Queen Elizabeth's Lost Guns Timewatch

A mile off the rocky coast of the Channel Island of Alderney

lies a shipwreck that could rewrite English naval history.

For centuries this stretch of water has been a ships' graveyard.

Just 30 metres below me lies an extraordinary shipwreck.

The only Elizabethan fighting ship ever discovered.

Little remains of the ship and its name is still a mystery.

But, could it hold a 400 year old secret?

It is very exciting to think that we may at last have

artefacts and indeed fabric of the ship that fought the Armada.

Diving on the wreck could hold the

key to how the Elizabethan navy began to win control of the seas.

To have this kind of proof that English gun founders are almost 50 years ahead of

their time technologically. That would be extraordinary.

A team of divers and experts aim to find and raise the ship's cannon.

But they lie in some of the most dangerous waters in the World.

By recasting and firing 400 year old guns they hope to demonstrate how

Elizabeth 1st became the mother of British naval dominance.

Today, bathed in sunshine, the Island of Alderney looks idyllic.

But for centuries it's been a rocky fortress.

A tiny outcrop of the British crown.

The Nazis were only the most recent invaders to leave their mark here.

In the 16th century these waters swarmed with English ships of war.

The first line of defence against deadly enemies.

Many sank but for years it was thought no trace of Elizabeth 1st's navy remained.

Until, that is, the discovery of a wreck off this coast.

Its name and mission remain a mystery.

But it could hold the key to the birth of English naval dominance.

As a military historian, the Armada era fascinates me.

And this wreck offers a unique opportunity to unlock the secrets

of a pivotal moment in English history.

As the 16th century drew to a close the fate of Protestant England

hung in the balance.

Faced, as she was, on all sides by foes.

Spain was the World superpower and Philip the Second

wanted Elizabeth's throne and England Catholic.

With most of Europe against her, it was England's darkest hour.

People sometimes throw in comparisons with 1940.

But Britain and Germany in 1940 were approximately equal.

Whereas in 1588 the Spanish army was by an enormous margin,

not only the biggest but also the best in the World.

And England had no standing army at all.

So on the face of it, it would appear to be absurd to imagine

that England could survive such a contest.

Yet England did survive.

Could the Alderney shipwreck and the weapons she carried

help to explain why?

What we already know was that the ship itself was at the cutting edge

of Elizabethan naval technology.

Because her all-important rudder has been raised.

This key discovery allows for an array of calculations

that reveal the nameless ship's exact dimensions.

She was 20 metres long with a deep draft and a high stern.

This looks to me like one of the smaller size war ships of the period.

What they call pinnaces, the smallest size of warship at the time.

An English pinnace was a very powerfully armed ship for her size

capable of taking on even much bigger merchant ships

with a good prospect of success.

Over several years of diving the wreck has yielded

hard won artefacts.

The biggest single haul of Elizabethan objects ever found.

But could this ship also have

been carrying a set of guns that revolutionised war at sea?

One cannon has already been salvaged from the wreck.

And the divers have charted the position of eleven more

buried in the sea bed.

On first inspection, these cannon appear to be identical

to the one already recovered and stored in the Alderney Museum.

If that is the case, then it could rewrite Elizabethan naval history.

Until now, it was thought that Elizabeth was using

the same sort of weapons as her father, Henry VIII.

His flagship, the Mary Rose, was ultramodern but carried

a bewildering variety of cannon, many of them designed for land warfare.

They were of different shapes and sizes,

firing different shot at different rates with different killing power.

Fighting at sea was chaos.

You're in the middle of a battle.

This gun needs some ammunition and you're rummaging around in the hold

with a pair of callipers measuring one shot after another desperately

trying to find one which fits.

If all the Alderney cannon are the same, it would mean the Elizabethans

made a giant leap forward in military technology,

creating the first ever set of uniform cannons using the same shot

and capable of firing a deadly coordinated barrage.

The kind of guns that we take for granted now in HIMS Victory, etc.

This was the beginning of that.

A kind of mechanisation of war.

This ship is now a gun platform in a way that it wasn't before.

But to do this Elizabeth's gun founders must have developed a way

of casting identical cannon en masse earlier than had ever been thought possible.

This would be the first known example of a ship with a uniform armament.

It just doesn't happen in the 16th century.

