Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom

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Star Tribune
August 30, 2005

PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. - A diver has found the wreckage of a wooden ship 60 feet below the surface of Lake Michigan southeast of Port Washington.

Brad Ingersoll, 44, a landscape contractor from the nearby community of Belgium who has only been diving for three years, said Monday he spotted a steam pump, an anchor, the ship's rudder, part of a kerosene lamp and china Saturday.

Ingersoll believes the wreck is that of the Mahoning, which sank in December of 1864 while being towed to Milwaukee.

Brendon Baillod, a Great Lakes maritime historian, and Ingersoll are confident the wreck is the Mahoning because it is the same size - 120 feet - as that craft, it is in the area where the ship was lost and a steam pump was found at the site.

Two steam pumps were on the deck of the Mahoning to siphon off water filling the ship's hold after it ran aground near Sheboygan, and salvagers in 1865 recovered one of them.

Baillod said Ingersoll is not the first to discover the ship, but he is the first to publicize it.

"A lot of these guys don't like to go public with these finds because if something is missing from the wreck, they get blamed,'' said Baillod, who published an article on the Mahoning in 1998 in Inland Seas, the journal of the Great Lakes Historical Society.

"This is the first fellow to go public, which is a good thing because then it can be filmed, documented, and the state Historical Society can do a survey of it,'' Baillod said.

Ingersoll contacted state underwater archaeologist Keith Meverden, who plans to dive to the wreck soon.

All shipwrecks in state waters are protected, which means taking anything from them is unlawful, Merveden said.

Ingersoll is hopeful the Mahoning will attract more scuba divers to Port Washington.

"I love to take the new guys on my boat and drop them on a wreck and have them see a piece of china, a steam engine, boilers, and see their eyes light up,'' he said. "After that, they're full-fledged hooked.''


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BBC
August 27, 2005



A replica of Nelson's HMS Victory has been set alight in front of thousands of spectators to mark the Battle of Trafalgar's 200th anniversary.

The Torrington Cavaliers fund-raising group, of Devon, hoped to raise £57,000 - the cost of the original Victory - with the event in the town.

The group spent two years building the 100ft-long half-size mock-up.

Hattie Hill, 11, and her sister Katie, nine, of Welcombe, lit the fire after their godfather won an online auction.

Nick Hill, 45, who lives in Hong Kong, passed the honour to the girls after bidding £325 on eBay.

"I was taken aback when I won it. I wasn't really expecting it. I thought it was wonderful," he said.


Katie (L) and Hattie Hill before
lighting the fuse to torch the ship.

The three-deck Torrington Victory had three 100ft (30.5m) masts, 13 miles (21km) of rigging, 48 gun ports, anchor, cabins, lifeboats and furled sails.

The event on Saturday also included a narration of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar and a 24-gun volley.

Hattie said: "We didn't know what to expect but a few days ago I realised it was a really big thing so we are even more pleased to be here now.

"It's a beautiful boat and it was a shame to burn it but we just lost a friend to cancer so it's a really good cause and it's important to us."

Funds raised will go to cancer charities and local good causes.

The great-great-great grandfather of Torrington Cavaliers' project manager Dick Matthews, 62, had been a cabin boy on Nelson's flagship.

Since being founded 35 years ago, the group has become known for building and firing some of the country's most spectacular bonfires.


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Tampa Bay Biz Journal
August 29, 2005

Odyssey Marine Exploration saw its shipwreck attraction in New Orleans nearly sunk by Hurricane Katrina.

The grand opening of the attraction was scheduled for last Saturday in New Orleans at the Jax Brewery complex in the French Quarter and the day was declared "Odyssey Shipwreck and Treasure Adventure Day."

Despite the impending hurricane, visitors mingled with Louisiana dignitaries, politicians and company officials before the festivities were cut short when the New Orleans mayor ordered the city evacuated, a release said.

When the opening day affair closed early, employees secured the building and artifacts from the storm. The attraction is on the third floor of its building, and sits on the highest ground in the city.

"It was a harrowing day preparing for Katrina, but no matter what the result of the hurricane, we are sure that the awesome spirit of the people of New Orleans will prevail," said Greg Stem, Odyssey's co-founder, in a release.

Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration (AMEX: OMR) has several shipwreck projects in various stages of development throughout the world.


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The Courier-Journal
By Christa Ritchie
August 29, 2005

If you see a mysterious-looking ship cruising the Ohio River later this week, one that seems as if it sailed out of another time -- don't be alarmed.

It's just Christopher Columbus discovering Kentuckiana.

A replica of Columbus' famous ship, the Niña, is bound for Louisville -- not the same Niña that carried Columbus and crew to the New World in the late 1400s, of course, but as close as a modern vessel can get.

The Niña will sail into the Derby City on Wednesday and dock at the Louisville wharf. The public will be able to take a walk-aboard, self-guided tour beginning Thursday and every day through next Tuesday.

This version of the Niña was built by hand in Brazil by the Columbus Foundation and has been dubbed "the most historically correct Columbus replica ever built," according to Archaeology magazine.

The foundation, which is based in the British Virgin Islands, wanted to create an exact copy of Columbus' favorite ship so it could serve as a sailing musem in an effort to educate the public.
The Niña serves as the only touring maritime museum of its kind.

It has been touring ports along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North, Central and South America since 1992 as a sailing museum. It has stopped in Louisville three other times, in 1993, 1997 and 2000.

The Niña is a caravel -- a Portuguese ship that was a common trading vessel during the Age of New Discovery. The ships were also used as cargo carriers, warships, patrol boats and pirate ships. Speed and maneuverability were their advantages.

Life aboard the Niña was crowded. Cooking was done in a firebox on deck in the bow of the ship. Sleeping on the deck was uncomfortable because the ship was packed with cargo.

Today's more modern Niña is equipped with World War II-style pipe berths for sleeping its crew, an icebox that holds 1,000 pounds of ice and a small propane stove for cooking.

Christopher Columbus never had it so good.

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npr
August 27, 2005


The book is subtitled: "A Story of Killing Seas,
False Lights, and Plundered Shipwrecks."

“They wrecked for the same reasons that Mallory climbed Everest; because it was there. They wrecked because they were poor, because they lived on the coasts, and because a ship on the rocks was irresistible during a Shetlandic winter or a Hebridean famine. In the more remote parts of Britain they wrecked because they had to. ”

More than 30,000 shipwrecks line the coast of Britain. As Bella Bathurst details in her book The Wreckers, plundering those ships... and worse... has long been a way of life for the inhabitants of Britain's coast.

Read an excerpt from The Wreckers:

There are plenty of good social, historical, and economic explanations for wrecking, but nothing will ever really explain its metaphysical causes. The wreckers have always occupied a no-man's-land somewhere between water and earth, and through all the 2,000 years' worth of legislation, they have persisted in the belief that they have an absolute right to anything off an abandoned vessel.

It never seemed to matter whether the wreck had taken two years of international travel through the seas to arrive on their beach, or whether it arrived yesterday stamped with an identifiable mark from an identifiable owner on an identifiable ship. The wreckers would probably argue that they just made the best of what came their way, but they were also taking advantage of a subtler transformation. The sea does not sort objects according to weight or value, but by whether they float or not. Once stripped of context and immersed, those objects have also cast off their former identities and become something else. Add poverty and remoteness to the equation, and it is not really surprising that the wreckers thought as they did. They wrecked for the same reasons that Mallory climbed Everest; because it was there. They wrecked because they were poor, because they lived on the coasts, and because a ship on the rocks was irresistible during a Shetlandic winter or a Hebridean famine. In the more remote parts of Britain they wrecked because they had to. Treeless islands such as Tiree or Barra saw wrecks and jettisoned deck cargo as a kind of divine hardware store, providing them (albeit erratically, and at high rates of interest) with fence posts, joists, rafters, floorboards, and boat hulls. Families who lived along the main coastal trading routes would find their only luxuries -- silk for a dress, china for the kitchen, tools for the farm -- laid out for them on the rocks and reefs of an inhospitable coast. Whatever washed up on a beach was considered 'the sea's bounty', God's gift to the borderliners -- even if God at times appeared to be a present-giver who insisted on disinfecting all his gifts with saltwater first.

There were other, more subtle temptations to wrecking other than mere necessity. Anyone who breaks into someone's house or flat with intent to steal from it will be confronted by a thousand tokens of possession and identity. But anyone who breaks into a container vessel is confronted by a mass of anonymous objects. Their endless replication makes them seem impersonal, and their homelessness makes them seem unwanted. The ship and its contents are en route from one country to another; from manufacturer to retailer, from retailer to customer, from customer to landfill site. Unless the wrecker steals up to the captain's cabin and pilfers a watch or a wallet, he is probably not going to be confronted by any discomfiting signs of ownership or with the victim of his crime. If something evidently belongs not to an individual but to an organization or a group, then -- so the thinking goes -- it does not really belong to anyone at all. Finding a container-load of cotton shirts, stamped with their brand and still sealed in plastic packts, is somehow not the same as finding a suitcase filled with someone's old clothes. In the first instance, so the thinking goes, the company probably produces thousands of shirts a day, is insured, and will regard the loss of a few short-sleeves as -- quite literally -- a drop in the ocean. It's business, not personal. But in the second instance, those clothes belong to someone. Someone who does mind, and who probably doesn't have insurance, and who would definitely take exception to seeing their best coat on the back of a beachcombing thief. In law, there is no difference between the collective and the individual. But in the mind of the wrecker, there most definitely is.

