THE STUDY OF SIX ARTEFACT CATEGORIES FROM THE WRECK SITE OF THE EARL OF ABERGAVENNY

HYPERLINKED CONTENTS

Section - 1 - ANIMAL BONES

Section - 2 - HUMAN BONES

Section - 3 - METAL INGOTS

Section - 4 -ENGLISH CERAMICS

Section- 5 - CHINESE PORCELAIN

Section - 6 - LEAD CLOTH SEALS

STUDY OF THE ANIMAL BONES - Section 1

Dr Philip Armitage

DINING ON BOARD SHIP

For those passengers whose social standing and financial situation enabled them to berth in the spacious and comfortably furnished roundhouse cabins located beneath the poop deck, dining on board the English East Indiaman could be a delightful experience.  Having paid substantial sums (ranging from over two hundred to a thousand pounds) for their passage and accommodation, these passengers were accorded the privilege of dining at the captain’s table.  Even given the somewhat limited cooking facilities available on such ships, the Commander’s cook performed remarkable well, providing an array of respectable dishes (often three main meat courses followed by dessert) when dinner was served at the Commander’s table between noon and 2 pm.  The dinner menu (for 16 persons) noted by Lady Anne Barnard, one of these privileged passengers, on board the East Indiaman Sir Edward Hughes, in 1797, well illustrates just how sumptuous such meals could be.

The menu [1] included “pea soup, roast leg of mutton, hogs’ puddings, two fowl, two hams, two ducks, corned round of beef, mutton pies, mutton chops, stewed cabbages and potatoes, followed by an enormous plum pudding and washed down with porter, spruce beer, port, wine, sherry, gin, rum ___”.

While the wealthy passengers and highest-ranking ship’s officers, when dining at the captain’s table, were enjoying such culinary pleasures, their less fortunate counterparts in steerage, together with the ordinary sailors at their messes below decks, had to make do with boiled rations of salted beef and salted pork, often of very unappetising quality - English sailor Samuel Kelly (1781) described [2] such provisions “of infamous quality”, noting that the “barrels of pork consisted of pigs’ heads with the iron rings in the nose, pigs’ feet and pigs’ tails with much hair thereon”.

Procurement of the requisite supplies of salted beef and pork - along with other basic provisions - for outward bound East Indiamen apparently was a routine though major operation; the ship’s husband overseeing their lading at Gravesend in quantities regulated by the tonnage of the vessel, as directed by articles (victualling bills) issued by the East India Company [3] .

Responsibility for ensuring that adequate and proper arrangement was made to feed the higher ranking passengers traveling on board was, however, entirely the captain’s, and formed one further burden to the many demands made of him in preparing his ship for the voyage.  Just how vexing this task could be was well illustrated in the letter [4] written by John Wordsworth to his brother William shortly before the Abergavenny left the Thames on its last voyage:

            “The passengers are all down and we are anxiously expecting to sail.... we shall muster at my table 36 to 38 persons.... this alone have given me a great deal of trouble to procure provisions etc. for them..”

One logistical solution to meet the special victualling requirements for the higher ranking passengers was to take on board livestock as a convenient source of fresh meat throughout the voyage when the vessel was some distance for shore-based supply-stations.  Carrying sheep was especially important as these live animals served as the only source of mutton for the captain’s table:  unlike cattle and pigs, meat from sheep was unsuitable for preserving by salting.  In addition to sheep, an incredible variety of animals selected to serve as “walking larders”, often turned East Indiamen into veritable “floating farmyards” according to Lubbock [5] who quotes as evidence of this, the contemporary eyewitness account of a typical outward bound East Indiaman recorded by Royal Naval Captain Frederick Marryat:

            “The Indiaman was a 1200-ton ship....the poop was crowded with coops, tenanted by every variety of domestic fowls awaiting the day when they should be required to supply the luxurious table provided by the captain....the launch contained about fifty sheep....the barge and yawl were filled with goats and two calves....between the hatchways of the deck below were three milch cows; where also were fowls and rabbits....the manger forward had been dedicated to the pigs....”

