Welcome to the NJ Maritime Museum’s Shipwreck Data Base. The museum has a filing system with over 4800 folders, each folder describing the misfortune of a ship in as much detail as could be gathered. From each folder, key pieces of information have been transcribed into a data sheet. This is a collection of facts about each incident boiled down to key words and phrases to make the information searchable. Longer narrative on an event can be obtained by going to the physical files at the museum.
To access the NJ Maritime Museum’s Shipwreck Data Base, please click on the link below
This data base focuses on maritime events that occurred in the waters along the New Jersey coast, primarily the Atlantic Ocean, Delaware Bay and Delaware River. The information contained in this data base was collected from a vast number of sources including newspaper archives, ship’s logs, diaries, USLSS annual reports, shipwreck books, periodicals and many web sites on the internet. Where there was conflicting information, the most frequent or most logical choice was used.
This data base is now built using Google Sheets. While not as user friendly as Fusion Tables had been, it is still possible to conduct detail searches using the Filter option. Any comments or recommendations are appreciated. Send to Dave@njmm.org.
Two sub-sets of the data base have been removed from the main file and can be viewed separately. The first sub-set is the wrecks that have been intentionally sunk on New Jersey’s Artificial Reef system. To view the NJ Artificial Reef wrecks, please click on the link below.
The second subset is a list of all the wrecks whose locations are known but whose identity are currently unknown. To view the NJ Unidentified wrecks, please click on the link below.
Our newest addition to the shipwreck project is a map showing some of the better known shipwrecks. This map has four overlays. The first is main shipwreck map (red dots) showing wrecks that are close to the New Jersey coast. The second overlay is the offshore wrecks (purple stars). The third overlay is all of the wrecks sunk as part of the NJ Artificial Reef project (green circles). The final overlay is the original location of all the New Jersey US Life Saving Stations (blue diamonds). Each overlay can be removed to give a better view of ships from a different overlay. Please note that all ship locations are approximations. This map is not intended as an aid to navigation or treasure hunting. But if you are walking the beach in Holgate and wonder if any ships sank there, this map may be helpful. Enjoy.
We welcome your comments and suggestions. We also welcome any new information, additions or corrections to the data we are presenting here. Please send any comments to dave@njmaritimemuseum.org