Final Report Discovery Projects: Unpath'd Waters: Marine and Maritime Collections in the UK. Towards a National Collection

The UK has a rich maritime heritage. It is impossible to tell the story of our islands without talking about our relationship with the sea. This maritime past is becoming increasingly important. People are more aware of our exploitation of the sea and topics such as colonialism, slavery and immigration.
Unpath’d Waters therefore sought to increase interaction with the UK’s maritime heritage by making it easier to research and easier for the public to discover and share stories in new ways. Despite its importance, it is not always easy to study our maritime heritage. Records, maps and objects are scattered across hundreds of different archives, museums, libraries and galleries.
A large part of our work has been to develop new ways of making information across these different collections easy to search and find.
This will help everyone – from researchers asking new questions to members of the public having direct access to records. We hope this will encourage more experts from all disciplines to use maritime collections in their own work. To make sure this project has a lasting impact, we have published all our methods, outputs, code and research so anyone can use it in their work and help the future of UK maritime heritage.