On the Earl of Abergavenny, “some sheep and a cow”, providentially penned in one of the few launches safely lowered before the ship became submerged, apparently survived after the loss of the vessel [6] .  Their fellow animals, located below decks, were presumably not so fortunate and must have drowned;  and their skeletal remains are probably included among the animal bone samples recovered during excavations of the shipwreck.  Other recovered groups of animal bones are identified as discarded debris from meals eaten on board, probably thrown into the bilges.  The shipwreck also yielded cattle and pig bones derived from the barrels of packed, salted beef and pork stored in the hold at the time of the vessel’s loss. 

Figure 1

Animal Bones

Top row, left to right; tibia of a pig with evidence of butchery; humerus of a pig; innominate bone (pelvis) of a pig; complete dog femur; humerus of a domestic turkey; innominate bone from a dog; buchered cattle femur.  
Bottom row, left to right; femur of a large sheep; humerus of a domestic chicken.

 Scientific analysis of all this faunal material is providing fascinating insight into early 19th-century maritime diet and foodways, revealing information in more detail than has previously been possible to obtain from historical sources alone, about the types of livestock and the quality of the meat provisions carried on board an outward bound British East Indiaman.

Notwithstanding Commander Marryat’s mention of rabbits on board the East Indiaman he saw leaving the Thames, the discovery of a rabbit femur in this shipwreck was unexpected as the maritime literature indicates that many British sailors believed these animals would bring bad luck to any ship foolish enough to carry them.  Even the speaking of their name was considered taboo, and sailors generally referred to them as “furry things” - as illustrated by the following entry recorded [7] in the log of the ill-fated ship Felicity, a West Indiaman of Truro, Robert Oakapple, Master:

In his log entry dated July 12th 1820 Oakapple wrote:

“Mate reports that seaman had brought one of those furry things on board in a covered cage.  Ordered its neck wrung and body thrown overboard”.

This strong superstitious aversion to rabbits extended also to French mariners [8] , who in the late 18th century apparently refused to carry such animals on their ships, believing them the cause of misfortune at sea.

In addition to the one rabbit femur, the discovery in the shipwreck of several avian bone elements - identified as domestic fowl and domestic turkey - serve to further illustrate the variety of fresh meat enjoyed by those passengers dining at Commander Wordsworth’s table.  Measurement of the specimens of turkey wing-bones revealed them to be comparable in size to those from modern turkeys whose dressed weight was 12 lb.  While the shipwreck turkeys were not as heavy as the plumpest individuals available today (with dressed weights over 20 lb.) those served up on the Earl of Abergavenny were nevertheless of respectable size by early 19th-century culinary standards

Consumption of mutton on board was well attested by the recovery from the shipwreck of over fifty mature sheep bones, among which were limb bone elements from at least two, possibly three, individuals whose shoulder heights in the living animals (estimated from the lengths of the bones) ranged 69 - 72 cm.  The exceptional stature of these particular sheep fitted well with contemporary (late 18th/early 19th century) descriptions of the unimproved Romney Marsh (also known as the Old Kent) breed [9] .  Based on our knowledge of late 18th/early 19th century European maritime dietary tradition/protocol, the presence of Romney Marsh sheep on board an English East Indiaman at first seemed highly anomalous.  However, to better understand why this should be considered so, it is important to recognise that mutton consumption was the prerogative of ships’ captains and their dining companions who would expect only the very best quality meat - which at that period came from improved South Down and Welsh Mountain sheep, whose fine-grained mutton was much esteemed by the wealthier classes.  Mutton from Romney Marsh (and other unimproved long woolled) sheep was considered by the English upper and middle classes as “shocking” coarse-grained and insipid in taste, and therefore fit only for feeding the lower working classes - certainly not the sort of meat to serve the higher ranking passengers at Commander Wordsworth’s table.  Yet, the bones of such sheep were found in the shipwreck, suggesting that attributes other than meat-quality may have governed their selection by those responsible for stocking the Earl of Abergavenny.  Researching further into the characteristics of the Romney Marsh sheep revealed them to have been widely recognised by the early 19th-century writers on agriculture as an extremely hardy breed with a tough constitution that well suited them for survival in the “bleak windswept marshes of Kent”.  Also, their unusually hard hooves enabled them to resist foot rot even in marshy conditions.  Together, these traits would certainly have proved advantageous to any sheep being kept penned on the open, rain and sea-swept decks of an East Indiaman.  Furthermore, although their meat may have been considered somewhat coarse, their exceptionally large body frame and lanky legs would have yielded a plentiful supply of mutton to Commander Wordsworth’s table.

