Three words define us
Protection, Policy, Research
MAST was founded in 2011 to address a gaping disparity in the way our underwater maritime cultural heritage is protected compared to how cultural heritage is respected on land. In the last 12 years MAST has become a champion for maritime heritage in the UK conducting maritime archaeological projects; establishing and running the Maritime Observatory to detect and deter unauthorised salvage across the world's oceans; quietly influencing heritage management by Government; increasing public awareness, education, training and campaigning.
MAST is accredited to the Governing Bodies of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage.
The team combines high-level strategic management with experience unrivalled in the heritage sector in investigating and analysing threats to historic and designated wrecks within the UK Territorial Sea and the wider UK Maritime Area. MAST has led the ongoing investigation into the exploitation of UK historic wrecks by commercial treasure hunters and salvors including the attacks on designated World War One wrecks and wrecks defined under the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage 2001.
Our mission
- We believe that to protect our nation's future we must understand our past.
- We believe that this country's rich maritime heritage can provide a critical insight to our history, through the underwater archaeology resulting from thousands of years of seafaring, trade and warfare.
- We believe that our underwater archaeology is under threat from human activities and natural processes.
- We believe that we have a chance to enhance our future, by evaluating, recording and preserving our underwater archaeology for the benefit and education of the public.
MAST's mission is simple
It is to focus its operations on the thousands of archaeological sites that lie off our coasts and along our shorelines. Many of these are shipwrecks which are witness to thousands of years of exploration, war, and trade in cargo, people and ideas. Others are terrestrial features such as historic buildings and fortifications, harbours and submerged prehistoric landscapes. Together they and associated artefacts make up our maritime heritage. This heritage illuminates our understanding of our past, inform our sense of place within the world around us, explain man's extraordinary endeavours on the sea and show what is still possible.
Britain's maritime archaeology ranges across all periods from the remains of the oldest seafaring craft in the world, dating from the Middle Bronze Age, to the huge numbers of ships, submarines and aircraft lost in the two World Wars. Those sites that have been investigated have made great contributions to our understanding of the past. Underwater mapping in the North Sea is revealing drowned prehistoric hunting grounds and Britain's earliest human settlements. Ancient wreck sites across the south coast have revealed Bronze Age communities' long distance connections with Mediterranean, while excavations in the heart of Roman London's bustling waterfront have shown the origins of globalisation, and the wrecks of the Mary Rose and HMS Invincible have laid bare the personal lives of ordinary sailors in the Tudor and Georgian Navies.
But many more sites have been neglected and risk being lost through lack of awareness or funding. Britain's coasts are littered with the remains of more than 40,000 lost ships, more per mile of coastline that any nation on Earth, and their stories remain as yet untold. Winter storms and shifting sands continually expose and degrade forgotten wrecks, while unauthorised salvage, and looting causes the loss of others.
Despite the considerable contribution that our maritime past has made both to the UK as a modern nation and the multicultural nature of its people and communities, this internationally important underwater heritage has long been overlooked.
MAST exists to fill a long overdue void in our understanding of our nation's rich maritime heritage, to ensure that there is a sustainable future for such sites, through archaeology, research, study and dissemination.
