Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom

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Press of Atlantic City
By Mike Jaccarino
March 29, 2005

Divers who salvaged items from sunken lightship have to turn them over to federal government.
Six years. Countless hours of research. Thousands of dollars. But in the end they didn't cheer when the dream came to fruition.

The divers who recovered the 1,200-pound fog bell from the Nantucket Lightship off the Massachusetts coast in 2004 immediately bowed their heads and rang the bell for the seven sailors who died when the ship went down.

Now, remembering the moment - tainted by the events that would follow - dive team member Tom Packer, 45, of Camden County, sighs deeply and asks, "Does that sound like (we're) grave robbers to you?

"It's a tricky business recovering historical artifacts from sunken vessels, like the Nantucket Lightship, which went down May 15, 1934.

Packer and his team had hoped to make the items available for display in museums, including one slated to open on Long Beach Island.

Never mind the 195 feet of cold ocean water. Never mind the decompression, the capricious New England weather or the thousand other things that could have gone wrong.

What finally ended the dream were Uncle Sam and the debate over who should rightfully recover artifacts from ships lost at sea. Last week, the group returned the last of the artifacts from the Nantucket to the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Cape May.

Long before anyone knew the location of the Nantucket, the U.S. government passed the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987. It decrees that any shipwreck located within three miles of the state coast for which the owner is unknown belongs to the state in whose waters it was found.

Some of the items were returned in New Jersey since they had made their way to the Garden State since recovery.

The Nantucket is located about 50 miles offshore, but the vessel, according to Pete Hess, the maritime lawyer who represented some of the Nantucket divers, once belonged to the U.S. Lifesaving Service, and so Uncle Sam felt it still belonged in federal hands.

But the series of events still underscores the ongoing debate about such private recoveries. The 1987 act, according to maritime sources, seeks to prevent the raiding of shipwrecks for personal profit.

However, the Nantucket Lightship divers insist they had no financial interest in the recovery and hoped only to publicly exhibit the artifacts.

"To our wives' chagrin," Packer said, the Nantucket exhibit was to be financed at the divers' personal expense.

"We're interested in the history," said Steve Gatto, a 44-year-year Gloucester County man who accompanied Packer on the recovery effort.

Gatto said he spent countless hours in the National Archives researching the Nantucket Lightship. By late 2004, five museums and historical societies had agreed in principal to exhibit the Nantucket artifacts.

Now meet Bart Malone: The Camden County man has sold shipwreck artifacts, most of which he recovered, on eBay for the last five years.

Last year, Malone sold a cup and saucer recovered from a wreck off the Alaskan coast. The state of Alaska told him, as he said, "I had stole from their ship, which was culturally protected. It cost me $500 for a maritime lawyer to handle the case."

He was eventually exonerated, he said, since he obtained the cup and saucer through a trade for some items he had recovered on a dive from the Andrea Doria.

The list of museums that had planned to exhibit the Nantucket's artifacts included Deborah Whitcraft's shipwreck museum on Long Beach Island. The museum, under construction, is set to open this year.

"These guys risked their lives to recover artifacts from these wrecks," Whitcraft said. "Unless they bring them up, (the artifacts) are going to sit on the bottom of the ocean. You shouldn't be penalized for recovering for the good of the people."

Now, Whitcraft doubts the Nantucket artifacts will make it to LBI.

There is a scene at the end of the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" that shows the Ark of the Covenant, which Indiana Jones had acquired by performing myriad acts of courage and bravado, stowed away in the back of a federal government warehouse.

When Indiana Jones prods the U.S. government with exhortations of, "It belongs in a museum," Uncle Sam's representatives simply reply that "top men," will be studying the artifact.

Gatto said he didn't even get that much. "They didn't say," he responds when asked what the Coast Guard told him it intended to do with the Nantucket items. "Who knows?"

Coast Guard spokeswoman Lisa Hennings reported Wednesday that it has no plans to display the Nantucket artifacts. She otherwise refused to comment on the case.

And so the Nantucket tour is off. Who knows where the artifacts are now located? "Maybe in a warehouse," Gatto snidely suggested.


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Primezone
March 29, 2005

The Dragon in the Lake -- New Book Reveals Latest Research on the Ancient Underwater Pyramids in Wisconsin.

CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. -- In the cold murky depths of a Wisconsin lake lay mysterious rock structures wrapped in Native American folklore and local legend. These ancient underwater manmade structures may be the most significant and controversial North American archeological discovery of the twentieth century. In Archie Eschborn's fascinating new book The Dragon in the Lake, you will follow a small band of amateur archeologists led by Eschborn himself as they reveal new research opening up a new chapter in prehistoric North American history and ending decades of controversy on North America's most sacred and secret native American site.

In the book, the author provides compelling new evidence, along with countless professionals, scientists, geologists, researchers, archeologists, anthropologists and divers, who have challenged the status quo of the Wisconsin Historical Society who have clung to their erroneous pronouncements about the fabled "Rock Lake Pyramids" in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Dragon in the Lake takes readers on a wild ride to the coastal waters of Honduras, Mexico, Canada, and the United States to explore one of North America's most enigmatic underwater archeological sites. Investigated and researched by many in the past, none have covered this underwater archeological mystery firsthand like Eschborn. "This exciting, educational ride may soon have some Wisconsin state institutions in turmoil due to the explosive nature of its findings and their potential impact to change the thinking on pre-Columbian migration and trade routes between present-day Mexico and Wisconsin," according to some authorities.

About the Author
Archie Eschborn is a writer, filmmaker, scuba diver, and explorer. He also works full-time as vice president of sales and marketing for one of America's top ten aeronautical research and fan manufacturers for government, automotive, and commercial industries. He has been on Discovery Channel, ABC News, and A&E concerning his work about the underwater structures at Rock Lake as well as in national and international magazines and newspapers. Eschborn is currently working on a book about dome architecture and is researching several other projects on unusual history and archeology. To find out more about these mysterious underwater archeological treasures or to contact the author, visit http://www.rocklakeresearch.com.

The Dragon in the Lake -- By Archie Eschborn
North America's Most Controversial Underwater
Archeological Discovery of the 20th Century
Publication Date: December 17, 2004
Trade Paperback; $22.99; 375 pages; 1-4134-6032-1
Cloth Hardback; $32.99; 375 pages; 1-4134-6033-X

To request a complimentary paperback review copy, contact the publisher at (888) 795-4274 x. 835. Tearsheets may be sent by regular or electronic mail to Rob Gonzales. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (215) 923-4685 or call (888) 795-4274 x. 876.

Xlibris is a strategic partner of Random House Ventures, LLC, and a subsidiary of Random House, Inc. Xlibris books can be purchased in any major bookstore, or online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders or Xlibris. For more information, contact Xlibris at (888) 795-4274 or on the web at www.Xlibris.com

CONTACT:
Xlibris
Rob Gonzales
(888) 795-4274, ext. 835
Rob.Gonzales@Xlibris.com


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The Herald
By Raymond Duncan
March 31 2005

MORE than 51,000 gold and silver coins have been recovered by deep-sea explorers from the shipwreck of a steamer that sank off the eastern United States a century and a half ago.

The SS Republic, which is thought to hold more than £100m of coins, potentially the richest marine salvage in history, went down in the Atlantic during a hurricane in 1865 while en route from New York to New Orleans.

The operation is being carried out by Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Florida-based salvage company. Odyssey, which found the wreck 1700ft down two years ago, has recovered a haul which includes a quantity of US gold "double eagles", currency from the late 19th century, as well as half-dollars and quarters.

The coins, which were brought to the surface with the help of a robotic remotely operated vehicle, have been graded by numismatics experts.

The vessel, a sidewheel steamer, was carrying 59 passengers, all of whom reached safety in lifeboats.

The coins were intended to help pay for reconstruction of the South after the civil war. It has been estimated that today they would be worth £75m to £113m.

Odyssey is also excavating, in partnership with the British government, the wreck of HMS Sussex, which sank off Gibraltar in 1694. The 157ft warship, was carrying nine tons of gold and silver coins that could be worth more than £2bn.


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Reuters
March 30, 2005

CAIRO (Reuters) - Archaeologists have found the remains of boats used by ancient Egyptians for trading trips, the culture minister said in comments published on Wednesday.

The boats were discovered in caves in a pharaonic harbour on Egypt's Red Sea coast around 300 miles southeast of Cairo, Farouk Hosni said in comments carried by Egypt's state MENA news agency.

They were used to transport goods to and from the Land of Punt, he said. The Land of Punt, mentioned in ancient Egyptian writings, is thought by most archaeologists to be the coast of the Horn of Africa.

"Excavations discovered a group of sail and mast ropes, wooden ship beams and thin planks made of cedars, imported from northern Syria," MENA quoted Zahi Hawas, chairman of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, as saying.

Hawas said a team from Boston University in the United States working with an Italian team had made the discovery.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.


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eircom.net
By Andrew Bushe
March 28, 2005

ARCHAEOLOGISTS compiling the country's first list of the shipwrecks that litter the coastline believe there may be as many as 12,000.

This year, the Department of the Environment's special underwater archaeology unit will finalise the first of four volumes on the wrecks that will list those off the east coast. The number of wrecks has soared from an initial examination five years ago when about 7,000 wrecks were catalogued. "We expect that when we finish the number will be 10,000 to 12,000.

These would range from dugout boats in prehistoric times up to when we stop at the end of the World War II in 1945," said Karl Brady, archaeologist with the unit.

"It is the first time they will be documented and quantified as a resource and then after that we hope to map them and ensure they are protected." Any wreck over 100 years is automatically protected by law and anyone diving on it needs a licence.

Mr Brady said new wrecks were being discovered every year mostly as a result of dredging, pipe-lying and an extensive seabed survey being undertaken by the Geological Survey and the Maritime Institute.

Compiling the inventory involves an extensive search of records in the National Library, TCD library and the databases of other institutions like Lloyds insurance lists, shipping newspapers and registers.

Mr Brady said that while the number of wrecks might seem high it had to be considered in the context of Ireland being an island nation that imported many of its needs for centuries, suffered invasions and is close to major international shipping routes.

The first volume of the inventory will cover Louth, Meath, Dublin and Wicklow. Next month an extra archaeologist will be hired on a six month contract to help with the research. "At the moment we are planning to complete Wexford and Waterford next. At the entrance to the Irish Sea with a number of natural hazards, Wexford has the highest percentage of wrecks of any county.

"Cork will be the third volume and then Kerry to Donegal," he said. The location of many of the wrecks is unknown and others have been buried by shifting sands. Portmarnock Strand in north Dublin is an example.

"Many people will walk the strand and never see a wreck. But if you walk it at the right time after a storm sometimes you will see wrecks exposed after sand is dragged out. You might see an 18th century or 16th century wreck lying there. I think there are seven or eight wrecks on Portmarnock." Sand also buried a wreck in Waterford Harbour which is believed to be the Cromwellian flagship Great Lewis that sank in 1645.

It was discovered in 1999 when a dredger working on the commercial navigation channel through the Duncannon sandbar cut into the wreck and brought some timbers to the surface. The unit has been ensuring it is protected.


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Yahoo.com
March 28, 2005

TAMPA, FL--Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. announced today that Numismatic Conservation Services (NCS) has completed the conservation process and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) has completed the grading process on all gold coins recovered to date from the SS Republic shipwreck site.

A population report detailing the denomination, mint marks and grades of these gold coins is now available on the NGC website or on the Odyssey website. A population report detailing the silver coins recovered to date will be released at a later date.

The SS Republic was a paddlewheel steamer that sank during a hurricane in 1865 while en route from New York to New Orleans with post-war supplies and currency. Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered the shipwreck in August of 2003 nearly 1700 feet below the surface of the Atlantic. To date, more than 51,000 gold and silver coins have been recovered, including $20.00 Double Eagles, $10.00 Eagles, Half Dollars and a few Quarter Dollars.

NCS and NGC were awarded the exclusive contract to perform conservation, grading and encapsulation of the SS Republic shipwreck coins. NCS and NGC combined are a complete numismatic service organization: NCS is the only professional conservation service specializing in coins and other numismatic items, while NGC is the largest independent coin grading service in the world, having certified more than ten million collectable coins. NCS and NGC are the American Numismatic Association's (ANA) official conservation and grading services.


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The Guardian
By Ben Sills
March 28, 2005

The Strait of Gibraltar has been the scene of numerous skirmishes between the British and Spanish navies, and now the two nations are sparring again - this time over the wreck of an English warship packed to the gunwales with treasure.

HMS Sussex has lain undisturbed on the seabed for more than 300 years, but since researchers discovered the ship was carrying billions of pounds of English gold and silver, it has become the focus of a bitter dispute as the Spanish authorities try to frustrate the attempts of a private company to locate it and start salvage work on behalf of Britain.

International law gives UK authorities jurisdiction over the wrecks of British ships wherever they might lie, and this month the UK government gave permission to an American exploration company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, to salvage the Sussex.

But the regional government of Andalucía claims that Odyssey also needs permission from Spain to carry out exploration in Spanish waters and has sent out coastal patrols to disrupt the salvage operation.

The Sussex sank with 12 other ships when a storm blew up on their first night out of Gibraltar. The ship was swamped as its commander, Admiral Sir Francis Wheeler, tried to avoid being swept on to the rocks. The admiral's body was washed up on a Spanish beach two days later.

Documents uncovered in 1995 revealed that the ship was carrying a payment for the Duke of Savoy, a key ally in Britain's war against the French. It is estimated that the treasure it carried would be worth more than £2bn today.

Odyssey has struck a deal with the British under which it can keep a share of the treasure in return for conducting the salvage operation. It will get 80% of the first £45m recovered, half of everything up to £500m and 40% of everything above that. Shares in the company have nearly doubled in price over the past month.

Odyssey's explorers have combed 400 square miles of the Mediterranean seabed using sonar equipment and deep-water robots. They discovered 418 possible targets, including Roman and Phoenician ships more than 2,000 years old. But only one of the wrecks had cannons. Odyssey is confident it has the right wreck, but other archaeologists have expressed doubts.

The Guardia Civil has sent out patrols to disrupt the operation.


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al.com
By Sallie Owen
March 28, 2005

MONTGOMERY -- Many professionals in history-related fields say they're still unhappy with the latest proposal to rewrite laws about who can legally remove historical artifacts from beneath state waters.

Identical bills were introduced in the House and Senate, and a House committee adopted a heavily revised substitute version. Both bills are in position for floor votes when the Legislature returns from spring break Tuesday.

Rep. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, said he worked in suggestions from the Alabama Historical Commission and noted that divers made several concessions. Ward, the House sponsor, said he will be willing to consider further changes and hopes the proposal will get a floor vote in the House within the next two weeks.

Still, assessments from professionals range from tactfully negative to bluntly dire.

"We're just hopeful that the (legislative) leadership realizes that if passed in its current form, this bill would do more harm for cultural resources than good," said Brandon Brazil, a spokesman for the Alabama Historical Commission.

Brazil said interested parties met once to negotiate a compromise, and, he said, the substitute bill looks like the sponsor was trying to accommodate both sides.

Sufficient time was not spent to get to the substantive issues, said George Ewert, director of the Museum of Mobile. "It's a poor result of a flawed process," said Ewert, who also chairs the existing oversight panel for underwater cultural resources.

Glen Forest, a marine archaeologist who did dive work during excavation on the USS Monitor, agreed with divers that the current law needs work but said he's appalled by the substitute.

"It will lead to instant mechanized destruction of what's left of Alabama's resources," said Forest, who called the measure "looter-friendly."

Under current law, people do not need permits to scuba dive in state waters, according to state officials. Recreational diving permits are available but not required. Divers who are excavating, extracting artifacts or systematically looking for an object are required to obtain permits.

Divers say they were not consulted when the 1999 law was written, and their input was ignored when the commission developed rules for the permitting process.

Outspoken critic
The most outspoken critic of existing law is Steve Phillips, who was arrested for removing a Civil War-era weapon from the Alabama River at Selma. He is fighting the charge.

Phillips, who owns Southern Skin Diver Supply in Birmingham, complains that under the current law, a diver has to hire a licensed archaeologist in order to legally visit many sites, and the commission has been stingy with permits. He said he wrote for a permit three times and received no response.

"Our 100,000 divers in this state need to be able to go diving without being arrested by a rogue agency that is corrupt," Phillips said.

In the substitute bill, two of the biggest changes from current law are eliminating permits for recreational divers, which has widespread support, and shifting oversight of the remaining permits from the state archaeologist at the Alabama Historical Commission to the Department of Archives and History.

The only problem there is the Archives Department has not put out the welcome mat. "We don't have the expertise or the resources to manage that program," Archives Director Ed Bridges said.

The bill creates a 15-member Submerged Historical Cultural Resources Oversight Committee to set up guidelines for permits, volunteer reporting of finds by recreational divers and conservation of artifacts. The existing advisory panel would be dissolved.

Three politicians -- the governor, lieutenant governor, and House speaker -- would name most of the commissioners. The heads of archives, the Historical Commission and the Conservation Department would each make a single appointment.

The bill requires that three commissioners represent an Alabama-licensed and accredited dive school. Appointees for three other seats would have to be Alabama residents as well as a historian, archaeologist or artifact hunter.

'Collector-heavy'
Brazil said the oversight committee "could easily become collector-heavy," and he also noted that there's no guarantee any of the members would be trained historians or archaeologists.

The substitute creates two categories of violations, depending on whether the item disturbed or stolen is worth more or less than $1,500. The maximum penalties are one to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

Divers conceded several things to the commission in the latest version, Phillips said. They agreed to let the new bill apply to all rivers instead of only Mobile Bay, to restrict access to archaeological sites without a permit and to allow the commission to be one of three state agencies involved.

"We just want access to the public lands and waters, just like hunters and fishermen," Brazil said. He emphasized that he and other divers are not interested in removing items from shipwrecks, but rather they want to go after "isolated finds."

Other provisions in the substitute are also troubling, Brazil said. Law enforcement officials from the Conservation Department would have sole authority to enforce the law. Now sheriff's deputies, police officers and state troopers share that duty.

In several places, the bill states that items qualify for protection if they are at least 100 years old. In the United States, the generally accepted standard is 50 years, he said.

Wetsuits vs. bureaucrats
The legislative dispute at times seems to devolve into a battle between wetsuit-wearing pirates determined to plunder the state and bureaucrats bound on creating impediments for anyone who doesn't have a Ph.D.

Bridges, the head of archives who also at one time headed the Historical Commission on a temporary basis, said he hears strong arguments on both sides.

"The archaeologists say there is potentially valuable information to be gained, but we don't know what is there until we do the formal, scientific archaeology," Bridges said. "The other people are saying the archaeologists will never do the systematic work," he said because of a lack of funding and other resources.

Bridges said he has still not been persuaded by either side, though the state archives is certainly interested in artifacts that might be found. A compromise might involve setting up stricter rules for certain areas that need protection, he said.

Brazil explained the split this way: "The collector is artifact driven; the archaeologist is context driven. The context and the relationship between articles tells the story."

Many times collectors are able to identify and date arrowheads they find because an archaeologist found a similar item during a scientific excavation and was able to carbon-date nearby materials, Brazil said.

Phillips said it's wrong to leave these artifacts on the river bottoms, where they are constantly tumbled by the currents. This ceaseless motion invalidates arguments about "lost context," he said.

"It's like saying we should not ever go to the moon and observe it," Phillips said.

Collectors and artifact hunters say they're frustrated that some state officials want to exclude them. "People who love history -- they don't want them involved at all," Phillips said. Recent accusations of mismanagement at the agency further reduces his confidence in the commission.

The commission is battling aftershocks of a scathing audit issued March 18 by the state Department of Examiners of Public Accounts. The audit revealed widespread accounting problems and questionable expenditures during the last three years of Lee Warner's tenure as director. Warner resigned under pressure in August.

No permanent replacement has been hired.

Consequences of plundering
Ewert said Phillips' arrest shows that even with a strong law, people are willing to exploit these resources. Experts agree there's a lucrative market for relics.

Marine or underwater archaeology is so specialized that Alabama really needs its own professional in that field to protect its resources, Forest said.

Looking at how other states have handled the issue, he said, it would be ideal for that person -- and perhaps the state archaeologist too -- to fall under the auspices of the Conservation Department, which already has responsibility for state-owned land. Forest said that agency also has law enforcement capability with its game wardens and marine police, plus it has boats and some of the other equipment needed.

Federal law gives states the duty to preserve many of these underwater cultural resources, and there are penalties if that responsibility is shirked, Forest said.

Conservation Department officials did not return calls seeking comment.

"All you hear about is shipwrecks and all you hear about is Civil War," Robert Thrower, tribal historic preservation officer for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. "We've been here 12,000 years."

Thrower too scoffed at the so-called compromise because it does not clamp down on professional collectors. "If that thing passes, I don't think there will be protection for anything," he said.

State waters now cover numerous archaeological sites because the Creeks typically lived near water and stream beds shift over time, Thrower said.

Artifacts of any nature belong to the state if they lie under state waters.

"These objects that are being retrieved, by definition they belong to the people of Alabama," Ewert said. Companies that extract oil from beneath state waters pay royalties, he said, and businesses that dig gravel from state lands also compensate the government.


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Yahoo News
By Wilson Ring
March 26, 2005


A caisson from a bridge built across Lake Champlain
by Continental Army soldiers in 1777 is displayed at
the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum.

FERRISBURGH, Vt. - For more than two centuries, the waters of Lake Champlain have hidden the remains of a marvel of 18th-century engineering — a bridge built by 2,500 sick and hungry Continental soldiers. Now a piece of that bridge sits in the preservation laboratory at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, destined to give visitors a portal into revolutionary times.

"When you look at what they wanted to do, it connects you right to the American Revolution," said the museum's executive director, Art Cohn.

Historians say the bridge was constructed in March and April of 1777. Thousands of huge pine logs were skidded onto the ice and notched together; weighed down with rocks, these caissons sunk to the lake bottom through holes the soldiers cut in the ice.
By spring 22 caissons, some up to 50 feet tall, reached the lake's surface. They were joined by a 16-foot-wide deck that linked Fort Ticonderoga in New York and Mount Independence in Vermont.

The American troops were soon forced to use the bridge they had built. In July 1777, they fled the British army that was bearing down on Fort Ticonderoga.

The British occupied the fort and later destroyed the bridge. But many of those same colonial troops who fled Ticonderoga played a role in defeating the British in the Battle of Saratoga, one of the pivotal battles of the Revolutionary War, three months later.

If the part of the bridge above the water was destroyed, the part under the surface was not. The caissons were set so deep that they did not interfere with boats on the lake; the bridge was largely forgotten until 1983, until divers discovered the caissons, still largely intact, laid out in an arc between the two shores.

Cohn and others began to study the bridge more intensely in 1992, mapping the locations of the caissons and recovered thousands of Revolutionary War artifacts believed dumped in the lake when the British abandoned the fortifications in late 1777. Some of those artifacts are now on display at the Mount Independence Visitor Center in Orwell.

Then, last year, a 26-foot beam estimated to weigh between 1,500 and 1,800 pounds surfaced and was pulled to shore near Fort Ticonderoga. It sat there until December, until the ground was frozen enough so that a truck could be driven down to the water's edge and the beam could be retrieved.

It was taken to the Maritime Museum, to be dried out and prepared for public display.

The original tree, cut nearby in Vermont or New York, is believed to be dense, white pine. Eighteenth-century forests were full of such trees.

The cold lake water helped preserve the timber.

"The wood was never completely waterlogged," Chris Sabic, director of conservation.

"The conservation is going to be very passive," he said. "We're not trying to impregnate it with chemicals. We are really just letting it dry out as slowly as possible in a controlled environment."

That control comes from simply wrapping a plastic tarp around the beam for part of the day.

Once the preservation of the timber is complete it will be displayed at the Maritime Museum. Cohn said it will be returned to the museum at Fort Ticonderoga after a new visitor center is completed there.

The simple conservation technique is a marked contrast from some other wooden Lake Champlain artifacts that have required months or years of expensive preservation.

For example, it took years to preserve an anchor from a British warship from the War of 1812 that was pulled from the lake near Plattsburgh, N.Y. In that case the anchor was dried by soaking it in alcohol. Then the anchor was soaked in a solution that contained pine rosin.


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Deccan Herald
March 28, 2005

Legacy of Portuguese and Dutch rule in KeralaTriangular fort, St Angelo has many memories to unload to its visitors.

KERALA,UNI: St Angelo Fort, popularly known as “Kannur Fort,” is the symbol of Portuguese and Dutch rule for centuries of colonial legacy in this region.

It is one of the important tourist spots of North Malabar in Kerala.The triangular fort, which is celebrating its 500the year of its existence, is located on a rocky promontory in the Arabian sea, three kms from here and had been a witness to many a battle in the past.

Neither the ravages of the time nor the surging of waves have made a dent in the fortifications of the massive structure built of laterite blocks.

Fort still strong
The recent Tsunami Wave did not have any impact on the fortifications, despite the huge waves lashing on the fort.

According to Superintendent Archaeologist, Archeological Survey of India (ASI), Thrissur circle, K K Rama Murthy, the Portuguese built the fort on a 11-acre promontory in 1505 ,after the first Portuguese Viceroy, Dom Franscesco D Almeida, obtained permission from “Kolathari Rajas” who were the local rulers.

He told UNI that the fort, now under the ASI, has become a major national and international tourist attraction after it was renovated a few years ago. Detailing the history of the fort, Mr Rama Murthy said that a trade treaty was signed between the local kings and Vasco Da Gama in 1498, which marked the beginning of the Portuguese dominance in Kannur which continued for 150 years.

The fort was one of the first strongholds of the Portuguese in the Indian subcontinent.

The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the English had fought amongst themselves and against the local rulers, on the coast stretching from Mahe to Kannur.

The result was the Portuguese and later, the Dutch settled in Kannur, the British in Thalassery and the French in Mahe.

The fort was the symbol of Portuguese supremacy till the Dutch captured it in 1663 and sold it to Ali Raja of Cannanore (now Kannur) in 1772 .

The British captured the fort in 1790.Tipu Sultan of Mysore and the family of Arakkal offered stiff resistance to the East India Company, owned by the British, in the 18the century.

However, the Bibi of Arakkal family surrendered to the British in 1790 when Kannur was stormed by General Aber Cromby.

Later, the British made additions to the fort and it became the most important military station in Malabar. A few cannons are still seen at the place, as a reminder of the once glorious past.

The stable and ammunition houses can also be seen.

The fort comprises barracks, a roofless chapel and a dungeon.Kannur had also been the seat of the local rulers of Arakkal Royal Family.

Mr Rama Murthy said besides Kannur Fort, five other forts in the region -- Bekal, Tellicherry, Palakkad, Thangassery, Anjengo and Vattakottai Forts -- were under the jurisdiction of ASI.The Thrissur circle and the ASI are striving hard to preserve the monuments.

The Kannur district ASI office is also located in the Kannur fort premises.

Secretary of the District Tourism Promotion Council (DTPC) E C Raveendran said that steps had already been taken to attract more tourists.

He said five tourism police personnel were stationed at the fort to provide necessary information and guidance to the visitors.

Every year, about one lakh tourists, both domestic and foreign, are visiting the fort. The police of the departmaent of tourism narrate the history of the fort besides giving other details.

The inflow of tourists are on the increase this year, five ships with foreign tourists have already arrived here from London for a visit to the North Malabar region.

The Dutch epitaph of Susanna Weyerman and Godfried Weyerman in the fort says: ''Tomb of the first wife of Mr Godfried Weyerman who died on 28the March 1745, aged 17 Years, 7 Months and 16 Days.'' On the other side of the stone lie buried the children of Weyerman from his second marriage to Jeanna Anna Banister.

Godfried Weyerman was Governor of Cochin from 1761 to 1764.


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Underwater Archaeology: Exploring the World Beneath the Sea
by Jean Yves Blot



In fascinating before-and-after photographs, readers can see objects as they are found and, after cleaning, transformed into statues, teapots, revolvers, and myriad other riches.

Details:The staggering array of treasures that lies beneath the ocean makes the seabed the biggest museum in the world, and for the last 100 years, divers have been exploring its riches at a rapid pace. Here we learn how the science of underwater archaeology has evolved, from the diving bell to the Aqua-Lung to today's marine robots.

Click here to see the "Shipping & Billing Information" and click here to see the "Terms and Conditions of Sale".

$CAN 16.95
USD$ 12.50


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NOAA, the National Maritime Center, and the National Park Service arehosting a Maritime Heritage Education Conference this November in Norfolk,Virginia.

Visit the website here: http://www.sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education/mhec/ for more information.

Source: Subarch List


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Kfor.com
By Galen Culver

FORT TOWSON - It is one of Oklahoma's most significant historical finds. A riverboat covered by sand for a century and a half.

For two years now archeologists and historians have been pulling up relics from Oklahoma's frontier past. But until very recently the experts didn't even know the name of the ship.

Galen Culver reveals frontier treasure and for the first time a name to go along with it.

For the longest time she sat forgotten beneath a sand bank cow pasture on the red river.

Oklahoma's only shipwreck caused a sensation when the water changed course and revealed her again, but she still didn't have a name or a date, until now. "Well we're still working on some of the details on that but we think we have the right boat...vessel that was lost in 1838. We think it was a vessel called the heroine." "It's like Forrest Gumps box of chocolates. You just never know what you're going to find in a shipwreck."

After much careful study and two summer's worth of artifact retrieval Dr. Kevin Chrisman, who's heading up a team of naval archeologists, thinks the heroine might have been the first ship of her size to try to make it up the red. "It was 140 feet long. It had a crew of 20 or 25."

The Heroine, built much like her sister ship the Yellowstone, was within two miles of her destination when she hit a snag and sank. "The log was like a great big wooden torpedo and punched a hole right through the side of the boat." But the Heroine's epic inland journey is on again.

Slowly but surely the shipwreck is on its way to Texas A & M University where Chrisman and team are restoring what's left and trying to figure out how these early ships worked. "It's the earliest Mississippi river type steam boat that's been found anywhere and it's telling a lot of stories."

There are thousands of artifacts already...old boots...lots of metal pieces...and even a barrel of pickled pork with the meat still on the bone.

"Mind you, you wouldn't want to make a barbecue sandwich out of this." The ships huge, thousand pound rudder still sits in water, but this time at an old airbase in college station.

The Heroine never reached her original destination back in 1838, but her loss is now a much larger gain for the historians who've never been able to touch a ship like her before.


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Newcientist.com
By Emma Young
March 23, 2005

The first remains of ancient Egyptian seagoing ships ever to be recovered have been found in two caves on Egypt's Red Sea coast, according to a team at Boston University in the US.

The team also found fragments of pottery at the site, which could help resolve controversies about the extent of ancient Egyptian trade voyages. But details of the newly disclosed finds remain sketchy.

Kathryn Bard, who co-led the dig with Italian archaeologists in December 2004, has revealed to the Boston University weekly community newsletter that the team found a range of items - including timbers and riggings - inside the man-made caves, located at the coastal Pharaonic site of Wadi Gawasis.

According to the report, pottery in the caves could date at least some of the artefacts to a famous 15th century BC naval expedition by Queen Hatshepsut to the mysterious, incense-producing land of Punt. This voyage is depicted in detailed reliefs on Queen Hatshepsut's temple on the west bank of the Nile, near modern-day Luxor.

Bard declined to speak to New Scientist. But the find is exciting, says John Baines, professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, UK, who has been in contact with Bard. "These finds put flesh on what we might have imagined," he says.

Gold and ebony
The pottery finds include items the Italian researchers think could be from Yemen - a potential candidate for the modern identity of Punt. The ancient Egyptians sourced a variety of exotic wares in Punt, including gold, ebony and incense.

"The Yemeni pottery is very interesting because it was suspected that there were contacts across the Red Sea - and this proves that there were," Baines says.

The naval artefacts included two curved cedar planks which might have been parts of steering oars. But linking these to Queen Hatshepsut's famous voyage might be a little too specific, he says.

"Kathryn [Bard] has told me the pottery is early New Kingdom, and we know of no other expedition to Punt in that period, so it is a reasonable guess. But we also have to bear in mind that almost everything from antiquity is lost, so there could well have been other voyages."

It is not clear exactly why the artefacts were sealed up inside the caves. But it is possible that they were offerings to the Egyptian gods. "That sounds very plausible to me, not least because previous excavations found a structure made of stone anchors that could again be some sort of thanks-offering," says Baines.

The team plans to return to the caves in December 2005 to continue their excavations.


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ABC
By David Cussons
March 22, 2005


Curator Viv Moran with the ships bell from the Yongala.

The 23 March marks the anniversary of one of Australia's worst maritime disasters.On this day in 1911 the passenger and freight steamer the Yongala sank during a cyclone off the Townsville coast, with the loss of 122 lives.

The 94th anniversay of the tragedy will be commemorated in Townsville with the launch of a new gallery at the local Maritime Museum, including a memorial garden.

The gallery will be opened with a ceremony attended by descendants of some of the passengers who lost their lives on Yongala.Maritime Museum curator Viv Moran says while she's managed to track down some descendants of the Yongala passengers, it hasn't been easy. The passage of time and the mystery of the dissapearance has made following the trail of those who lost their lives, difficult.

While the loss of the ship during the 1911 cyclone is indesputable, there's no way of knowing what really happened.


A replica of the Yongala is a feature of the Maritime Museum's display.

The ship was last sighted heading into the brewing storm by a lighthouse keeper on Dent Island in the Whitsunday Passage north of Mackay. She never arrived in Townsville and was reported missing on the 26th of March. The only body ever found washed ashore was that of the racehorse Moonshine, which was being shipped north to compete in the Townsville Cup. Only fragements of wreckage were found along north Queensland beaches and despite searches at the time, and a reward, no sign of the wreck could be found.

The Yongala literally sank without a trace.It wasn't until 1958 that the wreck was officially located, 48 nautical miles south east of Townsville and 12 nautical miles east of Cape Bowling Green, lying in about 20 meters of water.

These days the Yongala is best know as one of the north's best dive sites, with an international industry based around visiting its final resting place.

But Viv Moran says she hopes her exhibition will help Yongala visitors better understand the significance of the site.

"I'm a diver myself and it is a great dive site. But it's also a part of the social history of north Queensland and a reminder of a tragic event that claimed the lives of 122 people."


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The Desert Sun
By Benjamin Spillman
March 22, 2005

Lonely, wind-blown creosote and rocks baked brown by the Southern California desert sun don't immediately conjure images of a bustling seaside village.

But shells scattered between the boulders and scrubby brush of one of the hottest, driest places in North America aren't a mirage.

They're evidence of an ancient lake where the earliest residents of the Colorado desert hauled in catches that would have included razorback suckers and bonytail chub.

Now descendents of those early fishermen are reclaiming physical evidence of their ancestors' fishing acumen.
A San Francisco-based conservation group called The Trust for Public Land expects to close a deal this week on 360 acres that includes fish traps built along the former shoreline.

"It is not just Indian history, it is California history," said Carmen Lucas, an elder in the Kwaaymii culture and member of the Laguna Band of Mission Indians, who visited the site Monday.

The current land deal includes 360 acres that will eventually become part of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. But the group behind it says another 4,000 acres is slated for preservation.

If the second deal closes it would be among the largest conservation deals of its kind in the region.

The idea is to buy the land and preserve the fish traps for educational purposes.

A group with local ties called the Native American Land Conservancy contacted the San Francisco group about the fish traps area.

The Trust for Public Land will give an archeological conservancy $179,600 for the first 360 acres. The group has an option to buy the other 4,000 acres. Alex Tynberg, the project manager for the deal, said he expects that will cost about $1.2 to $1.4 million.

The archeological conservancy had bought the land from a private owner to preserve the fish traps. Buying it from that group for the park means it will be part of a permanently protected landscape.

Tynberg said the Trust for Public Land is different from conservation groups that focus on wildlife.

That's because the group concentrates on buying and preserving land that is valuable to people for cultural, historic or spiritual reasons.

"It is connecting land with people," Tynberg said. "You have urban parks, you have suburban green space and you have these wide open wildlife areas."

Left alone, the fish traps and other archeological resources could be vulnerable to damage from off-road driving and other human disturbances.

An earth mover has already torn through some of the traps.

But once the land is part of the park, access will likely remain limited to a few Jeep roads and desert washes.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Superintendent Mark Jorgensen said even a lone dirt bike can scar the sun-baked patina that's cooked onto the sound by the sun.

"The tracks will be there for generations," Jorgensen said. "It is like driving on wet cement."

It has been centuries since Lake Cahuilla receded, leaving a visible water line on the nearby Santa Rosa Mountains.

But visiting the fish traps - pointed rock arrangements where tribal people may have herded fish - it is easy to envision the shoreline.

Shells dot the ground and many rocks still sport a layer of tufa, a hardened lime deposit that forms along freshwater shorelines.

During the trip group members theorized about how ancient people might have used the traps and considered what contemporary Californians could learn from the land.

Lucas said saving evidence of early Californians' relationship with nature preserves lessons that are relevant to daily lives of people today.

"It makes them aware there is more to life than big money, big trucks, big recreational things and a material life," Lucas said.

Mike Madrigal, a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians near Anza, said the site helped him visualize his ancestors' lifestyle.

"Having something to look at and experience is a big difference," said Madrigal. "It is completely different than reading something in a book."

Alvin Warren, director of the tribal lands program for the trust, said non-Indians would also benefit from visiting the fish traps.

Warren, who is a member of a tribe near Santa Fe, New Mexico, said people who know the cultural features of an area gain a deeper appreciation for the physical landscape.

"It is not empty," he said of the desolate land. "This is a desert landscape with tremendous features. But you have to have your eyes open to really see them."


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Collect.com
March 22, 2005



Editor’s Note: Wayne Sayles is executive director of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild. He presented the following statement at open hearings of the United States Cultural Property Advisory Committee on a request from the People’s Republic of China concerning imposition of import restrictions, which would include coins.


“Dear Mr. Chairman and distinguished committee members:

“The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG) is a national nonprofit organization created to promote and nurture the free and independent collecting of coins from antiquity through education, political action and consumer protection.
“The goal of this guild is to foster an environment in which the general public can confidently and legally acquire and hold, for personal or professional use, any numismatic item of historical interest regardless of date or place of origin.

The purpose of this statement is to point out that ancient or antique coins from China, being like all coins in general, are not objects of significant cultural importance. They should be freely available to private ownership, and should not be considered in any request for import restrictions.

“Over the past several centuries, private coin collections have served as the primary training ground for prominent numismatists and have been the source of much enlightenment of the past.

During this period, ancient coin collecting—which was once a hobby of kings—became accessible to the general public. Today, there are arguably more than 50,000 collectors of ancient coins in the United States alone.2 This represents a healthy and legitimate market for collectible coins that would be severely disrupted by the imposition of unnecessary import restrictions.

“In this country, institutions of higher learning virtually ignore numismatics. There are no university programs leading to a degree in ancient numismatics, and very few course offerings in the field of numismatics at any level.
“The few notable exceptions stem from initiatives of private collectors who happen otherwise to be associated with educational institutions or volunteer their time to introduce numismatics into the classroom in the form of guest lectures. If it were not for the enthusiasm and effort of collectors, ancient coins would be little more than curiosities in the academic world.

Ancient Coins for Education (ACE), an Affiliate Member of the ACCG, is a nonprofit group of private collectors and professional educators founded in 2001.

This group has organized a highly effective nationwide program to introduce ancient coins of all types into elementary through collegiate level classrooms as an aid to teaching Latin, Art and Ancient History. The program has been a great success. About 140 schools are participating in this program each year and the involvement is growing daily. Thousands of genuine ancient coins, donated by ordinary collectors, have been distributed to students as rewards for participating in classroom projects.

“Individuals around the world are becoming more interested in history and culture. Hollywood, which has a very good finger on the pulse of America, has invested millions of dollars in the past few years for the production of historical epics. Naturally, this blossoming interest—a modern Renaissance, so to speak—is accompanied by the innate desire to collect, study, admire and own objects that connect us in a real way to the past. It is a basic part of how we function as human beings.

“Understandably, the right of individuals to own historical or cultural objects needs, in some cases, to be tempered by the broader interests of society. Cultural property of critical importance to our understanding of the past should be safeguarded and preserved in the most effective way. From as early as the third century B.C.E., museums have provided this service. Private collectors and philanthropists have always been a primary source of museum funding.
However, common objects of minimal cultural significance do not warrant the same protections as national treasures.

The question that has been posed by some recent antagonists of private collecting is whether individuals have the right to own a piece of the past. Before the World Archaeological Congress in 2003, Dr. Paula Kay Lazrus asked, ‘The question for us today, is whether the concept of ownership (as opposed to stewardship) continues to be a sustainable or even moral position in our contemporary society ... ’ The view of some in the field of professional archaeology is that it does not.

Conversely, the ACCG believes that there is nothing immoral about ownership, or private collecting.

“It is a wholesome activity that greatly benefits society. Private property rights are also being assailed by certain factions. Archaeologists Jon L. Gibson and Joe Sanders wrote in the Society for American Archaeology Bulletin, ‘We suggest that just because sites happen to be on private property should not make them privately owned. We also maintain that archaeologists must challenge one of American’s most precious rights—the right to do as you please to your own land—if we are going to have any chance of preserving our diminishing heritage ... First, we must press for legislation that places an archaeological lien on private property with significant archaeological sites. Second, archaeologists must be the ones to choose which sites are to be protected. We can not entrust this selection to a governmental board or legislated process, which would give land owners the final word on whether a site will be protected ... Archaeologists must be more than just stewards of the past. They must serve as the public conscience. They must act on society’s behalf even when society is insensitive or objects.’

“Some supporters of the anti-private-collector community, in an effort to diminish the rights of private citizens, would seek and support broad restrictions against the importation of items defined by the UNESCO Convention of 1970 as ‘Cultural Property’ This is precisely the reason that we are here today.

However, the provisions of 19 USC 2600, Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act, are clear that restrictions should only be applied to ‘culturally significant’ material and not to extremely common items, like coins, for which many multiple examples exist. Archaeologists typically respond that restrictions on coins are necessary to protect the integrity of archaeological sites.

“In the field of archaeology, coins are useful mainly as a way of dating the strata in which they are found. However, even this is of tentative value since coins, like diamonds, arrowheads, and rocks in general (as any farmer knows) tend to migrate to the surface over time.

Thus, the accuracy of dating a stratum by coin finds is only reliable when the coins are in some way part and parcel of a fixed object. This is seldom the case, since most coins found in archaeological excavations are scattered finds. Large hoards of coins were generally buried in more obscure locations. Once an ancient coin is removed from the ground, it is of little or no archaeological interest.

“Consequently, archaeologists generally pay little attention to coins, and do not study them to any great extent, nor do they go to any trouble to preserve them. There are countless anecdotes of buckets full of ancient coins sitting in the dank basements of archaeological museums and storage sites, simply rotting from bronze disease. Yet they vehemently refuse to sell them to collectors to raise funds for continued work or better facilities. The logic, perverted as it may seem, is that doing so would merely enlarge the market and encourage site looting. Over the past 400 years, private collectors have produced, through their own effort, and at their own expense, a huge body of reference works that are widely available to, and used by, scholars of all disciplines and educational levels. They have preserved millions of coins through careful and loving attention and have led the world in numismatic research.

