Another highlight of our recent expedition to film the wrecks of Fathom Five National Marine Park was the James C. King, a schooner built in East Saginaw, Michigan, in 1867 …
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Diving the wreck of the Wetmore (1871), Tobermory, Canada, September 2015
I took these photos in September 2015 on the wreck of the W.L. Wetmore during a trip with my brother Alan (seen here and below with video camera) …
Read MoreFree-diving on wrecks at Tobermory, Lake Huron, Canada, August 2015
For the third year running my daughter and I have had a couple of days free-diving on the shipwrecks of Tobermory, in Fathom Five Provincial Park, Lake Huron, Canada …
Read MoreA 5th century BC Greek shipwreck excavation off Turkey
I wrote this article for the 2000 edition of the journal Antiquity, following the first season of excavation by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) of a classical Greek shipwreck off the west coast of Turkey at Tektas Burnu. I was very fortunate to participate in both the 1999 and the 2000 season at this site, carrying out more than a hundred dives to 45 metres and excavating some wonderful artefacts - including intact painted Greek vases of the 5th century BC ...
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My grandfather, Tom Verrinder, seated second row down far left, with his Troop of the 9th Lancers in France in 1916. All of these men are privates (the term 'trooper' was not used in Lancer regiments until after the war). The distinctive 9th Lancers cap badge can clearly be seen. Several of the men wear Good Conduct stripes (reverse chevrons on the lower left sleeve), awarded to Privates and Lance-Corporals for at least two years' service without being subject to formal discipline, and showing that these men were pre-war regulars who were with the regiment in 1914. The two men on the right also have the vertical wound stripe on the same sleeve. Since the wound stripe was first authorised by Army Order 206 of 6 July 1916, this gives a terminus post quem for the photograph, which was almost certainly taken late in the year as my grandfather was away from the regiment with a dismounted party from the start of the Somme offensive on 1 July for almost five months (photo from my grandfather's collection).
9th Lancers Vulture Party on the Somme, 1916
Ninety-nine years ago this morning my grandfather Tom Verrinder and his brother Ed were saddled up with their squadron of the 9th Lancers behind the front line south-west of Albert, waiting for the breakthrough that was expected to follow the first hours of the British Somme offensive. They had trained for five months previously in the New Forest learning to use lance, sword and rifle from horseback, and the Battle of the Somme was the be their first experience of war ...
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This famous image of the charge of the 14th Light Dragoons at the Battle of Ramnuggur in 1848 - in which the commanding officer, Colonel Havelock, and 11 of his troopers were killed - is the only contemporary depiction of the regiment in action during the Punjab War or the Indian Mutiny (coloured aquatint by J. Harris after H. Martens, published by Rudolf Ackermann, 26 January 1851; this example in the National Army Museum).
Campaigning in India and New Zealand, 1848-66: Captain Thomas Edward Gordon, 14th Light Dragoons
My great-great-great grandfather, Captain Thomas Edward Gordon, 14th Light Dragoons, had the unusual distinction of fighting in the Punjab War of 1848-9, the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8 and – as a colonial volunteer - the New Zealand War in 1866, and of thus being one of a small number of men to receive the medals for all three campaigns. Skelton and Bullock’s Gordons under Arms (Aberdeen University Press, 1912) summarises his British army career as follows, based on the biographical details in Hart’s Army List of 1849-63 ...
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Unnamed photo of First World War date presumed to show six men of the 9th Lancers, including Private John F. Lofts (photographer unknown, but stamped as a postcard on reverse).
Private John F. Lofts, Military Medal, 9th Queen's Royal Lancers 1915-1919
I have a considerable family connection with the 9th Lancers, one of the oldest British cavalry regiments of the line – my maternal grandfather Tom Verrinder and his brother Edgar served with the regiment during the First World War, and on my father’s side my great-great uncle Major Edward Robertson Gordon was with the regiment during the Boer War, commanding it briefly in 1901 (and co-authoring the Diary of the 9th (Q.R.) Lancers during the South African Campaign, 1899-1902) ...
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The Rumpa Rebellion, India, 1879-80: jungle fever and the cause of malaria
The greatest challenge facing the regimental surgeons with the Rumpa Field Force in India in 1879 was jungle fever, ‘that severe sickness that paralyses every effort, disheartens the men, and fosters the preconceived belief of the superiority and valour of the insurgents.’ The Madras Military Proceedings for 1879 and 1880, the source of this quote and others below, reveals a stark picture ...
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In my novel The Tiger Warrior, Lieutenant Howard of the Madras Sappers shoots his way out of a jungle shrine in 1879 using an obsolete 1851 Colt percussion revolver inherited from his father from the time of the Indian Mutiny. This photo shows me shooting the original London-made revolver that was the basis for that scene (photo: Alan Gibbins).
The Rumpa Rebellion, India, 1879-80: counter-insurgency in the jungle
The Military History of the Madras Engineers and Pioneers, published in 1881, contains only a brief account of the involvement of the Madras Sappers and Miners in the Rumpa Rebellion, written by an officer who was not present and at a time when most of the junior officers who had been deployed in the Rumpa Field Force had left the Corps for other appointments ...