And historians generally say it doesn't happen until

the middle of the 17th century, possibly even later.

So to find an example from the 16th century would be quite extraordinary.

What is known is that English sailors became greatly feared.

At the beginning of Henry VIII's reign the English fleet

was forced to run away from heavily armed French galleys.

By the time of Elizabeth, even King Philip of Spain was warning of the

deadly English artillery.

The proof that Elizabeth did develop these matched cannon could lie

in the sea bed a mile off Alderney.

The objectives for the summer... .

I've joined marine archaeologist,

Mensun Bound, and a crack team of divers on a salvage ship.

Mensun believes he can prove his controversial theory.

But to do so, he'll first need to find

and raise two of the lost cannon.

The mission is dangerous and the conditions will

limit the divers to just two short opportunities each day,

between tides, when they can descend to the wreck.

They can afford to be on site for just three days.

Ok, guys, unless you have questions I think that should be a wrap.

I've got so many questions...

Let's save them till later.

It's seven am. The tide is about to turn.

The window of opportunity is opening for the first dive.

Let's go diving.

We'd been scrambled in probably about five minutes.

Everyone was just finishing off their breakfast and all of a sudden the window opened.

So they've got 40 minutes to find what they're looking for.

The wreck lies in a basin the size of a football pitch. 100 feet down.

It's surrounded by rocks warn to razor sharpness by the sea.

The harbour master's vessel will monitor the conditions.

The currents here are so powerful that Alderney plans to tap them

to produce the same amount of electricity

as a nuclear power station.

Divers' safety is of paramount importance.

One of the divers will record pictures with a head mounted camera.

It's usually possible to send live images back to the ship.

But here the cabling would drag a diver out to sea.

Mensun has dived here many times before.

But he's no longer strong enough for multiple dives on this site.

What's the temperature like down there?

From the surface it looks quite benign. The sun is shining.

-It's freezing is it?

-It's totally deceptive.

It's freezing. After 40 minutes you're shaking even with a dry suit.

-What do you do now?

-Now we wait. That's it.

There's nothing else to do.

It's really quite eerie on the boat actually since the divers left.

It was all hustle and bustle for a few minutes and then

all of a sudden they were in the water and off.

Mensun waits anxiously for the divers to return.

He's all too aware of the peril faced by his team.

'The body of a Jersey man who died whilst diving

'on the Elizabethan wreck near Alderney has been brought...'

Just one week previously, tragedy struck.

Peter Le Sauteur, a hugely experienced local diver

and paramedic, died during the exploratory dive on the wreck.

It is totally hellish.

It's tragic beyond words.

It pitches everybody into this very dark place.

Certainly at a personal level, you just want to give up and go home.

There's no doubt about that. But you can't do that.

These waters are amongst the most dangerous in the World

because the landmass of Alderney splits powerful underwater currents

that send up huge clouds of sand.

Visibility is poor.

As the first team returns to the ship, the news is not good.

Pim, can we ask you what it's like down there at the moment?

You've literally just come up...

Sand, sand, sand, sand. All, everything is covered in sand.

British divers Russell Sanford and Phil Donaldson have also experienced problems.

Hello guys. How did it go?

It was good. Nice to get down there and see the site in its entirety.

Frustrating the amount of sand covering everything.

There's more sand than what we anticipated.

That's the only thing that really worries, worries it all.

All we've got showing right now are a few labels.

That's it. One cannon is showing on the periphery.

Everything else is covered. Buried under about

one metre and a half of sand as near as I can judge.

It's not going to be easy.

The tides are changing.

Diving has already become too dangerous.

Pictures from the head mounted camera confirm Mensun's worries.

Sand, you see it?

I tell you what's bad about all this, Pim, is the bad visibility

we're getting this year. I can't remember when it was last this bad.

Last year we could actually see what we're doing.

It was better, that's for sure.

But even though there are no cannon visible,

there are occasional glimpses of Elizabethan artefacts.

Oh look, that's a breastplate he's got there.

That's the one I lifted up, it's a really heavy one.

The divers are all safe on board

and the window of opportunity has slammed shut.

The undersea gale will now rage with increasing strength for another

six hours before the tide changes and the window briefly opens again.

