She was the greatest ship that Scotland ever sailed, built in Newhaven harbour a mere 2 miles from Edinburgh City Centre. It was said all the trees of Fife were cut down to build her and when completed she weighed up to 1,000 tonnes. She was bigger than HMS Victory, had 57 guns and a crew of 1,400.

When she first sailed she was the biggest warship in the known world, her existence caused such a panic in the English Royalty that King Henry VIII, in a fit of rage, instantly demanded a bigger warship be built.

She was called the Great Michael, she was the largest, most powerful and most technologically advanced warship of her day. Gilded, painted and with lavish carvings covering the hull she was a symbol of national pride for Scotland, a statement that cemented Scotland’s place among the merging naval powers of the 16th century leading to a joint venture into the Caribbean with the French, the capture of Borburata, and the founding of the first Scottish colony on Charles Island.

Though her time was short, vanishing in 1523 a mere 12 years after her launch in 1511 (fate unknown) she remains one of the most significant vessels ever constructed in Scotland, the ship that sent shock-waves around Europe marking a new era of naval design, founding the port-town of Newhaven and really annoying King Henry VIII.

And until today I’ll bet you any money you’ve never heard of it.

It has become a sore point of topic among Scottish historians that the representation of our own history in modern media, history books, and museums, is almost comedic in the levels of inaccuracies and fantasy stereotypes presented as factual to the intended audience.

The pinnacle of this to many historians will always be the tale of William Wallace, but to me it is Great Michael.

Wallace has monuments, books and films dedicated to him and has always been a person of some significance in the minds of the common public, a figure recognisable throughout the world, even if known only for the film Braveheart a film which tops the charts as one of the most historically inaccurate films of all time, the Great Michael, however, has nothing.

There are no monuments to its construction, even in the port of Newhaven, now part of Edinburgh City, is there any indication a ship of such magnitude was ever built there. The museum that once stood directly opposite the Great Michael’s berth was entirely dedicated to the lives of Newhaven’s Fishwives and did not mention the ship once.

Additionally the National Museum of Scotland, an entire museum dedicated to the history of Scotland, makes no reference to the ship, even when discussing Scottish naval history. When asked the museum could not give me an explanation of why the ship was omitted from the displays and smugly pointed me to a model of the ship on display at Ocean Terminal – a shopping centre in Edinburgh.

I visited Ocean Terminal and found the model, previously housed at NewHaven primary school, on display in a disused store front being advertised for rent, the ship was miss-labelled with little information to the significance of the vessel displayed; not helped when a small child ran up to the display and happily exclaimed “look mommy a pirate ship” to which her reply was “Yes son Blackbeard, that was his ship”.

Now thankfully I’m not the kind of person to angrily lecture a small child and their family on the cultural importance of 16th century naval warfare when all the child wants to do is wave a stick around and pretend to be a pirate for a bit, but what pains me is this is the only display of the Great Michael in the world, there is a second model in Fife but it hangs from a ceiling and no information on it is presented.

Children are not taught of it in school, there is no depictions of it in any Scottish media, no monuments or plaques to its construction, its existence is mentioned only in passing on most historical websites, and it is significantly absent from 99% of all books on Scottish History.

Its only true recent historical depiction comes from Susan Morrison, a radio presenter and columnist for the Evening News, whos hour long telling of the history of the Great Michael was last broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland at 2 minutes past midnight back in 2011 and has never been re-broadcast nor made available for digital listening.

Compare this to the Mary Rose, Great Michaels English counterpart and flagship of King Henry VIII’s fleet, a ship almost every school child knows and a ship you probably have heard of.

The Mary Rose has a museum all to itself, recently refurbished at the cost £35 Million, it has been the subject of countless documentaries and books, as well as a restoration and refurbishment program that has been running for over 30 years.

You can buy a scale model of it in Edinburgh for about £20.

We know so much about that ship, the life of those on board, their names and even their faces have been re-created for the amusement of visitors to its new resting place which proudly displays close to 19,000 artefacts recovered from the wreckage as well as details on the history of the ship and the theories of how it sank.

It is carefully omitted from the sinking theories that Great Michael (under a French Flag) was present at the battle and eye witness reports from the French side state the two ships had been firing on each other at the time the Mary Rose made her fateful turn and capsized.

A GIS (Geographic Information System) survey run by Dominic Fontana, a geographer at the University of Portsmouth claimed to support the French eye witness report that the ship had been hit on its lower hull and was taking on water. The ill-fated sharp turn initiated by the Mary Rose was an attempt to beach itself in the shallows.

Of course the Great Michael is never once mentioned in the Museum and depictions of the battle only ever show the French Galleys that had been brought in to shell the English fleet from range.

Great Michael’s Wikipedia page currently details more information about the ship than any museum in Scotland, and is a mere 640 words in length. Throughout the description of the ship it is described as being “Too big and costly” and Scotland “Too small and too poor” to afford her.

Meanwhile the articles regarding the Mary Rose and her bigger sister Henry Grace a Dieu make no mention of the extraordinary cost of either vessel, that King Henry VIII nearly bankrupted himself in an attempt to construct a larger ship, nor is it mentioned that both ships could not be sailed in rough weather, restricting them to docks during the winter months only to be launched for ceremonial reasons.

And this is unfortunately typical of the way British history is portrayed, in schools across the country, children are taught of the vast glory of the British Empire, that it was the cultural envy of the world with a navy so powerful that even the full might of the Nazis could not break our will. The works of Shakespeare and images of Spitfires flying overheard heralded by Churchill’s “finest hour” speech to the tune of “I vow to thee my country” are so defiantly ‘English’ in their origin and so synonymous with British pride in the love for a long dead Empire which, for three centuries shaped the fabric of existence in Britain, that there is simply no place for something so outrageously Scottish.

Scotland has never truly identified with the idea of being ‘British’ and in terms of the British Identity Scottish culture is boiled down to it’s comedic basic and vague components, kilts, bagpipes, and Nessie.

Scottish history is taught through the eyes of England, lessons on the Ancient Scots are told through the perspective of the Romans and “what they did for us” with descriptions on the ancient picts being left at mad naked men, covered in blue paint constantly attacking a wall.

Lessons on the 15th Century are referred to as the “Tudor” period and stories of King Henry and his many wives take precedence over Scottish King James the VI & I and his many boyfriends. Scotland shall always be historically portrayed as “small and poor” and always at the mercy of its majestic and wealthy southern neighbour, in such cases things like the Great Micheal, which challenge that rhetoric, simply have no place.

In ancient China, new emperors who ascended to the throne had a habit of burning all history books and chronicles of their forebearers, their belief was that before them there was no history and no China. In its own way, England has done the same: It is not Scottish history is it ‘British’ history, and Britain means England, England means London and before either there was nothing.