Historians have utilised artificial intelligence to uncover 461 years of Britain's maritime history. The University of Southampton project trained AI to process around 100,000 pages of handwritten records, a task that would have taken years to complete manually.
The research, spanning from the Elizabethan Era in the 16th Century to just before the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century, detailed how Britain developed into an Empire through its connections with Europe. Key goods traded by Britons included coal, ale, children's toys from China, sheep guts, and Venice treacle, a herbal medicine.
Professor Craig Lambert, lead researcher, stated that compiling data from parchment books at the National Archives in Kew was a "massive task" but AI "sped up the process enormously." The AI learned to recognise historical handwriting, providing insights into "who was trading what, with whom, when and where."
The project also revealed that Europe was a more crucial trading partner than previously thought, with European markets accounting for approximately 80 percent of England's overseas trade value between 1696–97. Additionally, lost towns and their vanished ports, such as Ravenspurn in East Yorkshire which sank due to coastal erosion, were discovered.