Besides, who exactly is a wrecker? Just for a minute sit back and consider yourself. Let's just say that you live in a place where unbidden gifts arrive on your doorstep at night, and from time to time deliveries of firewood or timber appear unpostmarked near your home. Once in a while, you and the dog go out for a walk to find precisely the thing you need laid by the side of the path -- a fence post of just the right side, a crate of untouched oranges. Whoever -- or whatever -- put them there has vanished, and you can be sure they're not coming back. Sometimes this silent deliverer of gifts, who expects no remuneration and asks for no thanks, does wonderful things: provides exactly the right roving material for your house, a bolt of undamaged canvas, even an unsolicited crate of vintage port. You know that such items are unclaimed, and that unless you take them, they will remain so. No one will see you find it, no one will know you have it, and no one will ever challenge your right to it. By taking it, you will not be stealing it, you will be salvaging it. And you know salvage is as legal as breathing.

Then you discover that, with a little extra effort, you will be able to reach right in to the source of these gifts, to go further and deeper than everyone else, to pluck out items which would otherwise be lost. With the aid of a boat, you can get right down into the half-sodden hold to rescue items otherwise destined to rot with time. You know that the source of these gifts will itself provide all sorts of extras: raw materials, tools, vital supplies. With the help of some wire cutters and an axe, you can liberate any amount of fabulous riches. You need feel no guilt, because if you do not act, then you are storing up problems for everyone, contributing to ecological disaster, degrading your pristine piece of sea for years to come. The local authorities know this too, and would actively encourage you to get out there and start picking things off. You imagine that the ultimate owners of all this free booty live in a far-off country, and that they do not care about this. If you don’t do something about it now, then they will just spend three years arguing over how to avoid dealing with any of it, by which time every last piece will have gone to waste. If you step back and think about it for a minute, you know that all of this represents a kind of divine justice, the sea playing Robin Hood.

And then time passes, and another winter comes. You sit huddled at home through months of gales, punished by the cold northern darkness or incessant Cornish rain. There was a bad harvest last year and some of your livestock died. It rains so hard that water pours in through the roof, spoiling what is left of your stores and rendering every possession spongy to the touch. There’s a death in the family and rumours of redundancies at the area's main employer. Just when you think you can take it no more, when there's nothing in the larder and you're down to rationing soap, you hear on the grapevine that something is coming your way. A ship approaching local waters, laden with everything you need and might wish for: tractors, timber, alcohol, seeds, tobacco. If you do nothing, then that ship will pass by on its way to an undeserving destination, and you and your equally hard-pressed neighbors will just have to watch it vanish. All it would take is something very minor -- a small incentive to the local pilot, the unexpected failure of the nearby foghorn or radio beacon. Nothing one could really call sabotage; just anticipated winter damage. And one bright morning after a particularly severe storm, there on the beach is everything you prayed for laid up on the sand. The ship itself has vanished and there's no sign of the crew, but you feel sure -- or as sure as one can be -- that someone else will probably have rescued them. And as you cart off the wood and make free with the drink, you can only thank God and the fates for hearing your prayers.

It is possible. It happened, and will doubtless happen again. But would you also choose to remember, as you piled your house high, that wrecking is not a victimless crime, and that every gold coin lying unclaimed at the bottom of the ocean was paid for with the bones of ten men dead?


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Gulf News
By Sunil K. Vaidya
August 28, 2005


Muscat: A replica of a 5,000-year-old boat is being created by Omani craftsmen.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture yesterday, the boat will be used by sailors to travel from Sur to the port of Dwarka in India to revive the old maritime links between the two countries.

The boat, which is being built with materials such as cane and lightwood collected from Africa and Iraq, will set sail on September 7 from Sur and is expected to take between 10 days to a month to reach Dwarka.

"The boat will not have any motorised device and is designed in such a way that it will work on the traditional sailing method using the forces of wind," a release from the ministry said, adding that the crew would solely depend on wind direction.

However, he added that another vessel Fulk Al Salama will sail alongside Majan during its journey.

Sayyed Haitham Bin Tariq Al Said, Oman's Minister of Heritage and Culture, will flag off the boat at the fishing port in Sur, about 350km from Muscat.

AAfter reaching the port in the Indian state of Gujarat the boat will then sail to Mandoli, another port town in India.

"The voyage is considered a revival of the maritime tradition of Oman when ships sailed from Sur to Gujarat. The crew will live on fish, bread and dates, and will have no access to modern equipment or any other facilities," the statement said.

A team of skilled craftsmen from the coastal town of Sur are busy building an exact replica of the 5,000-year-old raft Majan, which used to ply between Oman and India during the ancient days of their trade relationship.

"Archaeological surveys in Oman have concluded that Majan, which was mentioned in historical sources of Bilad Al Rafidain, is actually contemporary Oman," Biubwa Ali Al Sabry, Director of Archaeology, told Gulf News yesterday.

"The name of Majan was written in the cuneiform marks 'Ma' which means ship and 'jan' which means body. The full expression means the body of a ship."


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St. Petersburg Times
By Mark Albright
August 29, 2005

Tampa's Odyssey Marine Expeditions combines a museum and store in New Orleans to generate interest in its finds.

NEW ORLEANS - In a crowded storefront on the teeming French Quarter riverfront, a message over a tiny window beckons passers-by to peek inside the steel tank. What they see is an underwater robot picking up gold coins and an invitation to come drive this remote control rig.
That's the hook designed to pull in customers to a new attraction here developed by a Tampa company that's taking a side trip into the world of storefront museums.

Inside are hands-on, museum-style exhibits of the high-tech equipment that shipwreck salvage companies use to meticulously pluck treasures from the sea bottom. One-of-a-kind computer games outline the science behind archaeology, and how artifacts are used to reassemble history. The story is set against the backdrop of real treasures from the deep told in incredibly sharp high-definition video of the recovery of the SS Republic, which sank 140 years ago.

Odyssey Marine Expeditions Inc., which finds and salvages historic treasure-laden ships, sees the experience as a vehicle to turn most of the artifacts, effects and rare coins it exhumes from the ocean bottom into cash.

The company is negotiating deals to open a second of its Odyssey's Shipwreck and Treasure Adventures within a year. Its hometown Tampa Bay area is high on the list of the 10 markets in the running. If the initial $3.7-million development cost in New Orleans provides the return, company officials envision up to 50 of them in major markets around the world.

"This has been part of our plan since the beginning," said Greg Stemm, a director and co-founder of Odyssey. "The attraction answers all the questions people ask us about how we do this work and gives them a taste of what it's like to be on one of our expeditions. We are using it to build a community of shipwreck artifact fans around the Odyssey brand."

In a shopping complex shared by Ripley's Believe It Or Not, Virgin Megastore and Hooters, the museum comes equipped with gift shops front and rear. Patrons can buy effects as pricey as Civil War-period gold coins for $1,100 and up or resin replicas of delicate ceramics they've just seen exhumed from the ocean floor for as little as $12.

Of course, there is a full load of themed T-shirts featuring a beaming cartoon logo of Zeus, Odyssey's 8-ton underwater robot that's the workhorse of the company's deep-sea recovery effort.

If it all sounds like theme park tactics, the resemblance is intentional. Odyssey's entertainment wing is steered by a cadre of former Sea World, Busch Entertainment Corp. and Walt Disney World executives. The exhibits are modular, so they can be moved to other locations easily. The computerized videos and flat screen displays can be reprogrammed within days to tell the story of other vessels Odyssey recovers in the future.

"We've packaged the story to educate and energize people of all ages," said George Becker, chief operating officer of Odyssey and a former general manager of Sea Worlds in San Diego and San Antonio. "We designed it for the whole family. This is all about bringing history to life. New Orleans is all about history."

As a Confederate and Union ship, the Republic's home port was New Orleans. It went down in a hurricane off the coast of Georgia, loaded down with cash and other goods intended to resupply the Louisiana city at the beginning of post-Civil War Reconstruction.

The location in the French Quarter provides the historical atmosphere while the city, which drew about 10-million tourists in 2004, provides the traffic.

The exhibit got a warm welcome from city tourist industry leaders who have begun marketing New Orleans as a family destination rather than one known mostly for its adult diversions and overindulgences. In recent years, the city has dramatically bolstered its collection of art and children's museums and sees the success of the 5-year-old D-Day Museum as a catalyst for more.

That leaves Odyssey competing for attention with some high-profile draws, as well as a vast established collection of private exhibitions that appeal to young kids, known in the industry as the most influential decisionmakers in prodding parents to check out storefront-size attractions.

New Orleans has a wax museum, a Mardi Gras float museum that includes Segway rides, haunted ghost tours and the Voodoo Museum (which offers flashlights upon request after alerting guests there are live snakes on the darkened floor, albeit in cages).

