I recognised it instantly, because I used to have one just like it.
In 1990, I was working in Norwich on the Castle Mall excavation as an archaeologist, with my partner, and one weekend we decided to have a day out in Great Yarmouth. Just by chance, there was a tall ship in harbour, and it was possible to go aboard and look round. The ship was the Maria Assumpta, then the oldest square rigged sailing ship still sailing, and it was there I bought the sweatshirt.
The chap in the shop told me that he had been in the crew, and that they were sailing round to the Netherlands. He even remembered that the weather had been bad - it was a very grey day when we visited. When I was picking out my sweatshirt from the table with all the merchandise on it, the crew were sitting round a table nearby having lunch - he must have been one of them!
He told me that he stayed in the crew until the ship was wrecked, about five years later. I remember hearing about it on the news - they were coming into Padstow harbour when the engines failed and the ship struck rocks. Three of the crew were drowned.
He said that he was also an artist, and that he had carved the memorial to the ship and his lost crew mates that is now in a Cornish church. I looked it up, and it's St. Enodoc's Church in Trebetherick, which also has a memorial to Sir John Betjeman.