Despite mariner Samuel Kelly’s disparaging remarks concerning the “infamous quality” of packed, salted pork supplied to English ships (see above), some of these provisions carried on board the Earl of Abergavenny were of the highest grade, according to the results of the analysis carried out on the pig bones recovered from the stern - which revealed higher proportional representation of bones associated with the better quality (more meatier) cuts (roast ham, and hind leg).  A similar preponderance was documented for the pig bones excavated from the shipwreck of the steamboat Bertrand (1865), Missouri River (USA), representative of the remains of barrelled mess pork.  In marked contrast to the pig bones from the stern, those recovered from the bow of the shipwreck Earl of Abergavenny included skulls, lower jawbones, and extremity foot-bones (noticeably absent in the stern assemblage).  Interpreted as remains of heads, jowls, and feet, their presence indicated that the salt pork stored in the bow had been of the lowest grade (somewhat misleadingly graded by meat purveyors in the 19th century as “prime pork”).  A similar pig-bone assemblage containing quantities of elements from these less desirable cuts - and representative of barreled “prime pork” - was excavated at the Hoff Store site, San Francisco (USA) (1850s).

One explanation for the presence on board the Earl of Abergavenny of the two grades of packed, salted pork is suggested by the differences in the locations of the two distinctly different pig-bone assemblages (described above):  the assemblage in the stern perhaps represents part of the stored meat intended to supply Commander Wordsworth’s table, while that in the bow represents preserved meat forming part of the ship’s general stores intended for feeding the ordinary crew members and less important passengers on board (hence its noticeably inferior quality).

Among the cattle bones from the Earl of Abergavenny was one stylohyoid (part of the hyoid bone).  Interestingly, another shipwreck of an outward bound East Indiaman, VOC (Dutch) ship Amsterdam (1749) excavated on the shore near Hastings, East Sussex, also yielded cattle hyoid bones (5 Thyrohyoids and 1 basihyoid) interpreted by Armitage as remains of ox tongues intended for supplying the Commander’s table.  In modern butchery practice, it is common to cut the tongue in cattle [10] “short in the root” thus excluding the hyoid bones but butchers in the late 18th/early 19th century may well have cut beef tongues “longer” with the larynx, epiglottis, and two or three rings of the trachea attached (thereby including the hyoid bones with the tongue).  Then (as now) ox tongue was considered a culinary delicacy; and was included in the victualling bills of provisions authorised for loading onto East Indiamen at the “India Wharf” [11] .  British naval vessels in the 18th century apparently also were supplied with this meat; as indicated in a letter [12] from the Victualling Office to the Admiralty, dated 27th April. 1703, which includes reference to the distribution to the British fleet of “ox tongues.....which by ancient custome hath been allowed the ship of each rate on their first victualling”.

Analysis of the other cattle bones recovered from the ship revealed a preponderance (high proportional representation) of ribs that according to the criteria proposed by archaeozoologist van Wijngaarden-Baker [13] indicates remains of salted beef.  Together with salted pork, the packed, salted beef would have formed the bulk of the meat provisions stored on board the vessel in preparation for the long voyage to India and China.  From the reconstructed patterns of primary butchering, the ribs revealed two very different (distinctive) ways the midsections of the ox carcasses had been cut up into portions for salting:

1) - Some of the ribs bore evidence of multiple-cutting (by axe, cleaver, and saw), below the proximal articular head and again further down the shaft towards the distal end - indicating removal of clean-cut, square portions of rib meat.

2) - Other ribs were virtually complete except for the distal ends removed by means of cleaver, axe, or (less commonly) a saw.  These bone elements represented larger portions of rib meat removed with sections of backbone (i.e. the ribs in the cuts of meat would still have been articulated with their respective thoracic vertebrae) - a pattern of butchering documented by English [14] (1990:p 64) in the assemblages of cattle bones (identified as remains of “Prime Mess Beef”) from the shipwreck of the brig William Salthouse (1841) excavated in Australian Waters.

Extant late 18th/early 19th century victualling bills for English East Indiamen provide only very limited information concerning the types of preserved fish carried on board such vessels as part of their stores of provisions.  Apart from herrings and salmons such foodstuffs appear in these listings under the general  (non-specific) category “fish”.  Recovery from the bow area of the shipwreck Earl of Abergavenny of fish bones identified as cod has therefore contributed to our otherwise scanty knowledge of this subject:  revealing that at least one outward bound English East Indiamen was provisioned with stockfish (cod in preserved form, either dried or salted).

