Sydney Wignall

Sydney Wignall (16 October 1922 – 16 April 2012) was a British marine archaeologist, climber, explorer and spy.

Biography He was born in Wallasey on the Wirral as the son of a cobbler, the youngest of four children. He attended Wallasey Oldershaw grammar school, but left at 16 with no qualifications and later became an apprentice electrical engineer. By 1955 he was living in Colwyn bay. Wignall successfully passed on the information, but never returned to the area or to climbing again. In 1970 he helped with the wreck of Spanish Armada ship El Gran Grifón off Fair Isle excavated with Colin Martin. Wignall also made contribution through the analysis of finds from his dives. He worked out that the Spanish Amarda shot were weakened in the manufacturing process. The sudden cooling involved weakened and making the shot unstable in flight. Many of the details of his work are stored at Bangor University archives.