Cite this as: McKeague, P. 2026 'The Maritime Record in Scotland from Recording to Presentation', Internet Archaeology 72. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.72.7
With approximately 18,743 km of coastline along the high-water line, 462,315 km² of sea and over 900 islands, Scotland has a rich and diverse marine heritage. The maritime record for Scotland forms part of the National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE) maintained by Historic Environment Scotland (HES). HES is also responsible for formally protecting Scotland's heritage through Designations, including Scheduled Monuments and Historic Marine Protected Areas. Information in the NRHE supports decision making, research and stewardship across the historic environment. HES resources are published online through trove.scot.
Over the last decade, partnership working has highlighted the importance of sharing Scotland's maritime heritage with the wider marine community. The UK Research and Innovation UKRI Toward a National Collection Unpath'd Waters project demonstrates the wealth of and interest in the UK's maritime heritage. The Unpath'd Waters portal brings together the key datasets from the national heritage agencies in a single searchable browser. HES is a member of organisations that actively encourage the preservation and reuse of expensively gathered data. The Marine Environment Data Information Network (MEDIN) promotes the preservation, sharing of, and improved access to digital data from across the marine environment whilst the UK Centre for Seabed Mapping coordinates the collection, management and access of publicly funded data.
Information in the NRHE is organised by place (wreck), events and activities, and by archive. Each entry in the NRHE is uniquely identified through locally maintained URLs. Spatial datasets for both the designated datasets and the NRHE are published as web and download services under an Open Government Licence through the Scottish Government Spatial Data Infrastructure portal and via trove.scot.
Most of the information in the maritime record is drawn from the UK Hydrographic Office wrecks database or from comprehensive gazetteers of reported losses from documentary sources. This information can be quite technical or very brief and sometimes contradictory. Although primarily a record of loss, originally intended to inform offshore planning decisions, it is also publicly accessible online and more needs to be done to develop that aspect of the record.
Case studies explore some of the challenges in untangling the record and consider how to develop content of the record from a range of sources. These range from linking to related specialist websites to making more and better use of project archives so that the public can virtually explore difficult to access wrecks. However, exploring the potential highlights serious omissions in project archives as all too often much of the expensively gathered primary survey data is not archived, preventing subsequent reuse from monitoring the conditions or wrecks and the surrounding seabed over time to publishing 3D models to greatly improve public engagement with our online content. Following the ethos of MEDIN to 'measure once, use many times' (MEDIN 2025) much more can be made of project archives and related online resources to enhance the public experience of the maritime record provided that data is archived in the first place.
Corresponding author: Peter McKeague
[email protected]
Historic Environment Scotland
Figure 1: Relationships between the key components of the National Record of the Historic Environment (NRHE): site and wreck records; the events (activities) that inform our understanding of those records; and the associated archive from fieldwork and research (Crown Copyright Historic Environment Scotland 2026).
Figure 2: Reported locations for the wreck site of the World War I German submarine U12 recorded in the NRHE. Each wreck location is labelled with its NRHE ID. (Crown Copyright Historic Environment Scotland 2026). Contains OS data © Crown Copyright [and database right] [2026].
Figure 3 [video]: Dissemination copy of video footage (NRHE Archive ID 1471524) from an archaeological dive on the Duart Point wreck presented on trove.scot and hosted on Vimeo.
Figure 4: Bathymetric data of the seabed from the 2001 and 2006 ScapaMap surveys showing the locations of the German High Seas fleet wreck sites and scheduled area (Crown Copyright Historic Environment Scotland 2025) (after Forbes 2006). Contains OS data © Crown Copyright [and database right] [2026].
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