Dog Bones

Not all the animal remains were associated with the meat provisions on board.  Also recovered were two femora, an innominate bone (part of a pelvis), and one lower premolar tooth, all identified as domestic dog and probably from one animal.  This evidence for the presence on board of a dog was not totally unexpected as several historical sources make mention on such animals on English East Indiamen; as the following accounts illustrate:

In the Plassey [15] outward bound in 1769, there is mention of:  “an enormous dog of the Newfoundland breed called Beau" - being transported to India by his owner Mr Jacob Rider, Factor.

In the Prince of Wales [16] outward bound in 1776, there is a mention of, “foxhounds”, being taken by the ship’s captain to Bengal, for sale”.

In the Gatton [17] outward bound in 1778, a “large and noisy pack of foxhounds”, being taken to India for sale.

In the Antelope [18] homeward bound in 1783, there is the following note;  “Among the ship’s company was a huge Newfoundland dog”.

From published descriptions [19] of these breeds neither is a likely candidate for the dog represented by the bones from the Abergavenny - whose shoulder height in the living animal is estimated [20] at 41 cm: both the Newfoundland and Foxhound are of greater stature (66-71cm and 59 cm, respectively).  Comparisons made with stature data of modern breeds in the osteological collections of the Natural History Museum, London, examined by Armitage [21] , suggest a terrier-sized dog; very similar in height to the larger of the two dogs documented from the Dutch East Indiaman Amsterdam (1749).  This interpretation of a terrier-sized dog is further supported by comparison of size in the innominate bones of modern breeds [22] .  If indeed this animal was of the terrier breed-type, then, its role on board the Abergavenny may primarily have been as a rat-destroyer.  Although no skeletal remains of either black rat Rattus rattus or its larger, more aggressive cousin, the brown rat Rattus norvegicus have been found in the shipwreck, it is well documented that both these commensal rodent species commonly infested European sailing vessels at this period.  Then [23] (as now [24] ) terrier dogs would have proved the ideal choice for controlling such noxious vermin.  Other suggested explanations for the presence on board the ship of this dog include the following:  it was the ship’s mascot, or pet of one of the ship’s officers or passengers.  Whatever its role or status, this unfortunate animal presumably perished when the ship went down.

HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS - Section 2

(Dr Philip Armitage)

Contemporary (1805) accounts indicate that up to 270 persons out of the total 387 on board, perished when the Earl of Abergavenny, engulfed in a swell, plunged beneath the waves.  An unspecified number of corpses of those drowned, following the sinking of the vessel, apparently were washed ashore along with the wreckage and debris; others were recovered later, during dragging of the wreck site, and even as late as March 20th, the body of Commander John Wordsworth [25] was found and positively identified.

Continued efforts to recover further bodies apparently were unsuccessful as many of the corpses of those unfortunate people who had been trapped and drowned below decks, were now located deep within the sunken hull, and therefore inaccessible to grappling hooks: their skeletal remains were destined to lie entombed in the shipwreck until, over 190 years later, they were discovered during archaeological investigations of the wreck.  Unfortunately, from the viewpoint of the interests of anthropological research, post depositional disturbances, particularly the destruction wrought to the integrity of the hull structure and its contents during Braithwaite’s salvage operations, and more recently in the 1960s when explosives were used to recover copper fastenings, [26] had resulted in disarticulation of these skeletons, accompanied by the scattering and intermixing throughout the wreck site of their component bone elements.  Thus rendering it impossible to distinguish individual remains of sailors, from those of the soldiers and other passengers.  None of the originally articulated skeletons had survived intact whose presence otherwise would have allowed separation for analytical purposes of the different groups of persons represented.  Had such complete skeletons been found in situ, their individual identities might have been established from associated artefactual evidence (e.g. skeletons found with military accoutrements would indicate remains of soldiers rather than sailors).  Intermixing of the various skeletal remains and artefacts however precluded such determinations.

