A view of four of the guns on the wreck of the Schiedam, still aligned muzzle to breech as they had been in the hold of the ship. With the ship tasked to transport material from the Mole at Tangier, it seems possible that these guns were from the battery on the seaward side of the Mole visible in the Hollar etching above (photo: David Gibbins).
The Schiedam, more fully ye Groette Schedam van Horn (the ‘Great Schiedam of Horn’), was a ship of some 400 tons built at Hoorn in Holland and wrecked near Gunwalloe off the west coast of the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall on 4 April 1684. She was a fluyt, called by the English a ‘flyboat’, a type of wide-bellied cargo vessel with minimal armament and a small crew. The wreck was discovered in the shallow cove of Jangye-ryn in 1971 by Anthony Randall, was designated under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act and since 2016 has been investigated under my direction and that of Mark Milburn, the current Licensees from Historic England for the site. Much of the interest of the Schiedam stems from her remarkable final voyage. Having left Holland in late April or early May 1683 with cordage and anchors, she discharged her cargo at Ribadeo on the north coast of Spain and took on timber for Cadiz. On 1 August she was captured by Barbary corsairs, and then ten days later by Captain Cloudesley Shovel in the Royal Navy galley the James. He took her as a Prize to the English colony of Tangier, where she was put to use transporting fresh water from Spain for the English fleet - Tangier was poorly provided with water - and then taking equipment, stores and people back to England when Tangier was abandoned in early 1684. At the time of her wrecking, therefore, she was no longer a merchantman but was a transport vessel of the Royal Navy, termed ‘His Majesty’s Flyboat Scedam (sic) or ‘Schiedam Prize’, with a crew taken from a hulk at Tangier and considered the equivalent of a 6th rate naval ship.
A Dutch fluyt by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77), who also etched the image of Tangier above. This is one of the best images of a fluyt and probably gives a good impression of the appearance of the Schiedam, including the minimal armament - the Schiedam had only four small guns, and here you can see one gun and two closed gun ports (Wenceslaus Hollar Collection, Fisher Library, University of Toronto).
A fascinating aspect of the story of the Schiedam is the involvement of Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist who served as Secretary to the Admiralty in London during the reigns of King Charles II and King James II. In early August 1683, the same month that the Schiedam was taken as a Prize, Pepys embarked with a fleet at Portsmouth to help oversee the destruction and evacuation of Tangier. Over the next few months while the Schiedam was often in the harbour Pepys busied himself with his task of compensating the English merchants and other people of the city for their loss of property caused by the evacuation. On the departure of the Schiedam for England, in late February 1684, she had on board Pepys’ friend Henry Shere, while Pepys himself sailed in another ship that weathered a gale and passed the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall on 30 March, five days before the Schiedam was wrecked. Pepys’ direct involvement with the ship begins then – once back in London he concerned himself with the court-martial of the Schiedam’s captain and with the disposal of salvage. Among the letters in the National Archives regarding the Schiedam are several signed by Pepys and Charles II, a remarkable testament to the involvement in this story of two of the most significant figures of the age.
Samuel Pepys circa 1690, some six years after his return from Tangier (attributed to John Riley, National Portrait Gallery, London, reproduced here under License).
Pepys’ role in English Tangier has been the subject of extensive scholarly appraisal (Routh 1912; Lincoln 2014). His involvement began twenty-two years before the evacuation when he was appointed to the Tangier Committee, set up to oversee the new English garrison after the town had been handed over by the Portuguese as part of the dowry of King Charles’ wife Catherine of Braganza. At the time, there were high hopes for Tangier as a trading port – in his diary entry of 28 September 1663 Pepys wrote that it was ‘likely to be the most considerable place the King of England hath in the world’. As Treasurer of the Committee he profited personally from the enterprise, describing it as ‘one of the best flowers in my garden’ (26 September 1664), by taking presents from merchants vying to supply the garrison and from those to whom he had awarded contracts. However, it soon became clear that all was not well in Tangier. There was corruption in the governance, and the town failed to attract the type of entrepreneurs who were needed. It developed a reputation for debauchery and vice; by 1667 Pepys was calling it ‘that wicked place.’ The Great Fire of London, the plague and the Anglo-Dutch war meant that there was little money available to invest in it, a particular problem because of the huge cost of building the ‘Mole’ or breakwater that was thought necessary to create a protected anchorage. Moreover, it was under constant threat of Moorish attack, culminating in the great siege of 1680 – an event that made many realise the impossibility of defending the city in the long term without a greatly strengthened garrison, something for which there was little political will.
Another factor which may have sealed the fate of Tangier – as it nearly did Pepys – was the ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678-81, a fictitious but widely believed conspiracy to usurp the throne and replace Charles with a Catholic king. Pepys’ enemies tried to prove that he favoured Catholics, resulting in him losing his position as Secretary to the Admiralty and being imprisoned in the Tower of London accused of treason and piracy. The charges were soon dropped, but as the case never went to trial he was unable officially to clear his name. Tangier had come under suspicion as a possible Catholic stronghold because several of its governors had been Catholics and many of its garrison were soldiers of Irish Catholic origin. At the time of his appointment in 1683 as counsellor to Lord Dartmouth – who had been put in charge of the Tangier evacuation – Pepys was still under a cloud, and eager to regain his former position. This helps to explain the fervour with which he approached the task and his strong support for Dartmouth and the King in their decision to abandon Tangier.
