The Story of General Carleton

General Carleton was a ship of about 390 tons, built at Whitby in 1777, probably by Thomas Fishburn who was the builder of Earl of Pembroke (later Captain Cook's bark Endeavour). She was owned by Nathaniel Campion, and Thomas Pyman was the Master. In the early years, General Carleton was involved in the Baltic Trade, bringing timber and pine tar to Hull, and later to Portsmouth.



From 1782 General Carleton became a transport ship involved in supporting the military and naval forces in the American War of Independence; the ship had a new Master at this time in William Hustler, who had considerable experience as Captain of a ship in the Government Service. The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in the previous year had in practice ended the war (though  peace was not signed until 1783), so General Carleton was involved in the evacuation of Savannah and Charleston, which involved the removal of troops, supplies and Loyalist civilians to Jamaica. After which she returned to England in a convoy which was devastated by a heavy Gale of Wind; arriving at Portsmouth on 22 February 1783 with fewer than half the number of vessels that had set sail from Port Royal exactly two months earlier. After the end of the war, General Carleton was engaged in the Norwegian and Baltic trades,  though now she was owned by Margaret Campion (née Holt), her husband Nathaniel having died just a few weeks before the Treaty of Versailles of 3 September officially ended hostilities.

In 1785 General Carleton was again trading in the Baltic sailing to Dantzig [Gdańsk] and Stockholm. On a second voyage to Stockholm, she had loaded up with a cargo including iron and pine tar, and was returning to Britain when she was struck by a storm of 26 September, which left her very leaky. She anchored off Dębki, a small fishing village off the northern coast of what is now Poland, possibly so repairs could be effected. What happened next is conjecture, but it seems likely that she was caught in another storm, broke her moorings, and was driven onto a submerged sandbank, where she broke up and sank, less than 500 metres from the shore. It is not clear what happened to the crew. William Hustler certainly perished, presumably staying on board to preserve the ship and its cargo, as was his duty to the owners. Lloyd's List mentions three survivors, but there were probably more.

As the ship fell apart, the barrels containing the pine tar split open covering many of the artefacts and forming, over time, a concrete-like accretion which preserved them.

The Excavation of  General Carleton

Over two hundred years later, in 1995, a wreck, known only by its designation W-32, was investigated by a team from the Polish Maritime Museum, Gdańsk, (Centralnie Muzeum Morskie, CMM), under the leadership of Dr Waldemar Ossowski. One of the first artefacts discovered in th wreck was the ship's bell, inscribed: "GENERAL CARLETON OF WHITBY 1777", which enabled the vessel to be clearly identified. Contact with the late Harold Brown of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society Museum resulted in finding the original muster rolls, which gave the names of the owner, master and sailors for each of the voyages of General Carleton, including the date when she sank. Further excavations on the wreck site were carried out in 1996 and 1997. In total over 775 artefacts were found in the wreck of General Carleton. Some of the artefacts were initialled, and it has been possible to link them to particular members of the crew: a penknife and a comb both had the initials 'IF' scratched on them, and were almost certainly the property of  John Frazer; and a bag (possibly a pillowcase) with the initials 'RN' stitched into it would have belonged to Richard Neal. Both Richard Neal and John Frazer were servants (ie apprentices) on board the ship when she sank.

For a full list of those who sailed on General Carleton, click here.

Much of the above information is based on articles in The General Carleton Shipwreck, 1785.

The Importance of  the Excavation of General Carleton

The importance of the excavation of General Carleton, which has been dubbed "The Whitby Mary Rose" is, in my opinion, threefold:

1. It is a merchant ship, and information about 18th-century merchant ships is still scarce compared with information about the Royal Navy. However, in recent years there have been some really valuable underwater excavations done of 18th-century merchant vessels, notably that led by John Broadwater of the Yorktown wreck 44YO88 (identified as the Betsy, built at Whitehaven in 1772) between 1982-88, and that of the 'Bermuda vessel' (identified as a later 18th-century English collier, led by Gordon Watts in 1992-3. Both have similarities of construction to General Carleton.
2. An enormous number of artefacts have been found, including articles that would have perished if they had not been preserved by the pine tar. This includes an unparallelled collection of sailors' clothing of the period. This topic is dealt with in The General Carleton Shipwreck, 1785 by Lawrence Babits & Matthew Brenkle in their article "Sailor Clothing". 

Woollen hat excavated from General Carleton. Photo by S Baines, reproduced here by kind permission of The Polish Maritime Museum
The fact that a large number of the excavated artefacts would probably have been made in or near Whitby is also of enormous importance to the understanding of the history of that town and its hinterland.
3. It is an identified ship, and can consequently be linked to documentary evidence. One of the advantages is that it provides a clear terminus ad quem for the dating of the artefacts on board. This is, of course, valuable in itself, but also will be useful in helping to date other wrecks from the artefacts found.

Links to other information about the General Carleton:

Nordic Underwater Archaeology