Despite limitations imposed by the post-depositional history of the human skeletal material found in the wreck site (represented by the collected sample of 188 bone elements) their scientific analysis has nonetheless yielded interesting and useful information on such aspects as age composition, stature, and dental health of the human population as a whole on board the Earl of Abergavenny at the time of its loss.  Together with the documentary evidence, the results of the analyses of the skeletal remains have helped form a more complete picture of early 19th-century maritime lifeways; as demonstrated by the following selected preliminary findings:

Sex composition of the sample

Gender could be positively determined in the three pelvic bones recovered from the shipwreck:  all of which were recognised from their wide sciatic notch [27] as males.  All the limb bone specimens also were tentatively recognised as males on the basis of their general robust appearance and size.

For the purposes of the scientific analysis it therefore seemed reasonable to assume that all 188 collected bone elements derived from the sailors and soldiers who lost their lives in the wreck - and that none came from the one female passenger (Mrs. Blair) who refused to leave the sinking ship and is known to have been among those drowned.

Age composition

Apart from three crania from individuals aged 28 - 35 years, the majority (86.4%) of the collected skeletal elements fell within the age range 16 - 25 years [28] Assuming these mostly are the remains of sailors, their relative youthfulness comes as no great surprise:  M. Rediker in his book ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’ [29] in discussing the characteristics of 18th-century European seamen makes the observation that “high mortality rates and the rigors of maritime work made seafaring a young man's occupation”.  Most seamen were in their twenties or thirties, the average age of the common tar was twenty-seven.  Ship’s lesser officers tended to be in their late twenties.  Minimum age requirements set by the English India Company for the appointment of its ships' officers (20 - 25 years) [30] also indicates recognition that seafaring was the prerogative of younger men.

The age-profile documented for the Earl of Abergavenny human remains fits very well the contemporary (1805) mortality lists compiled for the ship’s company.  These data record, besides Commander John Wordsworth, the names, ranks and ages of the 81 officers and ordinary sailors who were drowned whose ages ranged 16-56 years, with the average 28.5 years.  Inspection of the distribution pattern of the recorded ages for these 81 members of the ship’s company, reveals a preponderance (noticeable clustering) of individuals in the lower end of the age range (16 - 27 years) : in statistical terms, there is significant negative skewness exhibited by these data.  There seemed therefore remarkable concordance between the historical and the skeletal evidence, with both characterised by a high proportion of younger aged individuals.  It must be remembered however that the corpses of an unspecified number of those named in the 1805 mortality lists either washed ashore or were recovered during dragging of the wreck site.  These data provide therefore an approximate guide only to the expected age composition of the sailors/soldiers presented by the excavated bone sample.  Furthermore, it should be acknowledged that some of the human bone elements collected during the archaeological investigations may be those of soldiers who drowned - though (like their sailor counterparts) these also would be expected to comprise a high proportion of young men, especially if they represent remains of the cadets known to have been on board, who could have been as young as 14 - 16 years.

Stature

Recovery from the shipwreck of several intact (unbroken) leg and arm bones (femora, fibulae, radii and ulnae) with fused proximal and distal epiphyses, allowed estimation of stature in the individuals represented; whose heights ranged between 5 ft 3 in. and 5 ft 11 in., with the average at 5 ft 7 in [31] .

These data compare remarkably well with the stature of the 24 mutineers on the infamous HMS Bounty (1789); whose heights as documented by Captain Bligh (in his descriptions intended to aid in their recognition and arrest by Naval authorities also ranged between 5 ft 3 in. and 5 ft 11 in., with the average at 5 ft 7 in [32] .

The men on the Earl of Abergavenny were, however, apparently slightly taller, on average, than their American counterparts serving on board privateers a quarter of a century earlier, as revealed by an 1780 muster list where the “average sailor was only between 5 ft 5 in and 5 ft 6 in. tall” [33]

In view of possible inclusion in the Earl of Abergavenny human bone sample of elements derived from soldiers (and cadets), comparison was made also with heights documented in 175 British Army conscripts in 1914 (used in the absence of any specific data on East India Company soldiers) these ranged between 4 ft 10 in. and 6 ft 2 in. with a mean of 5 ft 7 in. [34]

