The England’s Shipping project was undertaken to find ways of improving the access to archival records containing data on the character and density of shipping in the past.

An initial assessment of the archives available showed that enormous numbers of primary and secondary sources were available from libraries and museums around the country. It was also found that some data was easier to map than others. The quality and accessibility of data varies enormously between periods and from one sources to another.

A source appraisal was undertaken in Year 1 of the project. , Further information on the source appraisal.

The data collated during the project was divided between battles, ports, casualties, voyages, and anchorages. A trial dataset was collected and stored in a database. This provided the basis on which to build a Geographic Information System (GIS).