Simon Burton in 2011 with the minion gun on display from the Church Rocks
Remains of the wreck of late sixteenth-century armed cargo vessel suggested as possibly being a Venetian trading galley, which stranded on Church Rocks, off Teignmouth.
Despite 20 years of historical and archaeological research, the origins and class of vessel on the Church Rocks wreck site remains a mystery, although it certainly dates from the 16th Century.
From studies so far made, the ship appears to have been two-masted, carvel built of some 100 to 200 tons and not dissimilar from the ‘Zabras’ the small fast communications and service vessels that accompanied the Spanish Armada in 1588.
