Red-Coat
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After Charles Stuart inherited the throne as Charles I in 1625, his coronation ceremony was held in London in February 1626. After prolonged debate about whether there should be a separate coronation in Scotland (for which he wasn’t at all keen to travel), Scottish parliament insisted on having a ceremony in Edinburgh and it was eventually arranged for 18 June 1633.
Charles left London with a vast entourage on 10 May and arrived in Edinburgh some five weeks later. After the coronation and a tour of royal palaces (marked in red on the map below) intended to try and reassure the Scots that he wasn’t completely disinterested in them, he returned to Edinburgh en route back to England on 10 July, with the journey requiring him to make a five mile crossing of the Firth of Forth by boat from Burntisland to Leith. Contemporary accounts say “Two boats with sufficient crews to be got to ferry the King across” one of which was to carry the King to a larger naval ship operating as the King’s flagship at anchor in the Burntisland roads.
The transfer of the King and some of his personnel to the larger ship went smoothly and the smaller Burntisland vessel followed behind as it headed for Leith. In the meantime, a second Burntisland ship called the ‘Blessing’ set sail for Leith, heavily laden with the King's personal valuables (but not the Crown Jewels) and other equipment that had been needed for his comfort. More recent research has suggested that it was perhaps the Blessing which had carried the King, and another unnamed vessel carried the valuables. Contemporary details are scant since it appears there may have been a cover-up to spare the King embarrassment about what happened next.
Whichever was the case about the vessels' names, the heavily-laden ship carrying the valuables was unable to ride out a sudden squall and capsized and sank, with only two survivors. The distraught King watched the tragedy unfold from the deck of his flagship and afterwards blamed the tragedy on a coven of witches, who were subsequently put on trial and executed in England. The ship was said to be carrying 20 carts of jewels, plate and textiles, including a 280-piece silver dinner service commissioned by Henry VIII. In all, some four or five tons of gold and silver estimated to be worth around £100,000 at the time and hundreds of millions today.
There have been numerous attempts to locate the sunken vessel, hampered by the depth of the Firth of Forth, its shifting silts, poor underwater visibility, restrictions on diving in the past (now lifted), and, not least, because there are at least 500 wrecks of various ages sitting on the bottom. A sustained search by the Burntisland Heritage Trust and the Royal Navy began in 1991 (the Charles Wrex Project), with HMS Roebuck discovering a likely possibility in 1991, about a mile off the coast of Burntisland. Following up on that with "application of subsea ground-penetrating radar, together with advanced scanning techniques, physical exploration of the site and the retrieval of a timber", the team is now convinced that they have found it and said that “work to retrieve items from the wreck is imminent."
Officially the wreck, which now has legal protection, is the property of the Crown, with Burntisland Heritage as "Salvor in Possession.” That is, they would hold any recovered items in trust until a court determines an appropriate financial reward and suitable museum display arrangements are made.
[Ref: mainly Burntisland Heritage Trust website]
Charles left London with a vast entourage on 10 May and arrived in Edinburgh some five weeks later. After the coronation and a tour of royal palaces (marked in red on the map below) intended to try and reassure the Scots that he wasn’t completely disinterested in them, he returned to Edinburgh en route back to England on 10 July, with the journey requiring him to make a five mile crossing of the Firth of Forth by boat from Burntisland to Leith. Contemporary accounts say “Two boats with sufficient crews to be got to ferry the King across” one of which was to carry the King to a larger naval ship operating as the King’s flagship at anchor in the Burntisland roads.
The transfer of the King and some of his personnel to the larger ship went smoothly and the smaller Burntisland vessel followed behind as it headed for Leith. In the meantime, a second Burntisland ship called the ‘Blessing’ set sail for Leith, heavily laden with the King's personal valuables (but not the Crown Jewels) and other equipment that had been needed for his comfort. More recent research has suggested that it was perhaps the Blessing which had carried the King, and another unnamed vessel carried the valuables. Contemporary details are scant since it appears there may have been a cover-up to spare the King embarrassment about what happened next.
Whichever was the case about the vessels' names, the heavily-laden ship carrying the valuables was unable to ride out a sudden squall and capsized and sank, with only two survivors. The distraught King watched the tragedy unfold from the deck of his flagship and afterwards blamed the tragedy on a coven of witches, who were subsequently put on trial and executed in England. The ship was said to be carrying 20 carts of jewels, plate and textiles, including a 280-piece silver dinner service commissioned by Henry VIII. In all, some four or five tons of gold and silver estimated to be worth around £100,000 at the time and hundreds of millions today.
There have been numerous attempts to locate the sunken vessel, hampered by the depth of the Firth of Forth, its shifting silts, poor underwater visibility, restrictions on diving in the past (now lifted), and, not least, because there are at least 500 wrecks of various ages sitting on the bottom. A sustained search by the Burntisland Heritage Trust and the Royal Navy began in 1991 (the Charles Wrex Project), with HMS Roebuck discovering a likely possibility in 1991, about a mile off the coast of Burntisland. Following up on that with "application of subsea ground-penetrating radar, together with advanced scanning techniques, physical exploration of the site and the retrieval of a timber", the team is now convinced that they have found it and said that “work to retrieve items from the wreck is imminent."
Officially the wreck, which now has legal protection, is the property of the Crown, with Burntisland Heritage as "Salvor in Possession.” That is, they would hold any recovered items in trust until a court determines an appropriate financial reward and suitable museum display arrangements are made.
[Ref: mainly Burntisland Heritage Trust website]
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