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The Sinking of HMS Royal George
A listener asks why the story of a Naval accident in 1782 which resulted in maybe over one thousand people drowning, isn’t well known. Making History consulted maritime historian Hannah Cunliffe. She told us that HMS Royal George was the Ark Royal of her day. Built a couple of decades before HMS Victory she was a huge ship for the mid eighteenth century – the biggest the Royal Navy had ever built.

Much Wenlock
Much Wenlock is concidered home of the Modern Olympics. Emma-Kate Lanyon is Curator of Archaeology and Social History at Shropshire County Council and she contacted the programme for help in finding descendents of athletes who performed at the Much Wenlock or Shropshire games in the nineteenth century. Incredibly, it is these games that provided the inspiration for Baron Coubertin to revive the Olympic Games at Athens in 1896.