#Shipwrecks - Heritage Minister Josepha Madigan yesterday (Wednesday 25 April) announced the launch of a new website with an interactive map of the thousands of historic shipwrecks in Irish waters.
The Wreck Viewer has been developed to facilitate free and easy access to the Wreck Inventory of Ireland Database compiled by the National Monuments Service of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
The database holds information on over 18,000 known and likely wreck sites both off the Irish coast and in Ireland’s inland waterways.
These wrecks span the entirety of maritime travel around and within the island, from prehistoric logboats to medieval trading vessels, warships and ocean liners.
Detailed are exact locations for approximately 4,000 of the recorded wrecks. The map also provides summary information on individual wrecks and their history, voyage, cargo, passengers and, if known, the circumstances of their loss.
Information on the 14,000 wrecks in the database for which locations have yet to be fully confirmed can also be downloaded. Further details of these wrecks will be added to the database as they become available.
The Wreck Viewer complements the department’s Historic Environment Viewer, which provides information on archaeological sites across the country from the Sites and Monuments Record compiled under the National Monuments Acts and from the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.
Speaking on the new Wreck Viewer yesterday, Minister Madigan said: “Of particular interest, in this decade of centenaries, are the stories of those wrecks from the First World War.
“Over 1,000 ships were lost off the coast of Ireland during that conflict, in effect bringing the Western Front to our shoreline and alerting the Irish people to both the grim realities of war and the scale of the tragic loss of life that took place on land and sea.”
The minister added that it’s hoped the website will “promote a much greater appreciation and awareness of our marine heritage and at the same time provide an essential tool to help the protection of this remarkable resource.”
