600 years on, Henry V’s Ghost ship found

Published Oct 12, 2015

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One of medieval England's greatest ships appears to have been found entombed in deep mud beneath the bed of a Hampshire river.

A 30-metre stretch of the River Hamble near Southampton has been identified as the final resting place of one of Henry V's largest warships, the Holigost - the Holy Ghost, in modern English - by a British maritime historian.

With the discovery of the site, thanks to detailed archival and aerial photographic research, the Government's historical environment agency, Historic England, is now planning to carry out a detailed survey of the ship.

It intends to use sonar-based, sub-bottom profiling equipment to “X-ray” through the deep mud of the river bed and create a computerised image of the vessel.

The project is of particular importance because Henry was arguably the first English king to attempt to create an embryonic Royal Navy.

“This short-lived fleet was conceivably the most effective navy that England had before the Elizabethan age, 150 years later,” said Dr Ian Friel, who made the discovery.

Henry put England's navy on an entirely new footing, with 25 salaried ship masters (captains), regular maritime patrols and cutting-edge technology. He even oversaw an attempt to combat the piracy that was then endemic in the English Channel.

Dr Friel, author of the recently published Henry V's Navy: The Sea-Road to Agincourt and Conquest, 1413-1422, first began to think that he had found the wreck of Henry V's Holy Ghost back in the 1980s but has only carried out additional confirmatory archival research on the subject over the past year. His full findings are likely to be published academically in 2016.

The Holy Ghost was the third-largest ship in Henry's navy. It was capable of carrying around 750 tonnes of weapons, equipment, men and cargo, took a crew of up to 200 and spent much of its time at sea, probably exclusively in the English Channel.

The ship's exact dimensions are not yet known. It is likely that it was between 30 and 40 metres long but it is hoped the sub-bottom profiling survey will provide sufficient data to give historians a more accurate picture.

The warship was damaged in two great sea battles with the French: the maritime Battle of Harfleur in 1416 and the Battle of Chef de Caux near the mouth of the River Seine in 1417.

At Harfleur, the Holy Ghost was the flagship of the king's brother and right-hand man, the Duke of Bedford - the English royal who years later was responsible for sending Joan of Arc to the stake.

A letter from the Duke written on board the Holy Ghost in 1416 is now in an English county archive and is one of the earliest surviving letters written on board an English ship. The vessel was also the earliest English craft known to have had repairs carried out by a diver, a Welshman named Davy Owen.

Additionally, the ship is interesting for the number of significant named individuals associated with it - including its builder, the 15th-century Southampton merchant and MP William Soper, as well as the vessel's master Jordan Brownyng and one of Henry's top military commanders Sir Thomas Carew.

The Holy Ghost was also important for the way it symbolised Henry's personal political and religious beliefs. Historical research over recent years has revealed that the ship bore one of his personal royal mottos, Une sanz pluis (from a French version of The Iliad), meaning “One and no more”. It was an expression of the king's ultra-autocratic belief that he alone, by divine right, was the absolute master of England.

Quite apart from its importance in England's naval story, in a previous incarnation the Holy Ghost had also played a part in Spanish history.

The vessel was rebuilt from the timbers of a captured Castilian ship, the Santa Clara, which was said to have been associated with “the Queen of Spain”. That was almost certainly Catharine of Lancaster, the English-born widow of Castilian King Enrique III. After 1406 she was co-regent of Spain during the minority of their son, until her death in 1418.

The Santa Clara was captured by English pirates involved with William Soper in the winter of 1413-1414, a time when England and Castile were technically at peace with each other. The ship was then taken to Southampton and, on Henry's orders, rebuilt there by Soper as the Holy Ghost, at an extraordinary cost to the royal exchequer amounting, in modern-equivalent cash terms, to about £10m.

The remains have been tentatively located just 50 metres from the wreck site of Henry V's largest ship, the Gracedieu. That vessel, which now has protected status, was once the largest ship in Europe at some 66 metres long and was not surpassed in size in the English navy until the 16th century.

Archaeologists believe that the wreck of the Holy Ghost is likely to be better preserved than that of the Gracedieu.

The Holy Ghost was a vessel that had seen action in the years immediately after Henry V defeated France at Agincourt but, in the end, it was laid up in England's main naval anchorage of the age, the River Hamble, where it was ultimately abandoned and forgotten about for almost 600 years.

Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, believes that the wreck of the Holy Ghost “holds the possibility of fascinating revelations in the months and years to come”.

He added that Historic England was “committed to realising the full potential of the find”. – The Independent

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