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Times Online Spies and intrigue. Vital dispatches sent through treacherous waters. The initials of one of the most powerful politicians in the land, etched on a gun lying deep under the sea. A small country, fighting with cutting-edge military technology against a terrifying power. Hidden treasure sitting undisturbed for four centuries, which divers risk their lives to recover.  And all of it is true. On the Timewatch programme tonight on BBC Two, viewers can see for the first time the events that led to a groundbreaking discovery.
The story begins with the location of a wreck half a mile off the tip of the Channel Island of Alderney, where an Elizabethan ship, heavily armed with cannon, was reported lost in 1592. Raised from the sea bed four centuries later, the guns and shot led a marine archaeologist to propound a theory that could rewrite English naval history. A new and tantalising mystery emerged too, prompted by a set of initials found engraved on one of the cannon. "You do get these moments — I call them ‘mind touch’ — which transport you back over the centuries," said Mensun Bound, the marine archaeologist and Fellow at St Peter’s College, Oxford, speaking from his 14th-century manor house in the Oxfordshire village of Horspath. "It was like that with this." He was working on one of the salvaged cannons at the Tower of London. "It was late in the afternoon and they were just putting the ravens to bed. The sun was raking across Tower Green. "The shadows had been cast, when the light caught the barrel of the gun at the right angle. It was then that I saw it. I thought of him immediately — her spymaster." The ship that bore the cannon "probably had three masts, with square sails — like great hemp bags, not the tight, white cotton you see on chocolate boxes. She was small and agile, much more sensitive to sea and weather conditions than the great, cumbersome Spanish bugs around at the time." A fisherman, Bertie Cosherel, found an Elizabethan musket in one of his crab pots in 1977. A member of the local diving club went down to investigate, and found a cannon. Soon shot was being brought up to the surface. Examining the shot in 1993, Mr Bound had his eureka moment. Unlike the ammunition on the Mary Rose, which he had worked on as a student, the shot was all uniform: the same weight and material, the same size cannonballs to within a millimetre. Was it possible that this ship was witness to a naval technological breakthrough, more than a century earlier than previously realised? Was this how England had defeated the great Spanish fleet, so vastly superior in numbers and financial resources? The Alderney wreck had been kept as secret as possible to minimise the risk of looting. But if resources were to be found to answer this question, that policy would have to change. The Alderney Maritime Trust approached the Duke of York, who lent his name to the project and hosted a dinner at Buckingham Palace to attract patrons. Last summer, at the beginning of the thirteenth season of diving on the Alderney wreck, tragedy struck. One of the divers, extremely experienced and following safety procedures, had an embolism and died. The team suspended work while his death was investigated, before resuming, saddened and subdued. On June 23, 2008, Mr Bound’s 15-year-old theory was proved correct. One cannon had been brought up, cleaned and placed in the Alderney museum. The salvage of two further cannon showed that he was right: all three were ballistically identical. In the mid-16th century, a clergyman in the Weald had pioneered a way of casting cannon in iron, instead of the bronze which was in short supply. So instead of a system of "making do" that had prevailed under her father, Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth’s fleet had sets of smaller, uniform cannon, all cast identically and taking the same size shot. {mosgoogle left 7887083644} They could be fired reliably, by trained gunners, in unison, creating a deadly and devastating broadside barrage that could penetrate the oak hull of the enemy. The gun carriages were innovative too: the muzzles could be pushed through the gunholes, minimising the risk of fire, and the recoil kicked the cannon back far enough for reloading — which was consequently two or three times faster than previously. It was the beginning of a navy which would take command of the seas up to Trafalgar and beyond, and laid the foundations of an empire. It was when the cannon were cleaned up that the team made the other, wholly unexpected, discovery. On one of the cannon, the initials FW were clearly etched. Francis Walsingham came to mind immediately. Could these guns have been commissioned by the Queen’s spymaster? If so, they linked the three most important men of the realm, the other two being Sir John Norrys, Queen Elizabeth’s greatest general, who had deployed this ship to send dispatches and munitions to Lord Burghley who was working in Brittany to prevent another Spanish invasion attempt. Tragically, as Norrys wrote to Burghley, this ship was, "Cast away about Alderney." Then as now, men lost their lives in the treacherous tides and currents off the island.
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