Shipwrecks in Ireland

Wreck Inventory of Ireland

This week we are exploring Irish shipwreck data. The Wreck Inventory of Ireland Database (WIID) holds records of over 18,000 known and potential wreck sites in Irish waters, with data going back all the way to the 1300s.

The Wreck Inventory of Ireland Database (WIID) holds records of over 18,000 known and potential wreck sites in the marine and inland waterways of Ireland. The WIID includes all known wrecks dating to pre-1946 but some later wrecks are also included. The database also includes records of aircraft wrecks where these have come to attention.

• How many wrecks still have not been found?
• Where are shipwrecks more likely to occur around Ireland?

Thank you to Cormac Monaghan for curating this week’s dataset.

library(tidyverse)
library(praise)

wreck_inventory <- readr::read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/main/data/2026/2026-06-30/wreck_inventory.csv') |>
    mutate(year2 = as.numeric(str_extract(descriptive_date, "\\d{4}"))) |>
    mutate(century = floor(year2 / 100) * 100 )

wreck_inventory |>
    ggplot(aes(x = classification)) +
    geom_bar(fill = "purple")

wreck_inventory |>
    summarize(count = n())

# A tibble: 1 × 1
  count
  <int>
1 17981

wreck_inventory |>
    group_by(classification) |>
    summarize(count = n()) |>
    arrange(desc(count))

# A tibble: 138 × 2
   classification count
   <chr>          <int>
 1 Unknown         7941
 2 Schooner        1585
 3 Steamship       1246
 4 Brig             944
 5 Barque           793
 6 Ship             703
 7 Sloop            400
 8 Smack            380
 9 Brigantine       314
10 Boat             293
# ℹ 128 more rows

wreck2 <- wreck_inventory |>
    group_by(classification) |>
    mutate(count = n()) |>
    filter(count >= 50) |>
    #filter(classification != "Unknown") |>
    filter(century >= 1700)

wreck2 |>
    ggplot(aes(x = classification)) + 
    geom_bar(aes(color = classification)) + 
    labs(x = "", y = "") + 
    theme_minimal() + 
    theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 45, hjust = 1, vjust = 1, size =4),
          legend.position = "none") +
    facet_wrap(~century)

In the last few centuries, the count of the type of ship that was wrecked in Ireland. The type of ship was filtered to only those types that had at least 50 wrecks across all time.

wreck_inventory |>
  count(wreck_name) |>         
  filter(n > 50) |>
  filter(wreck_name != "Unknown") |>
  mutate(n_dots = n %/% 10) |> 
  uncount(n_dots)  |>
      ggplot(aes(x = wreck_name)) +
    geom_dotplot(binwidth = .5) + 
    coord_flip()

praise()

[1] "You are stunning!"