Dental health

Three lower jawbones, recovered from the shipwreck, exhibited evidence of loss of one or more molar teeth.  In each specimen, the alveoli (sockets) of the missing teeth were completely healed over indicating that the loss occurred while the individual was still living - perhaps as a result of severely infected gums or, surgical extraction’s of badly decayed teeth - and not post-mortem from post-depositional damage.  Captain Bligh's description of Edward Young (aged 22 years) one of the mutineers on board H.M.S.Bounty (1789) [35] well illustrates the often poor condition of sailors’ teeth.  This individual had apparently “lost several of his fore teeth and those remaining [were] rotten”.  At sea, extraction of any such rotten teeth was often carried out with very little ceremony - or indeed regard for pain caused to the unfortunate patient: as exemplified by the following graphic first-hand account of such crude corrective “dentistry” as experienced by Nelson Cole Haley [36] ,' harpooner on board the American whaler Charles W. Morgan in the 185Os:-

 “___ during the night I had had the toothache.  It was still causing me a great deal of pain, so I went to the Mate and asked him to pull it out.  He was always willing to do anything in the dentist or surgeon's line for anyone on board the ship.  He seemed to take pleasure in cutting or hacking the human frame.  Using old-fashioned tooth pullers he found the right tooth, shoved the instrument of torture over it, and bringing a sudden jerk on it, brought it out of my mouth with the tooth in its claw.  Thinking by the shock he gave me he must have taken the jaw with it, I remarked, that if he had no further use for my jaw to please put it back where he had taken it from.  ‘Pooh’, he said, ‘you will not miss the piece I have.  It is no more than an inch long’.  He was right, I did not miss it, or some three or four pieces that afterwards came out from the place he had fractured by letting the claw catch below the tooth, I suppose”

Surgical extraction of a bad tooth even when carried out on land by a supposedly trained surgeon seems to have been just as barbaric and painful in the late 18th century, as indicated by the treatment English sailor Samuel Kelley [37] received while on shore at Malaga, in 1792:-

“Having been much troubled with a decayed tooth for several days I determined to have it extracted, for which purpose... a barber surgeon was sent for, who secured my head under his arm and over the back of a chair.  Being determined to accomplish his undertaking he grasped the jawbone with his instrument and not only drew the tooth, but splintered the bone, a piece of which I shewed him”.

Visual inspection of the three human jawbones with pre-mortem teeth loss from the Earl of Abergavenny failed to detect, in the regions of the healed alveoli, any evidence of pre-mortem splintering of the bone or other physical damage - as would have been expected had these individuals suffered injury to the ramus during their tooth extraction procedure.  Unlike sailors Haley and Kelley (above), then, it appears these individuals on the Earl of Abergavenny had been more fortunate in having proficient practitioners involved in the removal of their rotten teeth.  It must be assumed though, that such surgeries performed without benefit of modern oral anesthetics, were not entirely lacking in pain!!

Evidence of occupational stress ?

Special mention should be made of one human humerus recovered from the shipwreck that despite its overall slender (gracile) build, exhibits a very much (abnormally) developed pectoral ridge.  Attached to the pectoral ridge in the human humerus is the pectoralis major muscle that is involved when lifting heavy objects.  The noticeably enhanced development of this bony ridge in this particular specimen from the shipwreck, therefore may indicate evidence of occupational work stress. [38]   The individual in question apparently was a wiry man with strong muscular development in the upper arms resulting from repeated strenuous lifting or perhaps pulling on ropes (attending the rigging) and sails (i.e. the routine, often heavy work-load expected of a sailor).

METAL INGOTS FROM THE EIC EARL OF ABERGAVENNY - Section 3

(P. T. Craddock*, E. M. Cumming and D. R. Hook*)

(*Department of Scientific Research, The British Museum, London, WC1B 3DG.)

INTRODUCTION

Prior to the excavations of the project team, the wreck attracted the attention of many amateur divers.  Quantities of the small cigar-shaped copper bars were recovered at this time, and one was even sent to the British Museum where it was examined and qualitatively analysed by the first author of this note, employing emission spectroscopy.  At that time the Museum did not actively collect ingot material and no attempt was made to acquire it for the collection.

Since then, the Earl of Abergavenny team has recovered several hundred ingots of copper, 10 ingots of lead and a single ingot of tin, and the British Museum has begun to collect ingots of metal from dated contexts [39] , including ingots from the Earl of Abergavenny [40] .  The most important of these contexts are documented shipwrecks.  The value of shipwrecks as well documented time capsules is now increasingly appreciated [41] .  This is especially true of artefacts with no distinguishing features to allow them to be categorised, or which usually had only a short existence, such that they are no longer recognised.  Many of the ingots fall into this category, such as the small copper bars from the Earl of Abergavenny.  Without the context of the wreck they could be of any date from the Bronze Age onwards.  This is true for examples of the copper ingots recovered from the seabed off Plymouth, they had no context and thus no date, despite detailed scientific examination [42] .  The same is true of the majority of the ‘ancient’ tin ingots found in the south-west [43] .  Without a date their value is severely compromised.

