Britain Today: Wreck care.

A HISTORIC wreck site, believed to be of an 18th Century merchant ship, is to be protected from interference, the Government said last night. The wreck - thought to be the Dutch East India Company vessel Rooswijk - was discovered by divers in the Kellet Gut area of the Goodwin Sands off the Kent coast in 2004.

Culture Minister David Lammy announced that he had now designated the site under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. The Rooswijk vanished in a storm in 1739, one day out from the Dutch coastal island of Texel, on only her second voyage to the East Indies.