Thames Estuary

These discoveries have been made thanks to Crossrail's massive excavations, but not all archaeology involves digging into the ground.

In the Thames estuary, a team of divers is battling the elements to solve a maritime mystery.

And they've sent us this dive diary.

In 1665, Britain was gearing up for war with the Dutch, primarily to win back valuable trade routes to the New World.

When suddenly, in the mouth of the Thames, an explosion blew her to pieces.

No one knows what caused that explosion.

And to have any hope of solving the mystery, the first challenge is to rescue the London from the savage currents and ravenous wildlife of the Thames estuary before she's lost forever.

In 2014, Cotswold Archaeology, Historic England and local Southend residents launched a rescue mission.

Yeah, I think we've only got one desalination plant in the whole country and it's off the Thames somewhere.

Yeah, off the Thames Estuary.

We need to

fuck another one, quick smiles, obviously, because these profiteering bastards have been taking all the money instead of replacing the infrastructure and building more.

And it's funny because you don't see it everywhere you go.

In the UK, it's nearly all, at the moment, it's nearly all, historically, it was all in the North Sea, in the Thames Estuary and in the Irish Sea.

So if you drive along the North Wales coast, for example, you just see wind turbines.

It's just wind turbines all the way along.

...

Thames Estuary.

Trick question.

Yeah, trick question.

My grandparents have always lived on the Suffolk coast, so very much in this sort of area.

And my grandfather was in the Merchant Navy and then later on became a river pilot up the Thames estuary.

And he left school very young and was completely self-educated.

So he would go off on these voyages and he'd pick a subject and that would be the subject that he was going to learn about on this voyage.

It is morning, and I wanted to turn the camera on and show you, because it's not just Madeira that has nice views.

This apartment is on the Thames Estuary, overlooking it, and has gorgeous views.

He's gone now, actually.

He's gone on a trip to Singapore.

A peace was drawn up between Alfred and Guthrum of East Anglia, defining the boundary between their realms.

It was to run along the Thames estuary to the mouth of the Lee, bracket a few miles east of London, end of bracket, then up the Lee to its source near Leighton Buzzard, and due north to Bedford, then eastwards up to the Ouse to Watling Street, somewhere near Fenny or Stony Stratford.

From this point the boundary is left undefined, probably because the kingdoms of Alfred and Guthrum ceased to be conterminous here.

England now had peace for some twelve years.

That's about 45 minutes east of London by train.

Uh, and he lived there with his mother and younger sister in a detached house overlooking the banks of the Thames Estuary.

After he graduated from the University of Kent, he started working as a ship broker in London, and he had what most people would consider a, a good job in the city.

But apparently, it was, uh, very nearly impossible to buy even a modest family home.

The de Havilland company had built a swept-wing experimental jet called the DH 108 Swallow.

Geoffrey de Havilland Jr. was flying it over the Thames Estuary in September of 1946 when the aircraft entered a compressibility dive.

The shockwaves tore it apart.

He was twenty-six years old, the son of one of Britain's most celebrated aviation names, killed by the very problem everyone was trying to solve.

And with the problem of determining exact coordinates now solved, people and goods can be safely transported in vast numbers every day of the year.

It is a winter night in twenty twenty-six in the Thames Estuary just east of London.

Deep inside the hull of a modern container ship, footsteps ring along narrow metal walkways as a navigator climbs the stairs from the accommodation block towards the bridge to start his shift.

He pushes open a heavy door to cross a deck.