A bonus with the material from shipwrecks is the potential of documentation giving additional information on where the metal was mined and smelted and where it was destined for.  In fact the material that failed to reach its destination in a shipwreck is often far more use for research purposes than that which did arrive only to be preserved in some totally anonymous context, as work [44] on the copper alloy manillas intended for the West Africa trade has demonstrated.  The study of metal ingots from wrecks is shedding new light on international trade in the post medieval-period, through the direct evidence of the ingots themselves.

The British Museum began actively collecting ingot material in 1985 [45] with the purchase of a group of ingots from a number of wrecks, including a single copper ingot [46] from the Earl of Abergavenny and since then several other ingots of copper have been donated to the Museum by the team, together with two ingots of lead. Studies have been carried out on the single tin ingot to be found so far, together with some copper discs and an iron ballast block.

The ingots also form an invaluable source material for the study of the metallurgy of the post-medieval period.  One tends to think that the later the material, the more that is known about it, but this is not necessarily so.  Relatively little is known of either the composition or of the metallographic structure of most post-medieval metals.  Most modern archaeometric research has focused on the distant past, such that, we now have a fair knowledge of the composition and structure of the metals used from the Bronze Age through to the Romans, but this peters out by the end of the medieval period.  There seems to have been a perception that more recent material would have little of interest to tell us, and that anyway the information was likely to be contained in contemporary records.  In fact nothing could be further from the truth, the post-medieval period was a time of experimentation, with new sources, new treatments and even new metals coming into use.  As for contemporary records of these developments, it is well to remember that this was the great age of technical secrecy and of the industrial spy, also real metallurgical knowledge and investigational techniques were in their infancy.  For example, at the time that the Earl of Abergavenny sank, English ironmasters were still not convinced that it was the carbon in the iron which dictated whether it was cast iron, wrought iron or steel, and had even less perception of the presence of other elements in the iron, as exemplified by the phosphorus in the iron blocks from the Earl of Abergavenny (see below).  The science of metallography, revealing the structure of metals, only began in the late 19th century, and the analytical chemistry capable of detecting the trace elements which often dictated the properties of the metal as a whole, as exemplified by the bismuth content of the copper bars from the wreck (see below and Table 1), came even later.

COPPER

The EIC Commercial Journal for 2 January 1805 indicates that apart from the consignment of Broad Cloth at £21,508. 12s. 1d, the copper at £18,344. 6s. 3d, was the next most expensive item of cargo.  All this copper, 2000cwt, was destined for Bengal.  As mentioned above the copper has been recovered in two forms, a small quantity of round discs of various sizes and several hundred small copper ingots weighing approximately half a pound (200 to 250 g).  The ingots were found on the starboard side of the wrecksite about fifteen meters from the keel, scattered over a very large area.  They may have been blown away from the wreck during an explosion or, the case they were in, may have broken up near the surface while being salvaged, probably by Braithwaite.

At about £9 per hundred weight the East India Company were determined to avoid theft if at all possible as can be seen from the following extract from the “INSTRUCTIONS  TO A COMMANDER”

“That from the time of any part of the Company’s cargo being received on board your ship, your Chief or Second Mate, with other sworn officers, do give constant attention on board.

That if any copper should be laden on board your ship on the Company’s account, you observe the following regulations which the Court of Directors have adopted, for preventing deficiencies in the delivery of that article.

That the copper be weighed at the merchant’s house or wharf, in the presence of the Purser, one of the Company’s officers from the East India Wharf and the merchant’s clerk as hitherto practised; and that an iron hoop be fixed on the inside of each case.  That the gross weight and the tare be cut on the case.  That an account be taken at the same time, of the number of each package, with these details, and the number of pieces contained therein.