“Even if coins were of archaeological interest, the only coins that legitimately should be restricted from importation would be those proven to have been removed from a scheduled archaeological site – and those by definition would have to have been stolen. Sites and storage facilities should be under the protection and control of the Chinese government. There would be no reason to suspect that Chinese coins entering the U.S. market were illicit unless China reported that they had been stolen. In any case, import restrictions would not be the appropriate remedy. In spite of harsh penalties, internal corruption among those charged with protection of China’s cultural heritage is a major part of the problem.

The head of the Cultural Relics Protection Department of the UNESCO- listed World Heritage Site at Chengde Mountain in China was recently sentenced to death for stealing 250 relics from temples of the former Qing Dynasty palace. U.S. import restrictions would do little to deter illicit sales of antiquities if the threat of capital punishment does not. Part of the problem is that China does not enforce its own laws with consistency, as I will illustrate.
“Most Chinese coins are quite common. For example, a seven-ton column of corroded coins dating back to the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 C.E.) was found in the town of Suishui in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province.

The number of important new discoveries each year in the field of numismatics is a tiny percentage of the number of coins bought, sold and traded in the legitimate market. There are literally millions and millions of ancient coins circulating around the world today in private collections and residing in museums. There are about 30,000 different types of Chinese coins, spanning a period of 3,000 years. In addition to recirculation in the market of coins from old private collections, ancient coins are often deaccessioned by museums and sold to the general public. A few notable examples in recent years are the sale of assets from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Fine Art and the Phoenix Art Museum. Just last month, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts sold 1,620 ancient coins at auction in New York City.

“It is virtually impossible to determine where most of these coins were found. Just because a coin was originally made in China does not mean that it stayed there. From the earliest days of coin production, before 600 B.C.E., long-distance trade and population movements led to the large-scale distribution of coins well beyond the regions in which they were originally manufactured. This is a universal phenomenon that certainly includes China.

“As Dr. Michael Mitchiner points out, few places were economically or culturally isolated by the time coinage was introduced to the world. Through the evidence of coin migration, Dr. Michiner documents an extensive trade between East and West during the Viking-Samanid period of the 10th century. This resulted in “a massive flow of Samanid (Persian) silver dirhems to Sweden.” Some of these trade coins became so commonplace in distant lands that they were imitated by local mints. Coins of Indo-Greek rulers in what is now Afghanistan, for example, were imitated by the Yueh Chi in Western China. The Khwarezmians and Volga Bulghurs struck Samanid style dirhems in their own mints. These same coins were imitated by various Turkish tribes in southern Russia. Silver coins of the 12th-century Bulgarian King Ivan Alexander replicate contemporary Byzantine silver issues from Constantinople so closely that only an expert can distinguish one from the other. Local coins emulating the Byzantine style are also found in such diverse localities as Sicily, North Africa, Hungary, Mesopotamia and the Crusader states of the Levant.

“The Han Dynasty of China (206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.) maintained a strong military presence in Turkestan, where their coins are still found. Some 2,000 years later, a series of revolts in Turkestan led to the production of Chinese-style coins with Turkish inscriptions. Other coins of the 19th century from Chinese Turkestan copy the contemporary issues of the Khanates of Bukhara and Khokand in Russian Turkestan. Distinguishing between these and ordinary Chinese coins is difficult enough without trying to determine if they came from China or Central Asia.
Ancient Chinese coins even came to America with 19th century immigrants and have been found in California among other places. About 30 kilograms of ancient Chinese coins were recently found by construction workers at Quy Nhon city in Viet Nam and several hoards of ancient Chinese coins have been found in India.

“Further evidence of widespread international trade in antiquity is confirmed by a huge number of documented coin hoards. One such hoard, found in northern Afghanistan near the ancient Baktrian capital of Balkh, consisted of a large number of Greek coins from various cities. A sampling of 20 coins from the hoard reveals an extraordinary distribution. Specimens were recorded from such diverse polities as: Lete in Macedon; Uncertain Thraco-Macedon-ian Tribes; Athens; The island of Aegina; Cnidus in Caria; Phaselis in Lycia; Celenderis, Soli, and Tarsus in Cilicia; Citium and Salamis in Cyprus and Tyre in Phoenicia. Dr. Troxell illustrates in this article that coined silver was ‘a major export of the Greek world in the late sixth and the fifth centuries [B.C.E.].’ Howard L. Adelson, in his study of sixth- and seventh-century Byzantine gold coinage, found that ‘In the overwhelming majority of cases, the find spot was clearly in an area removed from Roman control.’

“In other words, the coins were found in a geographical location populated by a culture other than the one that produced them. Although the coins being studied were originally struck in Constantinople, hoard find sites ranged from the Balkans and northern Italy to Russia, Frisia and Britain – that is, along the trade routes. This study was confirmed by the subsequent work of Joan M. Fagerlie in 1967. Some 800 Roman and Byzantine gold coins were analyzed and the conclusion was that they represented a steady stream of trade between the Mediterranean and Scandinavian countries. Dr. Fagerlie mentions in her introduction that thousands of Roman silver denarii from the second century have also been found in Sweden.

“A review of the Coin Hoards series, published by The Royal Numismatic Society, reveals that hoards of Greek coins, for example, have been found in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Tunisia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Israel, Yemen, Poland, Georgia, France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, England, Albania, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Iraq, Switzerland, Germany and, of course, Greece. Roman, Byzantine and Islamic coins have been found in equally diverse locations. The Silk Road to China was one of the world’s oldest and most important routes historically. Trade along this route led to the dispersal of coin in both directions. Coins of the Romans, Byzantines and Western Turks have been found in China, and coins of Western Chinese provinces and of the Mongols are often found in the West. A current exhibit at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, “Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation” is testimony to the extent of this prosperous trade.

“Ancient coins from China are not as widely popular among collectors in the United States as classical coins are, but the nature of their production and use is identical – as are the arguments against restricting their importation. Oddly enough, one of the wealthiest capitalists in China has made a fortune selling ancient Chinese coins – not to collectors, but to tourists. According to a Forbes article, Wang Gang’s business associate is the state-run Bank of China. He reportedly owns some 500 tons of ancient coins, estimated at about 90 million pieces and representing about 70 percent of China’s supply. It seems ludicrous that the Bank of China would sell genuine ancient Chinese coins to tourists, and then ask that the U.S. restrict the importation of these same coins. If the Chinese government feels that the loss of ancient coins places their cultural patrimony in jeopardy, then why do they allow the wealthiest of Chinese citizens to amass huge quantities of them and sell them commercially?

“Coins, whatever their origin, ought to be considered for what they were and are—monetary instruments meant to traverse boundaries and borders without respect to cultural influence. To restrict the importation of Chinese coins would do nothing to further our knowledge of the past and would do nothing to protect the cultural heritage of China.

“Restrictions would remove one of the few ways that U.S. citizens are inspired by direct contact to learn about China’s illustrious history and its ancient cultures. They would also impact negatively the existing free and legitimate trade in Chinese coins, that does not violate any laws of the United States or China. The practical effect of import restrictions is to shift to the collector or dealer the burden of proof to show the “provenance” of an item. This makes the unreliable and improper assumption that the coin in question actually came from the country with restrictions, and makes the further assumption that the importer might actually be able to meet the burden of proof on provenance. Coins typically do not have a provenance so this is a burden that would be virtually impossible to meet.

“The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild urges an exemption of coins from any import restrictions presently under consideration, just as they were exempted earlier before this committee in the cases of requests from Italy and Cyprus.”


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Dateline Alabama
By Mark Schleifstein
March 20, 2005

A section of the Mississippi riverbank near Audubon Park collapsed about a year and a half ago, with astonishing results.

No, muddy water did not inundate Uptown New Orleans. Riverbank repairs are a routine task that the Army Corps of Engineers performs adeptly. What made this job special was the historical treasure trove it turned up: 19 sunken ships, including the remains of a Civil War ironclad that played a major role in the 1864 battle of Mobile Bay.

Research conducted for the corps provides a rich and unusual view of the ties between a sliver of Uptown - the area just upriver from the Audubon Park Butterfly - and the economic and cultural heritage of the city and the nation. This was the place where renowned African-American singer Mahalia Jackson grew up; where ferries transported horse-drawn carriages, automobiles, and railroad cars and engines across the Mississippi; and where many of the work ships servicing the Port of New Orleans, the river and ocean-going shipping were based.

The sunken ships, scattered along about a mile of sloping underwater riverbank that's 30 to 150 feet deep, are mostly the derelict remains of vessels used by various Bisso family businesses that have operated in the area since at least 1853. And it was Bisso workers who first spotted the collapsing riverbank about 18 months ago.

"We lost about 50 feet of land," remembered W.A. "Cappy" Bisso III, chairman of Bisso Marine, one of the Bisso companies along the river at the repair site. "It was there when everybody went home that night and wasn't there the next morning."

When it became clear that at least two of the shipwrecks had historical value and should be protected, the corps quickly jettisoned its normal riverbank repair process, which uses huge revetment mats made of concrete panels to armor failing banks. Instead, the riverbank is being repaired with more than 140,000 tons of rock at a cost of $2.1 million to ensure that the Mississippi's current doesn't undercut that portion of the levee protecting the Carrollton-Riverbend area of New Orleans.