It's enough time for Mensun to take me ashore to the Alderney Museum

and the gun that inspired the expedition and his theory.

I always think how lucky we are to have a museum like this...

And here it is, isn't she magnificent.

That's some site.

This is the absolute pride of our work.

And this, of course, is why we're here.

But it was the cannon balls that first caught Mensun's attention.

He'd expected to see the different

shapes and sizes of shot found on the Mary Rose.

A ship that sank only 47 years earlier.

Instead, every ball he brought up from the seabed was the same.

If every ball was the same, was every cannon?

What occurred to me was that for the first time we were perhaps

looking at here not just one individual gun but taken

as a collection, what we had was our very first

coordinated uniform naval weapon system.

Of the kind which would take the

British navy right through to the dawn of the 20th century.

This represents standoff naval warfare.

It's a totally different style of warfare.

Naval tactics had been about getting soldiers aboard your enemy's vessel

and fighting a land battle at sea.

With powerful cannon capable of firing coordinated broadsides,

it became all about guns and ships.

This is the new style of fighting and this is the beginning,

if you like, of a new world in which it's possible to have,

if you like to call it that, a pure naval battle in which

ships fight one another rather than soldiers fighting one another afloat.

Controversially, Mensun believes the Alderney wreck will show

it was Elizabeth the First who created the earliest

matching cannon and began this naval revolution.

But he needs the evidence to prove it.

At 3.20 the coastguard signals that diving can begin again.

Precious minutes are taken up descending the 100 feet.

The team will have very little time with the wreck.

The problem is we haven't actually got anything yet

and Mensun's nightmare begins. Because he simply has to wait.

We've got no cannon and we've got no other material off the seabed yet.

And time is ticking.

Let go of the rope...

-The divers have found something.

-Let go of the buoy...

They already have two lifting bags out so I think the best thing

-to do we go over and pick it up.

-Yeah, me too.

It's not a cannon.

-Come closer.

-We will.

-It's really heavy.

Ok, let's get it off... Ok? OK...

-Careful of the boat, OK?

-Don't drop it on me!

It may look like a lump of rock

but the archaeologist knows that there's treasure buried inside.

It's the breastplate spotted on the first dive.

Over the centuries a concrete-like layer has formed around it.

You want me to take it back?

Ok, what we have here is a breastplate.

It's what the soldiers wore over their chests

to protect them from musket ball penetration.

It looks to be intact.

You've got to be made out of stone

not to feel excited when something like this comes up.

This breastplate is the first artefact of the dive.

And even better news follows quickly.

I found them all, got all the cannons back. I'm happy with that.

If you've been away for a year, all the sand is coming back

because it's one big sand pool.

So we just move the sand away and we found it again. All the cannons.

I've found all the cannons. Yeah.

This is excellent news. Yesterday we didn't have any of the cannons.

One was exposed, all the rest were covered.

Today we've got all of them exposed again. We know where they are.

A decade of dives has revealed 12 cannon in the sea bed.

A year after their last dive on the wreck, the team have found

the guns again and have begun freeing them from the sand.

We'll get changed and cleaned up...

With the first dive day finished, the team now has just 48 hours left

in which to raise two of the cannon to test Mensun's theory

that Elizabeth the first was the mother of British naval dominance.

The divers spend the second day preparing two of the cannon for

lifting. This will leave the third and final day of the dive

to attempt to bring them to the surface.

As the morning dive comes to an end, there is a surprising discovery.

Amid the debris of the wreck the divers have found what

appears to be an Elizabethan musket.

Well, let's have a look at this baby.

Oh, that is a beautiful musket.

This is the first time we've found a musket like this intact of this size.

It's remarkable. This was the weapon of the future.

This, the rise and eventually

the total ascendancy of firearms like this finished the longbow.

The only complete Elizabethan military musket in existence.

It will be preserved for further examination later.

Although the cannon have been found, getting them to the surface

will require a remarkable feat of marine engineering.

The guns weigh over 2 tons each.

The salvage ship will have to prize them from the bottom while fighting

the same fierce currents that tore the Elizabethan ship to pieces.

And because the wreck site is so important,

they can't risk damaging it by dropping an anchor

to steady the ship.

It's going to be difficult. It's going to be very difficult.

You cannot keep the cannon in the air because it's going to

swing all over. And swing the weight of two, three ton.