While at sea Pepys started a new diary that is the main source of information about the final months of the English occupation. The Tangier Diary differs from his more famous diary of the 1660s because it is mainly a record of events and observations at a time when his career was in question, but the entries as well as his letters of the period still have touches of his exuberance and humour. Having boarded the Grafton in Portsmouth for the voyage, Pepys wrote to his fellow-diarist John Evelyn on 7 August 1683 that ‘I shall goe in a good ship, with a good fleete under a very worthy leader, in a Conversation as delightful as companions of the first form in Divinity, Law Physick, and the usefullest parts of Mathematics can render it, namely Dr Ken, Dr Trumbull, Dr Lawrence, and Mr Shere; with the additionall pleasure of concerts (much above the ordinary) of Voices, Flutes and Violins.’ ‘Mr Shere’ was Henry Shere, a major figure in the story of Tangier as he was the engineer who largely designed the Mole, and then had the unhappy task of supervising its destruction. Once at Tangier – where he carried out a risky reconnaissance outside the walls, close to the Moor encampments – Pepys kept up a considerable correspondence, writing on 14 October to his friend the merchant James Houblin in London that ‘Our sulphurmongers are preparing a doomsday for this unfortunate place.’
It is unclear whether Pepys would have known the Schiedam’s final captain, Gregory Fish, when they were in Tangier, but he certainly came to know of him in June 1684 back in London when Fish went on trial for negligence in losing the ship. Fish’s competence had been called into question in a letter from Colonel Kirke, the last Governor of Tangier, to Lord Dartmouth, on Kirke’s arrival at Pendennis Castle in Falmouth on 7 April, only three days after the wrecking (Dartmouth 1887-96: 115):
… Mr Fish lies abed and cries instead of saving any of the wreck, and if he would have promised the country people to pay them they would have saved the horses, for they stood but up to the belly in water for six hours; in short he is a greater beast than any of them, and as the lieutenant tells me knew now where he was, though he met a Dutch vessel that told him how the land bore, and his course was directly on it, he believed himself upon the coast of France, and so came ashore before he saw it. The lieutenant asked him why he would undertake to command a ship and understand it no better; he said that he was sorry for it and was against it himself, but was over persuaded to take it …
Letter from King Charles II regarding the Schiedam, signed by the King and by Pepys (The National Archives, ADM 106/58/6).
The outcome of the trial is revealed in one of the most informative documents concerning the Schiedam, signed by King Charles II and Pepys (ADM 106/58):
Charles R
Our will and pleasure is, That you cause Bills to be forthwith made out, and paid by the Treasurer of Our Navy for an allowance of Salary to Mr Gregory Fish, for the time it shal appeare to you, he officiated the Office of Master Attendant, for the Affaires of Our navy at Tanger … and forasmuch as Our Right Trusty and welbeloved Conceller George Lord Dartmouth, did commit the charge of bringing home the Scedam Flyboate, a prize taken by one of Our Ships from the Pirates of Sally, and employed for the transporting the Materialls and Stores, then belonging to the Service of Our Mole att Tanger, to the care and direction of the aforesaid Gregory Fish; Our further will and pleasure is, That in Satisfaction for his endeavours therein, (he having passed a Tryall, and being acquitted by a court Martiall, for any blame about the loss of Our Said Ship, upon our Coast of England in her returne home), you also cause Bills to be made out to him, and paid by the Treasurer of Our Navy, for an allowance of Wages, equal to that given by us, according to the Customs of our Navy, to the Comanders of Our Ships of the Sixth Rate, for the time which it shal appeare to you, he served in the Said Ship. For which this shal be your Warrant. Given att Our Court att Windsor this 30th June 1664.
To the Principall Officers and Commanders of Our Navy
By his Majesty’s Command
Samuel Pepys
Fish was acquitted probably because he had been appointed to the command by Lord Dartmouth, whose judgement would have been in question had there been a guilty verdict, and despite the fact that the horses – the only casualties of the wreck – were Lord Dartmouth’s personal property. Undoubtedly there would also have been a general impetus to resolve speedily and with minimal fuss the affairs of Tangier, something to which Pepys would have been party. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Fish, formerly ‘Master Attendant for the affairs of the Navy at Tangier’ with little seafaring experience, was ill-suited to the command – so Pepys would have seen him, and the wrecking, as a salutary example of the consequence of appointing inexperienced commanders that was later to be one of his main criticisms of the Navy, and a focus of reform.
