Diving in the New Forest

Join our volunteer divers on a journey beneath the Solent. Watch the diver’s kit up with all their essential kit and then join them in the water. The Links on this page will take you to some of the shipwrecks they explored and more footage of what those wrecks look like on the seabed.

The Coastal Heritage Project covers the coast from 10m above sea level through the intertidal zone to six nautical miles off shore.

This means that a large amount of the Solent and New Forest underwater landscape is included. This area is even less visible to members of the public than the heritage contained within the tidal zone or on dry land.

The New Forest Coastal Heritage Project has now set up the Underwater Heritage Trail an exciting project that draws attention to three very different shipwrecks that lie off the New Forest Coast and in the Western Solent. The idea is to increase awareness of and access to some of the variety of archaeology that lies off our coast, but hidden beneath the waves.

To find out more about each wreck click on the links below

• Fenna
• Serrana
• Margaret Smith
• War Knight (This wreck is not marked by a buoy)
  

Not a diver?

Don’t worry if you don’t want to dive or can’t during our underwater work we carried out a large amount of filming so you can see what’s lying underneath the waves without getting your feet wet. Clicking on the wrecks above will take you to photos and videos of how the wrecks lie on the seabed. So if you are out sailing and pass one of our buoys why not find out what lies below your boat?

All the diving footage collected during the project has been scripted and edited into a 30 minute film ‘Shipwrecks of the Western Solent’ which is available from our on-line shop.

Related document

Underwater heritage trail leaflet (1.5  MB)