成人直播鈥檚 (BU) Maritime Archaeologist and Historian, has been featured in the latest for his Leverhulme Trust funded research.聽
is a charity with a mission to protect life and property on land, at sea and in the air by advancing transport and engineering education and research to make a significant improvement to the safety of the critical infrastructure on which modern society relies. Their annual Impact Review features profiles of individuals, like Dr McCartney, whose work is contributing to critical improvements for marine safety and environments.聽
Alex Stitt, Director of the Lloyd鈥檚 Register Foundation Heritage and Education Centre said: 鈥淟loyd鈥檚 Register has been an organisation committed to making the world a safer place since the 1700s. The purpose of the Heritage and Education Centre (HEC) is to protect this proud maritime history and use the past to enhance our understanding of maritime safety into the future. Innes McCartney鈥檚 work using HEC鈥檚 digitised archives to identify potentially hazardous wrecks in the Irish Sea is a shining example of how an understanding of the past can prove key in making the world a safer and more sustainable place.鈥澛�
Dr McCartney鈥檚 study involved accessing digitised records of ships held at the Lloyd鈥檚 Register Foundation鈥檚 Heritage and Education Centre (HEC) to help identify 129 previously unknown, or mis-identified shipwrecks in the Irish Sea. The study then used multibeam sonar data obtained by Bangor University's research vessel 'Prince Madog', which surveyed every charted wreck site.聽
鈥淭he HEC enabled us to match plans of missing ships with seabed scans of wrecks. We鈥檝e identified vessels from trawlers and submarines to large ocean liners, as well as munitions ships and tankers.鈥澛犅�
Three of the ships Dr McCartney identified were tankers that had the potential to be highly polluting wrecks to the marine environment if disturbed. Other ships recorded were found to be carrying munitions which can also present a danger to the environment and sea users.聽聽
Dr McCartney continued, 鈥淲hen a ship sinks with a dangerous cargo on board, it threatens the safety of the whole marine environment. That situation becomes more acute still if you can't identify the exact location of the ship.鈥澛�
One of those tankers is the 鈥楳V Rotula鈥� which was carrying aviation spirit from Nova Scotia when she was bombed by German aircraft in March 1941. 鈥淭hanks to our research, we now know that she broke in two and is lying in 90 metres of water, said Dr McCartney. "With the Rotula correctly recorded, marine scientists can now investigate the environmental effects of its cargo on the seabed and the surrounding area.鈥澛�
The HEC鈥檚 Ship Plan and Survey Report Collection is free to access and contains over 1.1 million documents from more than 80,000 ships. The digitised collection is a resource that is being used by historians, economists, linguists, ship model enthusiasts and marine archaeologists like Dr McCartney. 鈥淚n nearly all cases, the records at the HEC were essential to our work.鈥澛犅�
Dr Innes McCartney鈥檚 book, 鈥樷�� describes his research in more detail and will be published in September 2022.聽
For more information about our Archaeology and Anthropology department at 成人直播 please visit our website聽
