British Tokens, Tickets and Passes

Miscellaneous Tokens and Checks, Engraved coins: a Farthing-sized blank, one side engraved with a sinking three-masted ship to right, royal george below, 23mm, 5.72g (Comfort –). Very fine, good workmanship £50-70

The Royal George, a 100-gun first-rate ship of the line and flagship of Admiral Richard Kempenfeld, was anchored off Spithead on the morning of 29 August 1782, preparatory to sailing to Gibraltar. To facilitate work on the hull the ship was keeled over to the port side by moving guns and casks, but those working on the vessel could not contain the ship’s centre of gravity. The ship’s carpenter repeatedly warned the officer of the watch of the situation, who refused to do anything; frustrated, the carpenter told the captain, by which time the ship had started to fill with water. Within minutes, the ship, with some 1,200 sailors and civilians on board, quickly sank in 65 feet of water; about 900 people lost their lives, including many ‘ladies from the Point’ [i.e. Portsmouth] who, though seeking neither husbands or fathers…visit our newly arrived ships of war”. The bodies of many of the victims were washed up at Ryde, I.o.W. and were buried in a mass grave under what is now Ryde Esplanade