Fox: Dunbar, Firth Of Forth

NT67NW 8007 unlocated

NLO: Dunbar [name: NT 678 790].

Location formerly entered as NT 6830 7959 [N56 0.5 W2 30.5].

Not to be confused with NT78SW 8001.

The map sheet assigned to this record is arbitrary, being derived from the location cited by Larn and Larn. Whittaker cites the name of the vessel as 'HMS Fox' and notes the discovery of wreckage at 'Tynningham Sands'; Tyninghame House is at NT 621 799 and the name Tyninghame Sands presumably applies to the extensive sands at the mouth of the River Tyne (around NT 640 795).

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 19 June 2002.

R and B Larn 1998; I G Whittaker 1998.

In his discussion of the preservation process of shipwrecks, Lyell (1830-3) notes that the man-of-war Fox was stranded off the coast of East Lothian in 1745 and 'went to pieces'. In about 1778 a violent storm revealed part of the wreck and also several masses 'consisting of iron, ropes and balls' which were 'covered over with ochreous sand concreted and hardened into a kind of stone'. The 'substance of the rope' was 'little altered' but the 'consolidated sand' retained perfect impressions of parts of an iron 'just in the same manner as impressions of extraneous fossil bodies are found in various kinds of strata'.

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 17 January 2003.

C Lyell 1997.