And most of them, along with the plethora of government-supported museums, charge less than the $13.95 a head, $8.95 for children, Odyssey is seeking.

Indeed, for Odyssey the new competition won't be letting up. In 2006, distiller Brown and Froman opens a similar exhibition offering a tribute to its Southern Comfort liquor that originated in New Orleans, and Tabasco sauce maker McIllhenney Inc. opens an homage to the history of the hot pepper. If that's not enough the Insectarium opens in the historic old Customs House featuring all manner of live bugs and a cooking class.

"It's going to be pretty gross," said Kim Priez, vice president of tourism for the New Orleans Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau. "But what makes this a great place is this has always been a town that likes to be entertained. So we create things that other people like, too."

The common perception of shipwreck salvagers is one of entrepreneurs living out an adventure that's somewhere between Jacques Cousteau, Steve Zissou and grave robbers. It's an image Odyssey hopes to redefine with a focused marketing push that explains the company's role in researching archaeology, charting history and unraveling the mysteries of the sea. It also is taking some of the sting out of the idea of selling artifacts to pay for the high-tech research tools that make the work possible, but offends many purists in the academic world.

The attraction is hardly a first. Key West treasure hunter Mel Fischer for years has sold shipwreck artifacts from a museum. But he found the format doesn't travel well after closing a venture in Orlando. In Charleston, S.C., a new museum displays the wreck of a recovered Confederate submarine. Attractions marketers, however, have been reinvigorated by the popularity of several exhibitions from the wreckage of the Titanic.

Odyssey's marketing effort goes far beyond a state-of-the-art Shipwreck Adventure. Odyssey self-published a book about the Republic and the recovery that debuts Sept. 6. That follows a National Geographic spread last fall, an MSNBC/National Geographic documentary and a guest tour of the network talk show circuit.

Odyssey, which sold about $25-million in artifacts in 2004 mostly through wholesalers, has recovered about a quarter of the artifacts from the Republic that one hired expert estimates could fetch $75-million if sold at retail prices. In addition to being a revenue generator, the exhibition is supposed to be part of Odyssey's answer to generating more sales.

The company recently sold Republic coins on the NBC Shop at Home channel and is filming infomercials. Each Shipwreck Adventure patron is offered a free DVD of the retrieval work (the company has 3,500 hours of raw high-definition film). If they are interested in direct sales offers online, in the mail or from the company, a sales force of two dozen people at its call center in Tampa will spring into action.

Initial buzz has been positive among visitors.

"I love it because it tells the story of how this is done so simply," said Shelly Steele, a 52-year-old tourist from Atlanta. "My husband is a big history buff and an engineer. We've been coming to New Orleans for 16 years and every year they have something new like this."

"I'm a big video game player and the technology they've used is really cool," said Luke Cashio, a 23-year-old cook at Cafe Beignet.

Competitors are a bit skeptical.

"The technology is a big wow," said Antoinette Alteriis, general manager of the nearby Ripley's who plans to take her son for a visit. "But it is going to be difficult to get that many people" to walk from the small storefront at street level up three floors to the museum.


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CNN
August 27, 2005

NEWPORT NEWS, Virginia -- Was there a black cat aboard the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, placed inside a cannon by a superstitious but desperate sailor as the vessel was sinking?

Conservators had hoped to verify the legend as they worked this month to extract concrete-like sediment from two cast iron, smooth-bore cannons salvaged from the ship's turret.

A crewman who had survived the sinking off the North Carolina coast more than 140 years ago maintained that he stuffed the feline into one of the 11-inch-wide, 17,000-pound barrels.

And did he stuff his new wool coat and boots into the carriage of the other cannon, as he said? The answer is leaning toward "No" on both counts.

No trace of a cat -- nor a coat nor boots -- have been found in the barrels, said David Krop, assistant conservator at the Mariners' Museum where the 13-foot Dahlgren guns are being restored.

"Schoolchildren are always asking 'What happened to the cat?"' said Justin Lyons, a spokesman for the museum.

Crewman Francis Butts wrote in an 1885 magazine article that -- as he passed buckets through the turret to bail water from the Monitor -- the cat sat on the breech of one of the guns "howling one of those hoarse and solemn tunes which no one can appreciate who is not filled with the superstitions which I had been taught by the sailors, who are always afraid to kill a cat."

"I would almost as soon have touched a ghost, but I caught her, and placing her in (a) gun, replaced the wad and tampion," he said.

Krop has emptied most of the sediment out of the barrels and screened it, and a scan of what remains at the bottom of the guns didn't point to much.

Coal found in the bores likely poured in when the turret, where the guns were mounted, turned upside down as the Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862.

Otherwise, the finds were seashells and other evidence of marine life.

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UticaOD
By Linda Murphy
August 26, 2005

ALEXANDRIA BAY - David Hinman, owner of Delta Divers in Rome, says some of the best freshwater scuba diving in the world is just 100 miles north of the Mohawk Valley, on the St. Lawrence River.

"One of the reasons is the clarity. Because of the zebra mussels (that filter the water) the visibility is 30 to 80 feet. At times, you can go down 80 to 100 feet and look up and see the boat," Hinman said.

Due to treacherously narrow channels, reefs and shoals and a history of battles fought in the St. Lawrence, many ships over the years have sunk in the river. The ship owners' losses have become underwater treasures for scuba divers.

"There are 200 wrecks or parts of wrecks within a day's travel of Alexandria Bay," said Chuck Skinner of Poland, a master scuba instructor.

As a teacher for Delta Divers, as well as owner of his own outfit, Crimson Tide Divers, Skinner has certified more than 800 divers. When training new divers, Delta Divers often travels to Alexandria Bay, Skinner said.

In July, August and September, the water temperature is 73 to 77 degrees.

When Skinner, Sam Guido and Victor Skinner, all master divers or higher, took our small group to dive last week, the water was even warmer. ´

After being properly outfitted in wet suits, mask, fins and boots, buoyancy vests and tanks, we dived to a wreck that sat just 20 yards from the shore: a side-wheel streamer called the Islander.

The Islander
The Islander, 125 feet long, 20 feet wide and weighing 118 gross tons, was built in Rochester in 1871. It was used solely as a mail carrier between Clayton and Alexandria Bay until 1893, when it also was used to conduct island and river tours.

On Sept. 16, 1909, the Islander caught fire while docked at the city dock. At that time, the city dock was just west of the hospital, in front of what is now a parking area with a gazebo catering to divers.

As the Islander burned, it slowly sank and pulled the city dock -- with all its contents -- on top of it to the bottom of the river.

"Everything on the dock that was going to be shipped or traded was right there. It pulled everything on the dock on top of it," Skinner said.

Divers today can explore the hulking remnant of the ship. Its bow is in about 20 feet of water, with the stern about 55 feet down.

Besides the ship, you can swim around concrete from the former city dock, see a few old bottles, underwater vegetation and a lot of fish.

If you have never dove before, don't attempt to explore a ship wreck, or anything else for that matter, in a river, lake or ocean.

You must first learn to use the equipment in a controlled situation, such as a pool.
"As long as you are properly trained, there is no danger," Skinner said.

The week before we dived in the St. Lawrence, three of us were taught how to use the equipment safely by Skinner at the YMCA in Rome.

Delta Divers trains people to become certified open-water divers through a combination of classroom work, sessions in a pool and a minimum of four dives in open water such as the St. Lawrence River.


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AJC.com
By Paula Crouch
August 24, 2005

Go under the sea without ever leaving dry land at Odyssey's Shipwreck & Treasure Adventure, which was to open this weekend in New Orleans.

Developed by Odyssey Marine Exploration, the interactive attraction — in the Jax Brewery in the French Quarter — tells the stories behind some of the world's most famous shipwrecks, their treasure and historical artifacts.

Hands-on exhibits, such as a wind tunnel, wave pool and a replica of the control room onboard the sonar-equipped Odyssey Explorer, give visitors the chance to experience deep-ocean shipwreck exploration.

A Civil War-era ship with an intriguing connection to New Orleans is featured in the exhibit. The SS Republic sank in a hurricane off the coast of Georgia while sailing from New York to New Orleans in 1865. Odyssey discovered the Republic nearly 1,700 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in the summer of 2003 — nearly 138 years after the ship went down. Visitors learn what it was like to be in the pilothouse during the storms.

More than 51,000 gold and silver coins, and some 13,000 additional artifacts, were recovered during the extensive deep-ocean archaeological excavation.

A film about Odyssey's quest for deep ocean shipwrecks is screened in the high-definition digital theater. Visitors learn about the history of shipwreck archaeology, and salvage and recovery techniques at an interactive exhibit.

The attraction is open daily. The cost is $13.95 for adults and $8.95 for children ages 4-12.


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China View
By Yu Fei
August 25, 2005

BEIJING -- A merchant ship loaded with exquisite porcelain left a port in southern China to trade with foreign countries by the ancient "Marine Silk Road". It sank, probably due to stormy waves, and was buried quickly by silt and slept under the water for about 800 years.

