Admiral Gardner

Basic Site Facts
Type: an English East Indiaman
Period: post medieval (1809)
Location: Goodwin Sands, Kent
Depth: 18m
Reason for designation: historical significance

Built at Limehouse in 1797, the 800 ton English East Indiaman 'Admiral Gardner' was bound for Madras on her sixth voyage with a mixed cargo of anchors, chain, guns, shot and iron bar stocks in January 1809. She also carried 48 tons of East India Company copper tokens that were to be used as currency for native workers. In company with the East Indiamen 'Britannia' and 'Apollo', she was caught in the Downs by a violent gale and wrecked on the Goodwin Sands.

We also have an account of the vessel's final moments from the Captain, Eastfield; "seeing it impossible to save the ship, I ordered the main and mizzen masts to be cut away. In doing it, the ship struck and the sea made a fair breach over us. At daylight I had the misfortune of witnessing her on the South Sand Heads. We remained on the vessel until 3.35pm, when to the gallant exertions of the Deal men, at the risk of their own lives, we were brought off with the loss of only one man, the ship then full of water to the upper deck."

A week later, the cargo of the wreck was reported to be beyond salvage. An auction was held to sell off all that remained of the vessel; some rope, lead and iron, sailcloth and some food.

In 1976, East India Company tokens appeared in sand dredged from the Goodwins for use as fill for construction work in Dover Harbour. The site and her cargo of tokens was eventually located in 1983 by divers investigating a fisherman’s snag. The site was then subject to a number of parties claiming interest as it was thought to be the 'Britannia', lost at the same time but carrying silver Company tokens. A salvage agreement was reached and operations began in 1984 and recovered over one million tokens. However, the site was designated in 1985 in response to concern for the apparent lack of archaeological standards applied during the salvage operation although salvage work continued under licence.

In 1986 the salvage company had the designation revoked due to the site being over three miles off the English coast. After the extension of the limit to 12 miles offshore in 1987, and the eventual relocation of the wreck, it was re-designated in 1990.

The seabed around the wreck site comprises sterile sand that is periodically mobile and several metres of the wreck mound have been uncovered. More extensive remains were exposed in 1995. Mobile sand waves, up to one metre high, have been observed around the site and indicate that the level of burial of the wreck could change on a daily basis. Due to the changeable sediment levels, there is little or no flora covering the site. A visit by the Government’s Archaeological Contractor found the site to be completely buried.

The area of exposed wreckage covers an area of approximately 15m x 20m and has been observed to stand one metre proud of the current seabed level.  A search located another area away of the main mound where two guns and an anchor were exposed. It is thought that the site plans available to the Government’s Archaeological Contractor were drawn in the mid-1980s prior to the destructive salvage and, inevitably, they could not be reconciled with the visible remains on the site.

In 1999, the site appeared undisturbed and relatively stable, though disruption of the concreted mound by the earlier salvage operations was still evident. Only the top metre of one of the cargo mounds consisting mainly of iron stock and anchors was exposed. Ship timbers were visible in one area of the mound, which also contained a scatter of concentrations of loose copper tokens. These tokens would almost certainly have been removed if unauthorised diving had taken place recently.

In 1999, it was reported that a diver guide had written that 2 million tokens still remained on the wreck; however, a monitoring visit observed that the site lay undisturbed despite evidence for unauthorised anchoring on site.

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