That's not nice, it's really dangerous.

The team spends the rest of the second day securing two of the

cannon in preparation for lifting.

In poor visibility it's painstaking work.

-The back, I think.

-Just, what, around there?

Look at cannon one right there.

It's very similar indeed to the one we have in the museum.

We blew a lot of sand away because it was covering up again next time.

Here it's cannon three. We cleared the cannon totally you can see it.

And probably tomorrow morning will

be a fine time for us to do a first attempt.

Depending on the weather, of course.

If the waves come up it's going to be a problem.

The team now has just 8 hours left to bring

Elizabeth's cannon to the surface before the dive window closes.

Then comes the news we were all dreading.

'Securite, securite, securite.

'All stations, all stations.

'This is Solent coastguard, Solent coastguard

'for a local strong wind warning for the central Solent area.

'Please listen VHF Channel 6.'

I'm in close communication with the harbour master's office.

He's given me the best weather advice I could hope for.

He's not that optimistic himself.

As a result of that neither am I.

But, you know, this is the Channel Islands.

This is Alderney and things change here from hour to hour

and minute to minute with the weather sometimes.

We've got to be ready in case there is another window of opportunity.

The conditions don't change and the first dive is cancelled.

Six hours later and the weather is improving.

But now there's another problem.

Both diving boats are out of action.

-Gabby?

-Yes?

-How's it going?

Well, found out the problem.

But it's probably going to take us all night to get it fixed.

Oh, Jesus. Spare parts. We're able to get that?

We have all the spare parts we need.

Ok, ok that's cool.

-And the other boat?

-The other boat,

they're fixing it now so it should be ready in half an hour, an hour.

Can we not do the dive without one of these two boats?

No, we've got to be able to offer them back up when they're in the water. If, for instance,

if you get a distressed diver on the surface, we cannot pick him up,

what do we do? It's as basic as that.

We've got to be able to mobilise one of these boats.

With only minutes to spare, one of the diving boats is fixed.

The team is ready to dive.

But the sea conditions remain a problem.

'Securite, securite, securite. All stations...'

-Then the coastguard calls again.

-'This is Solent coastguard, Solent coastguard...'

We've got to do it now. We're not going to get another chance today. That's for sure.

Good news. We've just heard from Mensun that the harbour master

has given the go ahead to dive today. It will be our first dive.

The morning dive was postponed because the weather was bad.

It's improved now, but they've got to get underwater

as quickly as possible because they've got just 40 minutes.

With every second now critical,

Mensun decides to go to the sea bed himself to check the slings on the cannon.

On the surface, Captain Pim de Rhoods makes a final check of the engine room.

At the flick of a switch he can change the direction of

the propellers to make minute changes to the ship's position.

It's like liquid chocolate down there.

Can hardly see a thing.

The cannon is all slung up ready for lifting.

Should be a clean lift.

So we're in the middle of an incredibly delicate operation.

Pim has lifted the anchor and we're edging

metre by metre closer to the point at which we can actually

pull the cannon off the surface of the sea bed.

Probably in the next 30 seconds or so we should be in position

and they're going to attach the ropes to the lifting gear.

And before too long we may see the cannon.

Unable to use his anchor,

Pim must hold the salvage ship in position in the ever-shifting tides.

Once the cannon is hooked the divers

must gently shepherd it through currents moving at different rates.

When the cannon breaks the surface, the salvage ship will be at the

mercy of the tides supporting a weight that could become a

deadly pendulum in an instant.

I think it's about 15 metres right now.

Once we get it to about 8 metres then we should see something.

There it is, guys.

You can see it.

When this cannon last saw light of day, Elizabeth the First was on the

throne and England was fighting for its very survival.

Not that way, this way.

We can... I don't know if we can right now. Yeah.

Ok...right...OK, Pim!

That's it. Steady it.

Watch your toes.

OK. That's it.

It's perfect, Pim.

Ok all stop. Look at that.

Brilliant.

Barrel is intact. Concretion is intact.

Just what we're after. It's perfect.

I know it looks like something that a camel might have left behind.

But trust me, inside this there is a beautiful gun.

Mensun now has one gun but that's not enough to prove his theory.

If he's going to show that Elizabethan warships carried

sets of matching cannon, he needs another.

