Whose Ships Sank Where? Flags of Shipwrecks in Europe's Seas, 1744 to 1945

Which nations' ships were lost in which of Europe's seas, and how did the mix change between the age of sail and the end of the Second World War? I treat English Wikipedia's lists of shipwrecks, compiled by volunteers largely from Lloyd's List and contemporary newspapers, as a register of losses. I parse 236,326 entries from 1,251 list pages, group the flags they record into national groups that are consistent across changes of state, and place each loss at the first specific place its description links, at coordinates given in the list, or at a Wikidata wreck position. 106,550 wrecks fall in European seas. Of these, 68% flew the British flag, rising to 89% in the Irish Sea and its approaches. Two seas have another flag on top: the Bay of Biscay (French, 38%) and the Norwegian Sea and Arctic (German, 31%). Measured by the effective number of flags, the Kattegat and Skagerrak (4.63) and the Mediterranean (4.55) are the most mixed seas, and the Irish Sea (1.24) the least. The British share fell from 77% in 1793 to 1815 to 49% in the First World War and 30% in the Second, when German ships were the largest group (33%). A hand check of 100 placed entries found 92 placed correctly and 5 at a county centroid. Because the record is built from British sources, the shares describe the record rather than all losses; the contrasts between seas and eras are the more robust finding. Interactive version: https://tristan-hotham.github.io/wrecks-of-europe/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/wrecks-of-europe. Blog post: https://blog.tristanhotham.com/2026/10/26/wrecks-of-europe/.