Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom

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Nevada Appeal

By David C. Henley

December 31, 2006



She's 82 years old, 302 feet long, and has been near death's door since the day before Christmas nine years ago.

There have been several attempts the past few years to bring the old girl back to life, one of which involved a plan by Nevada gaming interests to turn her into a floating casino and rename her the SS Nevada. But nothing ever came of them.

But today there's new hope that the fabled passenger steamer SS Catalina, which carried more than 24 million passengers from Southern California to Catalina Island, may have another chance at life.

The Catalina, built in 1923 by the Wrigley chewing gum family and put into service the following year, made more than 9,800 crossings between Los Angeles and Catalina before her troubles began in 1975.

During World War II, she was taken over by the U.S. Army, painted military gray, renamed the U.S. Army Transport SS-99, and carried more than 820,000 troops between the Oakland Army Base and several California ports until war's end in 1945.

In the mid 1970s, however, competition from swifter passenger boats, labor troubles and several ownership changes brought a halt to her Los Angeles-Catalina run.

One owner wanted to sell her off to a Hong Kong ferry service. Another wanted to sail her to South America to serve as a floating restaurant. Still another hoped to turn the Catalina into a gambling ship and hotel that would ply the California coasts. None of these ventures came to fruition.

The SS Catalina eventually sailed to the Pacific Coast Mexican beach resort of Ensenada and turned into a dockside dance hall and cafe.

The new owners, hoping for more profits from the old ship, conducted negotiations with a Hollywood producer to use the SS Catalina in a motion picture about the U.S. Army Transport Dorchester that was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in the North Atlantic in 1943. More than 670 men died, including four Army chaplains representing the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths who gave their life jackets to survivors.

In the movie, the Catalina was to have been a double for the Dorchester, but nothing came of this endeavor as well.

The SS Catalina's near-death blow came nine years ago.

The day before Christmas in 1997, the famed "Great White Steamer" broke loose from her moorings, struck a sandbar on Ensenada Harbor's southeast shore and slowly sank, stern first.

She remains in this near-moribund state today. Most of her superstructure visible, she's a sorry sight for gawking tourists, crewmembers of the huge container ships sailing in and out of Ensenada's port, and passengers arriving and departing here aboard massive cruise ships.

Since her near sinking in 1997, the Catalina has been boarded by vandals who have stolen much of her fittings and marine artifacts. She's also been the center of contention of several competing groups that have attempted to raise funds to raise, refit and restore her.

Until now, the efforts have failed.

But a potential new savior has arrived, a former Navy diving officer and current civilian salvage expert. Retired Lt. Commander Richard McPherson of Orange County, Calif., said the ship's hull is in pretty good shape and it can be successfully raised and refurbished.

It will take about $2 million to raise the ship and another $6 million to restore it to its original shape. After that, they hope to turn it into a floating California nautical museum.

He's hired a public relations firm to help with the fundraising and is himself leading a team to discover how to raise the ship without damaging its rotting wooden sides.

Meanwhile, the SS Catalina remains prey to looters and scavengers who board her from small boats, taking away valued parts of the ship.


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www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com

December 31, 2006


AN EXHIBITION marking the 100th anniversary of one of the most dramatic shipwrecks to occur off Tasmania's coast will open to the public tomorrow at the Low Head Pilot Station museum.

On the morning of January 6, 1907, the wool transport ship Eden Holme ran aground on Hebe Reef, 5km from the mouth of the Tamar River.

The reef had been named after the Hebe, a ship that was wrecked on the rocks in 1808.

The treacherous stretch of reef has claimed many victims over the years, including the Asterope in 1883, the SS Esk in 1886, the Eden Holme in 1907 and, most recently, the ore transport ship the Iron Baron in 1995.

The Eden Holme wreck was unusual in that nearly all items of worth were removed from the ship before it sank, and much of the cargo and maritime equipment was auctioned by the ship's owner to counter the loss.

After the large salvage operation, the ship took 12 days to sink and eventually went under on January 18.

Many of the salvaged items from the ship have been sourced by volunteers for the exhibition, and curator Wayne Shipp said it was unique to have such a collection of equipment from a single ship.

The exhibition features instruments like chronometers, hydrometers, a sounding machine, and other items like the captain's telescope, crockery, furniture, porthole frames, books and more.

Most of the displayed pieces are on loan to the museum until the end of February, so Mr Shipp encouraged people to get in early to see them.

"It's a unique part of Tasmania's maritime history," he said.

"Rarely do you get such an opportunity to see so many wonderful pieces of a ship's navigational equipment and so forth that actually belonged to one single ship."

Kenya will host the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) diplomatic conference in May 2007, The EastAfrican has learnt.

The conference where 500 participants are expected will be held in Nairobi from May 14-18 to consider the adoption of a new Wreck Removal Convention.

The IMO’s legal committee, at its 92nd session in October 2006, approved a draft Wreck Removal Convention. Once adopted and enforced, the new convention will provide the legal basis for states to remove, or have removed, from their exclusive economic zones, shipwrecks that may pose a hazard to navigation, or marine and coastal environments. The new convention will also require shipowners to take out insurance to cover the costs of removal and provide states with the right of direct action against insurers.

The draft convention covers reporting and locating ships and wrecks, determination of hazard, rights and obligations to remove hazardous ships and wrecks, financial liability for locating, marking and removing ships and wrecks. It also covers financial security and settlement of disputes.

Meanwhile, Kenyan seafarers hope the conference will speed up the enactment of four maritime Bills that were prepared by a taskforce three years ago.

The Merchant Shipping Bill, Maritime Authority Bill, Maritime Pollution Bill and the Inland Waterway Transport Bill have been lying at the Attorney General’s Chambers since 2003.

The seafarers want action on the Bills because the maritime sector is still operating under outdated laws.

In a memorandum to President Mwai Kibaki, the seafarers said they are losing out on jobs and other important maritime developments because of the delay in enacting the Bills.

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BBC
December 28, 2006

December 27, 2006


The Louisiana State Archives is now displaying a new exhibit, El Nuevo Constante, a cooperative endeavor between the State Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism and the Louisiana State Archives.

El Nuevo Constante is an 18th century Spanish ship that sank off the coast of Louisiana in 1766. It left Mexico en route to Spain in August of that year, but a hurricane prevented it from arriving at its intended destination.

In 1979, Curtis Blume found the ship when he caught several large ingots of copper in his shrimp nets near Little Constance Lake off the coast of Cameron Parish. He notified state archaeologists and historians, and together they worked to complete a comprehensive study of the shipwreck.

Among the items on display are copper ingots, pewter, glassware, bones from chickens and goat horns, fragments of green glazed olive jars and miniature ceramic items. The exhibit also includes an informative booklet written by archaeologist Charles E. Pearson and historian Paul E. Hoffman.

The public is invited to view the exhibit until Jan. 31, 2007 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays.

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The Sydney Morning Herald
December 27, 2006




The Great Ocean Road southwest of Melbourne is rated one of the world's most scenic drives but sagas of the sea abound also on a 180km-long shore sector called the Shipwreck Coast.

The rugged coastline between Cape Otway and Port Fairy, a three-hour drive from Melbourne, has claimed more than 180 ships over the centuries.

Tourists can follow a Shipwreck Trail, with signs and plaques commemorating the wrecks and their resting places.

For more detail, visit the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum in Warrnambool, the region's largest town (population about 30,000).

It's a recreated seaport village from 120 years ago - when Warrnambool was an important centre for international trade in the colony of Victoria.

Built around an original 1859 lighthouse, the museum's interpretive centre tells graphic stories of the hardships endured by men who sailed the high seas.

Tourism authorities say the Shipwreck Coast offers spectacular coastal scenery, first-class dining and accommodation to suit all budgets, along with many natural and man-made attractions.

Visitors bargain for antiques in the markets and shops, enjoy golf, bowls, tennis, fishing, the beach and bush walks; there's whale-watching in season and various festivals during the year.

At night at the museum there's a sound and laser show titled "Shipwrecked!" describing the tragedy of one particular wreck, that of the Loch Ard, a three-masted square-rigged iron sailing ship.

The 1,693-ton Loch Ard sailed from England for Melbourne in 1878 with 37 crew and 17 passengers, many of them from a family named Carmichael emigrating to the colonies.

After 13 weeks, on June 1, the ship was within days of arriving in Melbourne then ran into thick fog; when it lifted at 4am, Loch Ard was well off course and heading for jagged cliffs 2km away.

