper water.

The Metropolitan sank 18-10-1852 after a collision with the SS Zollvarien. Hit on her starboard side the ship sank without loss of life.

The position given in the last newspaper report below put the ship where our wreck is. It may or may not be very accurate but the size of the wreck, engine, boilers match. Also the age, It's a really old wreck. Just South of the SS Ashford

Built 1851

7 miles SW of Beachy Head puts the SS Metropolitan
right on the wreck of Albert!

Friday, December 27, 2024

St Hilda

Cairntorr

Listed position 7.7nm SSE from Beachy Head Light House 50 36 765 E 00 18 609. 5-6 miles from where the eyewitness, James Page reported.

Not having dived the wreck at the Cairntorr's supposed position, we can't say if it is or isn't but It seems far more likely than what I was trying to match it to which was the Scallop Wreck.

I also assumed, correctly as it turned out, that the ShipWreck index had the wrong number of boilers, 3. In fact the Cairntorr only had 2 . Did they count the donkey boiler as the third!? The Scallop Wreck has one as far as we can tell.

The size and position of the wreck given by the eyewitness was a good fit for the Scallop Wreck though.

Unfortunately, the boilers do not match, and my eyewitness must have been pissed. It seems odd that he appears be looking to the south south west when everyone else was looking south, almost south south east, he even drove further West to Birling Gap to see it sink. That would have meant the Cairntorr sank almost 9 miles away from where he was looking, If it sank where it is now listed. He had 20 years experience in 'The Bengal Pilot Service', highly skilled seamen who provided invaluable knowledge and expertise in navigating the Hooghly River between Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal. He also had 2 years training serving on the HMS Worcester. I'd have thought him a reliable witness....

Oh well, another partial success.

James Page-eyewitness

James lived at 3 West Cliff Mansions. He would have been looking South some 8 miles to have see the Cairntorr at its position now, not South By West!?

South by West is equal to 202.5 degrees

Eastbourne Gazette report, NOT James
Says to the South West from the pier!?

From James-213 degrees from the Kiosk
I'm assuming this is at Holywell!?
It would have been 8 miles south, almost south south east

Why has he travelled to Birling Gap when the ship is
listed 8.8miles to the SSE from the Gap!?
He's now further away!

Crew member

Daily Mirror
7 or 8 miles off Beachy Head

Lichfield Mercury
sank 8 miles from Newhaven

The Scotsman seems to have got it correct!

Manchester Courier
8 miles from Newhaven

Northampton Chronicle and Echo
4 Miles South of Beachy, 8 Miles from Newhaven

The Dundee Courier
As above

West Sussex Gazette
4 miles South of Beachy Head

Marlybone Mercury
11 miles !

Liverpool Echo
8 Miles from Newhaven

Did the Sheffield Evening Telegraph call it right!?

Sussex Agricultural Express
11 miles

Driffield Times
11 miles

London Evening Standard
8 miles from Newhaven

Birmingham Daily Post
4 Miles South

Newcastle Journal
6 miles South East and 4 miles South of Beachy Head!!!

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Nympha Americana

Full story here https://sussexhistory.net/2020/11/29/quicksilver-and-lemons/

More on the Harbens and Corsica Hall https://www.austenfamily.org/corsica-hall/ from which the following is taken.

The oft written but unlikely to be true

Apologies for the extensive quote below (a internet search will show several versions of this account) – my observation is in bold below;

When Whitfield died the house was purchased by Francis Scott, the fifth Lord Napier. The family spent time in Sussex presumably to get respite from their chilly Scottish estates. In May 1772 Lord Napier’s son was in the house with his tutor. A loaded pistol had been carelessly left in the classroom and the young lad picked it up and pointed it at his teacher. ‘Shall I shoot you’ he joked, to which the tutor laughed and said ‘Shoot on’. The trigger was pulled and the poor teacher was shot dead. The Napier family moved away and the empty house was said to have been haunted. We now go back a few years to 1747 when the Spanish ship Nympha Americana was wrecked on the cliffs at Crowlink near Friston. The cargo included a large amount of valuable metals and currency and much was washed up on the shore. Horse Guards who were billeted nearby were tasked to protect the cargo and the story is told of one soldier who tried to steal gold coins by slipping them into his boots. He was caught when he was ordered to mount his horse but couldn’t as the weight of the gold doubloons prevented him from lifting his foot to the stirrup. Another man from East Dean was more wily as he carefully buried his loot under the sand until he could retrieve it later. He had found some blocks of heavy metal but was not sure what they were. He took them to Lewes where he sold them to a watchmaker called Thomas Harben. He acquired the blocks at a small cost but this one transaction made his fortune as his purchase was a set of virgin gold ingots. With this money Harben purchased the vacant Corsica Hall but, although he liked the house, he wanted a more picturesque setting and was so rich that he could afford to move the building brick by brick to Seaford.
Harben was to become a major force in Seaford politics. In 1823 Corsica Hall was purchased by John Fitzgerald (1775-1852), but within a year he had pulled most of the old building down and built a new house which he named The Lodge. Fitzgerald lived in the house when he was MP for Seaford between 1826 and 1832.
Source: http://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/a-saintly-benefactor-who-was-less-than-charitable-to-his-sons-1-956518

It likely that two separate events have become intertwined here;

John Whitfeld was the ‘wreck master’ for the 1747 recovery of the Nympha Americana. At the time he was also the owner of ‘The Lodge.’ It is so far undisputed that he made is fortune from contraband trading – including Corsican wine. Prior to Mr Whitfeld fleeing the region around 1856 he had re-named the building as Corsica Hall.

The politically active Thomas Harben (1736-1803) ‘the son’ attracted negative press and it would have been easy for detractors to conflate the smuggling history of Cosica Hall (and the suggestion of illicit fortunes from the Nympha Americana) with it’s later owner Thomas Harben.

Later, the Victorian era Harben’s appeared to ‘stretch’ the period of time the family had called Corsica Hall as their ancestral home.

In 1747, Thomas Harben (1707-1766) ‘the original’ is a clockmaker in The Cliffe, Lewes. It is possible that he would have dealt in the recovered mecury from the wreak of the Nympha Americana. However, there is no sudden (or slow) signs that his fortunes increased.

His son, Thomas Harben, who was 11 years old in 1747, went on to purchase Corsica Hall in 1782. As there is a generation and 35 years between the two events it seem unlikely they are related.

At Crowlink

She got her man..or a man!

Harlequin Convoy

I often attribute the iron cannons near the Buckle in Seaford to The Harlequin, which is a simplification. In reality, they are more likely from the February, a ship that wrecked further west. It's convenient to refer to the Harlequin as it was the primary wreck, but it's uncertain which fragments of timber and wreckage belong to which vessel.