\n The men were buried in Happisburgh churchyard when HMS Invincible sank while sailing to join Admiral Nelson’s fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Of the 590 crew on board, just 190 survived, and the bodies that were recovered were carried to St Mary the Virgin church as it was the nearest to the wreck.\n<\/p>\n
\n HMS Invincible, 74-gun ship of the line (Image: Supplied)\n<\/p>\n
\n The mass grave of the lost sailors from HMS Invincible (Image: Richard Cogman)\n<\/p>\n
\n However the erosion now threatening the churchyard has led to calls for the men to be dug up and buried in the sea, as close as possible to where they drowned.\n<\/p>\n
\n North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) has agreed to conduct a ground-penetrating radar survey of the graveyard in the coming months to pinpoint the exact location of the mass grave for a possible exhumation.\n<\/p>\n
\n The survey follows a request from The 1805 Club, an international charity dedicated to preserving the heritage of Georgian-era sailors, which has offered to use its Royal Navy connections to help carry out the exhumation.\n<\/p>\n
\n The church is at threat of being lost to the sea (Image: Newsquest)\n<\/p>\n
\n Stephen Howarth, a senior advisor for the club, said: “In a few decades, that graveyard is going to be eaten away.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe 1801 disaster was such a huge tragedy, such a great loss of life, especially when the fleet was en route to Denmark.\n<\/p>\n
\n “They were buried on land as a matter of haste and urgency, and at the time they did not pay much notice to the erosion that was already taking place on the coast.\n<\/p>\n
\n “We felt they should be buried at sea, and as near as possible to HMS Invincible.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Most of those who drowned were never identified.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Among the few known was the ship’s captain, John Rennie, who came agonisingly close to reaching a rescue boat.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Contemporary reports say that he almost made it to a vessel, but then \u201cexhausted with fatigue he calmly resigned himself to his fate\u201d.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Boats to the rescue (Image: Supplied)\n<\/p>\n
\n Shoals off Happisburgh (Image: Supplied)\n<\/p>\n
\n The disaster was blamed on the ship’s pilot, who had ignored warnings about shallow sand ridges lurking off the Norfolk coast.\n<\/p>\n
\n Those washed ashore at Happisburgh were carried to St Mary’s in cartloads for burial.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The mass grave went unmarked for nearly two centuries until 1998, when the grave was rediscovered by chance in the 1990s during drainage works.\n<\/p>\n
\n Following the discovery, a stone was laid above it bearing the biblical inscription: “And the sea gave up the dead that were in it.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The Happisburgh churchyard currently sits around 80 metres from the cliff edge and government estimates suggest a significant portion of its land will be at risk by 2055, with almost all of it gone by 2105.\n<\/p>\n
\n Financial estimates of exhuming the churchyards for NNDC show it would cost around \u00a3103,000 to clear 100 bodies over a four-week period.\n<\/p>\n
\n It is one of three churchyards in the area which is under threat from coastal erosion, alongside All Saints Church in Mundesley and Trimingham Church.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n NNDC has appointed coastal consultants to work with affected communities on a plan of action, with options ranging from exhuming graves and reburying remains elsewhere to a “do-minimum” approach of waiting until the threat becomes immediate.\n<\/p>\n
\n Memorial stone to the lost crew of HMS Invincible (Image: R. Cogman)\n<\/p>\n
\n Another option would see authorities accept the gradual loss of burials, acknowledging that not all remains could be exhumed in time.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Consultations with residents and stakeholders are ongoing.\n<\/p>\n
\n The threats to coastal churches come as dozens of homes in Happisburgh and other villages along the coast also face the risk of erosion.\n<\/p>\n
\n In Happisburgh, 35 properties have been claimed since 2000, as well as a car park which has frequently been ravaged by erosion.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n A NNDC spokesman said: \u201cNorth Norfolk District Council is working with the church at Happisburgh and the Diocese to evaluate the best way to commission a GPR survey of the churchyard, including the HMS Invincible grave.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It is anticipated that the survey will help understand the location further and support future discussions.\u00a0This will be arranged by the Coastwise project which is funded by the DEFRA and Environment Agency Coastal Transition Accelerator Programme.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
HMS INVINCIBLE: THE SHIP THAT DIDN’T LIVE UP TO HER NAME<\/p>\n
\n On March 16, 1801, HMS Invincible sailed from Yarmouth Roads to join Admiral Hyde Parker’s fleet – where Nelson was second-in-command – already four days ahead and bound for the Baltic.\n<\/p>\n
\n Invincible had been delayed at Chatham for a major refit, missing the fleet’s departure entirely.\n<\/p>\n
\n Historians have since argued that Admiral Hyde Parker’s failure to send orders to her commander, Rear Admiral Thomas Totty, before she left Chatham forced an unnecessary stop at Yarmouth – a delay that put her on the Norfolk coast at precisely the wrong moment.\n<\/p>\n
\n Admiral Nelson was second-in-command of the British fleet at Copenhagen (Image: Supplied)\n<\/p>\n
\n When Invincible finally sailed, her pilot chose a course that took her directly into the treacherous shoals off Happisburgh – a route the main fleet had avoided.\n<\/p>\n
\n The pilots failed to account for the strength of the ebb tide, which pushed the ship off course and onto Hammond’s Knoll.\n<\/p>\n
\n Crucially, the coastline had been visible for at least 15 minutes before she struck, with landmarks clearly identifiable.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bearings were about to be taken on a known marker buoy when the ship hit the sandbank.\n<\/p>\n
\n A subsequent court martial absolved the admiral and captain – the latter posthumously – and laid blame squarely on the harbour pilot and ship’s master, both of whom should have known these waters.\n<\/p>\n
\n A total of 400 British men died when Invincible sank, which is more than who were killed across the entire Battle of Copenhagen (between 253-256).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The men were buried in Happisburgh churchyard when HMS Invincible sank while sailing to join Admiral Nelson’s fleet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-628914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}