General Carleton - late 18th century sailing shipwreck.

The vessel was built in the English town of Whitby as a sailing ship of high seaworthiness. It means that the cargo ship, launched in 1777, had a set of features which determined safe and comfortable (as far as it was possible) sailing conditions. At the time of the great industrial revolution, the General Carleton, delivered coal and iron to British ports. She sank during a very heavy storm on 27 September 1785.

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The ship was built by Thomas Fishburn’s shipyard in Whitby and was a twin to the famous HM Bark Endeavour, on which the legendary sailor James Cook made his first voyage to the South Pacific.

On 12 March 1777 the sailing ship set off on her maiden voyage to Riga, then under the rule of Tsarist Russia. Later, throughout its not very long history, Riga would be one of the main ports of call for the English coal carrier.

The last three years (1782-85), General Carleton served as an auxiliary logistics unit of the Royal Navy, in the War of American Independence. In this situation, the crew of the Carleton, was exempted from conscription into the Royal Navy.

The end of the service found the sailing ship anchored at the mouth of the Piasnica river, near the village of Dębki. A sudden break in the weather and a violent, very strong storm caused the anchor to break and drag, which resulted in the displacement of the cargo of iron that General Carleton was carrying. In this situation, despite being highly adapted to the most difficult conditions, the vessel went down. As a result of this tragedy, the lives of the sailing ship’s commanding officer, Captain William Hustler, and 17 members of his crew were lost.

The memory of the events at the end of September 1785 has survived in legends told by local fishermen, whose credibility was enhanced by the fact that they were constantly caught and their nets were broken. The memory of the events at the end of September 1785 has survived in the form of legends told by local fishermen, whose credibility was enhanced by the fact that they were constantly snagged and their nets were broken.

Dr Michał Woźniewski decided to check how much truth there is in the folk tales. By verifying the information told by fishermen and the places where they broke their nets, he managed to find the remains of a wooden vessel in 1995. Here, however, his work was just beginning. For the next four years, a group of divers from the Polish Maritime Museum conducted systematic research, finding the truth about the located wreck, which was given the working name W-32.

In the course of their work they managed to excavate many well-preserved items which, apart from the knowledge they brought to the researchers, became important museum exhibits. In total, over 700 relics in the form of: ship’s equipment, clothes, articles of daily use, weapons or navigational instruments, A breakthrough moment was the finding of a bell, which dispelled all doubts as to the identification of a sailing ship. With the information gained, it was possible to search for further facts about General Carleton. In addition to the exact route, even the personal composition of the crew from her unfortunate last voyage was established.

The wrecked English barge, with an overall length of 43.7m and a width of 9m, was powered by 27 sails, spread across three masts, totalling 900m². This provided the vessel with a speed of 7-8 knots. The ship’s draught was 5.2m and its displacement was 500t. It rests buried in sand about 460m offshore at a depth of 4.7-8m.

In 2008 an interesting book was published, edited by Waldemar Ossowski “Shipwreck of General Carleton, 1785”.. The contribution to the creation of this bilingual monograph was made by researchers representing universities in Poland, England and the USA, as well as persons not affiliated with any university.

Source: wikipedia.org, cmm.pl