Sites : HMS
Nymph
Location - Road Town Harbour, British Virgin Islands
Coordinates : 18 25.0183N 064 36.9702W (WGS84) Depth
: 6m
Conditions : Shallow, good visibility
Type : Sloop of War, 14 guns Built : 1778 Lost :
1783
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| HM Sloop of
War Nymph was safely at anchor in Road Town Harbour, Tortola, in
the West Indies. At 11pm she was found to be on fire so aid was
sent to the stricken ship from shore and other nearby ships.
The rescue parties were beaten back by flames so the ship was left to burn
out, eventually Nymph drifted in to shallow water and went aground.
In 2005 a small international team of
archaeologists went to Tortola to investigate the remains of a hull
thought to be that of the Nymph. The fieldwork was
undertaken between 18th
June and 3rd July under
the direction of Kimberly Monk from the Centre for Historical and
Maritime Archaeology at the University of Bristol.
The
area of interest lay on the Western side of Road Town Harbour close
to the shore. The seabed was flat sand and turtle grass in 6m
dropping off to mud and sand in 10m depth, bounded on the North and
East by steep slopes caused by recent dredging work. To the
South of the area lay a pile of ballast and to the North lay an area
of debris and scattered surface finds. The site was used for
mooring boats so these finds contained a large proportion of modern
harbour debris. A section of keel lay
on the seabed next to the ballast.
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Structure found under the ballast
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Two
baselines were laid through the site and were used as a reference to
position visible features and metal detector contacts. A trial
excavation into the ballast mound showed that timber structure lay
beneath so this was removed and the timbers recorded. The
area to the North also proved to contain cultural material in the
form of more timbers and areas of ballast. Light surface
sediments were removed by hand fanning then the timbers were
measured and drawn.
The
timbers found during the 2005 fieldwork were too small to have come
from the Nymph so her resting place is still a mystery. Flat
building land is at a premium on the island so some of the original
harbour has been reclaimed, only 70m to the West of the site is the
edge of the most recent land reclamation.
Site
Recorder was used to construct the site plan from survey
measurements, to record information about finds, structure and
samples. The program has
also been used to incorporate maps and charts showing the harbour in
the present day and in previous years as an aid to determining what
happened to the Nymph.
Download
the Site file to open in the free Site Reader program 
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| The plan below
shows the site in detail in Site Recorder with the finds positioned relative to the two
baselines (green) by offsets. |
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The plan below
shows the South site trench, timbers and ballast along with a few related
finds.
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| Below is a plan in
Site Recorder showing a chart of Road Town Harbour prior to land reclamation overlaid
with the current shoreline (green) and 5m contour (blue). |
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The project was sponsored by
Sonardyne International Ltd and 3H Consulting Ltd with local support from
Commercial Dive Services and the Royal BVI Yacht Club
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Links
Bibliography
- British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1994,
Hepper D., Jean Boudriot Publications, ISBN 0-948864-30-3, p72
[ABE]
- The Sailing Navy List, 1993, Lyon D., Conway Maritime
Press, ISBN 0-85177-617-5 [ABE]
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