HMS Roebuck (1690) - The Wrecksite Is Found

The Wrecksite Is Found

In March 2001 utilising the primary sources, the Museum’s team were able to fix Dampier’s position in February 1701 as his ship sank under him. On arriving on the Island, anchoring over that same place and receiving the same rare sustained sea-breeze that allowed Dampier to set a course for the shore 300 years earlier, the team was able to deduce with an element of surety the probable grounding site of HM Ship Roebuck in the bay. The team also experienced more good luck in the process for in investigating the seabed they found evidence of a vast and very recent movement of sand from the Bay, exposing rock and other formations hitherto not seen by the local divers in the 40 years since diving first commenced at the island. In conducting a line search from the beach out to the 3.5 fathoms of water described by Dampier, divers John Lashmar and Geoff Kimpton soon located an exposed bell. Expedition doctor John Williams then located a large clam in a cleft in the reef on the seabed south of the bell and a heavily-concreted grapnel anchor was located in shallower water c. 100 metres south of the bell and c. 8 metres from shore. In a very turbulent location, two heavily-eroded, slightly tapering iron objects, very similar to the remains of heavily eroded cannon were seen. These lay in the wave line and were firmly wedged amongst the rocks. All were left in situ. Being loose and potentially endangered objects, the island Administrator HH Geoffrey Fairhurst subsequently requested that the Museum team remove the clam and the bell in association with the Ascension Island and RAF dive clubs. On retrieval the bell was found to carry a Broad Arrow, confirming its Royal Navy origin. Of all the naval vessels lost on the Island only Roebuck had not been found until that time. Sent to the Mary Rose Laboratories in Portsmouth for treatment and replication, the originals were returned to the Island where they are now on exhibit. Replicas appear at the Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian Maritime Museum. Soon after the location of the bell and clam, Mr Jimmy Young, formerly of St Helena and the longest serving resident ( and diver) on the island, showed the team an ornate blue and white ceramic lid and an intact brown earthenware pot that he had found eight or nine weeks earlier projecting above the seabed. These have since proved consistent with Dampier’s time and travels, with the jar probably produced at kilns in Guangdong Province, southern China. The blue-and-white jar lid and the shards are products of the Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi Province, China with Batavia (now present-day Jakarta) the most likely trade source. The clam was of the genus Tridacna and possibly the species Tridacna squamosa from the tropical and sub-tropical waters of the Indo-West Pacific Region as far south as about Shark Bay. In respect of the good luck experienced by Dr McCarthy and his team, and of Ascension Island resident Jimmy Young in locating the site almost three centuries to the day since the Roebuck sank, it also needs be noted that a few weeks after the Museum team departed, the beach began to return to its normal configuration—and within a few months the site was again totally covered in sand.