English warship sunk in 1703 storm gives up its secrets three centuries on

Race against time to study HMS Northumberland as shifting sands expose part of well-preserved wreck off Kent

The English warship HMS Northumberland was built in 1679 as part of a wave of naval modernisation overseen by Samuel Pepys, a decade after he had stopped writing his celebrated diary and gone on to become the Royal Navy's most senior administrator.

Twenty-four years later, after the ship had taken part in many of the major naval battles of its day, it was at the bottom of the North Sea, a victim of the Great Storm of 1703, one of the deadliest weather disasters in British history.