Protection of Wrecks Act 1973
Public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 (c. 33) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provides protection for designated shipwrecks.
Section 1 of the act provides for wrecks to be designated because of historical, archaeological or artistic value. Section 2 provides for designation of dangerous sites. Wreck sites must have a known location in order to be designated. Designated wrecks are marked on admiralty charts and their physical location is sometimes marked by means of a buoy (sea mark). Information boards are often provided at nearby launch points on land.
Wrecks designated by virtue of historical, archaeological or artistic value
It is a criminal offence to interfere with a wreck designated under section 1 of the act without a licence. Navigation, angling and bathing are permitted provided this will not interfere with the wreck. A licence is required to dive at the wreck site.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Protection of Wrecks Act 1973” as public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7251359. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Protection of Wrecks Act 1973”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 primary sources, Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 archive and Protection research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Protection of Wrecks Act 1973”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Protection of Wrecks Act 1973” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.