That it is recommended to the owners to cause each package to be re-weighed immediately on its being received on board the ship, in the presence of the Commanding Officer, the master of the craft, the surveyor who had charge of her, and the surveyor on duty on board the ship, and in case the gross weight of any package should differ from the gross weight marked thereon, such package to be returned to the Company’s Wharf by the Commanding Officer, with an account of the number of it and the weight as taken on board the ship, signed by him, and the other persons who saw it weighed.  That on such occasions, the Warehouse Keeper at the Wharf do examine the package and take such other steps as may discover the cause of such difference in weight and report all the particulars he shall obtain to the Committee of Shipping unless it shall clearly appear to him to have been owing to a mistake in the original weight, which may easily be discovered by the condition of the chest, and the number of pieces of copper contained in it.

That the cases of copper be weighed again when delivered out of the ship in India, and an account of the weight be taken and that the Commanding Officer and other persons appointed by him be required to attend the weighing.  That when it shall be found impracticable to weigh it immediately, it be secured under 2 locks and the Commanding Officer or person appointed by him, have possession of the key of one of the locks, till the whole of the copper shall have been weighed.”

Copper seems to have been traded in three principle forms in the 18th and 19th centuries: the small bars such as those found on the Earl of Abergavenny, rectangular battery plates, so-called because they were of a shape ready to introduce to the water-powered battery trip hammers to be turned into sheet, and granulated copper such as that recovered from the EIC Winterton (sank off Madagascar 1792.) [47] that was in a convenient form with a large surface area for converting to brass by the cementation process.

So far the Earl of Abergavenny has only yielded the small bars (Figures 1&2), the seven ingots donated by the project team to the British Museum have a weight range of from 0.19 to 0.29 kg, and an average weight of 0.23 kg.  

Figure 3

Copper discs (the scale is 1 metre long)

Although none of the other recognised ingot forms have been found, there are a number of thin copper discs varying in diameter from 8in. to 28in. (20cm to 71cm).  They are of variable thickness, 0.6 to 2.5 grams per square centimetre.  These were not a recognised ingot form.  It is possible that they are copper preformed into a shape convenient for hammering into vessels, but they are rather thin to allow further hammering and extension, and thus the consensus at present would suggest these were part of the ship's stores and not cargo.  The photograph shows the copper discs, ranging in size from 8 inches (20.32cm) to 28 inches (71.12cm).  The thickness of the sheets varied from 0.63 to 2.5 grams per square centimetre.

The composition of the one copper bar to be quantitatively analysed so far from the Earl of Abergavenny (Table 1) is typical of the other late 18th century-early 19th century ingots from English East India Company vessels [48] , notably in the high arsenic and bismuth contents.  Throughout this period, the copper traded by the East India Company came from British sources, predominantly from the south west of England.  There was a significant contribution from Parys Mountain, Angelsey, especially in the late 18th century [49] and again in the 1820's [50] , although this died away almost completely during the first decade of the 19th century.  The few battery plates with identifiable stamp impressions all seem to be of copper from the south west, and generally have the distinctive arsenic and bismuth contents.  The arsenic content, although high, is not that uncommon in fire-refined copper, but the bismuth content, which typically varies between 0.1% and 1.0%, is unparalleled, and was totally unsuspected before the analysis of these ingots began.  Even quite small bismuth contents well below 0.1% seriously embrittles the copper by the formation of brittle intermetallic compounds at the boundaries of the copper grains, and no modern copper contains more than a few parts per million of the element.  There are hints that the contemporary metalworkers were aware that there was a problem, although of course they could have had no conception that it was bismuth in the copper that was to blame.  There were reports of Cornish copper failing when forged into the wrought bolts used to hold copper sheathing to ships' bottoms [51] .  Similarly analyses of contemporary cast and sheet brass, both made in the Bristol area from Cornish copper, showed that the cast items have a much higher bismuth content than that of the hammered sheet items.  The metal workers must have recognised that the copper that was to be made into brass for battery ware had to be carefully refined [52] .

Of course copper from the south west was being sent all over the world and several ‘native’ artefacts, such as the copper shields of the Indians of the North West coast of America, now in the Department of Ethnography, British Museum, which were previously believed to be of local native copper, have been shown to be probably of Cornish copper by virtue of their high bismuth content [53] .  The unusual and unexpected composition of these copper ingots shows once again the important information to be gained by the scientific study of the relatively late ‘historic metals’, from a period that was previously assumed to hold few metallurgical surprises.

Table 1

Composition of a copper ingot from the Earl of Abergavenny and other copper ingots dating from the late 18th-early 19th century.  Copper to Silver)