page_title: HMS Roebuck (1690)
section_title: Wreck site located
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Roebuck (1690) / Search for the wreck / Wreck site located
caption_attribution_description: Black igneous rocks (volcanic) on Ascension Island
context_page_description: HMS Roebuck was a fifth-rate warship in the Royal Navy which, under the command of William Dampier, carried the first British scientific expedition to Australia in 1699. The wreck of the ship has since been located by a team from the Western Australian Maritime Museum at a site on the coast of Ascension Island where it foundered more than 300 years ago.
context_section_description: In 2000 the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle commissioned a search of the primary sources in England. The many sources located and copied for the museum suggested that the wreck of Roebuck lay in the shallows of Clarence Bay on the north-west coast of Ascension Island. Others had already searched in that location but had been stymied by the size of the bay and an extensive cover of sand.
  By March 2001, based on their extensive study, the museum team believed they had a fair idea of Roebuck's position in February 1701 when the ship sank. Arriving at the island, and anchoring over the approximate position in the bay where they believed the grounding site to be, they experienced the same unusually sustained sea breeze that Dampier had described some 300 years earlier. When they examined the seabed, they discovered that a large and very recent movement of sand from the bay had exposed rock and other formations not seen by local divers in the 40 years since diving first began on the island.
  Conducting a search from the beach out to the 3.5 fathoms of water described by Dampier, divers soon located an exposed bell. They then located a large clam shell in a cleft in the reef on the seabed south of the bell, and a heavily concreted grapnel anchor in shallower water about 328 ft (100 m) south of the bell and 26 ft (8 m) from shore. In a very turbulent location, two slightly tapering iron objects very similar to the remains of heavily eroded cannon were seen. These lay in the wave line, and were firmly wedged amongst the rocks. All were left in situ.
  Being loose and potentially endangered objects, the island's administrator subsequently requested that the museum team remove the clam and the bell in association with the Ascension Island and Royal Air Force dive clubs. On retrieval, the bell was found to carry a broad arrow, confirming its Royal Navy origin. Of all the naval vessels lost on the Island, only Roebuck had not been found up to that time. Sent to the Mary Rose Laboratories in Portsmouth for treatment and replication, the original objects were returned to the island for exhibition. The replicas were made for display at the Western Australian Maritime Museum.
caption: Clarence Bay, Ascension Island, where the wreck of Roebuck was discovered in 2001
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