FAQ
Questions, answered.
Can't find yours? Send it through the contact page.
A shipwreck atlas for iPhone and iPad. 4,720 wrecks from Antiquity to today, in a full-screen feed you swipe through one wreck at a time. Each one opens into a dossier: the ship, the loss, the people aboard, where she lies, whether she has been found, and the sources behind the record.
Yes. Every wreck, every dossier, the map and the statistics are free. Wreck Lens Pro is an optional one-time purchase that adds search, advanced filters, saved wrecks, wrecks near you and the Lost at Sea Today widget. There is no subscription.
Yes. All 4,720 records and every photograph ship inside the app, so the feed, the dossiers, the filters and the statistics work with no connection at all. The only thing that needs the internet is the map's background, which Apple Maps draws from its own tiles.
No. There is nothing to sign up for. Saved wrecks and your settings stay on your device.
Records are built from Wikipedia and Wikidata, with positions, depths and protection status from official sources such as EMODnet Human Activities, Historic England and the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed. Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and public archives such as NOAA. Summaries were prepared with AI assistance from those sources. Every wreck links to what it draws on, and the app has a full attribution screen.
For many sailing ships and most U-boats, no photograph of the ship herself exists. Where the only image is of a sister ship or another vessel of the same class, Wreck Lens shows it and labels it as such: "Sister ship" or "Class photo".
Only wrecks with a published position are plotted: 2,813 of the 4,720. The rest are in the feed with their full story, but with no pin, because nobody has published where they lie.
Wreck Lens is a reference you read, not a chart you navigate by. Positions are shown as published, with an accuracy rating, and many wrecks are war graves or protected sites where diving is restricted or forbidden. Always check the local rules and official charts.
iPhone and iPad with iOS 17 or later. The Pro purchase works on every device signed in to the same Apple Account.
Please do. With thousands of records assembled from public sources, a wrong date or a mislabelled photograph can slip through. Tell us which wreck on the contact page and we will fix it in an update.