Class #2 Exercise

As Rutgers University, New Brunswick is built “on the banks of the old Raritan”, I was curious so see if any of New Jersey’s shipwrecks occurred nearby, and I did find eight data entries that relate to the Raritan River.

This data set was constructed by the New Jersey Maritime Museum, and therefore it seems reliable and accurate. Originally, the files had been on paper, but much of the information is now transcribed onto a Google sheets for easy public access. The Google sheet makes it simple to sort through the 4500+ shipwrecks and filter for key information and details. For example, I could easily find that Schooners are one of the most frequently shipwrecked vessels in New Jersey. Out of the 4600 ships, over 2000 were schooners, about 45%. To access the dataset, follow this link: https://njmaritimemuseum.org/shipwreck-database/.

This data set does not include ships intentionally sunk, or shipwrecks whose location is known but identity remains unknown. While the location lost of the ships is noted, many omit the exact latitude and longitude.

Some further questions that could be answered with this data set are (1) Are there multiple ships lost at the same time by the same cause? (2) Is there a certain type of ship that was most often shipwrecked or a certain location where shipwrecks were most common? (3) Were older ships lost more often than newer ships?

In recent years, the number of shipwrecks per year is very low, with a high of six (2009) in the 21st century. Compared to the high number in earlier years, I would like to argue that modern ships have less of a tendency to shipwreck. It can be argued that the reason for the difference is simply that boats are no longer the most common form of long-distance travel, but this point can be countered by assuming we have more complete records of recent shipwrecks, especially in our age of technology and media. In contrast, it is likely there are many shipwrecks from the 1700’s that we do not have on record, yet there are still many more recorded ships from that century. These two claims balance each other out, and we are left with our original argument: Modern ships are safer and have less of a tendency to shipwreck. I would use this information to praise the ship construction industry for their safety improvements throughout the decades.