Royal Charter (ship)

The Royal Charters maiden voyage was from Liverpool to Melbourne. The voyage was made in 52 days beating the previous record by 13 days. There is also a memorial on the cliff above the rocks where the ship struck, which is on the Anglesey Coastal Path. At the time of the disaster there were allegations that local residents were becoming rich from the spoils of the wreck or exploiting grieving relatives of the victims, and the "Moelfre Twenty-Eight" who had been involved in the rescue attempts sent a letter to The Times trying to set the record straight and refute the accusations. Exactly a century later (to the day) in October 1959 another ship, the Hindlea, struck the rocks in almost the same spot in another gale. This time there was a different outcome, with the Moelfre lifeboat under its coxswain, Richard Evans, succeeding in saving the crew. ==Aftermath==

The aftermath of the disaster is described by Charles Dickens in The Uncommercial Traveller. Dickens visited the scene and talked to the rector of Llanallgo, the Rev. Stephen Roose Hughes, whose exertions in finding and identifying the bodies probably led to his own premature death soon afterwards. Dickens gives a vivid illustration of the force of the gale: :"So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in which also several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it, had been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid when they were forced there." Dickens's friend, the painter Henry O'Neil exhibited the picture A Volunteer in 1860, based on the incident, depicting Rogers about to leap into the sea with the rope around him. The disaster had an effect on the development of the Meteorological Office as Captain Robert FitzRoy, who was in charge of the office at the time, brought in the first gale warning service to prevent similar tragedies. The intensity of the "Royal Charter storm" and winds were frequently used as a yardstick in other national disasters – when the Tay Bridge collapsed in 1879 the Astronomer Royal referred to the Royal Charter storm frequently in his report. The wreck was extensively salvaged shortly after the disaster. The remains today lie close inshore in less than of water as a series of iron bulkheads, plates and ribs which become covered and uncovered by the shifting sands from year to year. Gold sovereigns, pistols, spectacles and other personal items have been found by scuba divers by chance over the years. Teams have air-lifted, water-dredged and metal-detected for other treasure as late as 2012. ==Britain's largest gold nugget==

Vincent Thurkettle, a prospector from Norfolk, found in 2012 what is Britain's biggest gold nugget while scouring the waters just off Anglesey. He kept his find secret until early May 2016 as he and friends continued to search for other debris from Royal Charter. He found the nugget in water about deep, about from the shore. The nugget was about from the site of Royal Charters wreck, so Thurkettle had to notify the Receiver of Wreck, who took possession of it on behalf of the Crown. Recent storms had exposed seabed that had lain under of sand. ==Cultural references==

American folk singer Tom Russell recorded a song about the wreck of the Royal Charter, "Isaac Lewis" on the 2003 album Modern Art. American folksingers William Pint and Felicia Dale covered the song "Isaac Lewis" on their 2017 album Midnight on the Sea. Charles Dickens, in the first chapter (‘The Shipwreck’) of his collection of writings entitled ‘The Uncommercial Traveller’ recounts a visit he made, two months after the tragedy, to the coast of Wales off which the shipwreck occurred. The Royal Charter public house in Shotton, Flintshire was named after the vessel. ==Citations==