"The idea is to preserve them in place as best we can," said Don Rawson, a corps civil engineer directing the repair, said of the submerged hulls. "We're not placing rocks around the two most critical vessels."

The sunken ships were spotted by corps researchers using sidescan sonar and multibeam bathymetry to survey the underwater portion of the east bank of the river. Projecting multiple sound beams along the river's floor provided a three-dimensional image of the outlines of individual ships, and even of pilings driven through one of the ships.

The vessels lie along the east bank of the river from Audubon Park to Lowerline Street.

Using sophisticated sonar tools and old-fashioned hard-hat divers, archaeologists working for the corps used a variety of public and private business records and the reminiscences of Bisso officials to identify many of the ships and explain their roles in the port's history.

Among the discoveries documented in a two-volume report prepared for the corps by R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates are the remains of a tall-sailed schooner, several river or ocean-going tugs, a number of work and derrick barges, and at least two ferries that once traveled between Algiers and the Walnut Street wharf.

The area is marked on river charts as Greenville Bend, a reference to the adjacent Faubourg Greenville, a pie-shaped piece of land stretching toward Lake Pontchartrain from the river that was sandwiched between New Orleans and the village of Carrollton, until both were annexed by the city in the late 1800s.

Much of the land once had been used to raise indigo and sugarcane before it was subdivided for homes and businesses. During the Civil War, part of the land was used as a Union garrison, and nearby stables were used after the war by an African-American cavalry detachment that was the forerunner of the famed Buffalo Soldiers.

The most important find doesn't look so important in the underwater sonar views, but the shadowlike image that looks like a square picket fence emerging from the river bottom is the remains of the USS Chickasaw, an ironclad built in St. Louis in 1864 by James B. Eads.

Archaeologist Christopher Goodwin said there's not much chance any of the shipwrecks will be raised because the cost would outweigh the ships' historical value.

"Because of the history of refits of the Chickasaw, it's really the history of the vessel that's important, and that history already is fairly well-documented," he said. "The only reason to bring it up would be if the repair project would have a direct adverse effect on it and any historical data would be lost, and even then, only if something good could be done with it.

"It would cost millions to stabilize and restore, and at the end of the day, you'd have a vessel that's been cut up, chopped up and has lost its integrity above the hull," Goodwin said.

The Chickasaw is not the only Civil War-era ship caught in such limbo in the state, he said. "The CSS Louisiana is in Plaquemines Parish underneath a levee and a lot of water," and another ironclad is in the Red River at Bossier City.

Cappy Bisso said his company also has no interest in raising the Chickasaw, even though it specializes in raising sunken ships. "Only if somebody wanted to pay for it," he said.

In 1964, the company helped federal officials recover the USS Cairo, another ironclad now on display at Vicksburg National Historical Park. The sunken Boaz was one of the crane barges used in that effort.


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National Park Service
March 21, 2005



Contact(s):
David Barna, 202 208-6843
Gerry Gaumer, 202 208-6843
Patrick Andrus, 202 354-2218

New Travel Itinerary Invites You to Put on Your Mask and Fins

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Would-be Jacques Cousteaus have a new guide to exploring the underwater world of historic shipwrecks and the healthy habitats they create. Florida Shipwrecks: 300 Years of Maritime History offers divers and others fascinated by the stories and struggles of those hearty souls who plied the seas in search of trade and adventure an insight into 13 wrecks along the Florida coast. (Go to http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr).

“For more than 6,000 years, Florida has been the nexus of maritime trade routes that linked Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Central and South America and the Gulf of Mexico. Ships of commerce and ships of war helped to shape the peninsula’s economic and political development,” said National Park Service Director Fran Mainella.

“Today, these same ships provide insights into our history and continue to influence the state’s tourism economy as one of the many world-class watery destinations Florida is known for. Since much of what we have learned from these wrecks is a result of the work of professional underwater archeologists and the hundreds of volunteers who support their research, we are pleased to launch this National Register of Historic Places online travel itinerary as part of Florida’s observance of Archaeology Month.”

Part of a series of nearly 40 online travel itineraries featuring sites listed in the National Register of Historic Places, Florida Shipwrecks takes readers back to the time of wooden hulls and pirates when killer storms sent ships to the bottom with unnerving regularity. Among the ships highlighted are:

1. The Urca de Lima was part of a Spanish fleet sunk by a hurricane in 1715. Today the wreck of this wooden-hulled sailing ship is 200 yards offshore in 10-15 feet of water and part of a Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserve. Go to: (http://dhr.dos.state.fl.us/archaeology/underwater/preserves/).
2. 
   The USS Alligator, a U.S. Navy schooner built in 1820, took on pirate ships the spring and summer of 1822, but ran aground in November off Islamorada and is today preserved within the Florida Keys National Maritime Sanctuary.
   
3. The Great Lakes passenger steamship Maple Leaf went to sea on June 18, 1851. Pressed into service as a U.S. Army transport vessel during the Civil War it was taken over by Confederate prisoners-of-war, recovered by the Union and sunk in 1864 when it struck a Confederate "torpedo" (what we would now call a mine) off Mandarin Point in the St. John's River.

The itinerary was created by the staff of the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places, Archeology Program, and Submerged Resources Center in partnership with the Florida Division of Historical Resources, Underwater Archaeological Section of the Bureau of Archaeological Research, and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers.

"Our state is committed to the stewardship and preservation of these irreplaceable maritime treasures” said Frederick Gaske, Florida State Historic Preservation Officer. “Our partnership with the National Park Service allows visitors to experience and appreciate Florida's unique collection of shipwrecks, whether virtually or at the underwater sites. We are pleased to have this opportunity to work with the National Park Service to bring awareness of part of Florida's rich maritime cultural heritage to the rest of the nation and beyond."

In addition to providing histories and information on how to visit (or in one case, not visit) the shipwrecks highlighted, the itinerary offers three essays “Florida’s Maritime History,” “Why Preserve Shipwrecks,” and “Partners in Preservation: Volunteer Underwater Archeology.” A map of the sites is also included as is a listing of websites, books, and other sources to learn more about these topics.

Most of the shipwrecks in travel itinerary are easily accessible dive locations in Dry Tortugas National Park, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, or one of Florida's Underwater Archaeological Preserves. Unless otherwise noted, they are open to sport divers. When diving, always display the "diver down" flag and use mooring buoys to prevent anchor damage to the wreck sites. Brochures and laminated underwater field guides are available from local dive shops for many of the shipwrecks.

All of the shipwreck sites in this travel itinerary are historic properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places. As with all historic and archeological sites on public uplands or submerged bottomlands, the shipwreck sites are protected by federal and/or Florida laws that forbid disturbance, excavation, or removal of artifacts. Living coral also are protected by law in Florida and must not be disturbed. Violators are subject to prosecution.

Florida Shipwrecks: 300 Years of Maritime History is part of the Department of the Interior's strategy to promote public awareness of history and encourage visits to historic places throughout the nation. To this end, the National Register of Historic Places cooperates with communities, regions, and heritage areas throughout the United States to create online travel that highlight the diversity of this country's historic places for potential visitors.


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starbulletin.com
By Burl Burlingame
March 20, 2005


HAWAII UNDERSEA RESEARCH LAB
An undersea photo reveals an antiaircraft gun on the sunken Imperial Japanese Navy's I-401 submarine. The vessel was found in waters off the coast of Kalaeloa.

Researchers discover the wreckage of a giant underwateraircraft carrier scuttled after WWII.

The deep-diving scientists of the University of Hawaii have discovered another monster lurking in the waters off Oahu.

During test dives Thursday, the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's Pisces submarines found the remains of the Imperial Japanese Navy's I-401 submarine, a gigantic underwater aircraft carrier built to bomb the Panama Canal.

"We thought it was rocks at first, it was so huge," said Pisces pilot Terry Kerby. "But the sides of it kept going up and up and up, three and four stories tall. It's a leviathan down there, a monster."

It is not the first World War II-era "monster" that the HURL scientists have found. Last year, off Pearl Harbor, they located the wreck of the gigantic seaplane Marshall Mars, one of the largest aircraft built and used as a transport plane by the U.S. Navy. Two years earlier in the same area, the HURL crew also found the wreckage of a Japanese midget sub that was sunk on Dec. 7, 1941.

The latest HURL discovery is from the I-400 "Sensuikan Toku" class of submarines, the largest built prior to the nuclear ballistic missile submarines of the 1960s. They were 400 feet long and 39.3 feet high, could reach a maximum depth of 330 feet, and carry a crew of 144.


HAWAII UNDERSEA RESEARCH LAB
An undersea photo reveals the bridge of the Imperial Japanese Navy's I-401 submarine. The Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's Pisces submarines discovered the "monster" in waters off Kalaeloa on Thursday.