The sunk ship, dated back to the early Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), was the first ancient vessel discovered on the "Marine Silk Road" of the South China Sea and was named "Nanhai No.1", meaning South China Sea No.1.

Chinese archaeologists, using global positioning system (GPS) technology, have accurately located the ship and will make a huge"steel basket" to salvage the ship with the silt around it together.

"It is unprecedented in the field of underwater archaeology both at home and abroad," Zhang Wei, director of the Underwater Archaeology Center at China's National Museum, told Xinhua on Thursday.

Zhang said that traditionally archaeologists would excavate therelics on the sunken boat first and then salvage the boat.

"In order to better protect the precious relics on Nanhai No.1,and gain essential information, we plan to salvage the ship with silt together and move it into specially built museum to do the excavation carefully," Zhang said.

As early as 2,000 years ago, ancient Chinese traders began to ship chinaware, silk and cloth textiles and other commodities to foreign countries along a trading route starting from ports at today's Guangdong and Fujian provinces to countries in southeast Asia, Africa and Europe.

The maritime trading route, known as the "Marine Silk Road", together with the ancient Silk Road running through the hinterlandof Asia and Europe, were the bridges connecting the ancient civilizations in the east and west.

Nanhai No.1, accidentally found in 1987, is located some 20 seamiles west of Hailing Island of Yangjiang City in south China's Guangdong Province, and more than 20 meters deep in the sea. The ship, more than 25 meters long, is the largest cargo ship from theSong Dynasty discovered so far.

Green glazed porcelain plates, tin pots, shadowy blue porcelains and other rare antiques have been found during the initial exploration of the ship. Archaeologists estimate that there are probably 50,000 to 70,000 relics on the ship.

The two meters of silt have helped protect the treasures and the ship during the 800 years, but have also brought difficulties to archaeologists in excavation.

"We could see nothing in the water area, and could only work bytouch in the silt," said Zhang Wanxing, a member of China's national underwater archaeological team.

Measuring, drawing and photographing the relics were almost impossible. Drainage of the silt in the sea would cause damage to the porcelain on the ship, said Zhang.

"At last, we chose the plan to salvage the ship and silt together," said Zhang, adding that Guangdong Province has earmarked 150 million yuan (about 18.5 million US dollars) to build a "Marine Silk Road Museum", to preserve the salvaged ancient ship.

In order to avoid damage to the relics caused by a change of environment and pressure, the ancient ship, wrapped in silt, will be put in a huge glass pool, in which water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions will be the same as on the sea bed where the ship has slept for 800 years.

Archaeologists will conduct thorough excavations of the ship inthe pool, said Zhang.
Looking through the glass of the pool, visitors may observe thearchaeologists' work. "Some of qualified visitors may even dive into the water to watch the excavation closely after some training," said Zhang.

Li Peisong, director of the archaeological department of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said the creative excavation and protection plan, unprecedented in the world, is still under repeated discussions by cultural relics experts in China.

The experts have offered many suggestions to make the plan perfect and ensure the safety of the relics during the salvage andtransfer of the ancient ship, said Li.

So far, Chinese archaeologists have found more than 10 relic sites of ancient ships along the "Marine Silk Road". The excavation of Nanhai No.1 will be of great importance to the research of the "Marine Silk Road", the history of China's foreigntrade, cultural exchange, porcelain, shipbuilding and navigation, said Zhang Wei.


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Keys News
By Mandy B Olen
August 25,2005

KEY WEST — August hurricanes have proven disastrous to mariners since the earliest vessels braved the deceptively calm summertime waters in the Caribbean area.

On Aug. 27, 1856, a fierce storm overtook a 137-foot merchant ship from New York and deposited it onto the reef about 15 miles from Key West, off the Saddlebunch Keys.

The crew of the Isaac Allerton survived the wreck and were rescued the next day by wreckers from Key West who came to salvage whatever cargo could be saved from the ship and the ocean bottom.

The ship's captain, R.B. Baldwin, told the wreckers that the ship's rudder was torn off when it hit the reef and it had sunk in 5 fathoms, or 30 feet of water, according to a summary of the wreck written by Key West Shipwreck Historeum staff.

Although not filled with gold coins and emeralds like another well-known shipwreck off Key West, Nuestra Senora de Atocha, the Isaac Allerton was important to the economy of 19th century Key West.

Judge William Marvin awarded $43,000 in cargo from the Isaac Allerton to local wreckers in exchange for their part in rescuing the crew and salvaging the items on board.

Marvin's salvage award was the largest ever in Key West, with most shipwrecks yielding about $1,000 in salvage, said Clinton Curry, general manager of the Key West Shipwreck Historeum, which houses many of the remaining artifacts from the Isaac Allerton.

The ship carried candles, lamp oil, liniments, linens and other household items along with large slabs of marble that were to be used in New Orleans, where workers were building the New Orleans Custom House. Some of it was raised and eventually made it to its destination on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico, Curry said, but some still remains under piles of silt on the ocean floor.

Curry has traced his family history back through about six generations, and the name John Curry, Clinton Curry's fifth great-grandfather, is listed on a placard 200 of the nearly 400 wreckers who salvaged the Isaac Allerton.

"And when these guys weren't wrecking, they were fishing or sponging," he said, although 1856 was a busy year for wreckers, with 71 shipwrecks.

This weekend marks the 149th anniversary of the wreck. The ship hit the reef about 1:30 a.m. Aug. 27 and the crew abandoned the Isaac Allerton the following morning.

To commemorate the anniversary, the Key West Shipwreck Historeum at Mallor y Square is offering free admission this weekend to all Monroe County residents from 9:40 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.


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This article glorifies one particular treasure hunter without worrying to discuss matters of ethics, site destruction, etc.

Reuters
By Laura Myers
August 25, 2005

KEY WEST, Fla - Hundreds of millions of dollars in silver bars, emeralds and gold chains have already been recovered from the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, sunk during a Florida Keys hurricane in 1622.

But the mother lode of treasure discovered by Mel Fisher two decades ago may not have finished yielding its fortunes, his heirs believe, and there may be more to come. "

It's still a trail of gold," said Mel Fisher's son Kim, 49, chief executive of Key West-based Mel Fisher's Treasure, the umbrella firm of the family's 30 related companies.

The 110-foot (33.5-meter), 600-ton Atocha -- one of a fleet of ships laden with priceless gold, silver, emeralds and Catholic artifacts -- sank on September 5, 1622, near the Marquesas Atoll, about 35 miles southwest of Key West, off the southern tip of the Florida peninsula. On board, 260 passengers died, while five survived by clinging to the mizzenmast.

Mel Fisher, known for saying "today's the day," and his family searched for the Atocha treasure for 16 years, weathering daunting debts and ridicule.

In a life-changing moment 20 years ago, they found treasure from the Atocha worth an estimated $200 million to $400 million at the time, and Kim Fisher believes loot worth a further $500 million still lies in the ocean.

HUNT HAUNTED BY TRAGEDY
In its long quest to find the Atocha, the family even endured the tragic death of oldest son Dirk and his wife on July 20, 1975, when the salvage boat Northwind capsized during the night -- 10 years to the day before the treasure hoard was found. Dirk had located some of the Atocha's 11-foot (3.4-meter), 3,600-pound (1,633-kg) bronze cannons just days before. Diver Rick Cage was also lost.

"It was devastating," Kim told Reuters. "We almost threw in the towel. We decided Dirk would want us to continue. I think it actually made us try harder."

On July 20, 1985, a magnetometer capable of tracking cannons and cannon balls revealed a seabed target at a 55-foot (16.8-meter) depth.

Divers Andy Matroci and a colleague discovered 1,041 silver bars and hundreds of boxes, each with 3,000 coins. Other treasure included 127,000 silver coins, 700 emeralds and likely contraband consisting of 2,500 lighter stones, heavy gold chains and jewelry, silver and crucifixes.

Ninety percent of the original mother lode has been distributed to investors, crew and the Fisher family.

But Kim Fisher estimates there is another $500 million worth of undiscovered treasure.

Among the suspected riches would be 300 silver bars weighing 80 pounds (36 kg) each, 100,000 coins, eight to 10 bronze cannons and treasure from the stern castle, an area of the ship where the riches of nobility, clergy and first-class passengers were stored.

"There were 35 boxes that the Church had on board. They always had good stuff," Kim said.

SMUGGLING
Much of the treasure was contraband.

St. Augustine, Florida-based historian Eugene Lyon, who researched the Atocha on a trip to Spain for Mel Fisher, believes that most of the treasure's emeralds, for example, were smuggled. "Smuggling was not just a cottage industry but a national industry. Some of these Spanish wrecks were carrying way above what they were supposed to be carrying," added Jim Sinclair, 48, a St. Augustine, Florida-based marine archeologist who worked as a Fisher treasure hunter during the mid-1980s.

Diver Matroci, 50, recently found a 9-inch, 22-carat gold chain and more than 30 coins. "We're finding treasure all the time," he said.

Matroci still captains a crew of five on the 100-foot (30.5-meter) salvage vessel Magruder, working shifts of about 12 days, depending on the weather. They use sensors such as magnetometers to scan the sea bed. Each find is tagged using global positioning systems.

"Mel gave me a career I never knew existed and 25 years later I'm still doing it," said Matroci, who's logged more than 21,000 hours underwater.

Mel Fisher, known to his crews as the optimistic "Uncle Dad," died of bladder cancer in 1998 at age 76.

He became a cult hero among salvagers when he won a U.S. Supreme Court victory in 1982, three years before the actual discovery, over ownership of the treasure if he found it. The U.S. government had claimed that it was the owner of any treasure because, under common law, it was the successor to the prerogative rights of the monarch of England, but the court ruled 5-4 that any treasure belonged to Mel Fisher.

These days, Spain often lays claim to any likely treasure found from the wreck of one of its old sailing ships.

"With treasure finds now, the status is that it's a lawsuit from the time you find it," said David Paul Horan, the attorney who represented Fisher in his legal battles.

Key West last month celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Atocha treasure find with a rowdy bikini contest. Middle-aged men and women swilled rum and Coke and danced the hokey-pokey.

"It's all part of my father's legacy. If you have a dream, go for it," Kim said.

"My dad's last words to me were, 'Don't let the small stuff bother you.' I still do the same things I always did. I never used to worry about money. It really hasn't made any difference. It's an incredible thrill to find gold and emeralds. It's too much fun to quit."


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The New York Times
By Sharon La Franiere
August 24, 2005


Guy Tillim for The New York Times
Albert Mandobe, right, helping Jaco Boshoff
scan beneath the sands seeking traces of the
Meermin, a Dutch ship with 147 slaves on board.


STRUIS BAY, South Africa - After years of painstaking research and sophisticated surveys, Jaco Boshoff may be on the verge of a nearly unheard-of discovery: the wreck of a Dutch slave ship that broke apart 239 years ago on this forbidding, windswept coast after a violent revolt by the slaves.

On the other hand, he may have discovered a wire fence covered with beach sand.

Mr. Boshoff, a 39-year-old marine archaeologist with the government-run Iziko Museums, will not find out until he starts digging on this deserted beach on Africa's southernmost point, probably later this year.

After three years of surveys with sensitive magnetometers, he knows, at least, where to look: at a clutch of magnetic abnormalities, three beneath the beach and one beneath the surf, near the mouth of the Heuningries River, where the 450-ton slave ship, the Meermin, ran aground in 1766.

If he is right, it will be a find for the history books - especially if he recovers shackles, spears and iron guns that shed light on how 147 Malagasy slaves seized their captors' vessel, only to be recaptured.


New York Times
At Struis Bay, a slave ship may lie
under the sand, a rare discovery.

Though European nations shipped millions of slaves from Africa over four centuries, archaeologists estimate that fewer than 10 slave shipwrecks have been found worldwide. If he is wrong, Mr. Boshoff said in an interview, "I will have a lot of explaining to do."

He will, however, have an excuse. Historical records indicate that at least 30 ships have run aground in the treacherous waters off Struis Bay, the earliest of them in 1673.

Although Mr. Boshoff says he believes beyond doubt that remains of a ship are buried on this beach - the jagged timbers of a wreck are sometimes uncovered during September's spring tides - there is always the prospect that his surveys have found the wrong one.

"Finding shipwrecks is just so difficult in the first place," said Madeleine Burnside, the author of "Spirits of the Passage," a book on the slave trade, and executive director of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society in Key West, Fla. "Usually - not always - they are located by accident."

Other slave-ship finds have produced compelling historical evidence of both the brutality and the lucrative nature of the slave trade. From the British ship Henrietta Marie, the only slave ship ever excavated in American waters, archeologists recovered 80 sets of iron shackles, cast-iron cannons and pewter mugs.

The Henrietta Marie, discovered in 1972, was partly reconstructed and turned into a popular museum exhibit that toured the United States. Now housed at the Maritime Heritage Society's museum, the exhibit depicts conditions aboard for 190 African slaves who were sold in Jamaica just before the vessel sank 35 miles off Key West around 1700.

Archaeologists who excavated the Henrietta Marie were lucky to find the ship's bell engraved with its name. For Mr. Boshoff, who at every opportunity tramps about on this beach with a global positioning device, a measuring wheel and wooden marking poles, identifying a wreck may be more of challenge.

His best hope of proving that any find is in fact the Meermin, he said, will be to unearth one of the Malagasy spears that records show were carried aboard the ship.

The ship's final voyage is well documented in letters and court records in archives in Cape Town, which are being organized electronically by Andrew Alexander, a University of Cape Town history student who is working with Mr. Boshoff. The documents tell a story rife with folly, trickery, men tossed overboard, bottled messages, rescue ships gone awry and captives-turned-captors-turned-captives once more.

In the end, half of the 60-member Dutch crew and perhaps dozens of slaves were killed. The surviving crew went down in ignominy for losing their ship; the Malagasy slaves met bondage and servitude.

The Dutch East India Company dispatched the three-masted Meermin from Cape Town in December 1765 to buy slaves on the west coast of Madagascar, nearly 1,700 miles away. The growing Dutch settlement at Cape Town relied on slave labor, and the warring tribes on Madagascar were known to trade their captives to European merchants for guns and goods.

In late January, the Meermin left Madagascar with 147 slaves, including some women and children. Fearful the slaves would die in the airless cargo hold, the ship's captain ordered at least some of them unchained and allowed on deck. Another senior officer decided to employ five slaves to clean spears and other weapons that the crew had picked up in Madagascar as souvenirs.


Iziko Museums of Cape TownA detail of a
note sent in a bottle by the ships' officers
to Dutch colonial authorities near Cape
Town asking help to recover slaves who had
fled.

It was a stunningly stupid move. Armed, the slaves killed about half the crew, stabbing them to death or tossing them overboard. Surviving sailors barricaded themselves in the ship's lower quarters, surviving on raw bacon, potatoes and brandy.

Once they realized they could not sail the ship on their own, the Malagasy allowed several crew members on deck to guide them back to Madagascar.

By day, the Dutch headed in the general direction of the island. But at night they steered full sail for Cape Town. By the end of February, they had made it to 90 miles east of Cape Town.

Spotting shore, the slaves decided they had reached their homeland and dropped anchor in the bay. Seventy slaves piled into two small boats and headed ashore, promising to light three fires on the beach to signal the others if the land was Madagascar.

They did not get far. Dutch farmers, suspicious of the stationary ship without a flag, had alerted the local magistrate and organized a force of local men to patrol the beach. When the slaves hit shore, they were killed or captured.

For the next week, the Meermin remained at sea while the Malagasy aboard tried to figure out what had happened and the Dutch on shore tried to figure out what to do.

At some point, records indicate, more slaves came ashore in a raft, spotted a black shepherd running away and decided they had reached Madagascar. Their fate is unclear.

Dutch authorities in Cape Town dispatched two rescue ships, but neither managed to find Struis Bay.

The Meermin's officers at sea were trying to communicate with the Dutch on shore by the only method at hand: letters in bottles. Two floated ashore, were retrieved and delivered to the magistrate on March 6. The officers asked for three fires to be lit on the beach to deceive Malagasy into letting the ship come ashore. "Otherwise all will go immediately to their deaths," one letter said.

Another letter advised that the "Neegers" were unaware of their location and could be caught off guard.

The trick worked. The ship sailed toward the beach, hitting a sandbar. Confronted with the Dutch force, the slaves gave up.

For a week, the Dutch authorities worked to retrieve the ship's goods, recovering 286 muskets, 12 pistols, 5 bayonets, compasses and barrels of gunpowder and musket balls. They held an auction on the beach of ship cables, ropes and other less valuable items, then left the broken Meermin to be swallowed up by sand.

Much has transpired on this beach since then. Before the area became part of a nature reserve, fishermen drove up and down it. One farmer erected a fence. Valuable artifacts uncovered by the tides over centuries could now be sitting in someone's garage. When he first saw the vast expanse of sand near the river's mouth, Mr. Boshoff said with a grin, he thought to himself: "Phew! What have I let myself in for."

On the other hand, the sand might have preserved what water would have destroyed. Historical records suggest that the ship went down in or near the river's mouth, narrowing the search for its remains. Mr. Boshoff has also retrieved the ship's original blueprints, which will help him identify its size and shape.

His research is financed by a grant from the South African lottery board, which sometimes uses profits to back heritage projects.

He describes himself affably as "a one-man show." Major potential donors, like the Dutch government, want to see proof of the Meermin's remains before signing on to his project, he said.

Eventually he hopes to generate enough interest to search for other slave wrecks in the vicinity, including the French ship Jardinière, which sank 28 years after the Meermin in the same bay. "This is a long-term thing," he said. "Twenty years, plus."

Mr. Boshoff's field reports dutifully note both his struggles and his strides. His first efforts to find the Meermin involved lashing a magnetometer to a foam surfboard and towing it down the beach behind a 4-by-4 vehicle. The next day, he hammered a six-and-a-half-foot pole into the sand at the points where the device had recorded the presence of metal, hoping to hit something.

"This was a singularly unsuccessful exercise," reads his report of November 2002. Later he determined the device was too rudimentary to register the presence of any metal deeper than five feet or provide accurate readings.

Subsequent surveys from the air and on the ground went better. Last week Anglo-American, the mining and natural resources conglomerate, lent Mr. Boshoff a $40,000 magnetometer and the services of Albert Mandobe, a field assistant. For days Mr. Mandobe painstakingly paced the beach with a nine-foot metal pole strapped to his shoulder while the device recorded each magnetic abnormality as precisely as an electrocardiogram records heartbeats.

The magnetometer's measurements will be used to design a contour map that Mr. Boshoff says will guide excavation. Three sites look promising. The fourth, Mr. Boshoff has concluded, is probably the buried fence.

Success, he predicted, would ultimately be a combination of patience, skill and resources. Plus, he added, a measure of "blind luck."


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University of Southampton
August 2005

The Roman Shipwrecks Project was set up in 2000 to investigate the existence of Roman wrecks in the waters surrounding the British Isles. This project continues research begun in 1998, with funding from the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England (RCHME)’s National Monuments Record. To date, not a single Roman ship or cargo has been identified around Britain’s coasts. This is somewhat surprising considering the hundreds, if not thousands, of ships that must have sunk around Britain in Roman times. So far the only Roman ships discovered in the British Isles have been three abandoned hulks found in London (Marsden 1997), a riverboat from Wales (Nayling et al. 1994), another from Ireland, and the hull of a Roman ship destroyed by fire in St Peter Port harbour, Guernsey (Rule & Monaghan 1993).
Evidence that Roman wrecks do in fact exist in British waters comes in the form of considerable quantities of continental pottery recovered in the nets of fishermen working in inshore waters although the sources of this material remain unidentified.

This project intends to conduct detailed surveys of three areas from which Roman material has been recovered in order to locate the sources. The surveys will combine the latest high-resolution marine geophysical survey techniques with diver surveys. The areas identified include an area off the North Kent coast at Herne Bay known as Pudding Pan or Pan Sand, the approaches to St Peter Port harbour in Guernsey, and an additional area yet to be chosen from the results of a survey of Roman material recovered by fishermen.

Current work is focussed on Pudding Pan/Pan Sands. [Link to Report on work from 1998 to 2001]

The Roman Ship Wreck Project is jointly run by the British Museum and the Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Southampton. The principal investigators are: JD Hill (British Museum), Michael Walsh, Justin Dix, and Jon Adams (University of Southampton) Funding has been kindly provided by The British Museum, The Townley Group, The Roman Research Trust and English Heritage. The University of Southampton funds Michael Walsh’s doctoral research.


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Reuters
August 24, 2005

Recent underwater discoveries of ancient ceramic bowls, plates and urns in the South China Sea have unearthed proof of trade across Asia spanning a millennium.

The ceramics, dating back to the 10th century are from ancient China, Siam and Vietnam and were bound for ports in the Indonesian archipelago and Malay peninsula to be exchanged for spices, tropical wood and other jungle produce.

But the ceramics with European-influenced designs which are proof of the wide market for Asian goods, never made it to their destination and have lain underwater until now.

The findings of Swedish marine archaeologist Sten Sjostrand (pronounced SHER-STRAND) and his Nanhai Marine Archaeology Company will go on display next month and be auctioned to antique collectors.

His warehouse in the sleepy riverine town of Endau in Malaysia's the east coast Pahang state is a treasure cave of giant clay urns, delicate bone china ceramics, exquisite stoneware Yixing teapots and fine celadon ware found from 10 shipwrecks in the South China Sea over he past 15 years.

Calling the shipwrecks and its hold of cargo time capsules of history, Sjostrand said his interest in ceramics began decades ago and is more academic and historical than commercial.

"Well, it goes back 35 years. I was fascinated by the first ceramic bowl I bought from an antique dealer in Singapore. Not that I believed in what he said but he said it was 16th century. I didn't believe it at that time and that started it all. I bought the first book and got more and more confused. I think I found a lot of answers, 10 shipwrecks later, like to my original questions and maybe I can advise some people at least about what actually happened with the ceramic trade earlier," Sjostrand told Reuters in his Endau warehouse.

Operating from the warehouse, Sjostrand and his divers have been searching, mapping and finding shipwrecks for ceramics over the past 15 years - in coastal waters and the high seas of the South China Sea. Most of the work is carried out during the inter-monsoon periods when the sea is calmer.

He said the ships carried more than ceramics but time and tide have destroyed such items as silk and spices - revealing the dynamic trade between the Far East and Southeast Asia and in later years, the Europeans involved in the spice trade in Malacca, which the Europeans dubbed the "Emporium of the East" in the 16th century.

Apart from the 10 shipwrecks with ceramics found by his diving team, Sjostrand said they have also come across some 130 shipwrecks littered across the South China Sea ranging from wooden-hulled to steel-hulled ships.

"Malacca Straits is known to have many many shipwrecks, quite naturally because of the location of Malacca and its true too. If you look at the whole Indonesian archipelago trading with Malacca, really not going up to the South China Sea. So there is potentially more shipwrecks in the Malacca Straits. But my interest lays in the ceramic trade coming out from Vietnam, Thailand and China. They had to go through the South China Sea before even going to Malacca Straits. So because of that specific interest, this is a much more interesting area for me. Yes, there are probably many many more shipwrecks laying out there. But the question today, in the South China Sea, is not how many more shipwrecks there are, the question is now many can you detect?" Sjostand said.

Sjostrand's marine archaeology company works with Malaysia's antiquities and museums department in cataloguing the treasure trove, publishing books and monographs on ceramics and putting a part of the recovered ceramics on display.

"Malaysia, one they have done, they received 30 percent of every single artifact we have taken up. We have helped the museum to make an exhibition at the museum grounds where you can see artifacts from 10 different shipwrecks. It is unique, there is no such other place in the world today. Other countries have done exhibitions with one shipwreck, two shipwrecks but nobody has ever on a permanent display, been able to see artifacts from 10 different shipwrecks. So that is one thing they have done," Sjostrand said.

The remaining 70 percent of the collection belongs to Sjostrand, who has spent his own money estimated at five million ringlet in recovering the ceramics from six of the 10 shipwrecks his company has found. Among the interesting items found include a broken Jesus Christ ivory statue that has to remain soaked in water to prevent it from crumbling.

He said he was auctioning part of his collection to finance further recovery operations from the remaining four shipwrecks.

The auction is part of the "Treasures of the Nanhai" exhibition in Kuala Lumpur starting September 2. Nanhai is Chinese for South Sea and refers to the South China Sea.


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The Grand Rapids Press
By Ed White
August 21, 2005

GRAND RAPIDS -- While the state and a salvage group clash over a possible shipwreck in northern Lake Michigan, France is very interested in sending a team to determine if it is the Griffin, a 326-year-old vessel linked to a famous explorer.

The disclosure by a U.S. State Department official was filed in federal court in Grand Rapids as part of a lawsuit over access to the site.

"The French Ministry of Culture is prepared to send a team of three or four experts for eight to 10 days to assist with identification, although the issue of who pays ... remains a question to be resolved," wrote Robert Blumberg of the State Department's Office of Oceans Affairs.

Great Lakes Exploration Group believes it may have found the Griffin between Escanaba and the St. Martin Islands, near Wisconsin. Because of fears of looting, a precise spot in the lake has not been disclosed.

In May, Great Lakes Exploration was ordered to share more details so state experts could check the site. Since then, however, both sides have been squabbling over how much to disclose.
Get moving, a judge said Friday.

The state "must be given the precise location. ... Given the rapidly approaching seasonal change and the unpredictability of northern Michigan weather, the parties must move with expedited speed in order to accomplish this investigation," U.S. Chief District Judge Robert Holmes Bell said.

The state, which typically has control over abandoned ships at the bottom of the Great Lakes, has speculated a piece of wood is "barn timber."

But if it is the Griffin, and France can prove the ship was sailing under the authority of King Louis XIV in 1679, the French could have rights to the wreck.

Blumberg's e-mail expressing France's interest was filed by Great Lakes Exploration. There also is a memo from the French government describing the Griffin's history.

Robert de La Salle's trips "were not merely a personal initiative of an intrinsically private nature but required a king's decree," the memo states.

The judge, however, said the documents are not relevant at this stage of the case.

La Salle's other ship, La Belle, was discovered off the Texas coast in the mid-1990s and salvaged under an agreement between Texas and France.


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BBC
August 21, 2005


Sea Britain marks the anniversary
of the Battle of Trafalgar.

An exhibition documenting souvenirs and memorabilia from a famous Lancashire shipwreck opens on Monday.

HMS Foudroyant was once the great flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson, but was destroyed on the beach at Blackpool during a storm in 1897.

The ship was unsalvageable, but her owners recovered some of their lost expenses by making souvenirs from her timber and copper and selling them.

The artefacts saved from the ship are being displayed at Fleetwood Museum.

Souvenirs include medallions, coins, items of furniture and walking sticks.

The exhibition is part of the 200th anniversary celebrations of the UK's naval victory at Trafalgar.


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woodtv.com
August 22, 2005

MARQUETTE, Mich. The final piece of a memorial for two World War Two submarines is in place at the Marquette Maritime Museum.Two plaques were dedicated yesterday honoring the roles played by the Navy submarines the U-S-S Darter and U-S-S Dace during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944.

The Darter fired torpedoes that sank one Japanese ship and set another afire in the South Pacific battle.

And the Dace sank a Japanese cruiser and rescued the Darter's crew when their sub ran aground on a shoal.

The Darter's commander, David McClintock, was a Marquette native.


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Scotsman
By John Ross
August 20, 2005

NEW measures are being considered to protect wartime shipwrecks in Orkney from plundering divers.

Talks have been held over the last two days between police, boat operators, coastguards, Historic Scotland and the Receiver of Wrecks over the ongoing issue caused by a minority of divers.

About 3,000 people a year travel to Orkney to dive on wrecks of the German High Seas Fleet which was scuttled in Scapa Flow.

The wrecks were scheduled as ancient monuments in 2001. Although divers are allowed to visit the vessels, the legislation makes it illegal for them to be tampered with or for any items to be removed.

The most recent incident was three weeks ago when it was discovered that attempts had been made to remove the engine room telegraph from the warship, Markgraf. The equipment was found in lifting bags ready to be taken away.

Niall MacLean, an acting Northern Constabulary inspector based in Kirkwall, said: "We are keen to work with the dive boat operators and Historic Scotland to try to ensure that sufficiently strong legislation is in place to prevent the unauthorised removal of these artefacts.

"The vast majority of dive-boat operators working in Scapa Flow are legitimate and carry out a tremendous service. There is a small group [taking artefacts], but we are talking about important wrecks and if they are plundered the future enjoyment and historic importance could be lost forever."

Insp MacLean said some problems could be caused by foreign visitors who are not aware of the protection offered to the wrecks. Highlighting the issue in diving magazines was being considered.


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CDNN
By Suzy Bennett
August 20, 2005


The German Fleet in Scapa Flow.

ORKNEY ISLANDS, UK -- Mid-afternoon, 60 feet beneath the sea, Scapa Flow, Orkney. To one side of me, a shoal of crimson-coloured fish weaves in and out of a shipwreck. Below, a forest of soft corals is swaying in a gentle current. In the distance, iridescent jellyfish drift by, their frilled skirts shimmering in the sunlight.

As a column of sun lights up a cobalt-blue starfish, and a pipefish flutters in front of my dive mask, I struggle to re-adjust my view of what is and isn't Britain, because, from where I'm floating, it's doing a remarkable impression of the Caribbean.

Admittedly it's a fairly chilly Caribbean - the water temperature is 12C and I have to wear a dry suit to keep myself warm - but the sea life isn't so different. There are fish here as brightly coloured as their tropical counterparts, and corals that rival any I have seen in balmier climes.
This, scientists believe, could be one of the effects of global warming, and it's alarming. If sub-tropical marine species can survive this far north, it's only a matter of time before our environment is dramatically affected. But it's fascinating, too. The last time I dived in British waters was 10 years ago, and the highlight was seeing a shopping trolley furred in algae. This time, I feel as if I'm swimming in an out-take from Finding Nemo.

It's a similar story all along our coastline. Lured by rising sea temperatures, increasingly exotic creatures are starting to call Britain home. Leatherback turtles, ocean sunfish, sharks, dolphins, seahorses and jellyfish are now common sights along the west coast. Only this year, coral reefs were discovered off the south coast of England and the north coast of Scotland.

Unsurprisingly, these marine visitors are getting a warm reception. The British Sub-Aqua Club, the UK's main training body, reports that more than two million dives will be taken here this year, making scuba diving one of our fastest growing sports.

There are more than 500 regularly dived sites in the UK - at inland lakes, beaches and out at sea - but I'm at Scapa Flow, Britain's best known scuba diving destination.

"The Flow", a 144-square-yard lagoon encircled by the flat, heather-covered Orkney Islands, was the Royal Navy's principal anchorage during both world wars. Lying on its bottom is one of the wonders of the diving world: the remains of the German Imperial Navy's High Seas fleet, scuttled here by its commander on June 21, 1919, after a long and miserable internment.

Of the fleet of 74, most have been salvaged or have disintegrated. But still remaining within a few square miles of each other are the carcasses of seven vessels: three battleships, three light cruisers and one destroyer. In their time, they were part of a formidable force, which was a serious challenge to Britain's traditional naval supremacy.

I'm diving the SMS Cöln, one of the light cruisers, and the most intact wreck in the group. With me is Lindsey Cradock, a guide from Scapa Scuba, one of 15 operators that run daily tours to these ships.

Visibility is about 30 feet, and the Cöln is about 525 feet long, so it's impossible to see the entire wreck, but there's no shortage of things to look at.

The hull is a mass of swaying, trembling life, alternately toothy and tentacled, shelled and spiny, feathery and hairy. There isn't one inch of metal visible in this submarine city. Plumose anemones grope for food in the current with their delicate tentacles, a cuttlefish squirts ink at us, moray eels lurk in the shadows and lobsters lie in wait with their claws open like the arms of a child waiting for sweets. It's as if I'm swimming in an aquarium, only it's wild and natural.

Twenty minutes into the dive, Lindsey beckons me to swim deeper towards the stern of the ship. Soon I'm in a quiet, eerie world, floating over a graveyard of ghostly masts and spars.

Among the gnarled wreckage, Lindsey points out the grainy outline of the Cöln's armoured control tower, identifiable by its thin viewing-slits, and she shows me barnacled anchor chains and capstans.

Farther back, we spot the remains of gun turrets, steel searchlight platforms, lifeboat davits and, among the debris on the sea bottom, what could be a crow's nest. On the side of the wreck, portholes give us glimpses into the ship's cavernous interior and, through the dark soup of microscopic creatures inside, we catch an occasional tantalising glint of brass missed by salvagers.

I've dived about 300 times around the world, but I've rarely been so captivated by what I've seen. These ships have lain in this watery grave virtually untouched for more than 85 years - I feel as if I'm diving in a museum, where the only sound is my own deep breathing.

Back on the dive boat Lindsey explains the allure: "Some of the things you see down there beat the hell out of anything in the tropics," she says. "There's a real prettiness to the wrecks because the light is always changing."

Diving in Britain is generally more challenging than in warmer seas, and it requires special training. Before my dive on Scapa Flow I took a one-day dry-suit course, diving on shallower ships nearby to practise my buoyancy and acclimatise to the temperature.

I needed extra equipment, too: a 24lb weight-belt to compensate for the air in my dry suit, thick gloves to keep my hands warm and a torch to see in the darker waters.

Visibility in Britain can vary enormously. In western Scotland and Cornwall where the water is clear and unpolluted, visibility can reach up to 65 feet. On the south coast, the average is about 23 feet. Occasionally visibility is nil, and you can't even see your own hand in front of your face.

On the whole though, British diving is adventurous and exciting. As Lindsey puts it: "In warm water, everything is laid out on a plate for you and you get complacent. Here, you have to be on the ball. You sometimes have to look a bit harder for things, but it's much more rewarding.

There are colours you could never capture with a tin of paints.


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www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com

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tvnz.com
August 21, 2005

Civil servants in Tonga are entering the fifth week of a strike for better pay.

They want a better deal - a share of the wealth their royal family enjoys.

But what if the king's wealth were far greater than the average Tongan suspects? What if his majesty's fortune extended to bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of dollars and the source was a pirate ship?

According to official documents belonging to the king and obtained by TVNZ's Sunday programme, which have been secret until now, there may be truth to those stories.

The documents say the king of Tonga searched for gold bullion in the seas off the islands of Ha'apai.

Some say he found the treasure and seized the gold for himself.

British archives from 1806 show the crew of a pirate ship called the Port au Prince set out to hunt whales and plunder Spanish shipping in the South Pacific and The Americas.

It anchored for the last time half a mile off the beach at Faka'amumei on Ha'apai.

The locals say their ancestors attacked the Port au Prince, burned her to the water line and looted the ship.

The wreck has vanished. The contents of the hold are gone, but the story of the gold is alive and well and causing trouble in the kingdom of Tonga.

Local historian Monitiveti Liuaki has heard the stories of the ship all his life.

He knows of at least three expeditions to find the gold thought to remain on the seabed in a rapidly disintegrating wreck.

But Monitiveti claims no-one recovered the treasure.

According to the documents Sunday obtained in 1972, early in King Taufa'ahau IVs reign, he and his officials authorised a search for gold.

Their treasure seeker was an enigmatic businessman called Charlie Onodera.

A permit from the Governor of Ha'apai, backed up by a letter bearing the king's seal and the signature of his secretary, empowered Onodera to lead the search.

At the time, the documents say that the gold was worth $US30 - $US100 million - today it could be worth nearly $300 million.

Tonga's leading political dissident 'Akilisi Pohiva has also been on the trail of Onodera and the gold for many years.

"It is unusual, it is very unusual for someone from outside to have a picture, a photo together with the king, maybe three different photos," Pohiva says.

