Page 36 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

Chapter 2: Research 15
have always been of interest to the government and public alike. If a ship is wrecked in a relatively populated part of the world, there will usually be a record of the event. The problem is trying to find out if the record has survived. The further back in time the event occurred, naturally, the less likely it is that the record survived and the more difficult it will be to find. When a wreck has occurred in a remote or unpopulated location, the only hope is that there were either survivors who reached civilization and reported the event, or that someone saw the wreck site after the event and noted its location. The researcher, therefore, needs to use a fair amount of intuition and imagination in seeking sources of this information.
In the case of a more extensive research program related to a region or country, it is necessary to build up a complete record of all known sites in the region. This requires very detailed and ongoing research, and the results can be used not only to assist in field identification of sites but also as part of a site management program. An example of this type of approach, used in Western Australia by Henderson (1977a), developed into an extensive shipwreck register of all known losses on the coast. The register was compiled from archival sources such as Customs Department Volumes, Colonial Secretary’s Office Files, Board of Trade Wreck Registers and Certificates, Lloyd’s Survey Registers, newspapers, and other sources dating from European settlement in 1829 until the beginning of this century. This register now acts as the main reference for identification of wreck reports to the Department of Maritime Archaeology of the Western Australian Maritime Museum. Even with this register of more than 1000 losses, four sites dating from the first two decades of the 19th century have been reported since the register was started and five sites from the 17th and 18th centuries were identified in the 1960s. These sites, of course, would not have been discovered in the survey of 19th century Western Australian sources, but without the register, there would be an enormous problem in the iden- tification of any site. There are some examples of research-based projects that will give the reader more depth in this field, in particular, Hargrove (1986).
Wreck registers have been established in other countries including Sweden (Cederlund, 1980) and the UK (Allen, 1994; Hydrographic Depart- ment London, 1950; Larne and Larne, 1997; Parker and Painter, 1979). In some cases, these registers only list sites that have been located, and thus cannot serve as an aid to identification.
There are many different levels at which this type of research can be done. In the case where a broad survey is being undertaken, it is not possi- ble to do detailed systematic research on a particular wreck. Alternatively, if one plans to go out to look for a site, a very detailed study of all the avail- able information is required. Often long periods of time are spent doing