TOP 10 HISTORIC SHIPWRECKS

Britain's coastline is littered with eerie ship graveyards. Ben Lerwill picks his most compelling wrecks, many of which you can visit

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1 ST Sheraton, Norfolk

It's now been 78 years since the Steam Trawler Sheraton washed up on Hunstanton Beach, and it’s been a Norfolk landmark ever since.

At low tide, its metal ribs and corroding body are still clearly visible below the Old Hunstanton Lighthouse, its faintly prehistoric appearance at odds with the jacketed dog-walkers who pass it daily. So how did it get here?

Therein lies a story – or rather, several. Built in Hull to withstand the turbulent conditions of the North Sea and launched in 1907, it spent its first years working out of Grimsby as a fishing vessel, before the First World War broke out. It then became one of 800 trawlers requisitioned by the Royal Navy to carry out antisubmarine duties, laying nets and booms to deter U-boats. After returning to its fishing grounds between the wars, further service followed in the Second World War, when it was fitted with a gun and echo-sounding device and put on patrol duty.

Being a small ship with four long decades of sailing behind it, the Sheraton was decommissioned in the mid-1940s, stripped of any valuable components, painted bright yellow and towed to The Wash to be used as target practice for the RAF. As if in revolt at this ignominy, however, Mother Nature saw fit to break the ship from its moorings in a storm in 1947 and wash it onto the shoreline, where it remains to this day – a skeletal low-tide tribute to a vessel that survived two wars.

You'll find parking close to the lighthouse, and homemade cake at the nearby Cliff Top Café and Beach Shop.

2 Mary Rose, Hampshire

Arguably the most famous British shipwreck of all is the legendary