These remains are thought to be the wreck of HMS
Impregnable, a 98 gun second rate man-of-war launched in Deptford in 1786. The vessel ran aground in 1799 and despite efforts to re-float her, she was greatly salvaged and dismantled; her hull abandoned. As a result of this loss the Royal navy began building another warship - HMS
Victory. On the fateful evening of 1799, HMS
Impregnable was completing a mission to escort a fleet of ships from Lisbon. The First Mate insisted on arriving at Portsmouth before Friday; unfortunately he mistook their location as being further from the shore, and as a result the vessel ran aground on the sand. The ship lies in Hayling Bay at a general depth of 6-7m. The dimensions of the wreck site are 16m x 5m. In August 2002, Wessex Archaeology
surveyed the wreck site using sidescan and magnetometer; the results of which were particularly strong considering HMS
Impregnable was a wooden vessel. Therefore it was believed that the anomaly may be a different wreck or obstruction, constructed from a ferrous material, located near to the supposed site of HMS
Impregnable. The site was not dived in 2002, but it was investigated by the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology; the results of which can be read
here. Their thorough dive investigations concluded that this ship wreck was indeed the
Impregnable. The anomalies identified by the WA sidescan sonar results turned out to be
Impregnable's ballast of concreted iron bars. INSERT_MAP