The discovery of a wooden ship’s ribs on a Scottish beach in February 2024 led to a hunt by archaeologists, scientists, and local historians. Researchers have announced that the vessel is 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. Ben Saunders, senior marine archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, said that the ship was fortunate to be found on Sanday, one of the rugged Orkney Islands off Scotland’s northern tip.
The ship’s timbers were hauled off the beach by local farmers using their tractors and trailers, and local researchers set to work trying to identify it. Dendrochronology showed that the timber came from southern England in the middle of the 18th century, which coincided with the point where British bureaucracy started to kick off and detailed records were being kept.
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. It played a part in the expansion and contraction of the British Empire, helping Britain wrest control of Canada from France during the sieges of Louisbourg and Quebec in the 1750s.
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. In 1787, there were 120 London-based whaling ships in the Greenland Sea, including the Earl of Chatham. A year later, while heading out to the whaling ground, it was wrecked in bad weather off Sanday, with all 56 crew members survived.
