''Association'' was a 90-gun

second-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a second-rate was a ship of the line which by the start of the 18th century mounted 90 to 98 guns on three gun decks; earlier 17th-century second rates had fewer gun ...

ship of the line of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

, launched at

Portsmouth Dockyard His Majesty's Naval Base, Portsmouth (HMNB Portsmouth) is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Devonport). Portsmouth Naval Base is part of the city of Portsmouth; it is l ...

in 1697.Lavery, Ships of the Line, vol. 1, p. 164.Ships of the Old Navy, ''Association''. She served with distinction at the capture of Gibraltar, and was lost in 1707 by grounding on the Isles of Scilly in the greatest maritime disaster of the age. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked w ...

Service

''Association'' survived the

Great Storm of 1703 The great storm of 1703 was a destructive extratropical cyclone that struck central and southern England on 26 November 1703. High winds caused 2,000 chimney stacks to collapse in London and damaged the New Forest, which lost 4,000 oaks. Ships wer ...

, during which she was at anchor off Harwich. Her rigging was cut away to avoid foundering on the "Galloper" sandbar, and she was blown to Gothenburg in Sweden before she could make her way back to England. ''Association'' served as the flagship of Admiral Sir

Cloudesley Shovell Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell (c. November 1650 – 22 or 23 October 1707) was an English naval officer. As a junior officer he saw action at the Battle of Solebay and then at the Battle of Texel during the Third Anglo-Dutch Wa ...

in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

during the

War of the Spanish Succession The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict that took place from 1701 to 1714. The death of childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700 led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between his heirs, Phil ...

. Her engagements included the capture of

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = " Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gib ...

on 21 July 1704, and the Battle of Toulon in summer 1707.

Sinking

In October 1707, ''Association'', commanded by Captain Edmund Loades and with Admiral Shovell on board, was returning from the Mediterranean after the Toulon campaign. The 21 ships in the squadron entered the mouth of the

English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...

on the night of 22 October 1707 . At 8 pm, ''Association'' struck the Outer Gilstone Rock
see image
off the Isles of Scilly, and was wrecked with the loss of her entire crew of about 800 men. As a result of navigational errors, the ships were not where they were reckoned to be. ''Association'' was seen by those on board HMS ''St George'' to go down in three or four minutes' time. Among the dead were Captain Loades and Admiral Shovell, his stepsons Sir John Narborough and James Narborough (sons of Shovell's wife from her marriage to Rear Admiral Sir John Narbrough) as well as Henry Trelawney, second son of the Bishop of Winchester. Captain Loades was the son of Rear Admiral Narbrough's sister.James Herbert Cooke, The Shipwreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell on the Scilly Islands in 1707, From Original and Contemporary Documents Hitherto Unpublished, Read at a Meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, London, Feb. 1, 1883
/ref> Three other ships ( HMS ''Eagle'', HMS ''Romney'' and HMS ''Firebrand'') were also lost, bringing the death toll to nearly 2,000. The Scilly naval disaster was one of the greatest

maritime Maritime may refer to: Geography * Maritime Alps, a mountain range in the southwestern part of the Alps * Maritime Region, a region in Togo * Maritime Southeast Asia * The Maritimes, the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prin ...

disasters in British history The following list of disasters in Great Britain and Ireland is a list of major disasters (excluding acts of war) which relate to the United Kingdom or Ireland, or to the states that preceded them, or that involved their citizens, in a definable ...

. It was largely as a result of this disaster that the

Board of the Admiralty The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of i ...

instituted a Longitude rewards, competition for a more precise method to determine longitude. There is a memorial depicting the sinking of the ''Association'' in the church at the Narboroughs' home of Knowlton, Kent, Knowlton near Dover.

Discovery of the wreck

National Maritime Museum, KTP1326 - Gun from the Association

In June 1967, the Minesweeper (ship), minesweeper HMS Puttenham (M2784), HMS ''Puttenham'', equipped with twelve divers under the command of Engineer Officer (Royal Navy), Engineer-Lieutenant Roy Graham, sailed to the Isles of Scilly and dropped anchor off Gilstone Ledge, just to the south-east of Bishop Rock, Isles of Scilly, Bishop RockFarrell, Nigel, ''An Island Parish. A Summer on Scilly'', Headline Publishing Group, London 2008, p. 205-207, and close to the Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly, Western Rocks. The year before, Graham and other specialists from the Naval Air Command Sub Aqua Club had dived in this area on a first attempt to find the ''Association''. He recalled some years later: "The weather was so bad, all we achieved was the sight of a blur of seaweed, seals and white water as we were swept through the Gilstone Reef and fortunately out the other side."Interview with Engineer-Lieutenant Roy Graham in December 2005.
/ref>HMS Association (+1707) on www.wrecksite.eu
/ref> On their second attempt in summer 1967, using the minesweeper and supported by the Royal Navy Auxiliary Service, Graham and his men finally managed to locate the remains of ''Association'' on the Gilstone Ledge. Parts of the wreck are in 30 feet, while others can be found at between 90 and 120 feet as the sea floor falls away from the reef.''Wreck of the fleet and treasures of the deep'', The Islander 3, Autumn/Winter 2007.
/ref> The divers first discovered a cannon, and on the third dive, silver and gold coins were spotted underneath that cannon. The Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence initially suppressed news of the discovery for fear of attracting treasure hunting, treasure hunters, but word was soon out and excited huge national interest. More than 2,000 coins and other artefacts were finally recovered from the wreck site and auctioned by Sotheby's in July 1969. The rediscovery of the ''Association'' and the finding of so many historical Artifact (archaeology), artefacts in her wreck also led to more government legislation, notably the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, passed in an attempt to preserve British historic wreck sites as part of the maritime heritage. In 2017 Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archaeology Society (CISMAS) undertook a survey of the site of the ''Association''. A 3D site plan was produced for

along with photos from the dive showing the difficult diving conditions.

In fiction

In Robert Goddard (novelist), Robert Goddard's novel ''Name to a Face'',(2007) a central plot element is the recovery of a ring worn by Admiral Shovell at the time of ''Association''s sinking.

Notes

References

* David Hepper – ''British Warship Losses in the Age of Sail, 1650–1859'' (1994) *Lavery, Brian (2003) ''The Ship of the Line – Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650–1850.'' Conway Maritime Press. . *Michael Phillips
''Association'' (90) (1697)
Michael Phillips' Ships of the Old Navy. Retrieved 1 February 2008.

External links

*
HMS ''Association'' from ''Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia''

"''Association''" National Heritage List for England
{{DEFAULTSORT:Association (1697) Ships of the line of the Royal Navy Shipwrecks of the Isles of Scilly Cornish shipwrecks Maritime incidents in 1707 1707 in Great Britain Royal Navy ship names 1690s ships Archaeology of shipwrecks Ships built in Portsmouth