⚓ Shipwrecks Map

Rooswijk 1740

Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).

Key facts

NameRooswijkWikidata label
Year lost1740English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed)
EraAge of Sailderived from year
Ship typeship, shipwreckWikidata P31 instance of
Sea / oceanNorth SeaNatural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coastEnglandofficial dataset
Position51.2746, 1.5761Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3)
Protected WreckList entry 1000085Historic England
Designated2007-01-13Historic England
Restricted area15.89 haHistoric England
Grid referenceTR4951658901Historic England

About the wreck

Rooswijk (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈroːsʋɛik]) was a merchant ship belonging to the VOC (Dutch East India Company) that was wrecked off the coast of England in January 1740. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.

Diving & visiting

This is a designated Protected Wreck under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. Under the Act, diving on or otherwise interfering with the wreck inside its restricted area requires a licence; see the Historic England list entry for details.

The wreck of the Rooswijk was discovered on the Goodwin Sands by an amateur diver in 2004. It lies in about 24 metres (79 ft) of water at the northeast end of Kellett Gut.

In December 2005, it was made public that between May and September of that year a team led by Rex Cowan had recovered some of the ship and its contents. This was done in secrecy to avoid attracting looters. Artifacts recovered included approximately one thousand bars of silver, gold coins, and a mustard jar. When the VOC was disbanded in 1798, its possessions fell to the Batavian Republic, the legal successor of which is the current Dutch State, which therefore is entitled to the objects recovered from the Rooswijk.

Location

  • Recorded position: 51.2746, 1.5761 (Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3); may be approximate)
  • Sea / ocean: North Sea
  • Nearest coast: England

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Rooswijk (revision 1374311934), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Wreck”; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.

Protected Wreck data © Historic England 2026. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).

Nearby wrecks

Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off England · North Sea · Age of Sail

Further reading