Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom

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Taipei Times
January 29, 2005


Russian Submarine U-475.

Russia's navy offers collectors, museums and anyone else its decommissioned diesel-electric subs from the Soviet era.

If you have a couple of hundred thousand US dollars to spare and room for a giant relic of the old East-West confrontation, Russia has just the thing for you: one of its submarines.

Or maybe a less cumbersome World War II Soviet battle tank in your yard might settle one-upmanship scores with the neighbors?

With scores of decommissioned diesel-electric subs from the Soviet era cluttering bays in the Arctic, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific regions, the military has shown itself open to offers to buy warships for reincarnation as museums, cargo ships and tourist attractions.

While Russian Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo stresses there is "no disorderly sale of submarines," individual vessels can even be found for sale on the Internet.

On land, warehouses with vintage armored vehicles and artillery pieces may soon be cleared as the state arms export agency Rosoboronexport explores the possibility of deactivating the items, many of them left from World War II, and selling them to collectors.

"It is an attractive market and we cannot stand aside," Rosoboronexport spokesman Alexander Uzhanov told The Moscow Time newspaper.

"These arms bear the image of our victory, our heroic past. We plan to increase arms sales, so why not use up these reserves as well?" he said.

A T-34 tank of the kind that was instrumental in smashing Adolph Hitler's armies could fetch up to US$20,000, militaria experts believe. But for now, regulations on the sale of weaponry are holding up the plans.

Rekindling memories of the Cold War and generating fresh interest after movies like K-19: The Widowmaker, Soviet submarines have won a new lease of life in Russia and abroad in recent years.

Some still serviceable subs go to foreign navies, but other retired ones may win a reprieve from the scrap heap to thrill the public.

"Look what's surfaced now that Communism's sunk!" reads the advertisement for U-475, a 92m, 1,950-tonnes example that was delivered to Britain in 1994 from Russia's Baltic fleet.

Bought through middlemen by a British businessman for around ?250,000 (US$470,000), the submarine hosts tours, school outings and private parties and was the setting for three films, said museum manager Gary Parkinson.

Many of around 85 old military submarines on display around the world from Stockholm to Sydney came from Soviet shipyards.

Most recently, the 90m Novosibirsky Komsomolets was towed from Arkhangelsk to Moscow to serve as a museum. The sub was retired in 1998 after 18 years of service and lay idle until it underwent a two-year conversion by a Russian ship-building company.

Of course, the fate of old and relatively hazard-free diesel-electric models is of less concern than that of retired nuclear- powered submarines that Russia must safely dispose of at huge cost.

"The submarines lay sunken in shallow water so they were not dismantled," a middleman replied to an e-mail inquiry. "They have practically all their equipment apart from weaponry. After purchase they will be raised, prepared and transported to the designated place."

But foreign powers needn't think they will glean new insights into Russia's submarine technology if they pick up these or other models.

"All classified equipment is removed [from a vessel] before it is transported; no government will hand over its state secrets, will it?" said a navy spokesman.

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The State
January 28, 2005

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Scientists preserving the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley have started the tricky task of removing the bench where the crew sat to crank the sub into history.

The Hunley was the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship. Its 18-foot long bench, fashioned of three sections of wood, is badly waterlogged after sitting on the ocean floor for decades.

The first two sections have been removed but it may take several weeks to remove the final section, which extends to the pump mechanism at the rear of the sub, said Kellen Correia, spokeswoman for the Hunley project.

Scientists found three canteens beneath the bench sections already removed. They are hopeful that, beneath heavy encrustations found in that area, they will find other personal belongings of the crewmen.

"This is a potentially relic-rich region," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission. "I can't help but wonder what other items the crew may have decided to take with them on a mission they knew to be dangerous and life threatening."

The bench is fragile and about half of it is covered with a clear lead-based paint. