Identifying the Flower of Ugie

In order to complete the identification of the vessel, it was important for the characteristics of the vessel to be fully understood. This was done by careful survey of all of the remains, so that their location and size could be recorded. At the same time, important features such as the type of material used to fix the vessel together were also recorded. Both the wooden structure and the fastenings were also sampled and analysed to discover the exact material composition of them. This information helps the dating of the wreck, which allows a more precise identification to be made.

The wreck remains can be divided into three areas; a western section of hull remains, a second (eastern) section of hull remains some 23m to the east and a central area of scattered remains mainly comprising concreted elements and further wooden remains. All of the frames and planks of the vessel were built from wood, mainly Oak, Elm and Ebony. These wooden pieces were fixed together with wooden treenails (bolts) and metal bolts made from copper and brass. The vessel’s wooden structure was also reinforced with iron knees. Fragments of brass sheathing (called yellow-metal) indicated that the outside of the vessel’s hull was sheathed in that material. All of these results indicated that the vessel was built and used between about 1820 and 1860, the mixture of materials further suggested that the vessel had been refitted and repaired during the course of its life.

The detailed characterisation of the wreck remains resulting from the archaeological survey and specialist analysis allowed a general set of characteristics to be drawn up:

• The vessel is built of wood, reinforced with iron framing elements.
• The absence of mechanical propulsion elements or any significant armament indicate that the vessel was a sailing merchant ship.
• The hull is fastened using treenails as well as copper and brass bolts.
• The copper bolts are likely to have been manufactured within the UK between the mid-1820s and before 1850.
• The brass bolts are likely to have been produced during, or after, the late 1840s.
• The outside of the hull is sheathed in Muntz Metal; this can only have been applied to the hull after 1832, when this material was first patented. Analysis of recovered sheathing suggests that it dates to the late 1840s, or later.
• The vessel was probably at least 30m in length.

These characteristics were then compared with shipwreck losses recorded by the NMR, Hampshire Sites and Monuments Record, Isle of Wight Sites and Monuments Record, UK Hydrographic Office (via Seazone Hydrospatial) and the Receiver of Wreck within 10km of the wreck site. These comprised:

• 303 losses that do not have a known seabed location, only a named location (NLO).
• 77 losses that do have a known seabed location.
• Six seabed obstructions were noted within 1km of the site.

This comparison allowed the majority of the losses to be disregarded because they did not fit with the observed characteristics of the wreck. This left five vessels that required more detailed analysis; Colonist (sank 1837), Hopewell (1838), Flower of Ugie (1852), Eastern Monarch (1859) and Egbert (1867). Following consideration of their date of use, size, material composition and sinking location it became clear that the remains visible on the wreck site correlated closely with the Flower of Ugie, a barque built in Sunderland. Subsequent additional historical research into this vessel further confirmed this conclusion. Once the identification of the vessel was known, it was then possible to begin to research the career of the vessel between its building and wrecking.

Vessel History

Once the identity of the Flower of Ugie was confirmed, it was possible to investigate the building, use and eventual wrecking of the vessel, through historical documentation. This included sources such as the Lloyds Register, the Lloyds List and a range of contemporary local and national newspapers in the UK.

The keel of the Flower of Ugie was laid in August 1837 by the Sunderland shipbuilder Luke Crown. The vessel was launched in July 1838 and surveyed by Lloyds Surveyor John Brunton; listed dimensions were 102’ (31.25 m) in length, 27′ (8.23 m) extreme breadth, depth in hold of 19′ (5.8 m) and a registered tonnage of 350 old tons (402 new). The vessel was rigged as a barque. In his survey of the vessel, Brunton noted that the vessel was well built and that in some areas (such as the planking and fastening) the vessel was as good as it was possible to make. The vessel received a Lloyds classification of 10 A1, indicating that it did not need to be re-surveyed for ten years, the A categorising the hull as carrying the highest rating and 1 categorising the vessel’s rigging and stores as also the highest rating. You can view a transcription of the Lloyds Survey Report by John Brunton on the Flower of Ugie here  – this document was crucial to our research into the vessel.

The sailing career of the Flower of Ugie can be divided into three distinct phases of use. The first phase saw the vessel engaged in trade between the UK and destinations in the Indian Ocean and the Far East, between 1838 and 1846. The vessel sailed to destinations such as the Cape of Good Hope, Calcutta, Madras, Mauritius, Penang, Singapore and China. This included a continuous period of three years without returning to Britain, when the vessel sailed mainly between India and Mauritius. It is likely that the vessel was involved in the transport of indentured labour from India to the island of Mauritius during this period. The second part of the vessel’s career began in 1847 and correlates with a change in ownership. In this period the vessel remained in the northern hemisphere and visited destinations in Europe and North America. The ports visited included Odessa, Constantinople, Alexandria, Hamburg, Bremen, St Petersburg, New York and Quebec. A third phase of use occurs at the end of the vessel’s life, during 1851 and 1852 and is a combination of the first two periods. This again sees the Flower sailing to destinations in South Asia (Sri Lanka and Burma), as well as returning to North America (Quebec). The final intended voyage of the vessel was from Sunderland to Cartagena in Spain.

The Flower of Ugie departed Sunderland on 7^th December 1852, bound for Cartagena with a cargo of coal, passing Deal on the 22^nd December. On the 26^th December the vessel encountered a severe storm in the English Channel and was thrown on its beam-ends (turned on its side) off Portland. The main-mast and mizzen-mast were cut away in order to save the ship and bring it upright again. Following this, the damaged vessel arrived in the relative shelter of the eastern Solent in the early hours of the 27^th December. It was reported as having thirteen feet of water in the hold. The Flower of Ugie became stranded on the Horse Tail Sand and the foremast was cut away in order to try to stabilise the vessel. The captain and crew were eventually forced to give up their attempts to save the vessel and they abandoned ship, reaching safety in an attendant pilot boat. Observers report that the vessel broke up rapidly and sank during the afternoon of Monday 27^th December. Some elements of the vessel’s rigging that were washed ashore were sold at auction a few weeks later.

Flower of Ugie interpretation

The Flower of Ugie was built on the banks of the River Wear in 1838; fourteen years later the vessel was wrecked in the Eastern Solent. Between these two events the Flower spent the vast majority of its life at sea, sailing thousands of miles between a range of ports in South Asia, Southern Africa, Europe and North America. In this sense the vessel epitomised the age of global seafaring and developing capitalism that was in full-swing by the mid-19^thcentury.

Although unclear, it seems likely that the vessel was commissioned for use in the trade with British colonies in Southern Africa and South Asia; the Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Madras and Calcutta being primary destinations over a number of years. With this in mind, it may be possible to classify the Flower of Ugie as a late form of British East Indiaman, albeit one with no connection to the British East India Company itself. Ascribing such a status to the Flower of Ugie is perhaps over-simplistic; the vessel was very much the continuation of a tradition of British merchant shipbuilding that could be traced back to the beginning of the 19^th century. If shipbuilder Luke Crown had been engaged in the building of a similar sized vessel, but with an intended destination of Quebec, rather than Calcutta, it is likely that he would have built the same design of vessel with the same materials and carrying the same rig. The flexibility of the ships resulting from the building tradition in which the Flower was constructed is illustrated by the range of destinations and variance in passage distance that the vessel was capable of being employed on. The vessel was equally suited to trade in the Baltic or Mediterranean as to the conveyance of cargoes to the East Indies.

In light of later developments in materials and hull-form, in particular iron and steel and the clipper-style hull-form, it is easy to view the Flower of Ugie as being at the end of a particular branch of shipbuilding evolution. While this may be true in part, this should not mean that the vessel is viewed as backwards looking, low-tech or less advanced. Consideration of why the Flower of Ugie was constructed in such a way, and using such materials, provides a clue to the motives of the builder and owner and offers another interpretation of the vessel. The Flower was built to a tried and tested design formula that offered the capacious, steady conveyance of cargo over potentially long-distances in an economic fashion. Further indication of the latter is given by the rig of the vessel, selected for economic performance, rather than out-and-out speed. The building materials tell the same story through the building and repair of the vessel during its career; materials selected because they represent the most cost-effective way of achieving a specific technological aim.

Taking all of this into consideration, it is possible to see the Flower of Ugie as representing a state-of-the-art approach to the procurement, use and deployment of materials in a manner in which economics was the primary driving force. Viewed in this way, the Flower of Ugie does not lie at the end of a technological line of development for large wooden shipbuilding, waiting to be displaced by bigger, faster iron and steel vessels; the fact that vessels such as the Flower of Ugie would cease to be built within a generation of its launch is beyond question. But Luke Crown could not foresee this in 1837, he was simply building within the accepted tradition of the day. Instead, the Flower of Ugie may be seen as representative of the pinnacle of British wooden merchant shipbuilding, developed over several centuries and epitomised in the approach of shipbuilders in the north-east of England and in Sunderland in particular.

On a wider-scale, the Flower of Ugie also symbolises much more than simply a technological snap-shot of British shipbuilding in the mid-19^th century. The role played by the vessel throughout its life places it at the heart of the globally developing trading systems that were an on-going feature of the 19^th century. Many of these routes and the goods, people and ideas that travelled along them, lay at the heart of British commercial activity at this time. This activity itself was linked irrevocably with the development of overseas colonies and the maintenance and expansion of the British Empire during the 19^th century. In this sense, the Flower of Ugie is itself the result of this activity as well as a facilitator of its continuation. The technological features of the ship are simply the tangible manifestation of 19^thcentury commercialisation, colonialism and economisation.