Updates for the month:

• 129 records edited (additional links, spelling corrections)
• 228 records moved to better locations
• 2 records deleted
• 20 new additions

The following vessels were added to the database:

• V 87 Aosta, sunk 18 February 1942 in the Mediterraean between Tunisia and Sicily
• Ariosta, sunk 15 February 1942 off the coast of Tunisa
• Saint Octave, sunk 29 May 1940 at Dunkirk
• Royal Daffodil II, sunk 7 May1941 at Liverpool – more on Instagram
• Baicin, sunk 27 February 1943 in the Ligurian Sea
• Balena, sunk 16 February 1942 in the Bay of Biscay
• Bella Italia, sunk 9 April 1943 off the southeast coast of Sardinia
• Ben Hur, sunk 13 July 1943 off the coast of Italy northwest of Livorno
• Cressdene, sunk 17 March 1942 off the coast of England east of Harwich
• Buenos Aires II, sunk 8 November 1942 off the coast of Libya
• Cadamosto, 22 December 1941 off the coast of Libya
• Capodoglio, 26 September 1941 off the coast of Libya
• Carlo Splendor, 7 July 1943 off the east coast of Sicily
• Carlotta, sunk 19 June 1942 off the coast of Montenegro
• Pearl, sunk 17 December 1939 in the North Sea
• Cinzia, sunk 20 January 1943 off the coast of Libya
• Città di Agrigento, sunk 20 July 1942 at Mersa Matrouh, Egypt – more on Instagram
• Colombo, sunk 16 April 1944 in the Gulf of Taranto
• Dungeness, sunk 15 November 1940 off the coast of Norfolk, UK
• Constantina, sunk 20 December 1942 off the coast of Tunisia

Visit the dashboard to see them all! Or use the Find-A-Ship app.

I must confess: I was wrong. In last month’s update blog post I said that “These days, since I seemed to have mined most of what is available online there aren’t many changes.” Well, this month I stumbled across an entirely new source of data.

I am referring to the UK Hydrographic Office’s Admiralty Maritime Data Solutions. There they offer a shapefile of 94,000 wrecks from around the world for hundreds of years. Filtering out only those ships that were sunk between 1939 and 1945 leaves about 4,000 records. Though the wrecks can be found all around the world, the majority of the shipwrecks in the database for the time period that I am looking at are around the UK (see map), not surprisingly. I am happy to report that it appears that I have 97% of the shipwrecks on their list.

The UK Hydrographic data isn’t perfect. There are duplicate records, records putting ships well inland and a number that are listed as NameProbably? But it’s another data source and it has inspired me to dig deeper on some of the wrecks.

As a result, this month’s update is considerable:

• 54 additions (not all because of the UK Hydrographic list)
• 4 deletions (all duplicates)
• 387 records were moved to more accurate locations
• 5 other edits

I expect the next month or two to be similar as I wade through the remaining 2/3 of the data.

See the new additions and changes on the map!