The warship was a part of Oliver Cromwell's fleet of six vessels which attacked a Royalist stronghold at Duart Castle in Mull, UK, during the English Civil War.

[2][3] A naval diver found the remnants of the Swan in 1979 and important items from the wreck were recovered during the 1990s in an excavation led by maritime archaeologist Colin Martin from the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland.

[4][3] Items recovered at that time included a corroded pocket watch which appeared to look like "...little more than a lump of rock from the outside", many silver coins, iron guns and other military artifacts.

On 13 September 1653, a violent storm blew up from the north west, which resulted in two commandeered merchantmen, Martha and Margaret of Ipswich and Speedwell of King's Lynn being sunk, along with Swan.

It was transferred to the National Museum of Scotland, where researchers Lore Troalen, Darren Cox and Theo Skinner decided to try to analyze the watch's interior components by utilizing a state-of-the-art computed tomography (CT) X-ray scanner, originally developed by X-Tek Systems of Tring, Hertfordshire, U.K.