Tempest, Tide and Timbers evokes the ghost of an 18th century ship sunk beneath shingle on Bulverhythe Beach in a large-scale performance. We bring our expertise in creating community celebrations and the willingness of local people to participate in them to raise awareness of the impending loss of a significant part of our heritage to rising sea levels. It is a first step to delivery of a further ambitious work in September 2025 and a first collaboration between significant local practitioners

Tempest, Tide and Timbers explores a fascinating moment when an impoverished coastal community finds itself at the centre of a tempest that casts a major trading ship onto the Sussex coast. Mostly intact, the ship still lies where she beached in 1749, visible only at the lowest tides. Rising sea levels threaten the loss of the ship and inundation of much of our coastline within 25 years.

This exciting project launches Gleowit working with MSL Projects on a community participatory performance and fire spectacle on the beach at

Bulverhythe. Beneath, are the remains of the 18th century Dutch East Indiaman, Amsterdam. The volatile shingle beach has drifted from the Equator

and is likely to be lost to the sea forever, ironically 300 years from the day she was beached. For Gleowit this is an opportunity to combine our expertise in theatre and community spectacle as place-making narrative, to bring together themes of history and present day in a liminal space. Appropriately it marks the point at which the maritime and terrestrial communities intersected in 1749 taking place above the resting place of the ship.

As the captain struggled to save his ship, her cargo and passengers with neither rudder nor anchor, he headed onto what was then an estuary hoping to make repairs and float her off again. However, she sank into quicksand before she could be re-floated or her cargo and the bodies of crew members who had died on the journey cleared.

We aim to draw the attention of audiences to the fact that the Amsterdam lies at the point at which the sea is predicted soon to re-enter the Combe Valley, taking away the main south coast railway line, sewer, A road and inundating 750 homes and small businesses.

Community actors will convey the drama as she came ashore on a dark January afternoon firing her cannon to alert the local community to her plight. Onshore, more than 1000 people waited, not to rescue the crew and passengers of almost 300 but to help themselves to her rich cargo. Amongst them were members of the notorious Hawkhurst smuggling gang.

MSL has created an AV work, with sound and visual artists and professional performers working with participants from the Seaview Project. We will expand this into a performance engaging over 100 people. The script will be written from a concept draft by Margaret Sheehy of MSL by a specially commissioned writer, Anders Lustgarten. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Lustgarten) Staging and choreography will be by Gleowit (Heather and Keith Leech) with pyrotechnics and special effects by Renegade Pyrotechnics (Hastings Borough Bonfire Society). http://renegadepyrotechnics.co.uk/

In shining a light on the people of every class who gathered on the beach toransack the ship we will be asking how an impoverished community relates to the passing traffic in the Channel – the rich cargo ship, the fishing boat, the warship, the small rubber dinghy – and to the impending calamity.

Hastings, a place which has a story to tell from every era in time, has this one relic for this moment in time.