A £410,000 grant has been awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund for the research project “Commemorating the Forgotten U-Boat War Around the Welsh Coast, 1914-18”.
Over the next two years the latest imaging techniques will be used to reveal details of a number of Great War shipwrecks.
Marine geophysical survey will be used to capture high-resolution data as well as underwater video footage showing the ecology and biodiversity of the wreck-sites, says Bangor University.
Researchers from its Centre for Applied Marine Sciences will carry out the work for the Royal Commission partnership project, while the Marine Conservation Society’s Seasearch gathers the ecological information from the wrecks.
Also as part of the programme, the Nautical Archaeology Society is to provide underwater-archaeology training for sports divers at two sites in north and west Wales.
“We’re excited to be delivering an underwater field-school in Wales next year during the Year of the Sea, working with Chester BSAC in particular to explore the wreck of the Cartegena off Anglesey,” said NAS Chief Executive Mark Beattie-Edwards.
“We’re also already making plans for our 2019 field-school on the wreck of the Leysian.”
Bangor and Swansea University scientists have already been surveying the Welsh coast as part of the SEACAMS2 project, which is designed to show marine renewable-energy companies the effects of placing artificial structures on particular areas of seabed, and they will now enlarge the programme to include additional shipwrecks.
Underwater footage and 3D models of the wrecks will become permanent online digital resources.
One recent survey image has revealed the wreck of the Damao, torpedoed by U-91 on 28 April, 1918. Built as the Brisbane in 1911 for the German-Australia Steamship Company, the ship was caught in a Portuguese port at the start of the war, taken over by the state and renamed.
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