Women's History Month spotlight

Professor Claire Jowitt on the Gloucester, women’s histories, and whose stories survive.

Professor Claire Jowitt is Professor of Renaissance Studies at UEA, Historical Lead on The Gloucester (1682) Project, and inaugural Director of UEA’s Shipwrecks and Maritime Heritage Research Centre. For Women’s History Month, we asked Claire what the Gloucester story can reveal about women’s lives, missing voices, and the way history decides whose stories survive.

For anyone new to the Gloucester project, what is it and why does it matter?

The Gloucester was a seventeenth-century English warship lost on 6 May 1682 off Norfolk when it struck a sandbank. It was transporting James, Duke of York and Albany, heir presumptive to the throne, to Edinburgh from London when it sank. James abandoned ship in a rescue boat at the last minute, but many lives were sadly lost.

The Gloucester wreck was discovered in 2007, and since 2019, UEA has been researching the ship, the circumstances of its sinking, and the lives affected by the disaster. We’ve uncovered new information about what went wrong, who was on board, and how the event shaped both the lives of survivors and the families of those who died. We’ve also explored the ways the wreck was reported, remembered, and retold.

We have been privileged to work with the ship’s discoverers, Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, and the more than 500 artefacts rescued from the wreck site, sharing our research about the Gloucester in talks, publications, and a blockbuster exhibition UEA co-curated with Norfolk Museums Service in 2023. By working with partners our research can help secure the heritage future of the ship and its artefacts, with the long-term aim of developing a permanent home in Norfolk. Looking ahead, we want to keep exploring this important maritime event and what its artefacts can tell us about seventeenth-century life, while sharing those findings in imaginative and inclusive ways.

Where do women appear in the Gloucester story, and where are they missing from the records?

Maritime history has often neglected women’s lives and stories, and we want to address that in our research on the Gloucester. In fact, the reason the Gloucester was on its way to Scotland in May 1682 at all was a woman. James’ Duchess, Mary of Modena, was in Edinburgh and pregnant. Because she was often very badly seasick, she requested James should collect her in a large frigate rather than a royal yacht. In 1682, with no legitimate male Stuart heir beyond James, her pregnancy had major political importance.

“Maritime history has often been seen as neglecting women’s lives and stories, and we want to address that in our research on the Gloucester.”

We don’t know for certain whether there were any women on board when the Gloucester sank. A newspaper article from shortly afterwards reports that ‘an English Lady’ drowned, but gives no further detail, so whether she was a sister, wife, mother, or lover of a man on board we just don’t know. Because she is called a ‘lady’, we don’t think she was a servant, though it is possible there were female members of the royal household on the ship.

Some of the artefacts raise further questions. Among the finds are women’s clothes, shoes, and sewing equipment, but these were discovered in a luggage trunk with many other items. Perhaps they belonged to women on board or were simply possessions being transported.

“The loss of sailors in the Gloucester tragedy would also have changed the lives of their wives, children and other dependants.”

James gave widows and children financial compensation, and we have been researching some of the families who lost their main breadwinner on the Gloucester and what that meant for their futures.

What can artefacts and archives tell us about everyday lives beyond elite or noble individuals?

The quality and range of the artefacts from the Gloucester is remarkable. They can tell us a great deal about day-to-day life on a seventeenth-century ship.

One example is the butchered animal bones recovered from the wreck site. Specialist research shows that most came from a cow, with one from a pig and one from a sheep. Beef and pork were part of standard naval rations, but mutton was not. Officers often supplemented official rations with more luxurious foods, including fresh meat.

So, while the beef and pork could have been eaten by any sailor on the ship, the sheep bone likely points to the diet of an officer. Details like this help us understand not just what people ate, but how class and status shaped everyday life at sea.

What’s next for the public-facing work and community involvement?

We are really excited to be starting work on a short, animated film, supported by a recent Arts and Humanities Research Council grant, A Ship Rat’s Eye View of the Gloucester Warship: An Animated Adventure for Adults and Children.

The film will tell the story of a greedy, royalist rat called Charles, who journeys from the Gloucester’s cookhouse to the captain’s cabin in search of the Duke of York and his ‘royal’ victuals. When the ship strikes a sandbank, the public will help decide his fate. Does he drown, drunk on the duke’s fine claret wine, or does he abandon ship, comfortably nestled and dry in the pocket of the Duke’s waistcoat? Focus groups of local schoolchildren will help shape the story, MA Scriptwriting students will pitch to write the script, and drama students will voice the final animation. The film will be shown at Norfolk Museums Service’s Time & Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth, and we hope it will also form part of a planned augmented reality heritage walk about the Gloucester and Great Yarmouth’s maritime history.

What do you wish more people understood about how history gets written, and who gets centred?

History is written by the winners. We see this with James II, who when he finally inherited the throne was deposed by his Protestant daughter Princess Mary and son-in-law and nephew William of Orange just three years later in 1688 in the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’. ‘Whig’ history — which was written by the victors — portrayed King James as bigoted and despotic and praised the more democratic Parliamentarian principles of the new regime.

Yet in many ways, regime change in 1688 was due to the birth, finally, to the Yorks of a healthy male baby. The new Prince James was ahead in the succession of his half-sister Princess Mary and could establish a ruling Catholic Stuart dynasty. Many Protestant English subjects found this idea abhorrent. All through Mary of Modena’s pregnancy, rumours of skulduggery were widespread, eventually resulting in the ‘warming pan’ scandal where it was believed that a healthy male child had been substituted for a girl or dead baby. The fact that the leading royal physician Sir Charles Scarburgh — who had been on the Gloucester with James when it sank — arrived late to the prince’s birth and couldn’t testify its veracity, didn’t help. Scarburgh had thought Mary of Modena had miscalculated when she conceived her child and hadn’t expected the birth so early.

Yet the same rumours of skulduggery had circulated before the birth of the child Mary of Modena was carrying in May 1682, yet they immediately died away when it was publicly announced in August that a princess had been born to the Yorks.

Why I foreground these stories about babies is that it shows the quirks of history, and the paths that didn’t happen. What if Scarburgh hadn’t believed he knew better than Mary of Modena about her due date? What if Mary’s child in 1682 had been a boy who had survived the perils of infancy? If James II had inherited from his brother Charles II in 1685 with a Catholic male heir already in place would the ‘Glorious Revolution’ have happened at all? We can’t ever know, but the counterfactual historical possibilities are intriguing, and alternate histories, including those that centre women’s experiences, can often illuminate or test the significance of what actually did happen.

Supported by philanthropy, the Gloucester Project brings together historical research, public engagement and partnership working to explore far more than how a warship sank in 1682. As Professor Jowitt and her collaborators’ work shows, it is also helping recover stories beyond the political elite, bringing into view the lives of women, sailors, servants, families, and communities shaped by the disaster. Through exhibitions, schools work, and future heritage plans, the project continues to show how history can be more inclusive, imaginative and publicly meaningful.

The launch of the exhibition UEA co-curated with Norfolk Museums Service in 2023: