Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom

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Timesunion.com
By Matt Pacenza, Staff writer


American Indian artifacts at Schaghticoke a new factor in EPA decision

FORT EDWARD -- American Indian artifacts have been discovered in Schaghticoke where federal environmental officials are considering building a plant for processing PCB-contaminated mud dredged from the Hudson River.

Archaeologists hired by the Environmental Protection Agency found sharp stone points that may have been arrow or spear heads as well as shards of ceramic pots and stones used for scraping leather at the Bruno property off Knickerbocker Road.

EPA officials were quick to say the discovery is just one of many factors the agency will consider as it decides whether to place a dewatering plant in Schaghticoke, Fort Edward or Bethlehem. The agency has said it could pick one, two or all three of those sites. A decision is expected by the end of this year.

The National Historic Preservation Act requires the EPA to consider what impact its six-year, $500 million dredging project will have on area cultural and historical resources.

American Indian artifacts were not found at the Bethlehem or Fort Edward properties, most likely because development at those sites had buried or destroyed any antiquities.

The choice of who will host the dewatering sites has provoked controversy up and down the river. Residents and elected officials near the proposed sites fear that dewatering will be a loud, stinky industrial operation with heavy truck and rail traffic.

At a dewatering facility, mud from the Hudson will be squeezed dry. The wastewater will be treated and returned to the river, while the PCB waste will be shipped via rail to a secure facility outside the Hudson Valley.

By far the most stringent opposition to such a site has come from Schaghticoke, where worried residents created a dynamic grass-roots organization, which packed public meetings and sent more than 1,500 comments to the EPA.

The agency doesn't want to disrupt the resources that make neighborhoods unique, said John Vetter, the EPA's national expert on archaeology, as he addressed a community advisory meeting Thursday in Fort Edward.

"You can't appreciate the sense of place, the fabric of a community, if you superimpose objects from the contemporary world," Vetter said.

The EPA review also considers the impact dredging could have on local historical resources like canals, bridges and homes. One example is the 1709 Knickerbocker Mansion near the proposed site in Schaghticoke.

Historians believe the home was built near a tree planted to signify a peace agreement from 1676 between Dutch, English and French settlers and the Mohawks, Hoosacks, Schaghticokes, Abenakis and Pennacooks.

Panamerican Consultants, the Alabama-based archaeological firm with an office in Buffalo, did sample digs at the proposed Schaghticoke site this summer.

"What we found below ground was cooking and more cooking," said Vetter. Evidence of hearths used for preparing food was discovered in multiple locations.

Additional excavation at the site is planned, Vetter said. Officials also hope to figure out what the native people ate, he said.

The discovery of American Indian artifacts has disrupted big projects in the region previously.

In 1996, Wal-Mart withdrew a plan to build a 146,000-square-foot store in Catskill after Mohicans protested that the stores would dishonor remains and artifacts of their ancestors found at the site in the hamlet of Leeds.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Thursday, October 28, 2004


Offshore find dates to King David's time
Archaeologist hopes 3,000-year-old wood is from ancient ship

Hof Dor, Israel -- An archaeologist's dog may have discovered the first ship ever found from the period of King David and his son, Solomon, who ruled the holy land 3, 000 ago.

The remains, which have been carbon-dated to the ninth century B.C., include a huge stone anchor believed to be the largest ever unearthed. The wreckage is lying under a few inches of sand off the Mediterranean coast in shallow waters, and has yet to be examined extensively.

If the remains are indeed 3,000 years old, it would be the first archaeological artifact ever found from the era of the first kings of Israel, with the possible exception of several huge stones at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The discovery was made by a dog, according to marine archaeologist Kurt Raveh.

"My dog Petal led me to an enormous stone anchor -- the biggest in the world," said Raveh. "He was swimming, started to drown, and was suddenly standing above the water. We couldn't understand how, so we went to check what he was standing on, and out of the sands came an enormous stone anchor."

Raveh, who has studied more than 200 stone anchors, said he discovered the huge anchor -- 8.2 feet long, almost 6.5 feet wide and 1.6 feet thick during the summer near his home in Hof Dor, about 25 miles north of Tel Aviv.

Named for Dorus, son of the Greek sea god Poseidon, the hillside city was a major port for both conquerors and traders and is mentioned in the first Book of Kings. At its peak, the port had 200,000 residents.

In the past 30 years, Raveh has discovered 23 shipwrecks spanning more than 15 centuries off Hof Dor's natural harbor, including vessels made by the Canaanites, Byzantines, Persians, Mamaluks and French. His past discoveries include ancient coins, a gold cup, Crusader swords and cannons ditched by Napoleon to make room for horses so he could move his sick and wounded soldiers.

"In King Solomon's time, this was the major port for the Israelite kingdom," said ancient boat specialist Yaacov Kahanov of Haifa University. "The island here off the coast is still called Taphath, after Solomon's daughter."

Raveh also excavated the world-famous 27-foot by 7 1/2-foot "Jesus boat" discovered in 1986 by two fishermen on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where the Bible says Jesus walked on water. Archaeologists carbon-dated that vessel to the first century and believe it may have sunk in fighting between Jews and Romans.

On Tuesday, Raveh said he found the anchor and wooden beams that appear to be the King David-era boat's keel as he probed the shallow waters.

"I took a little piece of wood and sent it to laboratories in Switzerland. This week we got it back, and it turned out to be from the time of David and Solomon, 3,000 years old," he said.

The carbon-14 test from the Institute for Particle Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich dated the wood between 997 and 806 B. C. That would overlap with the rule of the ancient House of David, which governed the first united kingdom of Israel from 1,000 to 925 B.C.

This week, Raveh and a team from nearby Haifa University led by Kahanov will try to uncover the vessel for the first time in three millennia.

"Now we want to know if the wood is just beams or there is also a shipwreck from the time of King Solomon," Raveh said.

The team will also examine two Byzantine shipwrecks lying about 54 yards off shore. So far, they have pulled up dozens of coins, pieces of pottery and glass vessels that went down with the two ships, which have been dated to the 5th and 7th centuries A.D.

The archaeologists believe many more wrecks are buried inland, where the harbor once extended.

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Scotsman.com News
By Chris Court, PA News



The public will soon be able to book their seats on a mini-submarine for a voyage to the bottom of the sea.

The 18-tonne craft, now undergoing sea trials, will enable people to view in comfort Europe’s first artificial diving reef – a decommissioned warship scuttled off the Cornish coast.

And they will also be able to book the 11.2-metre long vessel for special occasions, such as an anniversary dinner on the sea bed.

Passengers will have a spectacular view of the underwater world from an acrylic sphere.

The six-seater sub is being operated by Plymouth’s National Maritime Museum, which expects to be able to take bookings for the submarine voyages in a couple of weeks.

There have already been inquiries from around the world for seats on the sub, which took three years to design.The first trips by the public are expected to begin in early summer next year.

The diesel-electric powered submarine, the first of its kind in the UK, has been built in Plymouth.It has been paid for by an anonymous American enthusiast and named after his daughter Alicia.

He has agreed to lend the craft to the museum for a year, with the option of buying it.

Although the craft will be available for hire by the public and corporations, it has been built to be capable of serious research.And there have already been inquiries about the submarine – which is capable of diving to 300 metres – from a couple of expeditions, said a museum spokesman today.

The museum created the artificial reef when it paid £200,000 for the retired RN Leander class frigate HMS Scylla and scuttled her in Whitsand Bay, east Cornwall, in March.

Hundreds of divers from home and abroad have since explored the new reef, but now non-divers will be able to take an hour-long trip around the wreck aboard the sub for £175 a head.

“Since Scylla’s placement under the waves seven months ago, the area has proved even more popular and has drawn the largest crowds ever known,” the museum spokesman added.

Later this year webcams on the Scylla will begin to beam images of the underwater world back to the aquarium.



Check this link.

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ALPENA, Mich., Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve broke ground today on a 20,000-square-foot facility in Alpena, Mich., that will preserve and highlight the maritime heritage of the Great Lakes and the shipwrecks of Michigan's Thunder Bay. The Sanctuary is managed by NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the State of Michigan. NOAA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

When completed, the facility will feature a maritime heritage "discovery center" featuring over 8,000 square-feet of exhibits on the Great Lakes, shipwrecks, archaeology, and maritime history. The center will also have an auditorium for showing films and live video feeds from Thunder Bay shipwrecks, an archaeological conservation laboratory, and an education resource room.

"The Thunder Bay Sanctuary is important to the people of Michigan and the community of Alpena," said Michigan Sen. Carl Levin. "The project will initiate a redevelopment initiative that will greatly benefit the sanctuary and the community."

"The new center will be a national destination that will allow people of all ages to share in the discovery, exploration and preservation of the Great Lakes' historic shipwrecks and rich maritime past," said Sanctuary Manager Jefferson J. Gray. "In addition, the laboratories, archives, dockage for research vessels and a field station for visiting scientists will make the center a regional research facility, not just for historians and archaeologists, but for other scientists working to ensure the health of the Great Lakes."

The facility will be housed at the former Fletcher Paper Mill, a historic property that will be renovated with an initial investment of $2.5 million from NOAA. The agency signed a 20-year lease with the building's owner, Alpena Marc, L.L.C., in September 2004.

Located in Lake Huron, the 448-square-mile Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve was established in 2000 to protect an estimated 200 historically significant shipwrecks ranging from nineteenth century wooden side-wheelers to twentieth century steel-hulled steamers. The Sanctuary brings to the American public the lore of Great Lakes maritime heritage through exploration, education and research.

NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program seeks to increase the public awareness of America's maritime heritage by conducting scientific research, monitoring, exploration and educational programs. Today, the Sanctuary Program manages 13 national marine sanctuaries and one coral reef ecosystem reserve that encompass more than 150,000 square miles of America's ocean and Great Lakes natural and cultural resources.

NOAA's National Ocean Service manages the sanctuary program and is dedicated to exploring, understanding, conserving and restoring the nation's coasts and oceans. The National Ocean Service balances environmental protection with economic prosperity in fulfilling its mission of promoting safe navigation, supporting coastal communities, sustaining coastal habitats and mitigating coastal hazards.

NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research on weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources.

On the Web:
NOAA: http://www.noaa.gov/
National Oceanic Service: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/
National Marine Sanctuary Program: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/
Thunder Bay National Marine Santuary and Underwater Preserve:
http://thunderbay.noaa.gov

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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NAS
Saturday 13th November, University of Portsmouth

The NAS Conference provides an annual update on the archaeological activities of members and non-members, and aims to appeal on both a national and international level. The 2004 conference will include the presentation of the 2nd annual Adopt a Wreck award.

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The following list of speakers will be updated as additional speakers are confirmed. There will be 8-10 speakers in total.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

Innes McCartney Researching the wrecks of Jutland

Fred Hocker Vasa: current research

Lars Einarsson The Kronan (1676) wreck site

Alex Hildred Research from the Mary Rose site

Justin Dix 3D CHIRP research

Phil Robertson 10 years of SOMAP

Mark Beattie-Edwards WreckMap Portland 2004

Amanda Bowens Stourhead 2004 - underwater archaeology in an 18th century landscaped garden

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BOOKING FORM

A Booking Form is available on-line. Please print up, complete and return to the NAS Office with appropriate payment. Don't forget, you can now pay via Credit Card!.

Please click here for a PDF 2004 Booking Form.

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The Norway Post
Rolleiv Solholm



The Kon-Tiki Museum has warned the Environmental Department that Thor Heyerdahl's "Kon-Tiki" raft made from balsawood logs is cracking up and disintegrating.

It says that the reed boat "Ra II" is also in danger of falling apart.

The Oslo museum says in a letter to Environmental Minister Arild Hareide that a new air condition system is needed to prevent further damage to Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl's famous vessels.

Museum director Maja Bauge says such a plant will cost up to NOK 2 million.

Bauge points out that the Kon-Tiki Museum is a private foundation which receives no public support, and that the institution has only a small fund to operate on.

The Kon-Tiki expedition drifted across the Pasific Ocean, from Peru to Polynesia in 1947.The "Ra II" was used on an expedition to cross the Atlantic from Morocco to South America in 1970.

(NRK)

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BBC NEWS

There are concerns for part of Cumbria's Roman heritage, which is being damaged by erosion.
Roman invaders buried and cremated their dead at Beckfoot, which lies north of Maryport.

Now the site is being badly damaged by the sea and work is being done to try to save its relics.
Local volunteers have been gathering artefacts which are being found on the beach and an underground survey of the site has now started.

Community archaeologist from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Faye Simpson said: "Some of the problem is quite serious. Beckfoot is actually quite amazing and we think quite a large cremation cemetery.

'Amazing extent'
"Unfortunately we don't know the extent of it, we don't know exactly how many people were buried there. All we do know is these cremations seem to be quite wealthy.

"The finds that are coming up are pins, brooches and a statue and subsequently we really need to do something. It's eroding into the sea at an amazing extent."

She said they were trying to organise an excavation but she said, because the problem was being caused by a natural process, archaeological organisations are struggling to help because it is not in their remit.

She said they were trying to make people aware of the situation to win public support for protecting the site.

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IC Wales
Oct 26 2004
Gareth Morgan, Western Mail



THE ship of a real-life Welsh pirate of the Caribbean has been filmed for the first time after being discovered on the ocean floor.

Harri Morgan's lost frigate HMS Oxford sank off the coast of Haiti in 1669 as the result of an explosion believed to have been ignited by a celebratory pig roast.

The legendary Welsh buccaneer gained a fearsome reputation as a naval strategist and ruthless pirate operating against Britain's enemies, Spain, France and Holland.

The ship has not been seen for over 400 years but a team led by Rick Haupt and Bruce Leeming from specialist company Ocean Discovery Networks (ODN) found HMS Oxford off Isle Vache.

The search was filmed for an S4C documentary, Chwilio am Long Harry Morgan (Looking for Harri Morgan's Ship), presented by Lowri Morgan, who only last year travelled to the depths of the ocean to explore the Titanic.

She said she had heard of her fearsome namesake but did not realise his historical importance.

Lowri said, "In reality, he wasn't a pirate but a buccaneer who later gained the respect of England's King Charles II due to his military and naval prowess."

The 34-gun ship had in fact been sent to Morgan by the king to celebrate his appointment as Admiral in Chief of the Confederacy of Buccaneers and Morgan become Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, where he died in 1688.

But Lowri says it is easy to see why pirates were drawn to the Caribbean.

"I saw amazing things on my journey under the sea including cannon balls covered in coral.

"There have been so many shipwrecks off the coast of Haiti that the locals believe that the magic of the Voodoo gods attracts vessels to the island."

Paul Calverley, the producer, added, "The discovery of the ship is an event of real historical significance, particularly to the Caribbean."



More about Morgan's biography here.

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Smithsonian Magazine

You were probably taught that the hemisphere's first people came from Siberia across a long-gone land bridge. Now a sea route looks increasingly likely, from Asia or even Europe.

Alongside a creek in central Texas runs a swath of chipped, gray stone flakes and soil blackened by cooking fires—thousands of years of cooking fires. This blackened earth, covering 40 acres and almost six feet thick in places, marks a settlement dating back as far as the last ice age 13,000 years ago, when mammoths, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats roamed the North American wilderness.

Archaeologists have amassed nearly half a million early prehistoric artifacts here at the Gault site. Among the artifacts are distinctive stone spearheads known as Clovis points, a defining feature of the Clovis people, who lived roughly 12,500 to 13,500 years ago.

A visit to the site raises two monumental questions. The first, of course, is, Who were the Clovis people? The emerging answer is that they were not simple-minded big-game hunters as they have often been depicted. Rather, they led a less nomadic and more sophisticated life than previously believed.

The second question—Where did they come from?—lies at the center of one of archaeology's most contentious debates. The standard view holds that Clovis people were the first to enter the Americas, migrating by land from Siberia 13,500 years ago across a now-submerged bridge.

This view has been challenged recently by a wide range of discoveries. Now some researchers suggest prehistoric south Asians might have spread gradually around the northern rim of the Pacific to North America in small skin-covered boats. An even more radical theory is that Stone Age mariners journeyed from Europe around the southern fringes of the great ice sheets in the North Atlantic.

According to archaeologist Michael Collins, the project director of the Gault site, "you couldn't have a more exciting time to be involved in the whole issue of the peopling of the Americas."

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Universitat de Barcelona, del 31 de enero al 28 de febrero de 2005


La arqueología náutica y la subacuática son unos campos profesionales relativamente nuevos y su presencia en las aulas universitarias es escasa, hasta el punto que no existe ninguna titulación académica en esta especialidad arqueológica.

Por otra parte los organismos autonómicos dedicados a la arqueología subacuática en: Catalunya, Comunidad Valenciana, Andalucía y el de Cartagena (Ministerio de Cultura), han posibilitado la formación de numerosos arqueólogos subacuáticos, que han adquirido un buen nivel técnico en la excavación subacuática, pero que encuentran serios problemas para completar su formación científica en un ambiente universitario que no suele tratar los temas específicos de la arqueología náutica.

Este curso de postgrado pretende ser una nueva aportación para contribuir a solucionar esta situación.

INFORMACIÓN.- www.ub.es/prehist

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Archaeology.org

It's been the season for Vikings, with a replica of a warship originally crafted in Dublin setting sail in Denmark and some important discoveries in the British Isles.

Danish researchers at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde have spent four years replicating a 90-foot-long ocean-going warship based on the museum's Skuldelev 2 shipwreck.

The vessel was one of five Viking ships deliberately sunk in the late eleventh century to block a channel at Skuldelev, Denmark. Archaeologists erected a cofferdam around the ships in 1962 and spent seven years excavating them.

While Skuldelev 2 was the largest of the cargo and warships discovered at the site, it was also the least preserved, with only a quarter of its hull remaining.

Experts have nonetheless been able to reconstruct how the ship was built, and through its building materials trace its manufacture back to the Dublin area in the 1040s.

The replica will face two years of sea trials before it sails to Dublin in 2007.

...

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Sanluisobispo.com
BY RICH MCKAY
The Orlando Sentinel

INDIALANTIC, Fla. - (KRT) - It is the stuff of pirate legends, but do not waste your breath asking Joel Ruth on what stretch of Florida's Treasure Coast he found his hoard of Spanish pieces of eight - waiting to be scratched out of the sand with bare fingers and toes.

Treasure hunters guard their secrets.
Especially, if like Ruth, they have just found about 180 near-mint silver coins worth more than $40,000.

To most Floridians, hurricane season is the time to board up windows and dread the worst. But to professional and amateur treasure seekers, it is the time to hit the beaches and hunt lost riches.

"It's why we're called the Treasure Coast," said Ruth, a bookish 52-year-old marine archaeologist with an African parrot named Euclid who has learned to squawk "Pieces o' eight."

It takes the big storms like Jeanne and Frances to rake several feet of sand off the beaches and dunes and expose gold, silver and gems sunk and scattered centuries ago.

But making a find takes more than walking the beaches with a metal detector. What separates those who make a real find from the legions of beachcombers is knowledge and patience, said Sir Robert F. Marx.

Marx is an underwater archaeologist and marine historian who was knighted by both the Spanish and English crowns for his work, including about 800 popular and scientific articles and about 60 books.

His colleague Ruth, for instance, has been keeping his eye on a certain stretch of beach in Brevard County, Fla., for 20 years, checking it every so often as the years go by, Marx said. He and Ruth think the find is part of a sunken treasure fleet off Florida's Atlantic coast.

But it took Jeanne to bring a slice of the shoreline back to where it was in 1715, he said.

That is the year a famous Spanish treasure fleet of about a dozen ships sunk in a summer hurricane, bloated with treasure headed for Philip V of Spain, Marx said.

Captain-General Don Juan Esteban de Ubilla, commander of the flotilla carrying gems, gold, silver and porcelain from China - hence the name Plate Fleet - set sail in the late summer 289 years ago.

Under pressure from the king to bring treasure to boost a war-ravaged economy, Ubilla set sail even though hurricane season had already started. Leading with the Capitana, the fleet hugged Florida's Atlantic coast, heading north in the hopes of catching the trade winds of the Gulf Stream. With no more warning than a morning of steel-gray skies, a tempest snapped the ships like matchsticks, a few survivors would later tell.

Nautical records of salvage attempts and previous finds pointed to the spot Ruth staked out to search. Others know the spot and have made finds there, too.

The basic rules of treasure hunting on beaches include finders keepers, but do not dig into the dunes or in protected areas.

Because riches go to those who are there first, "You have to be Johnny on the spot," said Mitch King, vice president of the Treasure Coast Archaeological Society.

"(Hurricane) Jeanne did more destruction than any storm has in years," King said. The last storm to yield finds like Ruth's happened on Thanksgiving about two decades ago, he added. Treasure hunters still whisper about it.

And you have to be quick, Ruth said, because the high tides right after a storm often dump several feet of sand back on the same beaches, leaving the heavy treasure well below the reach of most metal detectors.

"You could be walking over a million dollars in coins and never know it," said Ruth, who makes a living on salvage efforts and identifying and restoring ancient coins.

He headed out with his metal detector about 8 a.m. Sept. 26, when Jeanne's winds started slacking off. He knew the storm that brought some of the worst destruction to Florida's coast could also yield the most riches.

He would not say where he went other than "somewhere in Brevard." He shimmied down to the beach from a place where there is access - and knew right away it was a good spot. There was no modern trash - and the waves had cut deep into the sand.

"I made a find almost immediately - a big green (piece of) eight," he said.

It was green from age but was not worn or corroded, which told him the coin spent most of the time deep under the protection of the sand - making it far more valuable to collectors.

Ruth stayed for about four hours, filling his pockets with coins until his batteries were about dead and the high tides' waves bashed him against the sandy cliffs.

He went back the next day, but there was too much sand piled up. He did not find a thing, other than modern rubbish.

He showed his find to Marx, who smiled with approval and the respect of a fellow hunter. Although many marine archaeologists would call them "plunderers," professional treasure hunters say they give more discoveries to museums and make more historical finds because their ventures pay for new searches a life in academics could not finance.

And where does Ruth find the coins? "I'm sworn to secrecy," Marx said.

But if another storm hits before hurricane season ends Nov. 30, he will probably go back.

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A new book has just been published.

A Harbour Large Enough to Admit a Whole Fleet is a refereed collection of papers on Port Arthur's fascinating maritime history and archaeology.

It includes articles on the history of the shipbuilding at Port Arthur and the colonies by Mike Nash and Andrea Humphreys; the archaeology of Port Arthur’s maritime past by Cosmos Coroneos; and an investigation of the extended peninsula blue networks by Greg Jackman.

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Researchers with Exploramar discovered at depths of 600 to 750 meters a group of unusual megalithic structures which they decided to call MEGA. Upon the announcement of the finding by the press, diverse opinions as to its origin have captured the popular imagination.

Some have spoken of a "submerged city", of the remains of "Atlantis", among other similar ideas.

This report written by Manuel Iturralde-Vinent, senior researcher of the Natural History Museum and associated reseracher with Exploramar, provides a summary of the hypotheses that are now under analysis and the evidences upon which such conceptions are based.

Included in the materials studied in order to draw this report are submarine video footage, pictures of the features and objects observed, side scan sonar-generated mosaics, aerial photographs, highly detailed bathymetric data, some samples gathered from the sea bottom, topographic maps and scientific literature related with the western part of Cuba.

This report is updated regularly, as new information is gathered.

After examining the available information, the following points are discussed:

Photographs are property of ADC Exploramar

What is MEGA and where it is located

Characteristics of the submarine structures

Hypothesis for the origin of MEGA

First hipothesis: Natural origin

Second hipothesis: Build by inteligent beings

Third hipothesis: Natural structures transformed by inteligent beings

First results of the geological-geomorphological investigations

How to test these hipothesis

See the link.

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Metro West Daily News
By Benjamin Smith / News Staff Writer
Friday, October 22, 2004

SUDBURY -- Efforts to end the Red Sox's 86-year-old championship drought will need to wait until next year due to a lack of money.

The Restoration Project, an Acton-based organization, has been attempting to break the "Curse of the Bambino" on the Red Sox by finding a lost piano that once belonged to Babe Ruth. The organization has been unable to raise the money needed to find the instrument believed to rest at the bottom of Willis Pond.

"We've gotten $10 in donations," said project Director Eloise Newell.

"We started this as frustrated fans, and are frustrated that no one has stepped up to help," said Kevin Kennedy, an instructor with Restoration project. "Roughly 20 percent of Red Sox fans believe in a curse, so why are they standing ideally by not helping while their team becomes doomed?"

Volunteer divers have gone into the mucky water of Willis Pond four times to search for the piano. In November 2002, John Fish, an expert in locating submerged objects, found three potential sites using a magnetometer. The equipment locates variations in the earth's magnetic field caused by large masses of metal.

Three "hot spots" were identified to potentially be the piano by Fish because of the depth and size of the metal objects. Divers have been unable to examine the three sites because they lack the sophisticated equipment that Fish can provide. Because of time constraints last year, Fish was unable to search the entire pond. He was asked to return at a later date to do so, but has not been able to schedule time around his business.

"It's gotten to the point where we will have to pay Fish for the time needed to finally bring up the piano," Kennedy said. "You can only ask so much of people."

It will cost $2,500 a day for the rental of Fish's equipment, according to Newell.

According to legend, Babe Ruth was vacationing at a cabin on Willis Pond in 1918 and, while drunk, threw the piano into the lake as a display of his Herculean strength. Since the famed toss, the Boston Red Sox have not won a World Series. Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees in 1920 and not long after, the "Curse of the Bambino" was born.

Another version of the story says Ruth was hosting a sing-along and the cabin became too crowded with children who came from miles away to see him. Ruth and the children then pushed the piano down the hill on top of the frozen pond and the sing-along continued. Afterwards, Ruth left the piano there, where it eventually sank to the bottom of the pond.

The group hopes that restoration of the piano will not only break the curse, but will raise money to help people with mental illness ease back into society after treatment through the sale of the instrument. More than 150 people with mental illness have restored furniture with the Restoration Project since it opened a decade ago, offering both jobs and therapy.

If divers find the Bambino's lost piano in Willis Pond, it will cost more than $200,000 to restore it, Newell said. The Restoration Project is still hoping to get donations, either for the organization or the piano. Donations can be sent to Newell at Restoration Project, 81 River St., Acton, MA 01720.

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IOL

Constance, Germany - Archaeologists believe Lake Constance is a huge ships' graveyard for historical vessels dating back to ancient times.

Martin Mainberger of the regional office for the preservation of historical monuments said Tuesday 50 shipwrecks have already been identified in Lake Ueberling, a northern arm of Lake Constance.

Underwater archaeologists from Europe and the United States are currently meeting at Constance in southern Germany as part of an international conference on underwater archaeology in Zurich.

The experts are unsure how many ships may be lying on the bed of Lake Constance which borders Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Researchers only began to realise just what historical treasures were hidden in the lake when a 14th-century load sailboat was discovered in 1992 at the northern bank near Immenstaad.

"It is only a question of time before an antique ship from Roman times is found," said archaeologist Helmut Schlichtherle. Even dug-out canoes dating back more than 2 000 years could be on the bed, he said. - Sapa-dpa

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The Copenhagen Post

Denmark is about to become the third country in the world - and only the second in Europe - to offer a degree programme in marine archaeology

The University of Southern Denmark's Esbjerg campus will soon offer a new, internationally renowned degree programme in marine archaeology, thanks to a DKK 3.2 million (430,000 euros)-foundation grant.

Denmark will become only the second country in Europe to offer a marine archaeology programme.

Professor Poul Holm from the Center for Maritime and Regional Studies was contacted by representatives of the foundation, which granted the money for the programme on condition of anonymity.

The curriculum will combine elements of natural science, biology, history and deep-sea diving. Marine archaeology studies are currently offered only in the United States and England - despite tremendous demand for trained marine archaeologists all over the world.

Denmark is home to some 12,000 registered shipwrecks, as well as numerous Stone Age sites in waters around the Little Belt and Southern Funen.

Amateur divers have uncovered various artifacts at these sites over the years, and Professor Poul Holm expects the newly systematic, scientific approach of the marine archaeology programme to benefit the study and preservation of these objects.

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Honolulu StarBulletin.com

Divers removing nets froma Hawaiian atoll find what might be ships sunk circa 1822

By Diana Leone


COURTESY NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE
Susanna Holst, a diver with the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, examines the remains of
a shipwreck found at the Pearl and Hermes atoll.

Back in the early 1800s, whaling ships hunted whales for their oil, which was used in lamps.

Earlier this month, as divers were removing marine debris from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands with the aim of protecting the ocean's mammals -- including whales -- they found what are believed to the remains of British whaling ships.

The Pearl and the Hermes ran aground in 1822 on the atoll that now bears their names.


COURTESY NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE
Holst measures an anchor at a whaling shipwreck site. Fragments were
initially spotted in July, with the wrecks located after several weeks of
marine debris survey swims and tows.

Hans Van Tilburg, Pacific marine heritage coordinator for the National Marine Sanctuary Program, said he finds a "larger irony" in that the 123 tons of net and rope gathered this year will be converted to electricity at Honolulu's HPOWER waste-to-energy plant.

"The debris will be burned to light cities and towns, just like we used to do with the whale oil," he said yesterday at a press conference on the unexpected double success of the recently completed mission of divers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"I can't say that we've got positive identification," Van Tilburg said, "but this site could very well be the Pearl and Hermes."

Although the wreck of two whalers was "a tragic moment in maritime history ... sites like this are windows into our past," Van Tilburg said.

Items at the wreck site include anchors, trypots (cauldrons) used to process whale oil, copper hardware and even small cannons and cannonballs, all scattered over hundreds of yards in relatively shallow water.

Van Tilburg and other marine history experts will examine the site more closely during another trip scheduled for May.

Between now and then, he will be researching boats' histories and studying the underwater photos and measurements of the wreck site brought back by divers on the Casitas, a contract vessel that returned from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands on Monday.

Pearl and Hermes Atoll reef has been a "mother lode" of nets, rope, floats and other marine debris washed there by ocean currents, said Jake Asher, a NOAA team leader for the Casitas voyages from June to October.

After four years of intensive debris cleanups in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, "we're seeing a difference in what we're doing. We're seeing progress in the amount of nets out there," Asher said.

"I think this year we're over the big hurdle" in the goal of getting the nearly pristine islands cleared of flotsam and jetsam, said Rusty Brainard, program director of coral reef ecology for NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.

Past cleanups hauled in 69 tons in 2001, then 108 tons in 2002 and 122 tons last year, Brainard said.

The effort to clear marine debris from the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was kicked off after biologists studying the endangered Hawaiian monk seal found two pups tangled and drowned in drifting nets. The debris comes from all over the Pacific and is an international problem, Brainard said.

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Powered by CYBER DIVER News Network
by Rachel Harris

MARTIN COUNTY, Florida -- Kerry Dillon had his suspicions. He had heard the rumors about the sport divers who found a sunken ship ripped in two after Hurricane Frances. Still, nothing prepared him for the shock he felt when he plunged into the ocean off Martin County this week.

The USS Rankin had been hit. Hard.

While Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne ripped apart roofs and mangled road signs on land, the torrential storms tore apart the retired World War II Navy ship, one of several artificial reefs created by the county to attract fish.

"It looks as if a bomb went off," said Dillon, a commercial diver. "I've been shipwreck-diving for about 29 years now, and I've never seen anything like this. It took my breath away."

Measuring 459 feet long, the ship was sunk on the Sirotkin reef, about 7 1/2 miles offshore in about 130 feet of water.
The bow, which used to be about 30 feet from the bottom, now lies about 8 feet above the ocean floor, Dillon said. The hull, made of inch-thick panels of steel, now are twisted like paper streamers. The deck that once covered the cargo holds now lies to the side of the ship.

"I dive the Rankin about six times a year, so I knew it like the back of my hand," Dillon said. "The entire forward half of the wreck is no longer recognizable."

Even the ocean floor where the Rankin rests has changed. Giant, jagged pieces of limestone form 12-foot cliffs where gentle sand slopes once cradled the ship.

Dillon saw similar changes Friday, when he explored an artificial reef created from the old Evans Crary bridge, which is about 300 feet by 80 feet. He said the storms caused the pile of metal and steel to sink about 10 feet, and a lot of sand and shells are gone.

"The whole thing has been changed," he said. "You can see where the metal I-beams were ripped up and dragged across the concrete."

It's unlikely the Rankin's damage will have a major effect on the underwater environment, said Mark Perry, executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society.

Although the ship's movement may have covered some natural habitat, it likely has uncovered more.
Any disturbed plant life, like algae, will return within months, he said.

Hurricane damage could also be a boon to anglers, since the breakdown of the materials provides more open space for fish.

Dillon saw schools of trout, barracuda and Goliath grouper at the Rankin and found the old Evans Crary bridge teeming with snapper and snook.

But the new layout of the Rankin shipwreck could prove dangerous to divers.

"It will be so easy to get lost," Dillon said.

There's also the risk of getting cut on jagged edges of cracked steel or entangled in exposed cables, said Mike Marshall, manager of Scuba Quest in Stuart.

"It makes it more interesting," he said, "but it's definitely not something for amateurs."

The county has enlisted Dillon to assess the county's other artificial reef sites, but the dives have been stalled by the murky brown water close to shore.

"As it cleans up a bit, we'll be able to assess the other reefs," he said Friday. "We're almost certain they're all affected."

SOURCE - Palm Beach Post

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TimesDaily.com
By LYNN BREZOSKY
Associated Press Writer

Archaeologists have discovered a cache of artifacts near South Padre Island they say could be up to 5,000 years old, potentially providing new clues about early peoples of the Texas coast.

The items, found in a protective clay dune about 6 feet underground, appear to be part of a fishing camp for a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers, archaeologist Robert Ricklis said. They include fragments of shell tools, chipped flint projectile points, and a fish earbone, or otolith, that can be analyzed for information about the bay environment of the time.

Ricklis said the find was significant because so little is known about the ancient Rio Grande Valley. Most early manmade items would have been eroded by sand and sea air, or washed out by the ever-changing course of the waterways of the Rio Grande basin near the Mexican border.

"We don't have a chronology for the Rio Grande Delta," said Ricklis, who works for Corpus Christi-based Coastal Environments Inc. "We really have no idea of what the culture's prehistory was.

"The artifacts were found in May during an archaeological survey by Coastal Environments of the Bahia Grande, a 6,000-acre lowland between Brownsville and Port Isabel. The survey was required before the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service proceeds with plans to restore wetlands lost to the digging of the Brownsville Ship Channel during the 1930s.

Geologists say the Gulf of Mexico once reached as far west as Starr County and the Mexican state of Coahuila. Paleo-Indians - the term for ancient peoples who roamed the Southwest - may have seen the Gulf's final rise and retreat about 10,000 years ago, said Tony Zavaleta, an anthropologist at the University of Texas-Brownsville.

Ricklis said he believes the artifacts come from a later group of peoples who belonged to the archaic period, 7,500 B.C to 750 A.D., which is characterized by grinding tools and certain types of projectile points.

The artifacts have not yet been carbon dated, so Ricklis bases his estimate on the shape of the projectile point and what's known about the Laguna Madre, the bay between South Padre Island and the mainland. He said the items were at least 1,000 years old, and he believes more study will determine they are even older than that. He has recommended more digging be done.

Zavaleta agreed that the area is one of the most historically significant, yet neglected, sites in Texas.Andrew Elliott Anderson, one of the few archeologists to concentrate on the area, documented nearly 400 Indian site locations between 1908 and 1944.

When the ship channel was being dug, Anderson scooped artifacts that fell from the mud, including fossil fragments of mammals from the Pleistocene era (1.5 million to 11,000 years ago) and a bright red pot with the cremated remains of a child.Anthropologists know roaming groups such as the Coahuiltecans regularly visited the area to hunt, fish and gather fruits and berries, and that by the time Spanish explorers arrived, there were thriving villages. But scientists know little about earlier peoples.

"Once you get to five thousand and beyond that you get into a whole different type of archaeology," Zavaleta said.

Tom Hester of the University of Texas-Austin, considered the authority on South Texas archaeology, said the early days of the Rio Grande Valley are full of mysteries, including evidence of cemeteries for otherwise wandering peoples.

"Why did they return to a special site to bury the dead? Was it their way of defining territory?" he asked.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife has decided to move at least one of the planned flooding channels so as not to disturb the site.

"We want to take a more detailed look at it to make sure there wasn't something missed," said John Wallace, manager of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. "The intent is to find a spot free of artifacts."

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KPLC

ATHENS, Greece A Greek fisherman has made the catch of the day -- or maybe the century.

He snagged a 24-hundred-year-old bronze statue a few days ago, near the Aegean Sea island of Kythnos
The Greek Culture Ministry says it's missing a head, an arm and a leg, but it's still quite a find.

Experts think the statue is of a young athlete -- given the fact that it is naked, its stance indicates movement, and that there's a great deal of anatomical detail.

It is about four-feet-eight-inches tall and weighs nearly 155 pounds.

The fisherman handed the statue over the the port authority on October 15th, then it was taken to Athens under police guard.

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Scotsman.com News
JULIA HORTON

FINDING something which has lain hidden at the bottom of the Union Canal for decades could potentially be a very gruesome business.

After all, Edinburgh’s infamous body snatchers, Burke and Hare, were once employed to cut the historic waterway through the city.

However, when archaeologists stumbled upon a dark, solid mass during an investigative dig in the heart of the city, it emerged that what they had uncovered was not a body, but a barge.

And while it might not sound instantly gripping to a gore-thirsty public, experts hope to reveal fascinating secrets about the lives of Edinburgh’s "boat people".

Tomorrow, a team of city archaeologists at the specially drained site at Viewforth are giving people a rare chance to see the historic 70ft barge and quiz experts as they move into the second week of a five-week excavation.

Russell Coleman, project manager at Edinburgh-based Headland Archaeologists, says: "Most people think of barges as covered, narrow boats, but this barge, or scow, is one of the earlier ones. I don’t think one of these has ever been found in a canal like this before, although they are found in estuaries in England where you can see them sticking out of the water. "We think it was built in about 1840 and was probably used to carry coal and lime into Edinburgh and to take manure back out to the fields.

So far, we think it was used for about 50 or 60 years. "There is lots of evidence of running repairs; you can see patching where extra bits of wood have been attached as the owner has obviously decided it was not worth buying a new boat. "When the railways came in the canal went into decline and we think that around about the First World War the barge was just abandoned, lying there hidden ever since."

The dig which revealed the wooden vessel, which has been largely preserved in silt and mud, was commissioned by Edinburgh Quay Limited, a consortium of British Waterways Scotland and Miller Group which is behind a new housing development at the Edinburgh end of the canal.

The barge was found when the canal was drained for engineering works. The canal was built in the early 1800s to transport coal into Edinburgh from outlying areas in a bid to break the monopoly of the Edinburgh coal masters and Midlothian mine owners. It took four years to complete the 32-mile waterway linking Edinburgh to Falkirk - where it joined the Forth & Clyde Canal.

At first the barge business thrived, with numerous boatyards in the Edinburgh area. But the advent of the Glasgow to Edinburgh railway, which opened in 1842, sent the canal into rapid decline.

In 1861, the canal was bought up by the North British Railway Company, and in 1921 Port Hamilton and Port Hopetoun were filled in. While the dates of openings and closures are recorded, little is known of the reality of the life and work of Edinburgh people on barges during the Industrial Revolution because records were either not made or not kept.

WHILE the Union Canal barge is definitely a trade boat, some believe it may have also been used for pleasure cruises. Sandra Purves, engineering historian and spokeswoman for the Edinburgh Canal Society, says: "It would not have been a [full-time] passenger boat, but there are pictures of barges [like this one] crammed with passengers. "They were probably on Sunday school outings.

The furthest they would have gone would probably have been Ratho, which in those days would have been quite an adventure." Meanwhile, the barge’s future looks uncertain.

The team is in discussion with "several museums" about moving the boat and exhibiting it once the excavation is over and water is allowed back into the canal site. But if that does not happen, the boat faces being destroyed because it must be moved to make the waters safe.

Coleman says: "We have spoken to various museums, but it is a large vessel [to accommodate]. Either it will go to a museum or it will have to be broken up." The Edinburgh Canal Society is also urging people to take up the opportunity to see a piece of history.

Purves says: "It is a chance to see a bit of history that has been hidden for a long time. You don’t often get the chance to see the skeleton of a boat, to see how it was built, and to speak to archaeologists about it." •

Anyone interested in seeing the barge should go to the Union Canal by St Peter’s Place, Viewforth, between 10am and 2pm tomorrow where the archaeological team will be on hand to answer questions

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By Scott Gold
Times Staff Writer

OVERTON, Nev. — Early last year, fishermen searching for bass and bluegill on a northern finger of Lake Mead saw a curious cluster of concrete blocks jutting out of the water. It turned out to be the chimney of what had been, 65 years prior, an ice cream parlor.

Within months, other ruins began to emerge from the lake: The steps of a nearby schoolhouse. The foundation of the old Gentry Hotel, where President Hoover once bunked for the night.

Today, the water line of Lake Mead, once six miles to the northwest, is half a mile to the southeast. Now, there is a sun-soaked valley, along with the ruins of St. Thomas, a town that was, until very recently, under 64 feet of water.

For nearly six years, a drought has afflicted much of the United States. Some regions haven't been as dry as they are today for 1,000 years or more, scientists say, and there have been terrible consequences: crop losses, falling electricity production at dams, savage wildfires.

For historians, however, the drought has brought an intriguing diversion. Pieces of the past that had long been submerged, and often forgotten, are emerging again as lakes and rivers shrink.

St. Thomas was formed in 1865 by Mormons who were dispatched to southern Nevada to plant cotton and push the reach of their church toward the West Coast.

For a spell, the town was the epitome of the western frontier, a bleak outpost where devout religion clashed with liquor and miners, where dreams of a better life were shattered by debilitating heat and disease. In 1938, it was erased — flooded, intentionally, when the construction of Hoover Dam created Lake Mead.

Eva Jensen, a Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs archeologist, stood in the middle of the town's ruins recently, shaking her head in dismay and wonder.

"The circumstances of this are not good," she said. "But it is fascinating to watch it happen. It's just incredible how much has been exposed, and how fast it has happened."

Historians and archeologists have reported similar discoveries across the West and the South, drawing widespread interest from outdoors enthusiasts, sightseers and students.

Not far from St. Thomas, in a northern stretch of Lake Mead known as the Overton Arm, prehistoric salt mines have been exposed. Near Roosevelt, Ariz., in an area that was flooded a century ago to build a reservoir, relics left behind by Salado Indians, including ornate jars and pots believed to explain religious parables, have surfaced.

In Utah's Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a prized geographic formation known as the Cathedral in the Desert — long swamped by the creation of Lake Powell — has been revealed again as water levels have dropped more than 70 feet. In northeast Georgia, a town founded by tobacco dealers in the 1700s, lost when the government created Thurmond Lake, has emerged.

Judy Bense, chairwoman of the anthropology department at the University of West Florida in Pensacola and the president-elect of the Society for Historical Archeology, said the drought had created an exciting time for academicians — and a fleeting opportunity, since the weather will eventually turn and the water will rise again.

Many of the objects that have reemerged, perhaps most, have little historical significance. A large water-clarifying tank that juts above the surface of Lake Mead, for instance, is more of a menace to pleasure boaters and fishermen than anything. Other finds are significant, however.

Archeologists, for instance, recently discovered ancient canoes embedded in a lake bank near Gainesville, Fla., Bense said. Radiocarbon dating showed that the canoes were 3,000 to 5,000 years old, causing some historians to rethink the conventional understanding of historical water transport trends and migration patterns in the region.

Near Zapata, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, portions of a colonial town established in the 1750s — intentionally flooded when the two countries dammed the Rio Grande to create the Falcon Lake reservoir — have emerged again.

They include Nuestra Senora del Refugio, a historic Spanish mission, as well as facilities where historians believe the world's finest lace was produced more than 200 years ago.

"Archeologists are used to this kind of thing," Bense said. "But even we are amazed at what we are finding."

Because historical sites are emerging so quickly, academicians and government regulators are having a hard time figuring out what to do with them — how to catalog, study and, if necessary, preserve them.

Jensen and other historians are pushing for a full-fledged archeological dig at St. Thomas, about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas, but state and federal officials are still sorting through red tape.

Virtually all that officials have been able to do so far is trim back the tamarisk shrubs that have taken over newly dry areas, offering shade to coyotes and lizards that quickly replaced the bass. Even those efforts are lagging, making it difficult to access some of the building foundations.

Amid the ruins of colonial towns and Native American communities that have emerged around the country are tens of thousands of artifacts — some of it junk, but all of it worth a look to historians. For several reasons, the artifacts are in peril.

Many wooden structures and artifacts were protected by being underwater, largely because the pieces were shielded from corrosive oxygen. Now that they are above water, archeologists fear that the wooden relics will quickly dry out and crumble.

In the Ocala National Forest in Florida, where several small lakes have vanished, portions of a well-preserved 500-year-old fish trap were exposed recently, and federal officials feared it would be lost. At St. Thomas, Jensen said, delicate window frames on many of the houses, made of wood hauled in from the Utah hills, will soon dry out and fall apart.

The emergence of historic sites has also brought about court battles.

Late last year, for instance, U.S. District Judge Kent J. Dawson dismissed an aircraft salvage company's claim to a B-29 bomber that crashed into the Overton Arm of Lake Mead.

Local residents had known that a group of test pilots, who bailed out and survived, had crashed a bomber into the lake in 1948. The wreck's location was unknown until August 2002, when the salvage company used high-tech sonar to find it. The discovery set off a dispute over who should control the site.

Entrepreneurs had hoped to raise and restore the plane, which is seen as historically significant and potentially valuable. State and federal officials designated the wreck a "sensitive archeological resource" and restricted the public's ability to dive there so they could study the plane and preserve the site.
Finally, looters have descended upon numerous ruins.

Federal officials have banned overnight camping near St. Thomas, primarily to guard against scavengers who were coming out at night with metal detectors, some in search of old railroad ties and buggy parts, and others apparently driven, officials said, by a false rumor that a $5 gold piece was discovered there recently. It has long been illegal to take artifacts from federally protected land, and more than a dozen people have been charged with preservation law violations at Lake Mead.

In Georgia — a prime region for hunting arrowheads, burial items and other Native American relics that can fetch high dollar on the Internet — state officials have also had difficulties with looters.

Anticipating that shrinking lakes would expose historic sites, the state passed property laws three years ago to guard against artifact collectors.

Collectors rebelled: They launched petition drives and argued frequently with law enforcement officers, resulting in numerous arrests.

This year, Georgia tried to make peace through a new program that let collectors accompany state officials on archeological expeditions. They are allowed to keep the relics they find, provided that an on-site official determines that the pieces have no historic significance, said Georgia Department of Natural Resources Capt. Mike Commander.
"We're trying our best to be a good steward of these resources, and it hasn't been easy," he said. "But I think everyone is starting to understand that this is in everyone's best interest."

The Hannig Ice Cream Parlor's chimney, the highest point of the St. Thomas ruins, had popped up during a few dry spells in the past. This time it is different: The entire town is visible.

Today at the ghostly, isolated site, portions of about 40 buildings have been exposed. Most were built of tan concrete blocks that look intensely bright when illuminated by the desert sun and contrasted against the colorful mesas and hills behind them. The blocks, crafted of silt lifted from the nearby Muddy and Virgin rivers, are expertly squared off at the edges.

On the outskirts of town — "the rich neighborhood," Jensen said — are the foundations of larger estates, where settlers grew cotton, watermelons, pomegranates and cantaloupes that they sold to nearby towns and as far west as Los Angeles.

Orange and cottonwood trees were planted alongside some of the streets; their stumps remain today.
In the center of town is a smattering of smaller foundations. S

ome of the cellars are still intact, held together by metal bow springs that were removed from buggies and fused into the concrete walls during construction for support.

Two thoroughfares slice through the settlement. One is the path of a long-defunct railroad spur. Built in 1918, the rail made regular stops at St. Thomas, introducing new goods, including blocks of ice and bottles of booze, that led to the town's brief but colorful heyday and ballooned its population from 300 to almost 500. The second was the original Highway 91, which went all the way to Los Angeles.

Remnants of the post office are here, where the last bag of mail was stamped and postmarked on June 11, 1938, then tossed in a boat for delivery as the water crept up behind Hoover Dam and through the streets of St. Thomas. So is the foundation of stubborn Hugh Lord's house.

Local historians say Lord was the last holdout — refusing to believe the water would ever reach his tiny home and then, when it did, was so upset that he tried to burn it down before fleeing in a rowboat.

"All of this was under water," Jensen said. "And it was 64 feet deep. Imagine how much water that is. And how much had to go away."

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The Valley Times News

EDTVALLEY -- The Chattahoochee Valley Historical Society will meet in the Lanier Room of Bradshaw-Chambers County Library at 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 17. As always, the public is welcome to attend, and anyone interested in the study and preservation of local history is invited to become a member.

The featured speaker for the Sunday afternoon meeting will be Jason Burns, an underwater archaeologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Burns is the first underwater archaeologist hired by the DNR's Historic Preservation Division. He comes to Georgia from Florida, where he earned his B.A. in anthropology from the University of Florida and an M.A. in history/historical archaeology from the University of West Florida. He has also served in the U.S. Navy.

Burns has worked on several high profile underwater archaeology projects, including the recovery of the Civil War submarine, the H.L.Hunley, near Charleston, S.C. and the recording of the CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France. He is currently involved with the underwater survey of the Chattahoochee River bed in West Point.

Burns most recently worked as the director of conservation and underwater archaeology for the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program and the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum in St. Augustine, Fla.

Burns' personal research focuses on the transition from sail to steam in 19th century merchant fleets and the expansion of world commerce by shipping nations after 1849. His book, published in the Plenum Series in Underwater Archaeology, The Life and Times of a Merchant Sailor and the History of the Norwegian ship Catherine details this search.

Those wishing to learn more about the H.L. Hunley in advance of the program can log onto the website http://hunley.org, sponsored by the Friends of the Hunley.

For further information, contact Cobb Memorial Archives at (334) 768-2050.

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Navy Newsstand
From Naval Historical Center Public Affairs

CHARLESTON, S.C. (NNS) -- The Naval Historical Center's (NHC) Hunley project staff and consultants positively identified Joseph Ridgaway, a Hunley crew member, through DNA testing Sept. 24.

The NHC Hunley staff has been actively working to identify the eight pioneers who manned the craft Feb. 17, 1864, when it became the first successful combat submarine in history.

"Before the DNA match, our only tools in identifying the Hunley crew for their burial was the archaeological, forensic and genealogical data," Warren Lasch, chairman of Friends of the Hunley, said.

In 2001, once the crew's remains were excavated from the submarine, Hunley scientists sent samples of each crew member to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, where the samples were selected for DNA analysis.
From there, the samples were sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL).

AFDIL extracted mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the samples and laser scanned the DNA sequences. Since then, they have waited for the Hunley scientific team to locate DNA samples from potential descendants to cross reference in hopes of making a match.

"A mother passes mtDNA to her children, meaning mtDNA identification can only be done through direct maternal descendants," said Jackie Raskin-Burns, AFDIL Supervisory DNA Analyst who led the analytical work on the Hunley crew samples.

After extensive historical research, forensic genealogist Linda Abrams was able to locate a maternal descendant.

"When we received the sample, we performed mtDNA typing and the sequence was consistent with one mtDNA sequence obtained from the remains of the Hunley crew," Raskin-Burns said.

The mtDNA sequence was consistent with the crew member who was second-in-command of Hunley and stationed at the seventh crank position: Joseph Ridgaway.

“It is a marvel of modern science that after 140 years we can give these eight crewmen of the Hunley a personal identification through facial reconstructions, genealogy and DNA analysis," said said Dr. Robert Neyland, Underwater Archaeology Branch, NHC. "I am very proud that the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, and AFDIL could make this happen through their sponsorship of the Hunley project and utilizing technologies developed for the military.”

For related news, visit the Naval Historical Center Navy NewsStand page at www.news.navy.mil/local/navhist.

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4NI

Three researchers from the University of Ulster have won a prestigious British Archaeological Award for their pioneering survey of Strangford Lough.

Thomas McErlean, Rosemary McConkey and Wes Forsythe, from the Centre for Maritime Archaeology, received the Keith Muckelroy Memorial Award for published work on maritime archaeology in recognition of their scholarly contribution to the subject.

The winning book, ‘Strangford Lough: An Archaeological Survey of the Maritime Cultural Landscape’, presents the results of a five-year study of Strangford. It was also short-listed for the British Academy Book Prize last year.

Tom McErlean said: “The intensive survey of the Lough was commissioned by the Environment and Heritage Service and exceeded all our expectations by demonstrating the great archaeological richness of our coast.

“Keith Muckelroy was a pioneer in maritime archaeology and this project was a first for Northern Ireland,” Rosemary McConkey added. “It’s an exciting time for the subject here and we are delighted that our work has been recognised by this award.”

The Centre for Maritime Archaeology is based at the University’s new £1.5 million Centre for Coastal and Marine Research. Other publications in 2004-5 include ‘Boats and Shipwrecks of Ireland’ by Colin Breen and Wes Forsythe and the forthcoming ‘Harnessing the tides – the monastic tide mills of Nendrum’ by Thomas McErlean. The awards, which are presented biennially by the Council for British Archaeology, are regarded as the Oscars of British archaeology.

The ceremony took place in Belfast’s Elmwood Hall - the first time the awards have been hosted in Northern Ireland.(MB/GMCG)

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Press Release
Source: Ocean Resources, Inc.

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2004--Ocean Resources, Inc. (OTCBB:OCRI - News) today announced that due to continuing unfavorable weather conditions in the North Atlantic, the company has chosen to depart from its current project west of Ireland and commence its $11 million winter recoveries program.

The first project of this program is a World War I wreck located in the Mediterranean Sea whose manifested cargos include over $2.5 million (at current spot market valuation) of tin ingots and other metals. The wreck has already been found and positively identified on the seabed. Ocean Resources plans to take advantage of milder weather at this location and commence recovery operations by November 1. This operation is expected to be completed within six weeks of its start date.

Immediately thereafter, the company will proceed to a World War II wreck off the east coast of Africa, which carried manifested metals cargos of over $9 million (at current spot market valuation). Recovery operations there are expected to last a period of four months.

"The intense hurricane activity and prevailing North Atlantic typhoon season has, for now, rendered recovery operations off the Irish coast potentially hazardous to crew and equipment, therefore it is in the company's interest to accelerate its winter recoveries program and return to the Ireland project in the spring," said Ocean Resources Chief Executive Dennis McLaughlin.

Ocean Resources' deep-sea excavator, ROGE, has performed superbly in sea trials at Bantry Bay in Ireland, retrieving up to four tons of metal per grab from a nearby shipwreck similar in age and contour to the Mediterranean wreck.
The Company's VP of Salvage Operations Graham Jessop stated, "The ROGE's underwater maneuverability has exceeded our expectations. Given these results, we are optimistic in our abilities to recover the metals we are after in our upcoming projects."

Ocean Resources' inventory of merchant shipwrecks includes World War I and World War II wrecks that carried copper, tin, nickel, and other metals for the war efforts.

OCRI will issue news on the progress of its Mediterranean project prior to completion, said Mr. McLaughlin.
Ocean Resources, Inc. is a marine salvage operator utilizing proprietary technology and sea recovery expertise in an attempt to retrieve significant supplies of commodity metals from World Wars I and II merchant shipwrecks lying at previously unreachable depths.

The company's ROGE (Remotely Operated Grab Excavator), a hydraulically operated multi-jaw grab, is among the world's most advanced deep sea excavating devices, capable of seizing up to three tons of material in a single grab and operating at depths of up to 16,000 feet, nearly double that of any competitive device.

Ocean Resources' recovery operations are directed by Graham Jessup, an internationally accomplished deep sea salvage expert who participated in recoveries from the RMS Titanic, RMS Carpathia, S.S. John Barry and HMS Edinburgh. For further information, visit www.oceanri.com.

This press release may contain "forward-looking statements". All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release and without limitation statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the Company, are forward- looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate.

Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Actual results may differ materially from the Company's expectations due to changes in operating performance, project schedules, prices and other technical and economic factors.

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Fredericksburg.com
By Rusty Dennen


Variety of wrecks found by underwater archaeologists working in Potomac River's Virginia creeks

Sixty feet offshore in Westmoreland County's Nomini Creek, some iron spikes and barnacle-encrusted wood poke just above the surface of the water.

Underwater archaeologist Bruce F. Thompson and a team of volunteer divers on Tuesday pulled alongside in a small skiff.

"Get the anchor ready," Thompson yelled to divers Tim Jeffas and Chris Maple, who sat up front, pulling on 60 pounds of air tanks and gear.

"OK, drop it," Thompson said, summoning the divers for a look at a map he sketched on white notebook paper of the remains of what's believed to be a 19th-century schooner. The crew was making another stop in a monthlong effort to locate and map shipwrecks in four Virginia tributaries of the Potomac River.

Resembling plump black seals in their diving suits, Maple and Jeffas plunged backward over the side and swam about 20 feet to the wreck. Jeffas held one end of a tape measure along the centerline of the vessel while Maple unspooled it to where the bow rests below the murky, 69-degree water.

In about an hour, under a clear blue sky and bracing against a brisk northeast wind, they took three measurements in water from 5 to 10 feet deep. Thompson, who dived on the wreck himself a few days before, concluded the ship is slightly smaller than first thought, maybe 85 feet instead of 90.

At one point, Jeffas thought he'd found the ship's second mast. "There seems to be a log or something going this way," he said, pointing the direction with a gloved hand.

Thompson yelled to him from the boat, "When you dig it out, try to get a diameter on it!"

More investigation revealed that the piece of lumber was too small to be a mast, but was, perhaps, some other part of the rigging.

"These were typically two-masted, and were built from about 1830 to the 1930s," said Thompson, a bearded bear of a man with shoulder-length hair flecked with gray. Today, clad in jeans, sunglasses and flannel shirt, he's driving the boat and directing the action in the water.

He's not sure of the origin of this ship, but he's gotten clues from what's left.

"We don't know the type of wood--it could be a hardwood," he said. The rust-encrusted iron spikes were probably used to join larger timbers.

It's possible, he says, that this ship could have Civil War connections. Union sailors sank six ships in Nomini Creek between 1862 and 1865; the Confederates, two ships.

Most carried supplies.

"These were the diesel trucks of their time," Thompson said. Cargo typically included commodities such as coal, lumber and tinned oysters, for example.

Two years of archival research, combined with help from local watermen's memories, helped to locate possible wreck sites.

The team will return to Nomini Creek in November with side-scanning sonar. It malfunctioned earlier on this trip. That equipment, a yellow torpedo-shaped capsule towed behind a boat, pinpoints mounds of debris on the bottom that can be hard to find any other way. From the scans, scientists can determine whether it's the remains of a ship or some other object.

Another helpful tool used on the project was a magnetometer, which detects the presence of iron.

With grants from the St. Clements Island-Potomac River Museum in St. Mary's County, Md., and the Naval Historical Center in Washington, Thompson has methodically located and documented dozens of wrecks along the river. Information gleaned on the Virginia side will be shared with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which has done its own work on Revolutionary War-era shipwrecks near Yorktown and in the Chickahominy River.
Last year and earlier this year, Thompson worked in Maryland waters. In mid-September, the work shifted to Yeocomico, Lower Machodoc and Nomini creeks and the Coan River on the Virginia side of the Potomac. Next spring, Thompson will hunt for shipwrecks around St. George's Island, Md.

Thompson believes the river is a treasure trove of maritime history and that archaeologists have barely scratched the surface in learning the secrets of these silent sentinels of the deep.

Thompson, 55, a Texas native and an archaeologist for 26 years, is assistant state underwater archeologist with the Maryland Historical Trust.

"We've been all over Maryland, logging everything from prehistoric [American Indian] sites to log canoes, to shipwrecks. We've probably added about 150 shipwrecks to the record," he said.

In the mid-1990s, Thompson helped to survey and document wreckage believed to be the USS Tulip, a 97-foot screw steamer, which sank in November 1864 off Ragged Point after a boiler explosion, and the CSS Favorite, a 90-foot schooner, which went down in Swan Cove on the Maryland side of the river the same year.

High-profile shipwrecks such as the Titanic have captured the public imagination and focused attention on archaeology beneath the waves. Last week, divers off North Carolina found another cannon from what is believed to be the Queen Anne's Revenge--the flagship of the pirate Blackbeard.

Thompson says every find is interesting.

Of the eight or nine wrecks examined so far on the Virginia side of the Potomac, "Not all are significant. A lot of them are watermen boats. There are two schooners from the Civil War period, and two earlier wrecks that need more study.

