How scientists solved the mystery of the 250-year-old shipwreck that emerged from a Scottish island

When a schoolboy going for a run found the ribs of a wooden ship poking through the dunes of a remote Scottish beach, it sparked a hunt by archaeologists, scientists and local historians to uncover its story.

Through a mix of high-tech science and community research, they have an answer. Researchers announced Wednesday that the vessel is very likely the Earl of Chatham, an 18th-Century warship that saw action in the American War of Independence before a second life hunting whales in the Arctic — and then a stormy demise.

“I would regard it as a lucky ship, which is a strange thing to say about a ship that’s wrecked,” said Ben Saunders, senior marine archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, a charity that helped community researchers conduct the investigation.

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“I think if it had been found in many other places, it wouldn’t necessarily have had that community drive, that desire to recover and study that material, and also the community spirit to do it,” Saunders said.

Uncovered after 250 years

The wreck was discovered in February 2024 after a storm swept away sand covering it on Sanday, one of the rugged Orkney Islands that lie off Scotland’s northern tip.

It excited interest on the island of 500 people, whose history is bound up with the sea and its dangers. Around 270 shipwrecks have been recorded around the 50-square-kilometre island since the 15th Century.

Local farmers used their tractors and trailers to haul the 12 tonnes of oak timbers off the beach, before local researchers set to work trying to identify it.

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“That was really good fun, and it was such a good feeling about the community – everybody pulling together to get it back,” said Sylvia Thorne, one of the island’s community researchers. “Quite a few people are really getting interested in it and becoming experts.”

Dendrochronology — the science of dating wood from tree rings — showed the timber came from southern England in the middle of the 18th Century. That was one bit of luck, Saunders said, because it coincides with “the point where British bureaucracy’s really starting to kick off” and detailed records were being kept.

“And so we can then start to look at the archive evidence that we have for the wrecks in Orkney,” Saunders said. “It becomes a process of elimination.

“You remove ones that are Northern European as opposed to British, you remove wrecks that are too small or operating out of the north of England and you really are down to two or three … and Earl of Chatham is the last one left.”

Wars and whaling

Further research found that before it was the Earl of Chatham, the ship was HMS Hind, a 24-gun Royal Navy frigate built in Chichester on England’s south coast in 1749.

Its military career saw it play a part in the expansion — and contraction — of the British Empire. It helped Britain wrest control of Canada from France during the sieges of Louisbourg and Quebec in the 1750s, and in the 1770s served as a convoy escort during Britain’s failed effort to hold onto its American colonies.

Sold off by the navy in 1784 and renamed, the vessel became a whaling ship, hunting the huge mammals in the Arctic waters off Greenland.

Whale oil was an essential fuel of the Industrial Revolution, used to lubricate machinery, soften fabric and light city streets. Saunders said that in 1787 there were 120 London-based whaling ships in the Greenland Sea, the Earl of Chatham among them.

A year later, while heading out to the whaling ground, it was wrecked in bad weather off Sanday. All 56 crew members survived — more evidence, Saunders says, that this was a vessel blessed with luck.

Community effort

The ship’s timbers are being preserved in a freshwater tank at the Sanday Heritage Centre while plans are discussed to put it on permanent display.

Saunders said that the project is a model of community involvement in archaeology.

“The community have been so keen, have been so desirous to be involved and to find out things to learn, and they’re so proud of it. It’s down to them it was discovered, it’s down to them it was recovered and it’s been stabilized and been protected,” he said.

For locals, it’s a link to the island’s maritime past — and future. Finding long-buried wrecks could become more common as climate change alters the wind patterns around Britain and reshapes the coastline.

“One of the biggest things I’ve got out of this project is realizing how much the past in Sanday is just constantly with you — either visible or just under the surface,” said Ruth Peace, another community researcher.