The first one might match the gun in Alderney Museum just by coincidence.

So, Mensun, congratulations. Cannon number two. The one you needed.

It's good isn't it. I'm really pleased.

Look at that. Muzzle over here.

-You can see the swelly. All that.

-Do you think it's going to prove your theory about it's uniform?

I think it's going to prove my theory, I do.

It's looking very much like this ship was really carrying

our very first coordinated uniform naval weapon system.

It's very exciting.

OK, guys. Thank you all.

Great job. Saul, join us, come on. Over this side, guys.

Look towards us...

Mensun has raised the guns.

But before he can prove they're part of an identical set he must

first preserve and restore them.

It takes just 36 hours for the salvage vessel

to make the 300 mile voyage from the Channel Islands

to the Port of London.

In Elizabethan times, it would have taken the Alderney ship a week.

In the 16th century, the Tower of London was the Royal Arsenal

and cannon would have been stored here.

Four centuries later the Alderney guns have

come to be separated from the hard concretion that covers them.

But getting Elizabeth's cannon inside the castle

proves to be a problem.

We've come to a bit of a standstill. We've got the cannons here.

We're trying to get them into the tank over there.

But the problem is the machinery isn't up to the job.

The cannon are just too heavy.

To make matters worse, the tank of water that will protect the cannon

is too small to take them with their thick coating.

As the sandstone cocoon begins to dry out and crack

the cannon are exposed to air, and will soon begin to crumble.

Mensun is in charge of emergency irrigation

and the de-concretion that will allow them to fit the tank must begin immediately.

After chiselling for two days the mouth of the first cannon is exposed

and Mensun is ready for the initial test of his theory.

yes. .

Smell... 400 year old air.

Smells of gunpowder.

The wooden bung is called a tompion.

It's prevented salt water entering the muzzle for more than 400 years.

Look at that.

It's almost corrosion-free.

But are the cannon part of a matching set?

This ball fits the muzzle of the cannon in the Alderney Museum.

But will it also fit this one?

Look at that. It fits perfect.

-Brilliant.

-Fantastic, it's good.

-You did it!

-I can't believe I did that.

That was a perfect fit.

I mean, that's it. It's perfect.

And that's what I was hoping for

and that's what I was expecting for the dimensions of the gun.

So far the cannon appear to be the same size.

Mensun now faces weeks of de-concretion and further tests

to prove categorically that they're part of an identical set.

While the work continues, I head south of Alderney

to the North Western coast of France.

I had a hunch that this was where our mystery ship was bound.

And I believed I knew why.

The first Armada sailed a 1,000 miles to invade England in 1588 and failed.

The Spanish knew they're next attempt had to

be launched from a deep water port much closer to the English coast.

Brittany was the obvious answer.

Knowing this Elizabeth sent her greatest general to stop the Spanish capturing a port in Brittany.

His name was Sir John Norris.

Could the Alderney ship have been part of his mission?

Military historian John Nolan has spent the last few summers

researching the ports of Brittany.

I've got some things here that are going to answer all your questions.

Excellent. Tell me more.

We have a letter here dated 1592 from Sir John Norris

who was campaigning in Brittany at the time.

He was describing his situation here when he first arrived in 1592.

As you can see here...

In his letter Norris asked the chief minister to speak to

the Queen about his need for money, winter clothing and men.

And then, incredibly he refers to the ship they were on.

A ship that was cast away about Alderney.

Are we certain that this ship is our ship?

Oh, I'm convinced this is the ship.

The dating period is just perfect.

The equipment that we have on it is the kind of thing he would have been

expecting to be on a ship that was following him up.

So Norris clearly needs supplies. The ship goes down.

How did that effect his campaign?

Well, from the year that that occurred,

in 1592, it really pretty much ruined the year.

Was he ultimately successful in his fighting in Brittany?

Well, yes, to a degree, yes.

Because this war will drag on a total of three and a half years till late 1594.

And during that time the Spanish are never able to use Brittany,

none of its deep water ports as a base.

Naval historians have found no other reference to a heavily-armed

Elizabethan warship lost around Alderney.

Our ship would have been a vital link between Elizabeth and her expedition force in Brittany.

It appears to have been carrying food, clothing and supplies.