"The [Nomini Creek] schooner is proving to be pretty interesting. We've now got three schooners where we can compare construction techniques, the way the ships were built, and get a [better] picture" of the vessels, Thompson said. "We're trying to look at the evolution of ship construction in the 19th century, and this is an excellent way."

Often, there isn't much left to find, so the divers and Thompson attempt to piece together a mental picture of the ships from scattered planking, mineral-encased hardware and what archives of known ships tell them.

Though the origin and identity of many of the ships may never be known, "We're adding something to the literature and the knowledge. We're finding something significant enough to say we can learn something," he said.

The information payoff is not only with regard to ships. The project has also turned up a Colonial-era wharf and a steamboat wharf on the Coan River.

Any artifacts found are documented, photographed and returned to the river. "We try not to recover artifacts because the cost of conserving them is very expensive," he said.

About 20 divers and volunteers have been involved in the project, working out of a cabin at Coles Point Marina.
Thompson says it's an opportunity to pass along the notion of conservation and preservation to the public, and divers in particular.

"They come from every working environment, and want to relax and have fun, learn stuff and be involved in it," Thompson said.

Jeffas and Maple, both experienced divers, have helped on Thompson's projects for several years. Jeffas is employed at the Navy's Aviation Survival Training Center Patuxent River; Maple's day job is with the Montgomery County, Md., Fire and Rescue Department.

Maple said the work is definitely not recreational diving, which is typically a hands-off sightseeing experience in clear water.

"Here, you're getting down and dirty, you pull yourself through the wreck. On a good day, the visibility is 6 inches."
He laughed, "We don't look for wrecks so much as feel for wrecks."

Said Thompson, smiling, "The really good thing about this job is that no two sites and no two days are ever the same."


Photo by Mike Morones / The Free Lance-Star
Volunteer diver Tim Jeffas of Leonardtown, Md., measures the wreckage
of what is believed to be a 19th-century schooner in Nomini Creek.


To reach RUSTY DENNEN: 540/374-5431 rdennen@freelancestar.com

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PalmBeachPost.com
By Rachel Harris, Staff Writer

To the untrained eye it is junk, two mountainous heaps of fish bones and shells that should be chucked with the tree limbs and fence debris left by Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne. Which is precisely the problem: This trash is an archaeologist's treasure.

"Middens are some of the only things we have left that show how the Ais Indians lived," said Robin Hicks-Connors, president of the Historical Society of Martin County.

But some archeologists fear that careless cleanup crews on Hutchinson Island — or another big storm — could destroy what is left of two middens unearthed by the hurricanes.

Packed with charred fish bones, chipped clay pottery and shells, the mounds are veritable landfills left by the Ais Indians, who lived along the Florida coast from about 1000 B.C. until the 18th century, when they were wiped out by European diseases and battles with settlers.

Records kept by the Spanish, along with the 17th-century journal of shipwreck survivor Jonathan Dickinson, provide only a glimpse of the Indians' life: They settled in clans and were hunters and fishermen who carved boats out of tree trunks, said Lucille Rights-Murtough, a board member of the Southeast Florida Archaeological Society.

Most clues of the Ais' life in Martin and St. Lucie counties lie in the 150 known middens and burial mounds scattered along the coast.

The two most recently discovered middens had appeared to be only sand dunes. Then Frances sliced them open, exposing a wall of artifacts atop a slab of Anastasia rock. Jeanne swept away even more sand, scattering stone tools and pottery shards along the beaches.

Linda Geary, keeper of the Gilbert's Bar House of Refuge — at the southern end of Hutchinson Island, where both Frances and Jeanne made landfall — followed a trail of artifacts to discover one midden under an oceanfront mansion a few miles south of the museum.

Bob Carr, executive director of the Davie-based Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, found the second midden about a mile north of the House of Refuge during a post-Frances assessment of beaches.

"We're not finished, so there could be even more middens along the Treasure Coast that we don't know about yet," Carr said. That makes him all the more eager to canvass the beaches quickly, pinpointing archaeological sites before another storm washes them away.

"With Jeanne, we saw that 15 to 20 feet of one site had been destroyed," he said. "That was thousands of artifacts, just washed out to sea."

Other known middens and mounds in the area survived without major damage, Carr said. A burial mound at Old Fort Park, in Fort Pierce, remained intact, covered by a blanket of trees.

But now the sites face a new threat: bulldozers, plows and front-end loaders.

"We really learned from the Hurricane Andrew cleanup that you can't just put a bulldozer blade down and push trees," Carr said. "You have to move more gingerly."

For the latest cleanup effort he is working closely with county and city governments, advising them to use cranes to pluck branches from burial mounds and chain saws to cut trees before dragging them across archaeological sites.

Carr also is looking to protect the oceanside middens from the next storm. He is urging state and local leaders to renourish beaches, dumping more sand on middens so they can survive erosion, or protecting the middens with a layer of stones.

"It's irretrievable what happens with these storms," Carr said.

And with each midden lost, he said, the memory of the Ais fades even more.


Bob Shanley/The Palm Beach Post
Linda Geary, keeper of the Gilbert's Bar House of Refuge,
holds a shell from a midden uncovered after Hurricane
Frances stripped a sand dune. Jeanne swept away some
artifacts.

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turnto10.com
URI Community Could Monitor Oceanographic Expeditions

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. -- University of Rhode Island professor and marine explorer Robert Ballard has secured more than $2 million in federal and private funding for a new center at the university.

The funding is for the Inner Space Center, which Ballard said will be the ocean exploration equivalent of NASA's command center for space exploration.

The Inner Space Center is a component of the Undersea Exploration Center, which will be voted on as part of a bond referendum question in the November election.

"With the passage of bond issue No. 9, the state of Rhode Island is ready to play a central role in our nation's new program to explore the uncharted regions of the world," Ballard said. "One can only imagine what discoveries await us."

Ballard found the Titanic in 1986. He recently went back to assess changes to the wreck.

In the Inner Space Center, signals from research vessels will be transmitted to URI's graduate school of oceanography.

Students, faculty and researchers will be able to monitor oceanographic expeditions in real-time.

The live pictures would also be sent over the Internet to all schools in Rhode Island.

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Chicago Sun-Times
By Andrew Herrmann, Staff Reporter

A 17th century vessel under Lake Michigan, considered by some the Holy Grail of Great Lakes shipwrecks, may have been found, but its ownership is mired in a storm of a court battle.

Field Museum archeologists are analyzing the find, but were tight-lipped Monday.

"We do have a research interest in this ship,'' confirmed Field spokesman Greg Borzo. The museum has been consulting with Steven Libert, who discovered what may be Le Griffon at the entrance of Wisconsin's Green Bay, and with Michigan state officials, who are reportedly trying to gain control of the ship.

Borzo declined to elaborate on the Field's activities, saying only, "perhaps in a few weeks we'll know more.''

The name of the 45-ton ship, built for explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in Canada, reflects its two wooden griffins -- mythical monsters with lion's bodies and eagle's heads. It was on the return leg of its maiden voyage loaded with furs bound for the Niagara River when it sank in September 1679.

"Not so much as a splinter ever washed up on a Lake Michigan beach to give a clue to her fate,'' says William Ratigan in his book Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals.

Considered the first real sailing vessel to ply these waters, the ship "sailed through a crack in the lake,'' disappearing, says Ratigan.

Libert has been cagey about the find. When he filed paperwork this summer, he avoided naming the ship or the exact location. But shipwreck experts say by the sketchy details in his claim, he must believe it's Le Griffon.

Whose wreck is it?

Recently, the state of Michigan moved to block Libert's claim in federal court, arguing that state law and the federal Abandoned Shipwreck Act give it ownership of sunken boats of historical significance.

A spokesman for the Michigan attorney general's office couldn't be reached Monday because of the Columbus Day holiday.

But assistant attorney general James R. Pigguish argues in Michigan's claim that "A 45-ton, 40- to 60-foot long, wooden, hand-built sailing vessel with a beam of 10 to 22 feet, and a crew of five, lost and abandoned near Poverty Island prior to the 20th century, would be a significant archeological find,'' the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported over the weekend.

Pigguish also described photographs of the wreck showing something that appears to be coming out of the lake's bottom "looking much like a needle.'' Libert reportedly has had some slivers of the wreck carbon dated. That procedure dates the wood between 1640 and 1780.

Libert, 50, is a well-known treasure hunter who has spent decades scouring Lake Michigan for gold and has clashed with Michigan over finds before. His attorney, Richard Robel, told the Traverse City paper that Libert is "committed to preserving the site'' and wants to work with Michigan officials.

Ralph Frese, vice president of the Chicago Maritime Society, said Le Griffon might have sunk in a storm, or ran aground, or been attacked by Indians.

Over the years, many divers have discovered wrecks in Lake Michigan, declared them to be The Griffin, but were proven wrong, Frese said.

"Everybody is looking for The Griffin,'' Frese said.