On behalf of Historic England, Fjordr is working on two projects about the First World War at sea, East Coast War Channels and Dover Sector. Amongst their objectives, both projects are encouraging people to find out about heritage sites relating to the war at sea and to add their own information to archaeological records.
Fjordr is working alongside the CBA Home Front Legacy (HFL) project and CITiZAN. Both HFL and CITiZAN are helping people to record archaeological sites. HFL’s focus is on the very wide range of heritage sites associated with the First World War, on land as well as at sea. CITiZAN is recording archaeological sites just from the coast, but from every period. There is more information about their work on the Home Front Legacy and CITiZAN websites.
Both HFL and CITiZAN have online toolkits and apps to enable people to record archaeological sites. You can also use these toolkits and apps to record sites relating to the First World War at sea. To help you get started, Fjordr has produced a short guidance note that you can download here.
One of the trickier aspects of recording archaeological sites at sea is the way that positions are recorded. Recording with the HFL and CITiZAN tools is based on Ordnance Survey grid references, rather than latitude and longitude, as commonly used at sea. To help translate from one to the other, Fjordr has also produced a guide on recording positions, which can be downloaded here.