Once I Was A Clever Boy: An Elizabethan shipwreck at Dungeness

Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.

Sunday, 8 January 2023

An Elizabethan shipwreck at Dungeness

Several online websites have reported on the discovery in a quarry at Dungeness of the significant remains of an Elizabethan ship. The oak timbers of which it was constructed were felled between 1558 and 1580. Where it was found is now somr distance from the sea but, as it well known, Dungeness has changed its profile significantly over the centuries. What was a beach in the late sixteenth century is thus now nearly a thousand feet inland.

There are articles about the discovery of the ship. One is from LiveScience at Quarry workers make 'unexpected' discovery of ship from Queen Elizabeth I's reign

A second is from Artnet at English Quarry Workers Have Struck Elizabethan-History-Lover's Gold With the Discovery of a Rare 16th-Century Ship

There is a third article about the discovery from the Financial Times at Elizabethan ship found in ‘remarkable condition’ in Kent quarry