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A woodcut from John Campbell’s A Personal Narrative of Thirteen Years Service amongst the Wild Tribes of Khondistan for the Suppression of Human Sacrifice, published in 1864.
The Rumpa Rebellion, India, 1879-80: Human sacrifice in the jungle
In my novel The Tiger Warrior, set partly in India during the Victorian period, Lieutenant John Howard of the Madras Sappers takes cover with his men on an armoured river steamer deep in the jungle of southern India, part of a force deployed against a tribal rebellion in the Rumpa district of the eastern Ghats in 1879. As bullets spatter off the metal plating, Howard watches a horrifying ritual unfold among the rebels gathered on the opposite river bank, one that leads him to pick up a rifle and take a course of action that he could never have thought imaginable ...
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THE SWORD OF ATTILA: military map-makers, Roman and Victorian
One of the characters I most enjoyed creating in my novel Total War Rome: The Sword of Attila was Gnaeus Uago Alentius, a senior tribune of the fabri – the Roman equivalent of the Corps of Engineers – who oversees a military mapping unit in Rome. I'd imagined that by the 5th century AD, Roman proficiency in field survey and road-tracing might have led to a kind of topographical department in the army, with the fabri close to creating detailed maps akin to the early British Ordnance Survey series - something that would have been halted by the collapse of the Roman army in the west shortly afterwards, leaving us no evidence of their work ...
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A Brown Bess musket of the War of 1812 period stamped MSR: De Meuron's Swiss Regiment?
I purchased the musket in these photos several years ago in southern Ontario, Canada, from a dealer who had acquired it locally and believed that it had not previously been on the collector market. The musket is a flintlock 'India Pattern' of the Napoleonic Wars period, one of several million produced in England between 1793 and 1815. What particularly interested me were the unusual regimental markings on the barrel and the buttplate tang, and the possibility that this musket might have seen service in Canada during the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States ...
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My first ice dive, Elora Quarry, Ontario, 1979
These pictures were taken during my first ice dive, at Elora Quarry, near Guelph, Ontario, Canada, on 3 March 1979, when I was 16 …
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PYRAMID: Akhenaten in the Ashmolean
You don’t have to go to Egypt to see spectacular artefacts from the 14th century BC reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten – if you’re in England you can go to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and see a beautiful display of material from Akhenaten’s capital at Tell el-Amarna, excavated by the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie and his successors from the late 19th century. The display is small and intimate and yet contains some of the most famous Akhenaten artefacts ...
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A Merchant Navy gun crew in action, Part 1: the gun and its crew, 1940-1
This photo above was taken in 1940-1 on board SS Clan Murdoch, a British merchant ship that brought essential goods from Africa and India to ports in Britain during the Second World War. The man second from left is my grandfather, Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins, who was the ship’s Second Officer and Gunnery Officer …
Read MorePYRAMID: the sarcophagus of Menkaure and the wreck of the Beatrice
One of the greatest real-life mysteries to feature in my novel Pyramid is the whereabouts of the ancient Egyptian sarcophagus of Menkaure, lost in a shipwreck in the 19th century as it was being transported to England. In both Pyramid and my previous novel Pharaoh, Jack Howard and his team dive deep into the Mediterranean in the search for the wreck and its treasures ...
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'Rheinfels' by H.J. Gibbins (watercolour, approx. 22 by 29 cm).
Henry James Gibbins (1803-1877), perfumer and watercolourist
The painting above is by Henry James Gibbins, a prolific amateur watercolourist who exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1871. In his professional life Henry was a hairdresser, perfumer and purveyor of European fabrics and other finery, operating for many years from 7 King Street, St James, London, adjacent to the auction house Christie’s ...
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PYRAMID: excerpt from the novel (the wreck of the Beatrice)
In my novel Pyramid, Jack and Costas revisit the wreck of the Beatrice - discovered in my previous novel, Pharaoh - in order to examine the ancient Egyptian sarcophagus of Menkaure for further clues to Akhenaten's lost 'City of Light'. To find out more about the real-life wreck and the sarcophagus, click here. After a horrifying accident with Costas' submersible, Jack has to make a snap decision ...
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A 1770 Indenture of Matthias Gale, merchant, of London, Whitehaven and Maryland
This indenture of 28 June 1770, never previously published, contains an agreement between Matthias Gale of London, merchant, and John Hasill, mariner, regarding the ownership of a property in Workington, a town in Cumbria on the north-west coast of England near the port of Whitehaven. Matthias, whose elder brother John was my ancestor, was one of an extensive family in Whitehaven who had prospered in trade with the American colonies ...
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The rendering of the Israel hieroglyphs that appears in my novel. The two kneeling figures signify a people or tribe, and the other symbols were read by Petrie's philologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg as I.si.ri.ar.
PYRAMID: Sir Flinders Petrie and the discovery of the Israel Stele
My novel PYRAMID features the group of hieroglyphs shown above as an illustration dividing the Parts of the text. They’re not just decorative – they’re among the most famous hieroglyphs ever discovered in Egypt, a find that set the world alight at the very end of the Victorian era and gave scholars of the Old Testament something tangible to set alongside the Biblical narrative. In my novel, fictional Egyptologist Maurice Hiebermeyer discovers the hieroglyphs again in another context that makes their association with the Biblical Exodus indisputable ...
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