Re-imagining shipboard societies: A spatial approach to analysing ships of the British Royal Navy during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

Shipwrecks have always occupied a place of primary interest in the field of maritime archaeology. This article examines the spatial organization of ships in an effort to reconstruct the social dynamics of shipboard society. Shipwrecks are often the result of site formation processes that ‘spill’ the artefacts that are often used to describe shipboard life. In order to engage a holistic interpretation of shipwreck sites we must explore the structure of the ships themselves. This article contributes methodologies for a quantitative analysis of shipwreck sites to the growing toolkit of shipwreck investigation.