It's easy to imagine the misery of the commander on learning that his life line had sunk without trace.

But his loss is our opportunity.

The recovery of the intact musket allows us to examine the weapons

used by an Elizabethan soldier.

During the dive it was X-rayed at Alderney hospital.

Definitely looks like the lock mechanism, doesn't it, Mensun?

Yeah, that's it. That's the lock plate right there.

The X-rays were sent to the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

We've taken the information from Alderney and

recreated the lock, the barrel, bore diameter & overall form of the

stock are all carefully modelled on information from the Alderney wreck.

Graeme Rimer is the chief weapon's expert.

But, he'd never seen an intact Elizabethan military musket before.

Here's the barrel tang forming the breach end of the barrel.

The gun he's made is a replica of the one found on the wreck.

So, on the Alderney wreck musket we've got the same lock

we've got the same trigger mechanism and we've got the same barrel. All similar to these.

Yes, that's right.

Graeme and his team now have a unique opportunity

to test Elizabethan fire power.

And now we prime the pan using a finer grade.

The Mary Rose carried hundreds of long bows.

No trace of them has been found on the Alderney ship.

Mensun wants to know why.

The first test is to measure the speed with which the musket fired its led ball shot.

-Ok.

-Yep, ready.

-There we are.

-My goodness.

It's incredible 230.3 metres a second Graeme how does that compare to the long bow?

Well, based on our findings that's about between five and six times greater velocity

than the long bow arrow from a serious long bow.

What's amazed us Graham again and again in the

course of this excavation is just how modern our ship is.

Just how much these are weapons of the future.

I think what Alderney is representing is the culmination

of new thinking into the best equipment for British forces.

I won't be able to get it all on one image at the same time so I'll do that half and then that half.

But what damage could Elizabeth's muskets do to the enemy?

It looks like there's something here.

The team uses the breastplate brought up from the wreck

to replicate a piece of 16th century body armour.

This is the bit I've been waiting for.

Graeme, the target you've arranged for us here it's the same thickness

as one of our breastplates?

It's a 2mm thick piece of mile steel plate.

It's going to be very interesting indeed to test

the resistance of this to the penetrating capability of our musket.

What sort of punch could this musket deliver?

Colt 1911 used by the US forces for many years.

Graeme begins the test with a comparison from the 20th century.

The iron breastplate was designed to deflect arrows,

lances and musket balls.

It didn't go through, it didn't penetrate.

Here is the evidence really very graphically.

The mushroomed head of the bullet and here is one in its unfired state. Dramatic stuff!

It's pretty remarkable to think Graham that using a modern

weapon you can't penetrate the type of armour we brought off the sea bed.

Anybody wearing a breastplate that thick would've been safe against a weapon of this power.

Now, the musket is tried against the same thickness of armour

that the Spanish would have hoped would protect them.

Look at that.

Extraordinary. This is unbelievable.

-Straight through.

-Straight through.

This demonstrates categorically

that the Elizabethan shot is far more dangerous.

'The next test is designed to

'simulate the ball on the body inside the breastplate.'

-Good shot, Graeme. Just where you wanted it.

-There it is. Here's the hole.

The victim in this case is a block of gelatine which behaves like human flesh.

The entry hole is small enough but the internal damage is terrifying.

You can see flecks along there.

There are bits of coat with you know goodness knows what.

If the shot didn't kill you, the infection would absolutely.

The last target is a soap block.

Unlike the gelatine this won't collapse.

So the passage of the ball will be graphically demonstrated.

There's hardly any deviation at all is there. It just goes.

That is what happens at the immediate moment it hits the body.

The frozen moment, that flesh effectively being struck. This is the kind of performance.

But, you can also see the depth which is significantly deeper than

the thickness of the human body and yet even so it's gone through.

The Alderney musket was clearly a devastating weapon.

Englishmen had for centuries been required by law to learn to use the long bow.

Now, they took up a revolutionary new weapon.

One that could penetrate the thickest enemy armour.

Look at that.

The long bow was dead.

At the Tower of London the cannon are ready to reveal their secret.

It's the same length to within a centimetre.

The, the proportions, the dispositions of all the features

they're the same they're absolutely identical to the gun on Alderney.

All three of the cannon recovered from the Elizabethan ship wreck are the same.

