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Maritime Recording

“…. including the ancient and historical monuments and constructions in, on or under the sea bed…”

To many people maritime archaeology is all about diving under the sea to explore shipwrecks. The objects found often reveal a wealth of information about life on board, trade or warfare.

However, maritime archaeology is not concerned solely with understanding seafaring history. It also includes the study of the ports development and the exploitation of resources which form ship’s cargoes. Ports, harbours and landing places are where maritime adventures begin, planned by merchants whose homes and warehouses often provide clues to trading links with other countries. The busy seaways around Wales have, for thousands of years, provided conduits along which people, goods, and cultures influences have been exchanged. Sometimes, locating items which have been jettisoned overboard or lost by accident along these seaways can be as significant as finding a wreck.

In more recent times aircraft losses have added to the number of wrecks on the seabed. Losses include one of the earliest transatlantic flight attempts and a great many wartime aircraft operating to or from military airfields along the Welsh coast. Although many of these stations provided pilot training, aircraft preparation services and storage facilities, aircrews also undertook vital frontline roles including bombing raids on France, the protection Atlantic convoys, and fighter cover to deter bombing raids on Liverpool and Manchester.

Maritime archaeology also includes improving our understanding of the survival of evidence for submerged landscapes inundated by rising sea-levels, particularly since the last ice age, and how our ancestors inhabiting those landscapes responded to climate change.

Cardigan Bay is the focus of two legends relating to submerged landscapes. The earliest is the one telling how being that the land called Maes Gwyddno (the land of Gwyddno) was drowned when the priestess of a fairy well allowed the water to overflow. The origins of this legend may relate to a period of relatively rapid sea-level rise (some 14m) from the Late Upper Palaeolithic to the Late Mesolithic periods (10,500 - 6,500BC).

As can be seen, the heritage assets which are of particular interest to the RCAHMW’s maritime recording programme are diverse. They form a vast archive of potential information helping to reconstruct the story of human life along Wales’ constantly evolving coastline. The assets primarily include:

• Submerged prehistoric landscapes, associated sites and palaeoenvironmental deposits
• Terrestrial sites lost to the sea by coastal change in more recent times
• Shipwrecks (both located on the seabed and reported as shipping casualties) and abandoned vessels in intertidal areas
• Aircraft losses (both located and reported as aviation casualties)
• Isolated finds from the intertidal and offshore areas which may be indicative of the presence of a larger site or deposit with archaeological potential
• Seascape features which have been significant navigational hazards and which, together with their associated recorded shipping or aviation losses, represent areas of high archaeological potential
• Seascape or topographic features relevant to particular human uses of the sea, for example traditional anchorages and historic fishing grounds

The remit to extend the spatial extent of the National Monuments Record of Wales offshore is specified in the Commission’s Royal Warrant of July 2000.

The acquisition of a research database containing some 4,000 documentary references to shipping losses was one of the first steps undertaken. The appointment of a full-time Maritime Officer in April 2007 is allowing a concentrated programme of work to be taken forward.

Over the next five years (2008-2012) staff at the RCAHMW will be working towards the delivery of the following:

• Providing an enhanced dataset edited to a new RCAHMW maritime recording standard (estimated 5,000 shipwreck and downed aircraft, and 300 seascape features)

• Developing a GIS layer representing density analysis of shipping and aviation casualties offshore (estimated 4,000 records) to identify areas of high archaeological potential

• Providing an enhanced coastal record, including undertaking foreshore survey working with the Nautical Archaeology Society and the Welsh Archaeological Trusts

• Providing more detailed enhancements of records for located wrecks and downed aircraft to assist in the assessment of their individual importance

• Providing advice to Cadw with regard to sites that may require proactive management and/or statutory protection to highlight their national importance