Known or potential wreck records assigned to these years.
What the Record Keeps
See what Irish wreck records preserve—and what is still missing.
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How to explore
Ireland's national inventory records known and possible wrecks from charts, newspapers, registers, fieldwork, and other sources. A wreck can have a written record even when its exact resting place is unknown.
Start with the 1850s
Read the tallest decade in this dated record and compare how many entries have a vessel type or coordinates.
Choose another decade
Every view updates so you can see how the surviving detail changes across time.
Select a vessel type
Follow one source label through the monthly pattern and the records that can enter the coordinate grid.
Check what is missing
Use the final explanation to separate an absent coordinate from an absent wreck.
- Inventory record
- One known or potential wreck entry in the National Monuments Service database; it is not necessarily a wreck that has been physically found.
- Vessel type
- The classification written in the source, such as schooner or steamship; older sources may use labels differently.
- Coordinates
- Latitude and longitude recorded for a location; the source warns that a wreck's position can still be approximate.
- Month share
- The part of a selected set of records assigned to one month, shown as a percentage so groups of different sizes can be compared.
Wreck Inventory of Ireland · 1700–1945
What the record keeps
See what Irish wreck records preserve—and what is still missing.
A ship can be known from a newspaper, chart, or archive even when its exact resting place is unknown. This project follows 14,348 dated records and shows how the surviving detail changes over time.
17,981records in the source
3,303without one usable year
11.6%of dated 1700–1945 records have coordinates
Choose a decade
Each column is one decade. Taller columns contain more inventory records; the bright segment shows the share with coordinates.
Inventory records Records with coordinatesThe last column covers 1940–1945, not a full decade.
Selected period1850s
This is the largest decade in the dated 1700–1945 record.
Records whose classification is more specific than “Unknown.”
Records with latitude and longitude. The position may still be approximate.
Records within 1850s
Taller marks mean more records assigned to that year. They show the archive’s pattern, not a complete count of every loss.
1491850
1071851
2131852
1581853
1891854
1101855
1321856
1031857
1871858
981859
Compare recorded vessel types
Select a row to follow that label through the month and coordinate views. “Other” combines the remaining source labels without guessing a broader category.
You are following all inventory records from 1850s. The original classifications describe how the inventory labels a vessel; they do not guarantee that every source used the same naming rules.
When the recorded losses fall
Each bar shows a month’s share of the selected records. The thin mark shows that month’s share across 1700–1945 for the same vessel-type filter.
13%Jan
11%Feb
10%Mar
9%Apr
4%May
4%Jun
2%Jul
3%Aug
7%Sep
8%Oct
14%Nov
16%Dec
Dec has the most selected records237
That is 16.4% of all inventory records in 1850s. It does not measure the chance of a wreck in that month.
Which records can enter a coordinate grid
Only records with latitude and longitude appear. Each square groups positions into a half-degree area so approximate coordinates are not shown as exact points.
North ↑Half-degree cells
25° westSouth ↓5° west
Why are so many positions missing?
The inventory draws on charts, registers, newspapers, fieldwork, and first-hand reports. A source may name a loss without giving a position that can be mapped.
The National Monuments Service says its viewer shows only records with a known location and that those positions can be approximate. New information continues to change the inventory.
This project counts what the snapshot contains. It cannot estimate every wreck, compare true danger between decades, or explain why one period was documented more fully.
Why this exists
The question
How do the number, vessel labels, recorded months, and known positions in Ireland's wreck inventory change from 1700 through 1945?
What to try
Start with the 1850s, then choose another decade or vessel type to update the annual record, month pattern, and coordinate grid together.
Method and limits
About the data
I selected the Wreck Inventory of Ireland from TidyTuesday's 2026 catalog after checking the underlying National Monuments Service dataset page, the Wreck Viewer notes, and the stated Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. The official dataset describes a June 20, 2024 export. I pinned TidyTuesday's cleaned CSV to commit f55f1f30735a689efa3de1877b9d641d934eaf0f, retrieved its 3,579,278 bytes on September 27, 2026, and verified SHA-256 5bcb8fc3131f46e7af11e187f2743edf78a37e500cef2a2efef0bb650c0a3427.
The reproducible reduction validates the checksum, byte count, and 17,981 source rows. It keeps the 14,348 records assigned to 1700 through 1945 because the inventory is intended to include all known pre-1946 wrecks but only some later wrecks. It groups records by decade and year, preserves the source's exact vessel classifications for its eight largest labels, combines the remaining non-unknown labels as “Other recorded type,” counts month shares, and measures whether latitude and longitude are present. The page imports a 42,870-byte static snapshot with SHA-256 3c828ea7a10f68cda7d4b5f263c725dbed7964eeccad7c6eee89ca99c57d56eb and makes no runtime requests.
To avoid implying false precision, the coordinate view aggregates recorded positions into half-degree cells across 46.5–57.5 degrees north and 25–5 degrees west. A record with coordinates may still have an approximate position. The interface never turns a missing coordinate into a zero or places it on the grid. Month bars use shares within the selected records, which makes differently sized groups comparable but does not measure the probability of a wreck.
The inventory combines newspapers, registers, charts, third-party wreck sources, fieldwork, and public reports collected under changing conditions. Counts can reflect shipping activity, conflict, survival of documents, research attention, source coverage, and database rules. This snapshot cannot estimate every wreck, establish why a decade has more records, compare true danger between months, or treat improving coordinates as proof that later records are complete.
Skills used
- Data analysis
- Data engineering
- Statistical reasoning
- Systems design
- Visualization
- Information design
- Interaction design
- Visual design
- Creative coding
- Product thinking
- Editorial storytelling
- Accessibility
- Performance
What the data shows
- The 1850s contain 1,446 inventory records, the most of any decade from 1700 through 1945. December has the most records in that decade at 237, while only 64 records, or 4.4%, have coordinates.
- The 1910s contain 1,271 records, including 476 labeled Steamship. The year 1917 has 574 records, the largest single-year count in the selected period, and 630 records from the decade have coordinates.
- Across the full 1700–1945 selection, 1,664 of 14,348 records have coordinates. The changing share reflects what the inventory can place, not the share of all wrecks that have been discovered or the danger of a period.