Happisburgh Church

The tower of the 15th Century St Mary's church Hapisburgh (pronounced Haze-bruh) is an important landmark to mariners warning of the position of the treacherous nearby sandbanks of Haisbro Sands. It did not work for HMS Invincible in 1801.

HMS Invincible was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched in 1765 at Deptford. Invincible was built to replace ships worn out in the recently concluded Seven Years' War. She served in the American War of Independence, fighting at the battles of Cape St Vincent in 1780, and Chesapeake in 1781 and St Kitts in 1782.

She was present at the Glorious First of June in 1794, where she was badly damaged and the Invasion of Trinidad in 1797.

On 16 March 1801, Invincible was lost in a shipwreck off Happisburgh. She had been sailing from Yarmouth under the flag of Rear-Admiral Thomas Totty to reach the fleet of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker in the Sound preparing for the upcoming attack on the Danish fleet, with approximately 650 crew on board. As the ship passed the Norfolk coast, she was caught in heavy wind and stuck on the Hammond Knoll Rock off Happisburgh, where she was pinned for some hours in the afternoon before breaking free.

However immediately she became grounded on a sandbank, where the effect of wind and waves tore down the masts and she began to break up. She remained in that position for all of the following day, but late in the evening drifted off the sandbank and sank in deep water.

Admiral Totty and 195 sailors escaped the wreck, either in one of the ship's boats or were picked up by a passing collier and fishing boat, but over 400 drowned in the disaster, most of them in the deeper water. The Court Martial investigating the incident, absolved the Admiral and the Captain (posthumously) of culpability in the disaster. The Court Martial posthumously blamed the Harbour Pilot and the Ship's Master, both of whom had been engaged to steer the ship through the reefs and shoals of the dangerous Happisburgh region, and should have known the location of Hammond Knoll, especially since it was daytime and in sight of land.

The remains of many of her crew were located about 15 years ago by chance in a mass grave in Happisburgh churchyard during the digging of a new drainage channel, and a memorial stone was erected in 1998, by the Ship's Company of the then RN aircraft carrier HMS Invincible.