Monday, January 27, 2025

Dive into Your Maritime History

satellite view of an historical jetty in the River Thames

The marine area of the UK has played a pivotal role in shaping the country's history. The seas surrounding the UK are home to a wealth of historical treasures, including submerged prehistoric landscapes, shipwrecks, crashed aircraft, and maritime industrial structures. Unfortunately the historical collections, which document these sites, are dispersed across various government organizations, universities, museums, and archives in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The Unpath’d Waters Portal is a new online interface that, for the first time, enables users to access these disparate marine collections through a single, shared, and cross-searchable online catalogue. By consolidating these diverse datasets in one place, the portal allows users to uncover and study underwater artifacts and sites more effectively than ever before.

How the Portal Works

The portal provides a wealth of information about the UK's maritime past, including data on shipwreck sites, maritime archaeology, coastal defenses, maritime structures such as docks and harbors, and more. It is designed to help researchers and the general public discover and explore the UK’s fascinating maritime history. 

One of the portal’s most exciting features is its interactive map. Users can zoom in on the map and search the collections by location. As you pan around the UK and its surrounding waters, the map automatically updates to display all markers within the current view. Clicking on these markers reveals detailed information about the selected historical features.

The map is an invaluable resource for discovering more about local maritime history. For example, this morning, I used the portal to explore the historical heritage of the River Thames in East London. I discovered several nearby historical sites that I plan to visit in person in the coming weeks.

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