Activities and Operations

The Story So Far....Starting from a brief account of the loss of the King’s baggage in Balfour’s "Annals of Scotland", we spent most of 1991 searching archives and libraries around the country until we had confirmed the general truth of the account and had developed a detailed picture of the circumstances surrounding the King’s Scottish coronation and his time in Scotland. We believed that the vessel had sunk within a mile of the harbour, and having established that no significant dredging had taken place in the area over the years it seemed possible the wreck might be lying buried and fairly intact, as it had capsized rather than been broken-up.

So, from 1992 to 1996 we organised a series of surveying operations, initially from the harbour eastwards into Pettycur Bay. Surveying to the west of the harbour, was more problematic, as there was a closed naval de-gaussing range which served the minehunters squadron at Rosyth. We were able to carry out remote surveys of the eastern side using magnetometers, side-scan sonar, sub-bottom profiler and limited diving operations to verify the survey data. Results from this work included an assessment of working conditions, ( zero visibility and fierce tides), a detailed bathymertric chart and over one hundred "anomalies". One of these turned out to be an armed naval tug-boat from World War I, and one was a "Hurricane" fighter plane from World War II, interesting discoveries in their own right, but not what we were looking for. We were able to develop useful relationships with academic institutions, offshore companies, and the Royal Navy, which continue to support the project and help keep us at the leading edge of underwater technological development.

Throughout 1997/8, as a result of de-commissioning at Rosyth, we have been able to continue surveying west of Burntisland harbour , again using remote sensing backed by diver verification. In addition to the aforementioned, magnetometer, side-scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling, we have added two other useful tools. One is a revolutionary system for imaging and analysis which we are unable to discus at present, the other is human,.... a map dowser. This may sound bizarre to many people, but both the dowser and the technology were pointing us to one particular location by the end of 1997. During 1998 we gradually homed in on this target, which began as a small blip on a naval sidescan image, until by Christmas 1998, and after many trials and tribulations, we had the image of a buried wooden vessel which corresponds to the dimensions we would expect for King Charles’ baggage vessel, and diver, Carl Galfskiy , was able to touch wood and corroborate the remote evidence.