Each carried three fold-up bombers inside a watertight hangar, plus parts to construct a fourth airplane. The bombers, called Seiran or "Mountain Haze," could be made ready to fly in a few minutes and had wing floats for return landings. Fully loaded with fuel, the submarines could sail 37,000 miles, one and a half times around the world. Three were captured at the end of the war, as well as a slightly smaller test design called the I-14.

Their first mission was called "Operation PX," a plan to use the aircraft to drop infected rats and insects with bubonic plague, cholera, dengue fever, typhus and other diseases on American West Coast cities. When the bacteriological bombs could not be prepared in time, the target was changed to the Panama Canal.

I-400 and I-401 were captured at sea a week after the Japanese surrendered in 1945. The commander committed suicide and the huge submarines' mission was never completed.

I-400, I-401 and I-14 were ordered to sail to Pearl Harbor in late 1945 with an American prize crew, who smuggled Japanese war souvenirs in the aircraft hangars. Also along to be evaluated were I-201 and I-203, two top-secret Imperial Navy submarines that were twice as fast as American designs.



The submarines were greeted with ceremonial brass bands in early 1946, but within a few months it was decided to scuttle the Japanese designs, partly because Russians scientists were demanding access to them. On May 31, 1946, I-401 and the other four top-secret Japanese submarines were sunk by torpedoes from the American submarine USS Cabezon. I-401 was last seen sinking by the stern, vanishing until last week.

"It's about 820 meters down, off the coast of Barbers Point," said HURL Acting Director John Wiltshire. "The bow is broken off just forward of the aircraft hangar -- it looks like it came apart as it was sinking, as the two pieces aren't far apart and they're connected by a debris field."

According to Pisces VI pilots Kerby and Colin Wolleman, the "debris field" is a twisted landscape of gigantic metal pieces ripped into jagged shreds.

"We had to be very careful approaching that thing," said Wolleman.

Nearby, the Pisces V crew consisted of John Smith, Max Cremer and Steve Price, and the submersibles helped each other illuminate a path through the wreckage.

"The main hull is sitting upright on the bottom, and it's in great shape," said Kerby. "The I-401 numbers are clearly visible on the sides of the conning tower, and the antiaircraft guns are in almost perfect condition."


U.S. NAVY PHOTO
Officers of the I-400 submarine gathered for one last portrait as Americans
captured it and the I-401 at sea a week after the Japanese surrendered in 1945.

With only a few hours available before setting off on a research trip to Samoa, the HURL scientists noted the location of the I-401 for future exploration.

Also discovered last week was the American submarine S-19, a World War I-era design that was deliberately scuttled in 1938 to meet treaty obligations.

"The S-boat wasn't much of a surprise, because we had a good idea of where she might be," said Kerby.

He said the S-19 is lying on her starboard side, and many of the external parts, such as the propellers and conning tower, were removed prior to scuttling.

"We came up to her from behind, and you could tell immediately she was from a different era," said Kerby. "Almost a turn-of-the-century, Jules Verne look to her. Lots of big rivets."

Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory
www.soest.hawaii.edu/HURL


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The Virginian-Pilot
By Catherine Kozak
March 20, 2005

HATTERAS - A shipwreck museum indeed may be the most fitting place for the remains of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse’s original Fresnel lens.

With its former majesty picked away by vandals and salvagers, the first -order Fresnel lens that is being conserved this month for display at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras is a battered, skeletal survivor of time and elements.

But like the shipwrecks lying off the coast of the Outer Banks, within the remnants of the lamp that once guided mariners there’s a profound American story to be told.

“This lens suffered from abuse and neglect and the ravages of souvenir hunters,” said Kevin Duffus, the president of the museum’s board who wrote a book about his quest to find the lens. “No one will come here and admire this lens for its beauty; they’ll admire it for its history.”

On loan from the National Park Service, the steel, pineapple-shaped frame and bronze panels that will hold about 400 sea-green crystal prisms are being assembled for display in the entrance hall of the museum, which is incomplete.

The $75,000 lens stabilization and reconstruction project is expected to be completed by April 1.

As far as restoration projects go, Jim Woodward, one of a handful of Fresnel lens experts in the country, said it is the most unusual in his 40 years of working on the lenses.

Woodward, 59, is being assisted by lampist Jim Dunlap and metals expert Kurt Fosberg.

“This embodies all the experience all of us have, ” Woodward said during a break in assembling the frame Thursday. “Because it was so messed up, to make it right takes a lot of experience. It’s great to be part of the link with the past.”

Woodward, owner of The Lighthouse Consultant LLC in Cleveland , said the task entails straightening, scraping, repairing, cleaning and rebuilding parts.

After the panels are determined to fit exactly, the prisms will be secured with a putty like compound, and the panels will be bolted to the frame. When it’s done, he said, two panels with prisms will be at the top third of the lens; the flash panel frames in the middle will have no glass; and the lower panels will be about half-filled with the prisms. If it has any light at all, he said, the lens would probably be illuminated by a light beamed from the ceiling.

“And that’s what they’re going to see,” Woodward said. “They’re going to see what happens to a lens when people totally abuse it.”

Joseph Schwarzer, the museum’s executive director, said the exhibit in all its ruggedness will work well with the mission of the museum to preserve the robust wealth of Outer Banks maritime history.

Schwarzer said an additional $500,000 is needed to finish the gallery area and back of the museum, and $1.2 million is needed to do the exhibits. Recent federal, state and private grants have enabled the museum to build offices and a collection storage area starting next month.

Noted for its extraordinary ability to refract and reflect light, the Fresnel lens revolutionized the U.S. Lighthouse Service in the 19th and early 20th centuries .

“This is not a run-of-the-mill lens,” Schwarzer said of the exhibit. “It is one of the first ones purchased by the United States. I think by the time it’s done, it’s going to be recognizable as an amazing artifact.”

The rediscovered Fresnel lens already is inspiring some lighthouse lovers to trek from far and wide to the Outer Banks to help in the restoration.

Paula Liebrecht and her sister Lauren Liebrecht, both from Laurel, Md., spent three days last week cleaning the panels and preparing them for display. The 47-year-old twins frequently have volunteered on lighthouse projects, Paula Liebrecht said.

“I tell you, when we were called and given the opportunity to do this, we jumped,” she said in a telephone interview from her home. “This one had a special mystique to it because it wasn’t around, and all of a sudden we had a chance to help. It really excited us.”

The 6,000-pound lens, built in Paris in 1853, was installed in the 1803 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in hopes of reducing the high number of shipwrecks at wicked Diamond Shoals. Because of its reputation as dangerous, Cape Hatteras was one of the first locations in the country to get the lighthouse technology.

But on the eve of the Civil War, the lens was secretly removed to keep it out of the hands of Union forces. It was then hidden in numerous places, recovered and lost and recovered again, shipped back and forth across the Atlantic before history finally lost track of its whereabouts.

Until 2002, when Duffus unraveled the mystery of its fate in a dusty room of the National Archives, the lens was thought to be gone forever.

But after tracking the twists and turns of the lens’ travels, Duffus determined that it had been installed in the 1872 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which had replaced the 1803 beacon. For years it had been assumed that the lens was from a different lighthouse.

As it turned out, Duffus discovered, the lens at the top of the Hatteras lighthouse that had been abandoned by the Coast Guard in 1936 in Buxton was the lens that everyone had been searching for since 1861.

When the 1872 lighthouse was later put back in service as an aid to navigation, the beacon was replaced with a modern lamp, and what was left of the Fresnel lens was put in storage by the National Park Service.

“If I go back to the moment in the National Archives,” Duffus said, “it would’ve been at that time beyond my imagination that I’d be in the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum looking at it. And be able to share that history.”

The park service has agreed to loan much of the recovered lens to the museum but has declined to lend its pedestal and clockwork mechanism still at the top of the restored and relocated Hatteras tower.

Lawrence Belli, superintendent of the park service’s Outer Banks Group, said that the pedestal is an important part of the tower’s original structure.

Belli said that the park service also is unwilling to let the shipwreck museum borrow the panel of prisms from the original lens that is displayed in the Cape Hatteras Light Station museum in Buxton.

“That has never been on the table,” he said. “It’s in context with the lighthouse itself.”

Woodward, however, persuaded the park service to loan the museum a panel of first-order Fresnel prisms that had been on display at the Bodie Island Lighthouse.

As it is, about 600 of the original 1,000 glass prisms are missing from the lens. Although no one is quite sure what happened to them, the assumption is that local people, thinking the tower had been abandoned to the elements, helped themselves.

Dale Burrus, who was born in Hatteras in 1942, remembers that there were a lot of big pieces of glass that the local children played with when he was growing up.

“You could take a piece of paper and set it on fire with the glass,” he recalled. “They were definitely around. They told us they were pieces from the lighthouse lens. It was kind of like a little toy.”


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