The Earl of Abergavenny was one of the largest British East Indiamen built, captained by William Wordsworth's brother John. Disaster struck in 1805 when the ship went down just 1.5 miles from land, with many crew lost. The Wreck Detectives' challenge is to find out why it sank so quickly, and with such a tragic result.
The dramatic lifting of a piece of structural ironwork led to an exciting discovery. The iron knee (iron bracket that fixes the deck to the hull) was fixed to the timbers with copper pins. Copper causes iron to rot and the pins would have gradually worked loose. This weakness fatally undermined the structure of the Earl of Abergavenny. It literally came apart and sank quickly, with tragic losses.
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