Mensun is convinced that they are part of a matching set. The earliest one ever found.

We've established now that the wreck is every bit as important as

we thought it was. This is the first archaeological evidence that we have

that guns of this type were being used in this way during this period.

And this system of fighting at sea wasn't something which our enemies

really caught up with for decades.

The guns are now bound for York

to one of the world's leading experts in gun preservation.

On arrival in York, Ian Panter and his team

complete the final cleaning of the cannon and uncover another surprise,

an owner's mark.

It appears to link the cannon and the ship

to one of the most important men in Elizabethan history.

Wow Saul, look at this, here it is.

F W.

Francis Walsingham.

So we're talking about Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spy master.

-One of the great figures of the Elizabethan age.

-It links it right into the heart of government.

In other words this is definitely a Queen's cannon.

He was second only to Burleigh in importance.

We have Burleigh on one side of the throne, Walsingham on the other and in the middle is Elizabeth.

That's how important he was. He was in charge of the defence of the nation at the time of the Armada.

Every bit of information we get underlines the importance

of this ship and the material that was on it.

Absolutely so. Absolutely so.

This to me is just more than I could have dreamed of.

If these were Francis Walsingham's, cannon then they would be directly

linked to Elizabeth herself and possibly even Queen's cannon

bought by her spy master Walsingham to be used on a ship bound for her

greatest general - Norris.

Elizabeth may well have had a ship

with a matching set of guns but how effective were they?

Like the musket the recovery of her cannon presents us with

a unique opportunity to find out.

99.3

99.3. Mag's maths is...

The original gun is too unstable to be fired.

Mensun will need to carefully replicate and cast the first new

Elizabethan cannon in four centuries.

Reinforce all the way down to the muzzle right there.

Right.

78.5.

OK and then the muzzle.

From the mouldings there to the muzzle rings right there.

It will be re-cast in this foundry where they've researched ancient

techniques that might allow us to reproduce the gun

with a few concessions to modernity.

This is how iron cannon were made under Henry VIII.

Under construction here already is a replica of a Mary Rose

wrought iron cannon.

It had to be pieced together and banged into shape.

Metal rings gave it support.

But, it was still liable to explode when fired.

If Mensun is right, it was Elizabeth's gun founders

who perfected cast iron technology.

Casting iron cannon made them stronger

but it also meant that sets of identical iron guns could be made.

It took early foundry men three weeks to get the furnaces up to the

1500 degrees, the temperature at which iron runs like water.

It's the English secret weapon.

The technique of casting iron guns that didn't explode.

It would be an advantage that England would keep right up to the,

up to the 19th century.

This allowed the growth of this huge English armada.

Modern cast iron is extremely pure and durable.

This cannon is deliberately cast with a high level of impurities

to get as close as possible to the grade of metal available

to the Elizabethans.

That's quite a long way up above the gun, isn't it?

Look at the bubbling in that.

That's incredible Nick. Look at it. It's amazing.

That's all the impurities.

The smell too, it's so alchemaic, isn't it?

It's Elizabethan magic we're seeing here.

And this is exactly the feeling that the Elizabethan gun founders

must have had but they don't know if the gun is going to be any good

until they take it out of the mould and take it out and fire it.

The casting must set overnight in the mould.

Early the next morning it's ready to be opened.

You know, for the first time in my life I really don't know what to say.

This is incredible.

Fresh out of the mould the gun requires careful handling.

Sweet Jesus!

That was a bit unexpected.

The iron is in a state known as cherry red.

So hot saliva boils or bounces off it.

The metal is getting much thicker here.

Changes in pitch

might reveal a flaw which would cause the gun to explode on firing.

Oh, oh, is that a crack over there?

A fault at this stage would mean scrapping the cannon.

You see it though? The question is, is it skin deep?

I think it probably is. We're OK. Might get away with this.

It's just in the sand and the ash that's accreting to it. We're OK,

it's fine.

Tense moment though.

The guns found on the Mary Rose were lumbering mismatched weapons.

Mensun believes that the Alderney cannons were their descendants - a new generation.

To prove it, he'll need to test them in action.

So, we're going to load one round shot.

Common cannon ball placed in the muzzle.

For the first time in over 400 years,

Elizabeth's ground breaking guns are about to be fired.

