In search of Henry V's flagship

Under the murky, fast-flowing waters of the River Hamble, in Hampshire, lies the skeleton of a great medieval warship. Experts believe it to be the Grace Dieu, Henry V's flagship, which was the biggest ship of its day. Indeed, no bigger ship was to be built for 200 years.

Prior to Time Team's visit, the wreck had never been excavated underwater, nor its size verified. Donning their dive suits and masks, Tony Robinson and Phil Harding got to work with a team from the nearby Southampton University. Onshore, Francis Pryor and Stewart Ainsworth led the hunt for the local boatyard, while ancient woodwork expert Damian Goodburn tried to replicate the unique style of construction that was pioneered in the building of this massive ship.

Fighting the tide and the mud, the Team had three days to prove that this wreck was indeed that of the Grace Dieu, as well as finding out just how big it was and how much of it remains buried.

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As well as shovelling more muck on land in an average digging season than many archaeologists shift in a lifetime, Time Team's Phil Harding is also an expert underwater archaeologist. For this programme, he donned his diving suit with a team from Southampton University, led by marine archaeologist Jon Adams, the former deputy director of the project to raise Henry VIII's famous warship, the Mary Rose.

Phil has taken part in underwater excavations for Time Team on a number of previous occasions. These include the investigation of a crannog, a prehistoric man-made island, at Loch Migdale, in the Scottish Highlands, as part of the 2004 series; the wreck of the British warship, the Colossus, which sank in the Scilly Isles during a gale in 1798 and featured in a Time Team Special in 2002; and that of a ship from the Spanish Armada some 20 metres down on the seabed just off the coast of Kinlochbervie, in north-west Scotland, which featured in the 2002 series.

The Team has also been involved in some underwater archaeology in unexpected locations – and not just the kind that results from heavy rain and waterlogged trenches. At Merton Abbey Mills, in south London, for example, during the 2003 series, Time Team called in diver Gordon Bell and some of his colleagues from the Mole Valley and Meadhurst sub aqua clubs to see if they could find anything from Arthur Liberty's 19th-century works on the Wandle riverbed.

Of course excavating underwater poses special problems for archaeologists. Not the least of these is the way that shifting tides and currents can disturb the stratigraphy of a site. At Merton, Gordon Bell described the effect of the currents swirling around as 'like one big washing machine – you can find a Victorian coin and then sealed in the clay bed below it can be a modern 50-pence piece.' Time Team's Mel Morpeth gives a director's take on filming underwater on the Kinlochbervie programme web pages.

As well the shipwrecks featured in underwater excavations, Time Team has also looked at boats and boat-building in more orthodox digs. For example, Damian Goodburn appeared in the very first Time Team series, when he was called up to make a log boat. And the Team went to Smallhythe, in Kent, as part of the 1999 series to see if they could find any traces of the medieval shipwrights who built, among other craft, Henry V's 1,000-ton Jesus. There's an animated 3D reconstruction of the Jesus, which was much smaller than the Grace Dieu, on the Smallhythe web pages.

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