Among the other matters dealt with by Pepys’ office was a petition of June 1684 by Henry Dale, ‘late Master Caulker at Tangier and Gibraltar on behalf of himself and six other Caulkers’ ‘ … returning to England on the Schiedam Prize, were on the 4th of April 1684 Cast away in Mount’s Bay by distresse of weather, to their very great detriment, they having not only lost their Clothes, Tooles, and other things then on Board, but had their wages abated …’ (ADM 106/58).
By far the greatest concern, though, was the question of material salvaged from the wreck, the subject of eight of the ten letters in the Admiralty Papers signed by or received by Pepys regarding the Schiedam. Had the ship been a private merchantman her salvage would have been of no official concern to him, but as Secretary to the Admiralty he was responsible for the recovery of naval property which comprised both the ship itself and some of the stores brought as cargo from Tangier. Mr Richard Sampson of Gunwalloe, who had salvaged much material in the days following the wreck, presented a claim ‘For the Honourable Samuel Pepys Esq his Majesty’s Secretary for the Admiralty’, ‘For saveing and securing of Masts Yards Beams Anchors Cables of his Majesty’s Flyboat the Schiedam cast away in Mount’s Bay near the Parish Church of Gunwalloe in the County of Cornwall on the 4th Day of April in the year of Our Lord God 1684’ (ADM 1/3554). The King was also apprised of the matter, having signed a letter regarding ‘the Stores brought from Tangier in our Flyboate the Scedam (sic), lately cast away in Mount’s Bay saved near that place’ (ADM 106/58/6). The following two letters are in Pepys’ own hand (ADM 108/58/10 and 60/2):
My Lord and Gentleman,
Letter from Samuel Pepys regarding the Schiedam, 16 January 1685 (The National Archives, ADM/106/60).
Having procured his Majesty’s warrant to the Master of Ordnance, in pursuance of your desire therein, in your letter to me of the 25th July, for his takeing care to being the Anchors from Mount’s bay, which were saved out of the Scedam lately cast away there, with some other stores belonging to his Office which were also saved at the same time, and to be brought unto the River, My Lord Dartmouth has been pleased to acquaint me that the said Anchors are ordered by him to be brought with the stores belonging to his Office, to Portsmouth, and there delivered by Mr Richard Beach’s order; which I intimate to you, that you may please accordingly to give advice of it to said Richard Beach.
I objure with you mention of those charges attending the salvage of the aforesaid Goodes, but because you doe not deliver your opinion whether the same be reasonable and fit to be allowed to Mr Sampson, I shall forebear moving his Majesty in it, till I receive from you such your opinion, and then I shall, and give you his Majesty’s own directions in it, remaineing Your most humble servant
Samuel Pepys
Derby House, 7 August 1684
My Lord and Gentleman,
Upon your letter to me of 15 December, I have signified to my Lord Dartmouth, his Majesty’s pleasure for his directing of delivery of the anchors and other stores proper for the service of the Navy, of lately saved out of the Scedam (sic), which have been lately brought from her Wreck to Portsmouth and I doubt not but you will find his Lordship’s order issued therein very speedily. I remain your most humble servant,
Samuel Pepys
16 January 1685
The last of Pepys’ letters concerning the Schiedam, dated 16 April 1685 – and signed by the new king, James II - counts among Pepys’ final words on Tangier, but the experience of dealing with the evacuation of Tangier, both in the detail at which he excelled and also on a wider canvas, continued to shape his thinking and career. His part in bringing English Tangier to a conclusion had led to his reinstatement as Secretary to the Admiralty, which allowed him to address deficiencies in naval organisation, discipline and other matters that he had noted during the expedition, something that lets us see English Tangier not as an isolated and rather odd episode in British history but rather as a stepping stone to British naval hegemony and imperial expansion in the years to come.
Note
For an account of three unique Portuguese merchant’s weights of probable early 16th century date from the wreck of the Schiedam, see Gibbins 2020. Frequent updates on our discoveries on wrecks off the Lizard Peninsula can be found on our Facebook page Cornwall Maritime Archaeology.
References
ADM: The Admiralty Papers, The National Archives
The Dartmouth Papers, Staffordshire Records Office
Chappell, Edwin (ed.), 1935. The Tangier Papers of Samuel Pepys. The Navy Records Society.
Dartmouth 1887-96: Royal Commission on Historic Manuscripts, 1887-96, The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Davis, Lieut.-Col. J., 1887. The History of the Second Queen’s Royal Regiment. Vol. 1: The English Occupation of Tangiers from 1661 to 1684. London: Richard Bentley & Son.
De la Bédoyère, G. (ed.), 2006. The letters of Samuel Pepys. Woodbridge.
Gibbins, David, 2020. Three Portuguese merchant’s weights of probable early 16th century date from the wreck of the Schiedam (1684), Gunwalloe, Cornwall, UK. www.davidgibbins.com
Latham, R.C. and Matthews, W. (eds), 1970-83. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: a new and complete transcription. London: Bell.
Lincoln, Margarette, 2014. Samuel Pepys and Tangier, 1662-1684. Huntingdon Library Quarterly 77.4: 417-34
Routh, E., 1912. Tangier, England’s Lost Atlantic Outpost. London: John Murray.