In September 2020 over the course of eight dives I raised the three 56 lb (25.4 kg) copper-alloy weights in this photo from the wreck of the Schiedam, a Dutch-built ship of some 400 tons that was ‘cast away’ near Gunwalloe off the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula on 4 April 1684. The wreck was discovered in 1971 by Anthony Randall, designated in 1982 under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act and since 2016 has been investigated under my direction and that of Mark Milburn, the current Licensees from Historic England for the site. The weights were first spotted by Mark Milburn on a dive we did together on the site in 2016. The recovery of these artefacts was carried out under the aegis of Historic England; they were reported to the Receiver of Wreck and are currently under conservation in preparation for museum display. Preliminary reports on our work have been published (Gibbins 2020a, b).
On her final voyage from Holland, the Schiedam was captured by Barbary corsairs off Spain, captured again by the English ten days later and then put to use transporting guns, equipment, horses and people from Tangier in North Africa at the time of its abandonment by the English in 1684. Tangier had been given by the Portuguese to the English king Charles II as a dowry with his wife Catherine of Braganza in 1661, but proved too costly to maintain in the face of Moorish attack and did not live up to expectations as a trading port. The three weights - deeply buried in sand for almost three years after we first saw them - are of great interest not only as objects in use in Tangier during this period, but also because they originated during the Portuguese occupation of Tangier (1471-1661) and are most probably of early 16th century date. They are unique among surviving Portuguese weights for their age, size and decoration, and are among the oldest and most unusual artefacts to be recovered from a shipwreck off Cornwall.
A detailed report on the weights and the evidence for their dating is currently in preparation for journal publication.
David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).
David Gibbins with a weight from the wreck of the Schiedam (photo: Rachel Hipperson).
Click here to read this article by Dalya Alberge in the London Daily Telegraph on the discovery, published on page 3 of the print edition of the newspaper and online on 29 November 2020.
References
Gibbins, David, 2020a. Samuel Pepys, English Tangier and the wreck of the Schiedam (1684). www.davidgibbins.com
Gibbins, David, 2020b. ‘The Schiedam: piracy, Samuel Pepys and English Tangier.’ Wreckwatch 3-4 (Winter 2020): 112-17.