Shifting sand reveals old anchor
 

Between Amble and Hauxley an old wood and metal anchor has appeared as the sand has shifted. Interesting to try and get a date, the metal ring is very large but the shaft and flukes appear to be detached and missing. The wood being the top part of the anchor. Perhaps lost from a ship in the Coquet Roads ?

It is also near some extensive peat beds and ancient tree stumps; and the rocks a little further north appear to have fossils embedded, I'll post some pictures

Photos of peat beds (looking for 5000 year old footprints!), old coal workings (covered on a previous thread) and fossils ?

Back to the anchor ! Presumably this is what a complete one would look like, definitely from the age of sail! courtesy of Alamy (hope i'm not infringing copyright?) pictured at Whitby.
Now the question is, how did it end up that high on the beach, its obviously very heavy. It will be interesting to dig around the ring to check that the anchor chain is definitely not there, if it is still attached then the sheer weight would mean that a ship dropped it very close by. Further investigation is needed.

What an interesting set of photos!

The fossil is Stigmaria, the root structure of the trees that grew in the carboniferous that produced the coal seams. Naturally they are common in the seat earth and fire clays immediately below coal seams. The name 'Stigmaria' is a 'form taxon' and is thus given to the roots of various different species of trees.

I wonder what date the Anchor is? Looks ancient.

Is the photo of the strata/coal at the Amble end of the beach? If so there's a seam there some individuals are still working. It's just about 6" thick I believe.
Only uncovered now and again. It can all disappear under sand for a year or two quite easily!

Yes ,an interesting find [anchor].Would love to know the history about it .

The coal seam appears when the sand shifts, it could be the one in the photo. The next shore north halfway along the beach, down on the rocks also has a seam and I have seen someone regularly filling a big bucket each morning recently!

To think I played on these beaches so many times as a child and knew nothing of peat or coal seams!! I do have a small piece of sea coal from Amble here on my pc desk in Thailand!!

Regarding the Anchor, it would only fail like that in in use, in a storm surely? Not exactly something that is just going to fall apart for no reason! As far as I can find out the shank up to the eye is forged in one piece. On British pattern Anchors there is a lip that sits under the stock. American Pattern it is inside the stock - but all one piece still.

From one of my books:

I was expecting to read about some relationship (ratio) between length of stock and shank, but I cannot see that anywhere. There must be a relationship so it sits on the sea bed at the optimum angle? Anyway, if you could find that out you could get the length of the shank and then work out the tonnage of the ship.

More than likely that artifact is associated with some calamity for some poor souls. Definitely so if a chain is attached, but the chain would be valuable and salvageable so probably not a reliable indicator.

Or do we assume from that drawing that 'L' of the stock is the same as 'L' of the shank? Easy question for the maritime type?

Well I have been with tape measure and it's 11 feet 4 inches wide at moment. 1/12th of L is about 11 inches according to your diagram and yes the 4 sides are about 11 inches . Also the centre section conforms to the measurements

There is a chap on fb who has reported that on an extremely low tide in the kelp beds exposed down from the anchor are lots of iron ingots which were used as sailing ship ballast.

Anchor length (S) is L (11'4") + radius of the shackle (5+ inches?) - it would be 11' 9" or next size up. That length would make it suitable for a vessel in the 1000 tons range according to the table above. That's big I think for wooden vessels?

Thats what I thought, Cutty Sark is almost 1000 tonnes and a very impressive ship

I could be way off the mark here, but I found records of a vessel which sank in 1885 (sail and steam powered) after it ran aground hitting rocks at 'Bordicar point' (possibly wrong spelling). It was the SS Ferrifer.

I don't know if it could have been towed North and broken up or if it just sank.

Could be a coincidence, but it was carrying 140 tons of pig iron ingots at the time!

Here is the link to the wreck site if anyone fancies a look. Unfortunately you have to pay for most of the information it links to, but the wreck report is free

https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?238484

No local SCUBA divers to consult with?

Where is this Anchor exactly? I went down the beach today for some seaweed for the allotment but came back with sea coal instead.

Sea-coal:

http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...f-sea-coal.jpg

Went for a walk onto the 'big shore' but the tide was starting to come in at that point. There has been a vast amount of sand taken away by the tides at the north end of the beach. Strata there now uncovered I've never seen before.

Walking around those flat areas of shales and thin coals I came across this fossil:

http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...fish-spine.jpg


I found one of those years ago, probably more that 30 years ago. In front of the salt pans it was. Took some photos and wrote to the Hancock Museum for an identification and got a nice reply back with the details. Unfortunately both photos and letter have not survived.

Anyway, it's a fish spine from a primitive shark like species. There were several species at that time that had rigid spines on the dorsal fin and/or pectoral fin. I note from Fowler's book 'The Geology of the Country around
Rothbury, Amble and Ashington' "Mr. Eckford states that in a small collection at Amble school are Gyracanthus spines, said to have been got near the base of a conglomeratic sandstone, where he himself found a fish-tooth and fragments of spines." (relating to strata near link house)

So one likely candidate is Gyracanthus.

Gyracanthus from a drawing on Wikipedia:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...s_NT_small.jpg
image licence details


This is a drawing of earlier but related Gyracanthides showing the spines


But... I'm not sure if this is the same species. this fossil has a serrated edge to the spine:

http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...rated-edge.jpg


I remember the one I found at the salt pans had a very clear serrated edge so made a point of photographing this one.


In close up it looks sort of translucent, amber like:


http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...e-close-up.jpg


Anyway, which ever species it's from it's a weird and wonderful object and I'm delighted to see one again.

Right. back to anchors.

Ye olde anchor chain on the beach:


http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...mble-beach.jpg


can you see it?? :)


http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...le-beach-2.jpg


http://www.coquetandcoast.co.uk/imag...le-beach-3.jpg

lens cap in there for scale.