Wreck of H.M.S. Somerset
Joel Dukes, left, and Steven Pendery fighting the tide during a brief reveal of Somerset‘s ruined hull, on 8 April 2010. [Dunlap]
Left: A cathead from Somerset was pried off in 1886 by Frederick W. Snow. It is now at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. Right: H.M.S. Somerset on the Peaked Hill Bars, by Spencer Parry Kennard. Oil on canvas. [Town Art Collection / Provincetown History Preservation Project Page 1578]
A ship’s timber shows the joinery method. [2010, Dunlap]
The shape and extent of the ship’s remaining hull is briefly clear. [2010, Dunlap]
Dukes and Pendery measured each of the boards. [2010, Dunlap]
Though still holding together after 232 years, the ship’s timbers showed a great deal of wear. [2010, Dunlap]
Somerset‘s broad curve can be seen at the water’s edge. [2010, Dunlap]
Pendery surveying the wreckage. [2010, Dunlap]
Text last updated in 2015 | In 1778, as the War of Independence was raging, the formidable Peaked Hill Bars bested a dreaded symbol of British imperial power: H.M.S. Somerset, the 64-gun ship-of-the-line that had terrorized the people of Boston and Charlestown. It even figured in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride as
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
The skeletal hull has occasionally been revealed since it went aground. Its emergence in April 2010 gave the National Park Service a chance to commission a three-dimensional rendering from laser scans and to pinpoint the wreckage through satellite navigation. I happened to come upon the scene by great good luck as Steven Pendery, Joel Dukes, and their colleagues fought the advancing seas and sands for this precious glimpse.
¶ Republished on 27 November 2023.
