The wreck of the Gloucester revisited

Abstract

The wreck of the frigate Gloucester off Norfolk on 6 May 1682 has always figured in histories of the Restoration period; it was taking James, Duke of York (the future James II and VII) to Edinburgh to collect his wife Mary of Modena and his daughter Princess Anne after his years of exile in Scotland. It has long been known that there were royal musicians on board, two of whom were drowned, though interest in the subject has been rekindled by the discovery of the wreck and an exhibition of artefacts from it in Norwich in 2023. Some other historic wrecks have proved to contain musical instruments, including the Mary Rose and several Dutch ships, though the Gloucester is unique in that a musical artefact—a brass trumpet mouthpiece—can be matched to documentary evidence concerning the musicians on board. Court documents concerned with replacing lost instruments and compensating survivors and the families of victims show that those on board included four royal trumpeters and a kettledrummer (Walter Vanbright, who was drowned); a five-man group drawn from the Twenty-Four Violins, led by the composer Thomas Farmer and including Thomas Greeting (who was also drowned); and the oboist, recorder player and bass violinist James Paisible, who had apparently been working in Edinburgh in the Duke of York’s household. Paisible may have been a member of Farmer’s string group, though there is a possibility that he was accompanied by three other French musicians, forming a separate recorder/oboe consort. An anecdote concerning James rescuing the string player Edmund Flower from drowning throws light on the musical and religious politics on board the Gloucester: the earliest version, published in 1730, claimed wrongly that the duke ‘turn’d him out of his band because he would not turn Papist’.