Right. Guns loaded.

This first shot is the critical shot because we don't know what's going to happen with this cannon.

It's the first time it's ever been fired.

WHISTLE BLOWS

The team takes cover. The cannon could turn out to be a bomb.

Stand by firing.

4, 3, 2, 1.

Stay down.

It's intact look at that.

You've got the foresight still there.

I thought that would have gone flying.

You see it's still a bit warm.

What do you think Nick that was one hell of a bang. It's certainly intact.

It's a small charge.

We've got to worm the gun to make sure it's clean, nobody's been chucking rubbish down it.

I'm serving the vents.

Great relief when we came out.

We knew it was fired properly and the gun is intact. That was the main thing.

You can really now begin to work out through the day what its destructive

capabilities really are.

'Next, the ballistics tests.'

The stakes are set at half metre intervals and these will help us

determine the velocity of the shot.

We're at a watershed moment in our understanding of these guns.

Before this, historians have only been able to speculate

at the velocity of the shot, the muzzle velocity.

We have a high-speed camera set up

which is capable of 1,000 frames a second.

Now we know the distance between the poles over there so we'll be able to

measure off to the split second what the muzzle velocity of the gun is.

Mensun hopes these tests will demonstrate

that the Elizabethans invented a devastating new naval tactic.

They seem to have reckoned that a few big guns were less effective

than a lot of small guns firing a barrage.

But the bigger the gun the more powerful the punch.

Had they paid a price by investing in smaller weapons?

Standby firing.

4, 3, 2, 1.

The computer will need several shots to calculate velocity.

Look at this guys. Somebody's found the shot.

What's not in question is the accuracy of the cannon.

Is that the shot?

Did you pick it up? Where did you find it?

It's right behind.

The target is the same thickness as the side of an Elizabethan ship.

Oh, look at this. It's really splintered the wood here.

Yes, if it was more seasoned wood, there'd have been bigger splinters.

What about the rock behind. Look at that over there. See that fresh break.

It's given it a thump. I don't think it's slowed down very much.

2, 1...

A volley of shots will provide data that will show how fast

the new super cannon could hurl a cannon ball.

You've got some velocity for us.

OK. Let's roll it. Oh, yeah look at that.

It's gone through.

It's ten frames over three metres. And it's a 1,000 frames per second.

-300 metres per second.

-300 metres per second.

That's nearly the speed of sound.

If you think about the hole in the target...

We were throwing the shot almost at the speed of sound. That's incredible.

-So, it's accurate.

-It's accurate, it's devastating.

It's fast and it causes a lot of havoc.

And damage.

Just think what that could do.

Elizabeth's guns could hit a target a mile away.

At a hundred yards the ball could go through the oak planks of a galleon

across the deck and out the other side.

The biggest Mary Rose cannon could fire a ball faster but Mensun

believes that a mass of shot fired as a coordinated broadside would

give a much better chance of hitting the target and destroying the enemy.

Look at that gentlemen, isn't that amazing?

That target is testament to a reasonable day's shooting.

-A very accurate day's shooting.

-Well, I think it shows very clearly that these guns,

they may look crude,

they're smooth bore and, of course, rifling came in in the 19th century.

But at the sort of ranges that were critical in the 16th

century they're very effective and they are surprisingly accurate.

We've almost got a broadside here. It's not going to hit the ship in this tight a cluster.

But, imagine standing behind that obstacle when all these shot came

through, you wouldn't stand much of a chance would you.

Put you off your own aim.

-It would. Exactly...

-And the damage...

I'm delighted with the way things have gone.

But, I keep reminding myself this is not, it's not really one gun we're

testing here, we're really testing maybe four or five or even six.

It's an entire broadside which means the efficacy of this weapon as a coordinated weapon system

is so much more devastating than what we're actually seeing here right now.

You feel very privileged if you like to be playing with a gun like this.

So, this is a high point in my life.

Mensun is now convinced that the Alderney shipwreck holds the key to

a new understanding of naval warfare in the 16th century.

The guns he recovered reveal that England had the technology to create

a new generation of weapons years earlier than was previously thought.

Coordinated cannon making possible the type of deadly broadsides

which were still being used by Nelson at Trafalgar.

He's revealed Elizabeth I as the mother

of British naval dominance.

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