The pictures he is talking about were hidden away in a safe with documents allegedly detailing Onodera's business dealings with the king.

Onodera died a decade ago and until recently the palace denied any link from him to the king.

But Sunday has revealed that he had been taken on as the king's trusted representative, that he'd enjoyed privileged access to the king and been given a Tongan diplomatic passport for his travels.

But the most stunning claim - in a series of letters to Onodera - is that the king had acquired far greater personal wealth than he admits to.

The letters span five years and describe funds in bank accounts in London, New York and Frankfurt.

Onodera was authorised to invest hundreds of millions of dollars.

Remember Onodera was the man authorised to lead the searches for gold.

So what did he find? And could that lie behind all those zeroes on the palace letterhead?

Sunday sought answers from the royals to no avail.

Unsurprisingly they are well guarded and the authorities are on edge - these claims have surfaced once before.

Just talking about the letters can get you in trouble.

'Akilisi Pohiva obtained just one of the letters Sunday accessed, published the contents and wound up in court charged with sedition and inciting rebellion.

He says he has no doubt that all the documents were produced within the palace office.

A jury acquitted Pohiva, his son and a fellow MP, 'Isileli Pulu after a palace official confirmed the letter was real, though he claimed the king had no knowledge of it.

The king then made a rare public address denying he had hundreds of millions of dollars in overseas banks.

Getting people in Tonga to talk about treasure is almost as hard as the search for the gold itself.
The trail has been well covered by time and by fear that any who speak out expose themselves to royal wrath.

One man, who was reluctant to speak to Sunday, said there had been two diving attempts on the wreck to his knowledge - one by a New Zealand team and later by the king's man Charlie Onodera.

Sunday were pointed in the direction of Tuakalau Fukofuka, who was hired by a Tongan sea captain and Charlie Onodera as a diver.

"He (the sea captain) told us there was gold... He and Onodera had some but the bulk of it had not been recovered from the bottom of the ocean that's what he told me," Fukofuka says.

But the diver says the government was losing interest in paying for the search.

"He found other Tongans to try to remove it and they managed to get one and a half container loads and Onodera shipped that to Fiji and there was money which they received from it... a lot of money was received, but the exact amount is never known."

Fukofuka says the rest of the gold is still at the bottom of the sea.

The Sunday investigation comes at a time of great unrest in the kingdom of Tonga.

Civil servants have spent the last four weeks protesting at low pay.

Ten thousand people have taken to the streets demanding pay rises of at least 70% for the workers.

Violence and vandalism against government property this week shows that tensions have reached a worrying level.

The protesters believe the king has greedy sons, they believe he has let foreign con men cheat him and they are willing to believe the story of the gold that the king has kept for himself - a prize worth perhaps milliions - while they are marching for enough money to live on.

Tonga's king is facing the greatest challenge his rule has ever seen.

For three years 'Akilisi Pohiva has been calling for an investigation, one that could clear the king's name or flush out the wealth.

But, despite the pile of evidence and questions about gold and Charlie Onodera, the palace is fighting it all - as well as the anger on the streets - with nothing but silence.

That used to work in Tonga, but maybe the tide is turning?


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www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com

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The Miami Herald
By Nicholas Spangler
August 19, 2005


The Nautilus.

Stewart B. Nelson, Deerwood Apartments resident and world adventurer, dropped a note about his next voyage:

Next month I will go to the bottom of the fjord at Bergen, Norway (1,138 feet below the surface) on the two-person JAGO submersible to explore the historic Arctic submarine Nautilus, scuttled in 1931. . . . It is a worthwhile story idea and I hope to hear from you.

A visit was arranged, and Nelson entertained in his study. The room was dominated by a map of the world's oceans and tall bookshelves stuffed tight with files on his various interests, which are obscure. One shelf held Estonia, Sharks, Atlantis and Camels in America.

Nelson is a thickset man, 68 and utterly bald. He has done oceanographic work for the U.S. Navy and lectured on cruise ships and in university halls, but has no apparent means of support now.
His expedition was not, he explained, to the Nautilus that actually surfaced from under the ice at the North Pole in 1958.

No, his Nautilus never came close to subnavigating the polar cap and almost killed its entire crew. Nelson's own writings, and the journals of Arthur Blumberg, the vessel's chief electrician, provide ample evidence of this point.

The man behind the ill-fated voyage was Sir Hubert Wilkins, 13th child of an Australian sheep farmer, an alleged gun-runner who became a fighter pilot in World War I, later a professional polar explorer knighted by England's queen, later still an employee of the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Convinced that a submarine voyage to the pole would offer unparalleled scientific opportunities -- to say nothing of the sheer glory of accomplishing what Peary and Amundsen never even attempted -- Wilkins plotted a route from the United States to Norway, and from there north to the pole.

Wilkins leased a retired U.S. Navy O-class sub for $1 a year, with the understanding that he would scuttle it or return it stateside after the mission.

A superstitious man, he turned down an O-13 and chose instead a 175-foot O-12 that had been rusting for years.

He befriended millionaire sponsors, including newspaper baron William Hearst, who secured exclusive print rights in exchange for a $25,000 donation, and began an expensive overhaul.

He insulated The Nautilus with cork and outfitted it with an icebreaking bowsprit, a collapsible periscope and iron sledge runners that would, he hoped, allow his vessel to glide along the underside of the icecap. And -- because the icecap was hundreds of miles across, and his vessel's primitive batteries powered only 50 miles' travel before they needed recharging from the diesel engines -- he invested in three ice drills. Two would vent the engines, and one would make an escape tunnel, should the vessel get stuck.

ROUGH BEGINNING
A young crewman fell off and drowned before the vessel left her shipyard. When she finally sailed out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard -- two months behind schedule -- she hit heavy weather in the Atlantic, lost both engines and had to be towed across by a training ship from the U.S. Naval Academy.

Ice formed inside the hull as The Nautilus entered the polar zone. On warmer days the ice melted, dousing the men and equipment inside. She developed a permanent list. The expensive ice drills would not work in the cold.

Maybe it was not, after all that, such a disappointment when The Nautilus finally reached the polar ice cap and it was discovered that the dive rudder was broken. Without it, Wilkins' plan to navigate a course to the pole was physically impossible.

Nelson suspects the crew sabotaged their own vessel. 'They probably realized `Hey, this is ridiculous. How did we get talked into this?' And you know, it's probably a good thing. Because they would have died. I have no question about that.''

A GLIMPSE
In the end, The Nautilus got at least a glimpse under the ice, by filling its forward ballast tanks and nudging its way underneath. Pictures were taken, as well as some samples of mud in the interest of science.

So the voyage was, if not a success, not a total failure.

Wilkins chose, wisely, to scuttle his vessel rather than attempt another transatlantic crossing.

His reputation was sufficiently intact to embark on four more polar expeditions.

The Nautilus was forgotten, over time.

Which brings us back to Nelson and his upcoming fjord dive. Aren't some things better left in the dustbin of history?

''Well, they didn't make it,'' Nelson said. ``But nobody had done it before. Nobody had even tried. They didn't know what it would be like. That's boldness, daring . . . they should not be forgotten.''

BOTTOM OF THE FJORD
He raised $150,000 to pay for the submersible that will take him to the bottom of the Bergen fjord during the week of Sept. 12.

It has powerful halogen lights and a camera. He hopes to make a documentary with his footage, or at least show it to some museums, proof that the wreck is there and should be recognized as a historic site.

Know morw about the 'Nautilus' here.


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www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com

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BBC
August 19, 2005


The HMS Victory replica took two
years to build.

Two Devon schoolgirls have been speaking about their excitement at the prospect of setting fire to a 100ft (30m) replica of HMS Victory.

Sisters Hattie and Katie Hill, from Welcombe in north Devon, will light the blue touchpaper on 27 August in front of thousands of people.

The spectacular vessel has been built over two years by the Torrington Cavaliers charity group in north Devon.

They will be helped by the man who won an internet charity auction.

Hong Kong businessman Nick Hill, no relation to the pair, paid £325 for the right to torch the Victory.

His goddaughter Hattie, 11, said: "I am very excited about lighting it, I cannot wait." Katie, nine, said the prospect of lighting the huge fire was "cool", adding: "I am really excited, and my friends are a bit jealous."

The vessel was built over two years by around 30 members of the Cavaliers group.
The event is bidding to raise about £60,000 for cancer charities and local good causes.

Big crowds
The vessel, based on plans of the Victory, has three 100ft masts, 13 miles of rigging, and furled sails.

The huge yellow and black three-deck hull comes complete with figurehead, 48 gunports, anchor, cabins and lifeboats.

On the night there will be a 24-gun volley from the vessel's gunports, and the crowd will hear a narration of the Trafalgar conflict.

Over 35 years the Cavaliers have forged a reputation for building and firing some of the country's most spectacular bonfires for charity.

In 2000 they built a full-size replica of part of the London of 1666 and recreated the "Great Fire of London" by burning it down in front of 20,000 people.

A few years earlier they constructed a huge replica of the Houses of Parliament, and invited a descendant of Guy Fawkes to put the torch to it.


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