Despite the efforts of her 29-year-old captain, the ship struck a reef running out from Mutton Bird Island and sank in 15 minutes.

Eighteen-year-old passenger Eva Carmichael rushed out on deck and found Captain Gibbs who told her: "If you are saved, let my dear wife know that I died like a sailor." He went down with his ship.

Eva was swept overboard by a huge wave and spent five hours clinging to wreckage before she saw ship's apprentice Tom Pearce on a small rocky beach - what was later named Loc Ard Gorge.

She yelled to attract his attention and Pearce swam to her and dragged her to shore, then breaking open a case of brandy to help revive the unconscious girl.

After the sun rose, Pearce scaled a cliff and, following hoofprints, came across two men from a farm 5.5km away and raised the alarm.

As they recovered later at the farm, it was realised that they were the only survivors of the 52 people aboard Loch Ard.

Tom Pearce was hailed as a hero and received the first gold medal of the Royal Humane Society and a cheque for 1,000 pounds from the Victorian government.

People through the colony saw the situation as romantic and wanted Tom and Eva to fall in love and be married, saying that God had brought them together for a reason.

But the couple didn't feel the same way, and after three months, Eva went back to Ireland, to be with the only surviving member of her family, a brother named William.

Years later Tom married a woman related to a man who died in the shipwreck, and started a family.

Today, if you drive down the Great Ocean Road to Loch Ard Gorge, you can see the place where Tom rescued Eva and see the graves where some victims were buried.

Ten days after the tragedy, salvage rights to the wreck were auctioned off for 2,120 pounds.

One unlikely piece of cargo to survive was a (well-packed) Minton porcelain peacock, one of only nine in the world, being shipped for the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880.

Today, it's on view at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum.


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www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com

December 28, 2006


"I'm no Indiana Jones,'' says Franck Goddio, the French economist-turned-archaeologist who curated "Egypt's Sunken Treasures'' at the Grand Palais in Paris.

The slow-talking 59-year-old heads the team that has spent 14 years recovering the artifacts on show. Goddio graduated in statistics and learned archaeology on the job, prompting some skepticism in the small world of archaeologists and Egyptologists.

"My job is to avoid adventure, it's the last thing I want,'' he said in an interview at the Grand Palais, where almost 500 of his underwater discoveries are on show through Jan. 7. "Things must happen as planned. I don't let chance drive my work.''

Before his first diving experience in 1984, when he explored Napoleon Bonaparte's sunken flagship in Egyptian waters, Goddio was an adviser on economics and trade to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, partly under the auspices of the United Nations and France's Foreign Ministry. From 1977 to 1983, he advised the Saudi Fund for Development.

In 1985, he created the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology and then his Franck Goddio Society, which signed the Unesco convention under which all artifacts are turned over to the states to which they belong.

His first major find, in 1991, was the San Diego, a Spanish galleon that sank off Manila 400 years ago. He said his financial background helped him persuade Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG to sponsor an exhibition of pottery from the vessel.

Goddio says he found the gigantic Hapy and Isis Ptolemaic statues, on display in Paris, under several meters of sand and clay after a meticulous search with the help of nuclear-based technology developed with France's Atomic Energy Center.

Rival Scientist
He is a rival of Jean-Yves Empereur, the French National Research Center scientist who is director of the French Center for Alexandrian Studies. The two men previously worked together in the mid-1990s and now excavate separately, Goddio in the bay of Aboukir and Empereur in the port of Alexandria.

Goddio says discovery and not adventure is in his "family gene.'' The boy, who grew up in Mata Hari's house on the outskirts of Paris, is the grandson of Eric de Bisschop, a French ocean sailor and explorer who built the first modern catamaran.

"I'm patient and it's worth it,'' Goddio said, citing the exquisite Ptolemaic Queen Arsinoe II draped sculpture exhibited in Paris and "which will soon be history.''

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Inside Bay Area
By Rachel Cohen
December 26, 2006


SAN LORENZO — "Get your oar locks ready! Put your paddles in the water. Starboard side, pull! Port side, pull! Come on now, together!"

A waxing moon shines above San Francisco Bay and the current runs at 3 knots an hour as second mate Mr. Watts directs a rowboat of 11 students away from Hyde Street Pier and the giant ship, the Balclutha.

Though the lights from the Ghirardelli Square sign shine over the harbor, the children, fourth-graders from the Santa Clara Unified School District, are back in 1906. The earthquake has just struck and the Golden Gate Bridge does not exist. Over the course of 18 hours, the class — divided into five teams — will complete dozens of activities to start their journey to Oregon.

The experience allows the students to get a hands-on feeling for history, and empathy for what it was like to live as a sailor — the responsibility and the adventure.

"Get your hands off the gunnel, lad! You're going to lose a finger," Mr. Watts shouts.

Finally, the boat makes its way safely back to dock, some of its occupants smiling, some tired and one who says she has to throw up. But they all manage three hearty rounds of "Hip, hip, hooray!"

The "Mr. Watts" leading them is actually Alice Watts, a 23-year-veteran of the Age of Sail program at the Hyde Street Pier, which is part of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. The San Lorenzo resident has been on more than 2,000 voyages with Age of Sail — so many thatsome of the children who participated are now parents bringing their children aboard.

"She brings a sense of history and of importance to the things they do. The children always appreciate her insights," said teacher Anna Marie Boubher. "She is very consistent and authentic, and really keeps the whole excitement of the program."

Boubher has brought her class on the ship's overnights for the past 10 years. Her adult daughters went through Age of Sail under Watts as elementary school students, and she said the adventure remains a favorite of many of her students.

"There is a major change in their view of themselves that they can do really hard things and they can do a good job," Bouhber said.

She added that it builds a stronger community within the classroom that carries on throughout the year.

Watts herself was introduced to Age of Sail and tall ships as a Tall Sailor, or parent-chaperone, aboard her son's fourth-grade class experience 23 years ago. She was immediately intrigued by the aura of the tall ships, and the different parenting and teaching styles.

"I was overprotective. I was bailing him out and not realizing that the problems are a part of life," she said.

Watts explains that the Age of Sail program teaches kids to complete tasks they have never before done on their own, as well as imparts internally driven discipline.

After her son's trip, she immediately started volunteering. After seven years, Watts was hired full-time in 1990.

"She is more dedicated to her job than anyone I've ever seen," said program manager M.J. Harris. "I have to physically make her leave sometimes."

Watts loves working at the Hyde Street Pier — part of a national park — so much that she is also the first mate on the Explorers program, which takes students out for a day on the Bay on the Alma, a flat-bottomed boat called a scow schooner, that once transported lumber. On Monday and Wednesday mornings, she also is the coxswain, or crew leader, for two senior citizen teams that row in the Bay.

In addition, she sails all over the Bay and the West Coast and has been preparing for her captain's license.

When she passed the 1,000 mark for voyages with Age of Sail, a colleague gave her a necklace with 1,000 beads on it. Each represented 30 or so students per class whom Watts had taught.

"That really blew my mind. Just to reach one person, and I've been able to reach a lot, that makes me feel really good," Watts said.

Having just returned from the rowing expedition, Mr. Watts asks the captain if help is needed. It is not, so Mr. Watts heads up to the foredeck of the Balclutha to take a break. She surveys the students preparing dinner and tying knots on the square sailing rig, which was built in 1886 and completed 17 voyages around Cape Horn.

She said that what she really enjoys are the little conversations she hears when she comes around from the galley, between two lads discussing how to complete a task.

"There's real learning happening there," she said.


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www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com

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This Is Hertfordshire

December 26, 2006


IN the Astley Arms at Seaton Sluice, between Whitley Bay and Blyth, is a bottle of whisky that's never to be opened. It recalls a poignant episode in the Second World War. On Boxing Day, 1939, sub-mariner ERH 'Tug' Wilson won the bottle of Johnnie Walker in a sweepstake at the pub. Due to leave within hours on a mission to the enemy-controlled Heligoland Bight, in a U-boat from a group then based in Blyth, he handed the bottle to the landlady, Lydia Jackson, for safe keeping.

But Tug's vessel, Seahorse, never returned. Her fate is a mystery, but up to her retirement long after the war, Lydia kept Tug's prize behind the bar, ready for his return. To ensure its future, she then presented the bottle to the Royal Navy's Submarine Museum. But a symbolic replacement, unopened, of course, remains a treasured relic at the Astley.

Telling this story in the superb opening volume of an ambitious record of every known submarine wreck around Britain, Ron Young and Pamela Armstrong reveal that the North-East has exceptionally strong links with the sinister yet also chillingly-heroic submarine warfare. As they declare in only their second sentence: "This spectacular coastline has been mute witness to momentous events.''

