The Government has the power to safeguard the site of any shipwreck in English territorial waters. Historic England manages the licensing scheme that enables access to the wreck sites. It is a criminal offence to interfere with a protected wreck without a licence. Wreck sites are identified as being likely to contain the remains of a vessel, or its contents, which are of historical, artistic or archaeological importance.

Gridded data, in ascii text format, of wrecks at the spatial extent of the North Sea (2012). Data are produced at three different spatial resolutions: 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 decimal degree, respectively. Values represent estimated proportion of grid cell occupied by structures.

Source data, obtained upon request from the Wreck Site (https://www.wrecksite.eu/), were processed and aggregated to support projects under the INSITE (INfluence of man-made Structures In The Ecosystem) programme.

This dataset consists of all identified shipwrecks and aircraft wrecks that fall within Northern Ireland's Marine Plan extent. These include wrecks which have been designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 (PWA 1973), the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (PMRA 1986) and the Historic Monuments and Archaeological Objects NI Order 1995 (HMAOO 1995). These designated heritage assets have been labelled accordingly. The dataset includes detailed information on each wreck; including the name of the vessel, type of vessel, accuracy of the position data, condition, date of sinking, and the UK Hydrographic Office number (if the location has been verified by UKHO). Wrecks for which there is only documentary evidence are not included; they are recorded on the Density of Documented Losses layer on the NI Marine Map Viewer and Historic Environment Map Viewer. The dataset was reviewed as part of DAERA's 2023 coastal heritage resources mapping project and all information previously compiled was updated at this time.