On September 5, 1914, just a month and a day after Britain was drawn into war with Germany, the torpedoing of a British cruiser, Pathfinder, off Berwick, gave her the unwanted distinction of being the first warship in naval history to be sunk by a submarine in the open sea.

Fast forward to November 10, 1918, the day before the Armistice. Sunk with all hands off the Farne Isles, HMS Ascot, thus became, say Young and Armstrong, "almost certainly the last British warship torpedoed in the First World War".

Meanwhile, Blyth had been the Royal Navy's main training station for sub-mariners. Still the base for a flotilla of submarines in World War II, it suffered more losses than any other U-boat port.

But near the coast most losses were of German U-boats. And - such are the whims of history - one yielded another "bottle" story.

On April 16, 1945, U-boat 1274 sank a tanker carrying molasses, in a convoy off the Farne Islands. But an escort destroyer, HMS Viceroy, tracked her down and dropped depth charges, which sent her to the bottom. Among the debris was a bottle of brandy, which was later presented to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

All 43 of 1274's crew perished, entombed in the vessel, which is now a war grave. Young and Armstrong report that it is "still intact, except for the stern end, where, it seems, a number of the depth charges exploded. . . The hatches are still sealed". With the end of the war just three weeks away, 1274, noted by Young and Armstrong as "one of the very last U boats destroyed in Home Waters during the Second World War", added another especially tragic distinction to the North-East coast.

Covering the entire East Coast, including Kent, this meticulously-researched account has separate chapters for the North-East (Berwick-Middlesbrough) and Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The authors have painstakingly pieced together the stories of the 16 U-boat wrecks so far located - seven off the North-East coast, nine off Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

They provide full technical details of the vessels, describe the events leading up to their loss, and list the victims, including, where available, those on ships attacked by the U-boats prior to their own destruction. The present state of the wreck, established by divers, completes the remarkable record.

Prominent in it is a renowned German commander, Werner Furbringer. A brilliant sub-mariner and honourable man, he once nursed his U-boat back to her home port after she had been so severely damaged that she drifted for two days. On July 9, 1918, instructed to attack an ironworks near Seaham, he audaciously took his boat, UB 39, right into the harbour and fired 39 shells, matching his boat's number. He escaped without even submerging.

Although the attack cost the life of a woman walking on the cliffs, Young and Armstrong say: "There is convincing evidence that the humane Furbringer deliberately fired his symbolic barrage over rather than at the town.''

By coincidence, Furbringer and his UB 39 take a starring role in another intriguing drama, seemingly overlooked by Young and Armstrong, but showcased in a small booklet by John Howard, a retired Scarborough headmaster with deep roots in Staithes.

On July 13, 1916, UB 39 surfaced amid a handful of Staithes' fishing boats, one of which sank after the intruders, probably checking that the boats had no spying equipment, tore it apart.

Furbringer assembled a couple of the crews on the deck of UB 39 and took a photograph. The group included a sturdy Staithes character, William Francis Verrill, who, acting as leader, asked Furbringer: "Do you like herring, maister? Francis, chuck him a warp of herrings (clutch of four) ower."

As the U-boat veered close to his coble he warned Furbringer: "Fend off, maister. Ah deeant want mah bit o'coble screeaped. Ah've nobbut just had her pented.''

When Furbringer offered the men a drink of water - after apologising for the lack of coffee or cocoa - William Cole, another redoubtable Staithes figure, a staunch Methodist, chipped in: "You've just sunk their bit o'cobles. Are you trying to corrupt 'em wi' strang drink an all?''

Donating the profits from his booklet to charitable causes in Staithes, including the War Memorial and Memorial Hall, Mr Howard says the U-boat story has been much embellished down the years. But Furbringer emerges as much the same "humane" man painted by Young and Armstrong. Mr Howard writes:

"The submarine commander bade his erstwhile prisoners farewell with the words: "Goodbye gentlemen, I have done with you now.' The Staithes fishermen commented afterwards on Herr Furbringer's unfailing courtesy throughout the whole of this episode." He survived the war, wrote what is now a classic book on his war experiences, and lived to be 93.


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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

December 25, 2006


The University of Oslo has decided to move three grand Viking ships, probably by truck and barge, to a new museum across town, despite dire warnings that the thousand-year-old oak vessels could fall apart en route.

A retired curator of the current Viking Ship Museum said that the fragile ships, two of which are nearly 24 meters, or 80 feet, long, were almost equal in archaeological importance to the Pyramids.

"Even if I have to live till I am 100, I will go on fighting this move," the former curator, Arne Emil Christensen, who is 70, said in an interview. "The best way to stop it is still through diplomacy, but, if necessary, I will be in front of the ships, chained to the floor."

The university board of directors voted this month to move the sleek- hulled vessels, over the objections of Christensen and several other scholars, including the former director of the British Museum, David Wilson, and the director of the Center for Maritime Archaeology in Denmark, Ole Crumlin- Pedersen. The board wants to transport the ships from a remote Oslo peninsula where they have been housed for more than 75 years to a large, multifaceted museum in the center of the capital.

The ships were pulled in pieces from separate Viking burial mounds more than a century ago, then reassembled with rivets, glue, creosote and linseed oil. Since then they have deteriorated markedly. Christensen said that they have the consistency of knekkebrod, a type of Norwegian cracker.

The most spectacular of them, the Oseberg ship, was built around the year 800 and has enlivened the covers of many history books. Its towering, carved snakehead prow and 30 oars offer insight on the old English prayer, "Deliver us, O Lord, from the fury of the Norsemen." Viking raiders carried by such ships were the scourge of Britain and much of the European continent from the 8th to the 11th centuries.

Engineers from Det Norske Veritas, a risk-management foundation, have modeled the Oseberg ship by computer and concluded that it could be moved "with little probability of damage" if a gyroscopically controlled cradle is designed to bear all five tons of oak without the slightest stress or tilt. The most likely travel route would be in three segments: downhill by truck for about 700 meters; across the Oslo fjord by barge for 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles; and uphill by truck again for several hundred meters.

"It will be a dramatic day, for sure, but I will stay calm," said Geir Ellingsrud, the University of Oslo president. "I am convinced that the move will take place without significant problems."

The ships will not set out immediately and the new museum is not due to open until 2015. The Oseberg ship's rival for museumgoers' attention is the Gokstad ship, which dates to around 890. The third vessel, called Tune, is really only half a ship; but what remains came out of the ground in one piece, held together by the original iron rivets.

"We simply don't know what may happen if these things are moved," said Christensen, an archaeologist who recently retired as the ships' curator and has not yet been replaced.

Ellingsrud, a mathematician, said that Christensen and his colleagues were exaggerating the risk "out of emotion" stemming from their long association with the ships. He acknowledged that they had one more card to play without turning to civil disobedience. The Norwegian Directorate of Cultural Heritage, which has the power to declare landmarks untouchable, is evaluating whether the current Viking Ship Museum and its contents should be protected as one monument.

"The point of no return has not been reached yet," Ellingsrud said.


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Delaware Online
By Randall Chase
December 24, 2006


GEORGETOWN, Del. -- For almost 20 years, Delaware Technical & Community College's campus in Georgetown has been home to a collection of artifacts pulled from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher.

Now, the school is preparing to float some of its treasure for coin collectors and history buffs.

Fisher made headlines in 1985 when he found the wreckage of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon that sank in 1622 off Key West, Fla., with a cargo of gold, silver, and precious gems worth an estimated $400 million.

Among those financing Fisher's exhaustive hunt for the Atocha was the late Melvin Joseph, a Georgetown businessman and entrepreneur who donated some of his take to Delaware Tech's Owens Campus. More than $4 million worth of artifacts, including cannons, coins and jewelry are featured in the school's "Treasures of the Sea" exhibit.

While the exhibit features several examples of Spanish coins, thousands more have been tucked away for years in safe deposit boxes.

On Jan. 7, those coins will go up for sale at a public auction in New York City.

"It's by far the largest group of Atocha coins that have been sold in at least 10 or 15 years," said Warren Tucker, director of world coin auctions for Heritage Auctions of Dallas. "We're just getting bombarded with inquiries about them."

Tucker said the coins -- more than 2,700 of them -- could fetch more than half a million dollars.

Delaware Tech will use proceeds from the sale, minus Heritage's commissions, to establish an endowment named for Joseph and the late poultry magnate Frank Perdue of Salisbury, Md., who also invested in Fisher's expedition and donated artifacts to the school's education foundation.

"These coins were sitting locked in a bank vault and basically were an asset we had that really wasn't working for us," said Bob Hearn Jr., business manager of the Owens campus.

The school will use money from the endowment as the education foundation, which approved the sale in April, sees fit.

"We certainly have a long list of deferred maintenance items on the campus," Hearn noted, adding that the endowment might also be used for scholarships and students services.

School officials are quick to point out that the "Treasures of the Sea" exhibit, which is tucked away in the library building and draws only about 3,000 visitors a year, is not being gutted for the sale.

In fact, at the suggestion of Heritage Auction officials, four coins that had been stored away will be added to the exhibit to complement those already on display.

Gayle Chandler, coordinator of the exhibit, said she was able to see the coins that are being sold during annual audits.

"You open the boxes up, and it's just coin after coin after coin," she said. "It's a great opportunity for the college to get additional funding for the campus."

Tucker said most of the coins being sold are 4-reales and 8-reales pieces, the famous "pieces of 8" from pirate lore. The auction is expected to draw buyers from around the country, as well the West Indies.

"They do a huge business in Atocha material down there; they sell to the tourist trade," said Tucker, adding that the well-publicized hunt for the shipwreck and the recent dearth of artifacts available for purchase should boost interest in the sale.

"There's a huge, pent-up demand," he said. "I think the timing is absolutely perfect."

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The Jamaica Observer
December 24, 2006


MIAMI, Florida - An exhibition showcasing the history of Port Royal will open in the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, downtown Miami on February 16, 2007 and continue until Sunday, June 3.

Titled 'Port Royal, Jamaica', the exhibition, jointly coordinated by the Institute of Jamaica and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, marks the first time that a large collection of rare artifacts from that historic Jamaican seaside town, parts of which sank in the devastating earthquake of 1692, will be displayed in the United States.

More than 150 artifacts will chronologically illustrate the life of that city since it was founded in 1655.
Many of these artifacts were recovered through underwater archaeology expeditions carried out since the 1950s.
Some of the items on display will include Chinese porcelain, German stoneware and Spanish silver coins, as well as red clay pipes associated with African craftsmen who then resided in the city.

Among the many skilled craftsmen inhabiting Port Royal before the famous quake were shipwrights, blacksmiths, pewterers, and silversmiths.
The era of the Royal Navy will be portrayed through such items as pharmaceutical vials from the Naval Hospital, the Spencer Browning & Rust telescope as well as a bust of Horatio Nelson, one of several British naval heroes who served in Port Royal during the 18th century.

Among the collection on display will also be rare maps, prints, books and manuscripts, and a ship model, all to be borrowed from the National Library of Jamaica, the University of Florida (George A Smathers Library) and the Historical Museum of South Florida.

A series of 25 black and white photographs depicting community life in Port Royal and which were shot during the 1980s by a leading Jamaican photographer, Maria LaYacona, will also form part of the exhibition.
In addition to the large collection, video footage of efforts to research and preserve Port Royal's heritage through underwater archaeology will also be featured.

A highlight of the four-month feature on Jamaica's historic city will be a variety of family-oriented educational lectures and entertainment programmes about the island's heritage and cultural traditions.

The city of Port Royal has been a focal point of Caribbean and Atlantic history. It was also a cosmopolitan port and centre for the African slave trade during the 17th century and a major base of the British Royal Navy during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Today, the maritime city is famous as a world historical site and an attraction for locals as well as the many visitors to the island.
Chief curator for the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, Dr Steven Stuempfle, said that the museum is committed to partnering with institutions to explore how events in the Caribbean have shaped world history during the past several centuries.

After the four-month display at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, the exhibition will be mounted in Jamaica until January 2008.

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Greek City

The Antikythera Mechanism was developed about 100 BC in Greece. It used gears to indicate the positions of the sun, moon and stars and to predict eclipses.

The island of Antikythera lies 18 miles north of Crete, where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. Currents there can make shipping treacherous – and one ship bound for ancient Rome never made it.

The ship that sank there was a giant cargo vessel measuring nearly 500 feet long. It came to rest about 200 feet below the surface, where it stayed for more than 2,000 years until divers looking for sponges discovered the wreck a little more than a century ago.

Inside the hull were a number of bronze and marble statues. From the look of things, the ship seemed to be carrying luxury items, probably made in various Greek islands and bound for wealthy patrons in the growing Roman Empire. The statues were retrieved, along with a lot of other unimportant stuff, and stored.

Nine months later, an archaeologist cleared off a layer of organic material from one of the pieces of junk and found that it looked like a gearwheel. It seemed to have something to do with astronomy.

That piece of “junk” went on to become the most celebrated find from the shipwreck; it is displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Research has shown that the wheel was part of a device so sophisticated that its complexity would not be matched for 1,000 years – it was also the world’s first known analog computer.

The device is so famous that an international conference organized in Athens a couple of weeks ago had only one subject: the Antikythera Mechanism.

The device was probably built between 100 and 140 BC, and the understanding of astronomy it displays seems to have been based on knowledge developed by the Babylonians in 300-700 BC, said Mike Edmunds, a professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University in Britain. He led a research team that reconstructed what the gear mechanism would have looked like by using advanced 3-D technology. The group also decoded a number of the inscriptions.

The mechanism explores the relationship between lunar months – the time it takes for the moon to cycle through its phases – and calendar years. The gears had to be cut precisely to reflect this complex relationship; 19 calendar years equal 235 lunar months.

By turning the gear mechanism, a person could check what the sky would have looked like on a date in the past, or how it would appear in the future. The mechanism was encased in a box with doors in front and back covered with inscriptions – a sort of instruction manual. Inside the front door were pointers indicating the date and the positions of the sun, moon and zodiac, while opening the back door revealed the relationship between calendar years and lunar months, and a mechanism to predict eclipses.

“It is a mechanical computer. You turn the handle and you have a date on the front,” said Yanis Bitsakis, a physicist at the University of Athens who co-wrote a study for the journal Nature with Frangois Charette, a historian of science in Germany.

Why was the technology that went into the device lost?

“The time this was built, the jackboot of Rome was coming through,” Edmunds said. “The Romans were good at town planning and sanitation but were not known for their interest in science.”


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Navy News

December 21, 2006

Sixty-seven years after she rolled over and sank in Scapa Flow, underwater archaeological experts have produced the most detailed sonar images of stricken giant HMS Royal Oak – images the ordinary camera could never capture.

Royal Oak fell victim to the skill and audacity of U-boat ace Kapitänleutnant Günther Prien in U47.

He slipped through the defences of the Royal Navy’s wartime anchorage in the Orkneys and put four torpedoes into the dreadnought in October 1939.

The battleship sank in less than 15 minutes; of her ship’s company of more than 1,200, 833 perished.

Beyond the immediate aftermath of personal tragedy and harm to British and RN prestige, the Royal Oak disaster has left a more long-standing legacy.

For over a decade Whitehall has been trying to prevent oil leaking from the ship’s fuel tanks.

To date, 884 cubic metres (194,452 gallons) of oil has been pumped out of the wreck; anywhere between 153,000 and 286,000 gallons are thought to be still trapped in her hull.

All oil has been removed from Royal Oak’s outer tanks using a method called hot tapping, fitting valves at strategic points.

What remains lies in her inner tanks.

Given Royal Oak’s status as an official war grave, the importance of preserving Scapa Flow’s environment, and the danger of explosions caused by munitions trapped in the upturned hull, tapping those inner tanks is an extremely delicate task.

A pilot scheme using specialist gear in 2005 proved that oil from the inner tanks could be withdrawn.

But before any large-scale tapping could begin, a detailed survey of Royal Oak was crucial.

The MOD called upon Adus, sonar and wreck survey experts from the University of St Andrews, to find out what state the wreck was in and how stable it was before tapping those inner tanks began in earnest.

The Adus team used multi-beam sonars to scan the wreck; this data was then turned into 3D images by computer wizardry.

“The survey work used cutting-edge technology and visualisation techniques specifically developed for this task,” explained Craig English of the Salvage and Marine Operations team.

Martin Dean, a maritime archaeologist with Adus, said the result of the survey produced a breathtaking view of Royal Oak’s crippled hull, with the places where Prien’s torpedoes struck clearly identifiable.

For maritime archaeologists and environmental experts, the work proved invaluable.

“The sonar images are of such accuracy that even small changes in the hull over time can be monitored closely year on year,” Mr Dean added.

“This will not only help reduce the impact of a catastrophic failure of the hull should it occur but, better still, allow a much greater understanding of how and when the wreck might break up.”

Something no survey could accurately predict was how much the shells, cordite and other ammunition in Royal Oak’s magazine had deteriorated.

As a result, time spent working on the wreck was kept to a minimum to avoid any potential disturbance.

Other disturbance to avoid is that to marine and wildlife at Scapa, in particular wintering seabirds.

Consequently, two weeks in September were deemed to be the best time to tap the oil tanks – and minimise the risk to wildlife if any oil spilled from the hull.

In typical autumnal weather at Scapa (ie cold, wet and windy), a team of expert divers under the guidance of the MOD’s Salvage and Marine Operations team began to remove the oil from the inner tanks.

“Despite the challenging weather conditions, the team spirit was very high – boosted by the fact that the support barge steadily filled with viscous, dark Venezuelan furnace oil,” Mr English added.


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icWales.com
By Molly Watson
December 18, 2006

CAMPAIGNERS have warned that a legal loophole is enabling divers to desecrate the war graves of hundreds of British servicemen killed at sea, including those who died on Sir Galahad.

Videos and photographs posted on the internet have revealed a growing number of companies are taking divers inside battleships, such as HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. Items taken from the ships have also appeared on eBay and some DVDs have even included footage of human remains.

Falklands hero Simon Weston, who suffered severe burns the fire that engulfed the Sir Galahad when it was hit, yesterday called for new international laws to ensure wrecks are given the same respect as war cemeteries.

He added that stealing from the wrecks was "deplorable" and akin to grave-robbing.

Although HMS Prince of Wales, HMS Repulse and Sir Galahad are designated war graves under the Protection of the Military Remains Act 1986, this act only applies to British citizens.

There is no law preventing foreign nationals from diving on wrecks in international waters.

Hannah Rickard, whose father survived the sinking of the Prince of Wales, said, "People are in tears about this - it is disgusting. It is obvious from some of the videos and photos circulating that the graves of these men are being disturbed.

"If it was British divers doing it, they would be prosecuted. I think the public would be amazed that foreign divers can get away with interfering with maritime war graves simply because they are not British citizens.

"The Americans have been very effective in protecting their ships. Our Government should be looking to do the same. Otherwise, where will this end? We already have reports that people may be diving on the Sir Galahad.

Mr Weston was serving as a Welsh Guardsman on Sir Galahad when it was bombed by Argentine jets during the Falklands War.

The attack killed 50 British servicemen.

Yesterday, he said visiting the wrecks was not wrong in itself, as long as they are treated with proper respect - and that they needed official protection.

He said, "I would be surprised if people were able to dive on the Galahad. It's so far down and the water is very cold.

"But, that being said, to dive and just have a look at these wrecks I don't see as a problem. It's not ghoulish at all. We have battlefields that we go to in this country and the Tower of London where lots of people died.

"But these wrecks need to be treated with the respect of a military cemetery.

"And there is a problem when you start to take away artefacts. These are war graves. We would be appalled if someone were to do the same in a war cemetery.

"And it's the same with plundering a ship. It's completely wrong, it's grave-robbing.

"From my perspective, I think it's deplorable but, in hundreds of years' time, when people have forgotten about the sacrifices people made, it will become the done practice. Unless, that is, we get a law through. We cannot hope for a great deal but, if the political will is there, then maybe it will get passed.

"The sad thing is most countries don't have the same feeling about graves as we do.

"If you could get worldwide laws, something as simple as nobody is allowed to rob, pillage or take artefacts from war graves, then we would have achieved something."

HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk by Japanese torpedos off Kuantan on the Malayan coast in December 1941. Around 840 men and women died on board.

Following pressure from the Government, some companies have removed footage of dives from their websites, although they still run trips to the wrecks.

Baroness Crawley said the Government was continuing to raise the issue from foreign governments and also aimed to educate diving companies about the historic importance of the wrecks.


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Archaeologist Andrej Gaspari is haunted by pieces of the past. His hometown river, the Ljubljanica, has yielded thousands of them—Celtic coins, Roman luxuries, medieval swords—all from a shallow 12-mile (19 kilometers) stretch. Those who lived near and traveled along the stream that winds through Slovenia's capital of Ljubljana considered it sacred, Gaspari believes. That would explain why generations of Celts, Romans, and earlier inhabitants offered treasures—far too many to be accidental—to the river during rites of passage, in mourning, or as thanksgiving for battles won.

But Gaspari may never be able to explain for certain why the Ljubljanica holds one of Europe's richest stores of river treasures, many of them remarkably preserved by the soft sediments and gentle waters. Too many pieces of the puzzle have already disappeared.

During the past two decades, sport divers have made the river their playground, removing most of some 10,000 to 13,000 objects found so far. Even though removing artifacts from the Ljubljanica has long been illegal, professional archaeologists have been forced to compete with private collectors. Some divers sold their loot to museums; others to the highest bidder. Some kept their treasures private. Many artifacts have left the country, untraceable. Gaspari's greatest torment comes from the knowledge that few maverick collectors know—or care—where exactly their prizes were found. For an archaeologist, an object's meaning comes as much from its context—location, association with other objects—as from the prize itself. Without context, there is no story.

Mladen Mück is one of Gaspari's tormentors. Now in his 40s, the Bosnian-born architect began diving in the river in 1985 and has brought up about a thousand pieces. In his kitchen in Ljubljana, a plastic box contains prehistoric tools. Upstairs, dusty cases hold other rare artifacts, including deer antler axes. Mück says he has no intention of selling what he has found. Like many collectors, he babies his goods and claims they are better off with him than with the authorities.

"More people see these artifacts in my house than if I gave them to a museum," he says with a dismissive wave. "There they would sit in a basement."

Gaspari disagrees. A team at the National Museum of Slovenia is preparing an exhibit of the river's treasures that will tour Europe in 2008, he says. Still, he hopes that someday Mück will hand over his items. "My heart is strong," quips the 33-year-old archaeologist. If Mück is obstinate, "I will outlive him."

Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine.

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CHN

December 19, 2006


Tehran -- Based on initial agreements between Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) and South Pars Oil Company, a center for underwater archeology will be established in the Persian Gulf as the first attempt to recover the Partho-Sassanid shipwreck discovered last September at a depth of 70 meters near the port of Siraf.

“According to articles 9, 10 and 11 of the memorandum of understanding signed between ICHTO and South Pars Oil Company, the Company has accepted to take charge of the establishment of a research center for underwater archeological excavations in the Persian Gulf. Based on this agreement, recovering the discovered Partho-Sassanid shipwreck will be the first priority of this center,” said Hossein Tofighian, director of ICHTO’s Underwater Archeology Research Center to CHN.

The recent discovery of the remains of an ancient merchant ship and its cargo, believed to have belonged to either the Parthian (248 BC-224 AD) or Sassanid (224-651 AD) dynasties, in the Persian Gulf attracted the attention of world archeologists and many expressed their willingness to cooperate in its recovery process, which is an absolutely challenging task.

During his recent trip to Greece last month, Taha Hashemi, director of ICHTO’s Archeology Research Center, invited Greek archeologists specialized in underwater excavations to cooperate in this project after he paid a visit to their underwater archeology equipments and found them appropriate for this project. According to Tofighian, salvation of the shipwreck will start once the Greek archeologists arrive to Iran.

The discovery of the Partho-Sassanid shipwreck and its cargo was made accidentally by the local fishermen. Initial studies were then carried out for the first time by Darya-Kav-e Jonub Company (Southern Sea Investigation Co.) on behalf of ICHTO under the supervision of experts from the Department of Underwater Archeology of Iran’s Archeology Research Center. A short documentary was also made from this ship which revealed that the ship’s cargo contains big jars, known as amphora, which were in use only during the Parthian and Sassanid dynastic periods.

An ancient boat of Southern Song Dynasty (1127 - 1279) has completed its three-year renovation and became open to the public on December 10 in Ningbo City of Zhejiang Province. It provides evidence for the maritime Silk Road which has applied to be listed as a World Heritage site. The renovation cost almost 1 million yuan (US$128,000).

The boat is 12.79 meters long, 2.8 meters wide and weighs 2 tons. It was mainly used for short-distance transport of up to 3 tons of goods and occasionally served as a passenger transport in the port.

This is the third ancient boat excavated in Ningbo City, bearing witness to ancient Ningbo's splendid history in overseas trade and ship building.

The boat was excavated to the south of the city gate's enceinte site of Heyi Road in the north part of Zhanchuan Street in Ningbo City in 2003. It lay broken at both ends with only the middle part preserved. Due to its long sojourn underground, it was found to contain quantities of mildew and lichen and to have suffered wood shrinkage and the main body contained over 1,000 cracks.

"The two other boats excavated before this one were not well-protected, giving us an international puzzle on wooden cultural relics protection," said Chu Xiaobo, Ningbo Cultural Relics Protection Institute.

To protect this boat well, the municipal finance department appropriated more than 900,000 yuan (US$115,000) to renovate it. A joint work team was set up by the city's cultural relics and archaeology institute, Wuhan University of Technology and Nanjing Museum. After a series of complex procedures including dehydrating, desalting, reinforcing and piecing together the fragments, the boat was restored and exhibited in the Ningbo Museum.

"This is rare substantial evidence for the maritime Silk Road. It will help citizen feel the real history. At the same time, we will accelerate underwater archaeology research and find more and better evidences for that period of history," said Chu. He added that ten relic sites of the maritime Silk Road have been proven, among which Ningbo is the only site without underwater evidence.

Chu revealed, as an important supplement to the archaeology on land, an underwater archaeology team has already been created by the Underwater Archaeology Research Center of the China National Museum and several other underwater archaeology institutes in Zhejiang, Liaoning and Guangdong provinces. The team will begin excavating 37 cultural relic sites in the sea of Ningbo in May next year.

OSLO, Norway: The wreck of a World War II German submarine in waters off Norway's coast should be covered with sand to contain its cargo of environmentally damaging mercury, a study said Tuesday.

The submarine U-864 was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine Venturer off western Norway on Feb. 9, 1945. Its wreckage, found by the Royal Norwegian Navy in March 2003, is believed to have 65 tons (about 70 U.S. tons) of mercury aboard.

The submarine was sunk while attempting to get to Japan, a German ally, with mercury for weapons production.

Studies revealed high levels of mercury around the wreck, which lies in 150 meters (500 feet) of water four kilometers (2.5 miles) off the western Norway island of Fedje.

In a report Tuesday, the Norwegian coastal administration recommended encasing the submarine in special sand, with a reinforced upper layer to prevent corrosion.

"Worldwide, about 30 large-scale encasing and coverage operations of mercury contaminated debris have been performed in the past 20 years," said the report. It said the measures were proven and provided permanent environmental protection.

If absorbed by fish, mercury can be passed on to humans in food, possibly harming their health.

The Norwegian ministry of fisheries and coastal affairs said it would be reviewing the report.

On the Net: http://www.kystkerket.no.


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The Copenhagen Post
December 18, 2006


The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde has reconstructed a long ship from the Viking age to undertake a voyage to Dublin, Ireland

An exact reconstruction of a Viking ship from the 11th century will be launched in 2007 on a historic journey from Roskilde to Dublin and back.

Ship owner Carsten Brebøl's non-profit foundation has donated DKK 2 million to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde to support the project. The new ship has been dubbed The Sea Stallion.

The original ship, Skulderlev 2, was built in Dublin in 1042 and found at the bottom of Roskilde Fiord in 1962. Since then the ship has been on display at the Viking Ship Museum.

The Sea Stallion, named one of twelve representatives of outstanding Danish design and craftsmanship in the Cultural Canon by the Ministry of Culture, has been built at the Viking Ship Museum Boat yard using the methods, materials and tools of the Viking Age. The boat has a length of 30 meters, a 3.8 meter width and a total of 60 oars. It can hold a crew of up to 100.

According to Tinna Damgård Sørensen, director of the museum, the ship will be manned by members of the Viking Ship Museum staff, as well as 120 volunteers who will take turns in joining the 70-man crew. Damgård Sørensen describes the project as 'the most ambitious ship archaeology research project ever undertaken.'

The Sea Stallion will begin its voyage to Dublin in July 2007 and is expected to sail back to Denmark in 2008. His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik is serving as patron of the voyage.

Treasure hunters have long scoured the Egyptian coast for vestiges of the port, thought to have disappeared about 13 centuries ago. Now an exhibit at Paris' Grand Palais brings together 500 ancient artifacts recovered from the area by underwater archeologists using sophisticated nuclear technology.

"Egypt's Sunken Treasures" features colossuses of pink granite, a 17.6-ton slab inscribed with hieroglyphics, a phalanx of crouching sphinx, pottery, amulets and gold coins and jewelry - all painstakingly fished out of the Mediterranean. Some of the oldest artifacts are estimated to have spent 2,000 years underwater.

The show, which runs through mid-March, spans more than 1,500 years of Egyptian history and traces the decline of the Pharaohs and occupations by Greeks, Romans and Byzantines.

"This is not your usual Ancient Egypt exhibit," said archaeologist Franck Goddio, who led the expedition for the European Institute of Submarine Archaeology. "The artifacts have been living together under the sea for millennia - not gathering dust on a museum shelf."

Goddio's team began its search in 1996, using such technology as sonar, depth-finders and sounding equipment. They worked with France's Atomic Energy Commission to develop a device that measures objects' nuclear resonance to pinpoint the exact locations of the port and two other sites, the lost cities of Herakleion and Canopus.

Television screens projecting videos of the excavations dot the exhibit, in the newly restored Grand Palais, a turn-of-the-century building with a vast glass cupola.

While some of the recovered artifacts were slowly swallowed by the Mediterranean as sea levels rose, others sunk during natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tidal waves. Experts think some heavy objects may have slid into the sea when the clay soil gave way under their weight.

A protective layer of sediment settled over most of the pieces, preserving them from corrosive salt water. Other artifacts were not as fortunate. Riddled with pockmarks or rubbed smooth by the tides, these objects clearly bear the mark of their centuries under water.

Some of the oldest pieces, such as a sphinx dating from the 13th century B.C., were brought to Egypt's coast from other regions of the country. Later objects clearly show the influence of the Greeks, who controlled much of Egypt starting in the fourth century B.C.

In an exquisite black-granite sculpture, the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis strikes a quintessentially Pharaonic pose, with one leg forward and arms pressed tightly at her sides. But the sensual drape of her gown, with its delicate folds, belies an unmistakably Greek touch.

The Stela of Ptolemy, a mammoth marble slab standing 19.5 feet high, bears inscriptions in both hieroglyphics and Greek.

Sculptures from the Greco-Roman period show the degree to which the European colonizers assimilated Egyptian culture, and vice versa. In a second century B.C. bust, the Egyptian god Serapis looks just like the Greek god Zeus, with a full beard and curly locks. With its wild expression and frizzy hair, a second century A.D. bust of an Egyptian water god is the exact image of a Roman Bacchus.

One of the most impressive objects in the show is the so-called Naos of the Decades, a hieroglyphics-covered prayer niche dating from around 380 B.C.

The roof of the niche was discovered in 1776 and taken to Paris, where it became part of the Louvre Museum's permanent collection. In the 1940s, archaeologists working under Egyptian Prince Omar Toussoun discovered two more bits - the naos' back and the base. But it wasn't until the recent submarine excavations, which uncovered several more fragments, that archaeologists finally managed to put the naos together again.

"Egypt's Sunken Treasures," which attracted some 450,000 visitors at its first stop, Berlin, closes March 16. After Paris, the show will return to Egypt. Authorities in Alexandria plan to build a museum of submarine archaeology to hold the artifacts as well as new items that archaeologist Goddio's team continues to discover during its twice yearly expeditions.

"There's enough in the three sites to keep us busy for a while - for about the next 150 years, at least," he said.


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The Santiago Times
By Benjamin Witte

December 15, 2006

Sub Seekers Narrow In On Lost 1866 Prototype
Somewhere below the surface of Valapariso Bay, hidden in the harbor’s dark, frigid waters and half-buried in murky sludge, is a unique 140-year-old object that, for more than a year now, has been filmmaker Juan Enrique Benítez’ consuming obsession.

“I’ve put everything else aside,” said Benítez, a wild-haired, middle-aged man with a real flair for story telling. “It’s been like an addiction. A drug. I feel like this is something very important, although since it’s been there so long, 140 years, nobody believed me at first.”

The addiction, Benitez’ “drug,” is a one-of-a-kind submarine, the first ever designed and built in Latin America. In 1866, just days after its unveiling, the prototypical sub sank precipitously to the ocean floor. Aboard the vessel were its designer, a German immigrant to Chile named Karl Flach, his 11-year-old son and nine other crew members – all of whom were condemned for nearly a century-and-a-half to Davey Jones’ proverbial locker.

For the past year Benítez has worked feverishly with one clear goal in mind, to find the lost submarine and rescue it not only from the depths of Valparaiso Bay, but also, as he claims, from historical obscurity. It appears he’s now closing in on that goal.
Earlier this month, after spending more than a year on detailed preparations, Benítez and his collaborators finally took their search to the water. Those collaborators include maritime historians, a group of highly trained Navy divers and academics from the Santiago-based Universidad Internacional SEK, which happens to have a department dedicated exclusively to sub-aquatic archeology.

Over the course of four days the team scoured Valparaiso harbor using state-of-the-art equipment: high-frequency sonar to detect objects above the ocean floor, a low-frequency depth profiler used to locate objects buried below the muck, and an electromagnetic scanner used for identifying metallic objects. Based on that survey, according to Dean Pedro Pujante of the Unversidad Internacional SEK, the team was able to narrow its search down to 12 specific points of interest.

Among the dozen hot spots is one particularly interesting find, something that shows up in computer-generated images as a type of cone or obelisk, protruding from the harbor floor at a slightly inclined angle. The image, if it in fact turns out to be the missing submarine, corresponds nicely with historical information about how exactly the vessel sank – lodged at an angle, nose first, in the ocean floor.

Between 1864 and 1866 Chile and Peru were embroiled in war with Spain that began when the later seized Peru’s guano-rich Chincha Islands. As part of the war effort, then Chilean President José Joaquín Pérez commissioned the construction of a submarine, only a few of which had ever been built anywhere in the world.
The president’s request actually resulted in two submarine prototypes--one designed and built by a man named Gustavo Heyermann, the other by Flach. Heyermann’s vessel, unfortunately, sank on its maiden voyage. Flach’s sub, however, seemed to work quite well – at least during several days of initial testing.

Designed to protect Valapariso harbor from attack (the Spanish fleet in fact bombarded and leveled the city on Jan. 31, 1866), Flach’s pedal-powered submarine was equipped with two cannons, one built right into the nose of the vessel. Constructed entirely of steel, it was 12.5 meters long, 1.5 meters wide and weighed an estimated 100 tons.

Then, on May 3, 1866, Flach, his son and nine crewmembers boarded the doomed submarine for what would be its final voyage.
Something went horribly wrong, and the heavy machine sank to the ocean floor. Two days later, a diver from the English frigate HSM Leander successfully located Flach’s submarine, reporting that in its fall the vessel had buried itself nose-first in the sediment below. The diver, a man named John Wallace, later drew a picture of the sunken submarine, a picture that in many ways resembles the enigmatic computer image that now has Benítez and his colleagues so excited.

It wasn’t until nearly 140 years, while working on a program called “De Mentes Geniales” (From Brilliant Minds) that Benítez first learned about the tragedy.

“There you have a play on words. Spanish wordplay,” said Benítez. “Dementes (demented people) means crazy. But de mentes geniales means something else. It’s an interesting play on words, because what interested me was looking at Chilean creativity, and new, non-traditional businesses that people here are coming up with.”

While working on the program Benítez met a man named Salvador Villanueva, a Chilean inventor who had constructed a submarine of his own, a sort of winged vehicle used for underwater exploration.
“He seemed to me to be a demente genial (a cool mad man), someone who would be perfect for the show, and I told him so,” said Benítez. “Then he said to me, ‘no, there’s something every crazier, even more brilliant that’s located in the middle of Valparaiso Bay. It’s Latin America’s first submarine, which sank 140 years ago with 11 people on board, and no one has ever looked for it.’”

Benítez, attracted in large part to the sheer madness of it all, decided to do just that – set out in search of the sub. The result has been months and months of research, fund raising, filming, interviewing and, most recently, actual exploration of the bay. He convinced companies like Subaru and Lider to invest. He brought the Chilean Navy on board. At one point he even visited a psychic, to bring in, he said, a paranormal angle to the story.

“The psychic corroborated everything,” said Benítez. “She said to me, ‘I don’t look for objects. I don’t have that ability. I don’t look for trucks, or cargo containers. I don’t look for treasure. And I don’t look for submarines. Because I can’t perceive objects, only people.’ And I said, ‘Inside this submarine there are 11 people who have been dead for 140 years.’ Then she was able to corroborate exactly the same information that we also had; that it was located 50 meters down, that it was near the coastline, etc.”
Next up is what Benítez and his colleagues are calling the visual identification phase, which begins Friday – today. For the next four days, the team – equipped with video cameras – will investigate targeted spots in an attempt to finally locate the missing submarine.

If they do find the sub, Benítez, Pujante and the others are under strict orders from Chile’s Council of National Monuments not to touch or move anything. So far there’s no consensus about what actually will be done with the sub once and if it’s located. Raising it from the ocean floor, furthermore, would be no easy task.
And finally there’s the very delicate question of what should be done with whatever human remains may be found inside. “It’s not an easy subject to deal with,” said Dean Pujante.

No matter what happens, though, Benítez is convinced he and his colleagues have already accomplished an important feat, not only in bringing public attention to this fascinating bit of Chilean history, but also in encouraging a collaboration between the military, civil society, intellectuals and artists. The Flach submarine, after all, is a symbol of Chile, according to Benítez.

“Since Chile was founded it’s boasted certain characteristics, all of which are represented by the Flach submarine,” he said. “First, that immigrants are accepted. Immigrants have been integrated in this country. Second, that this is a country that since the beginning didn’t allow others to step all over it. And third, that we care about creativity and the importance of technological development.”


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Cleethorpes. © MNR

Archaeologists working for English Heritage have begun examining 12,000 aerial photographs, some dating back to the Second World War, to identify historic sites on the brink of being lost to the North Sea.

The project is examining 137 kilometres (85 miles) of vulnerable coastline from Whitby to Donna Nook, in North East Lincolnshire, including Holderness, where erosion rates are as high as six metres per year.

"Rates of erosion along many parts of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast are very high,” explained Peter Murphy, Coastal Strategy Officer with English Heritage. “It's also an area rich in archaeology, so it's a national priority to get the work done.”

Although little can be done to prevent cliffs crumbling, or lowland areas being inundated, quick action will mean that valuable archaeological information isn't lost forever.

Along the Holderness coast about thirty towns and villages are known to have been lost to the sea since medieval times. A strip of land at least two kilometres wide has vanished since the Roman period.

"We have no more chance than King Canute of holding back the tide on this coastline, so we have to go for preservation by record, rather than physical preservation of buildings or ancient earthworks,” explained Dave MacLeod, Aerial Archaeologist with English Heritage.


Fishtrap off Cleethorpes, probably medieval.

very low tides. © MNR

The area being investigated is known to contain Bronze Age burial mounds, Roman signal stations, medieval enclosures and military installations. But many more sites await discovery.

“It is tempting to think that we already know where all the historic sites are,” added Mr Murphy. “But that's simply not the case. Surveys completed in North Kent and East Anglia yielded a nine-fold increase in records, including 4,000 year old features in the tidal zone."

Results from the survey will be fed into English Heritage's national Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey and cover an area up to one kilometre inland.

Some of the photographs being used include RAF pictures, taken in the early 1940s. They provide a rich source of information, particularly on naval gun batteries such as the Kilnsea coastal gun battery, near Spurn Point, Holderness, which is now sliding into the sea. Other images are more recent, offering clues on the rate of loss.

The best images are currently being scanned onto a computer, then by using a combination of specialist software, sharp eyes and archaeological knowledge digital maps will be created.

The aerial interpretation should be completed by April 2007, and will be followed by field surveys to flesh out new discoveries, and also to unearth sites not visible from the air.

By 2010, the survey aims to have produced the most detailed picture yet of the threat posed to the nation's heritage by rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and managed realignment of coasts.

The work is being carried out by a team from Humber Archaeology, on behalf of English Heritage. More detailed investigations could possibly follow, depending on the importance of discoveries.


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www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com

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The Sidney Morning Herald

By Bob Wurth

December 13, 2006


KAZUTOMO BAN, 74, a retired doctor, remembers going to the train station with his mother to see his brother, Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban, off to war in 1941.

It was a scene being repeated all over Japan, but the older brother, from a proud Imperial Navy family, already knew he would never return.

The discovery of the midget submarine off Sydney last month has brought mixed emotions for Dr Ban, who lives in Hekinan, a small city 40 kilometres from Nagoya, surrounded by water. "I feel relieved that we now know the exact place he died, [but] now I think we should leave him to rest in peace," he told the Herald.

"I don't see the point in raising the vessel and disturbing his peaceful sleep. What will be found? Probably nothing. It benefits nobody."

But as Australian and Japanese authorities consider what to do with the remains of midget sub M24, Itsuo Ashibe, 84, brother of the other submariner who died on board, says he is "filled with a hope" that the vessel will be raised. "As a member of a bereaved family - and someone who lost four brothers during the war and as a man who has nothing to show for any of them - I pray it will happen," he said.

"I know it is likely that nothing remains, but nonetheless, I want to know.

"There is probably little interest - in Japan, at least - to raise the vessel, and realistically there is probably nothing remaining inside. But if there were just something, a shoe, perhaps, or even if I could have a rusted piece of the sub that I could bury inside my brother's grave, I would be happy."

The discovery of midget submarine M24 has ended a 64-year mystery but is now the subject of delicate discussions between Japan and Australia on how to determine if there are remains inside and, if confirmed, how they might be brought to the surface.

The last 12 months have been an emotional time for the two surviving brothers of the submariners who rode the M24 to their deaths. A year ago they were informed that an Australian filmmaker, Damien Lay, was claiming, in a live television broadcast, to have discovered the M24 near Palm Beach. But Mr Lay's discovery was disproved.

Then on November 26, almost a year later to the day, a diplomat from the Japanese embassy in Canberra telephoned Dr Ban to say there had been another discovery, and this time it looked like the real thing.

Within a few days the discovery of the M24 was confirmed by the Royal Australian Navy.

Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban and his navigator petty officer, Mamoru Ashibe, initially had not been selected to be in the Sydney attack force, but were on standby on the mother submarine I24 in case they were needed. They were thrust into the operation after an accidental blast aboard the mother sub, less than two weeks before the Sydney attack date.

When the decision came, Katsuhisa Ban knew his duty. He wrote to his mother in beautiful calligraphy, saying he would drive his submarine "into the heart of an enemy battleship". He came near to achieving a naval victory.

The midget submarines had a reputation as being ineffective and dangerous after their failed part in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but elements in the Imperial Navy continued to push for their use.

When the decision came, Katsuhisa Ban knew his duty. He wrote to his mother in beautiful calligraphy, saying he would drive his submarine "into the heart of an enemy battleship". He came near to achieving a naval victory.

The midget submarines had a reputation as being ineffective and dangerous after their failed part in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but elements in the Imperial Navy continued to push for their use.

In Sydney Harbour, alive to the presence of enemy submariners, the boyish 23-year-old Katsuhisa Ban fired two torpedoes at a cruiser, USS Chicago, at anchor off Garden Island. Both torpedoes missed. One ran up on to the shore and failed to explode. The other exploded on the seawall alongside the Kuttabul, sinking the old ferry, which was being used as a barracks, killing 21 men, mostly Australian naval ratings.

Deep in the sea off Sydney on May 31, 1942, the two submariners prepared to leave the mother submarine for the M24 attached to the larger vessel. Katsuhisa Ban prayed, shaved his hair off, gave money to the sailors who had assisted his preparation and then wrote one final message indicating that death was expected: "Nations that fear death will surely be destroyed - it is necessary for the youth of Japan to take notice of this."

Underwater he and Mamoru Ashibe clambered through to the midget riding on the mother sub, and headed off at sunset to join the other two ill-fated midget submarines, each with their crew of two.

Petty officer Ashibe, 24, also knew that his chances of survival were slight. His surviving brother lives quietly in retirement in Wakayama city, on the Seto Inland Sea. "Should the vessel be raised and remains found, I have no hope or desire that any kind of military ceremony, like that held [in the 1940s] for the other four [Japanese officers killed in Sydney Harbour] will or should take place," he said.

The Curtin government allowed the Japanese ambassador, Tatsuo Kawai, to take home the ashes of the four submariners, whose wrecked submarines were recovered in 1942.

Mr Kawai's arrival with the remains of the four aboard the Kamakura Maru at Yokohama pier in October 1942, where the ship was met by the friends and relatives of the four submariners, created a great outpouring of national pride. The event was heaven sent for wartime propagandists after Japan's naval war was in decline. Japanese newspapers were full of the deeds of the submariners.

The ashes of the four naval men were in white boxes on a huge altar before the Rising Sun flag aboard the Kamakura Maru. The grieving relatives of the submariners came aboard the ship and placed bouquets and sakaki branches on the altar.

Mr Kawai then invited the relatives to a lounge downstairs, where they were seated, as the press crowded around. "Let me recount the scene of their heroic end," Mr Kawai said. "Glorious indeed was their end. Look at this photograph. It is of the naval funeral held by the Australian Navy. Even the enemy was moved by the daring of the heroes."

Mothers and fathers listened attentively with deep nods, tears filling their eyes. Mr Kawai related how the mother and father of one of the submariners came to see their son off. When they learnt that their son was determined to make the supreme sacrifice, they gave up their plans of finding a bride for their beloved son and spent the last night with him in a small boarding house room.

"Such father. Such mother." Mr Kawai said, moved to tears himself.

In 1943, shortly before his own death in action, the Japanese naval commander-in-chief, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, announced that Emperor Hirohito had granted a citation to the submariners in the Sydney raid and another that took place at the same time in Madagascar.

The men were elevated to "Hero God" status and each was posthumously elevated two ranks, which meant a larger payout to the relatives.

The two missing submariners Katsuhisa Ban and Mamoru Ashibe, whose bones today may still be in the M24 off Sydney, also became "Hero Gods."


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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

December 12, 2006

Well-preserved ship that sank in 1849 with twin masts still intact found in Lake Ontario
A 19th-century commercial sailing ship, its twin masts still intact, sits upright in deep, frigid waters off the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Shipwreck explorers Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville said they located the schooner Milan in summer 2005 about five miles off Point Breeze, 30 miles west of Rochester. They videotaped the 93-foot-long, square-stern vessel this year using an unmanned submersible built with the help of college students.

"It's not unheard of to have well-preserved ships, but this one is in so good a shape," Scoville said Monday. "It almost looks like it could be floated" to the surface.

The Milan was hauling 1,000 barrels of salt when it sprung a leak and sank in October 1849. Its crew of nine clambered aboard a yawl and was rescued by a passing ship along with a Newfoundland dog. The animal was carried down with the sinking ship but then popped to the surface and swam to the yawl.

The ship sits evenly on the lake bed, its masts extending 70 feet upward in a dark, almost oxygen-free setting. And while its rigging and sails have long since disintegrated, much else appears largely undamaged.

Both anchors are firmly in place near the bow. The bowsprit _ a large, tapered spar extending forward from the bow _ is intact, as is the tiller, a large handle for turning the rudder.

"If a ship goes down in a big storm, it usually gets broken up," Scoville said. "If it goes down on a nice day, it usually breaks when it hits the bottom. This one looks like it just drifted down and set upon the bottom nice and easy.

"At those depths, and the water being so cold, there's not a lot of oxygen" or light, he added. "It basically helps preserve the wood. If a shipwreck is in shallow, fresh water, the ice will get it or storms will beat it up."

Built in 1845, the Milan ferried corn, flour, wheat, salt and lumber to ports on lakes Ontario and Erie. It was sailing to Cleveland from Oswego, a port 80 miles east of Rochester, when crew members said they were awakened in the forecastle by splashing water, historical records show.

The inflow was already 18 inches deep when they started pumping out. They removed salt bags from the forward hold and steered south in an effort to get to shore. But the ship ran into southerly winds, made little headway and was abandoned soon before it went under.

While hundreds of ships have been wrecked in Lake Ontario's harbors and along its shores, fewer than 200 have been lost in the lake, which is 800 foot deep in places, Scoville estimated. About 100 of those wrecks have already been found, many in or near the St. Lawrence Seaway, he said.

The Milan is "the oldest and the prettiest" of at least five wrecks that Scoville and Kennard, both electrical engineers and deep-water divers, have discovered since teaming up five years ago. They undertook months of historical research before announcing their find this month.

"From the Niagara River up to the St. Lawrence, there's about a dozen that haven't been found that we think we are capable of finding," Scoville said.

An obscure newspaper reference to the sinking got the pair started on the Milan's trail three years ago, and they used sonar equipment to finally locate it.

Because many Ontario shipwrecks lie in water too deep to dive safely, they enlisted a team of seniors at Rochester Institute of Technology last fall to help them build a remote-operated vehicle equipped with cameras to explore the Milan.

Most wrecks and their contents found on the American side of the lake belong to New York. "It would be illegal to take anything off the ship without a permit from the state," Scoville said.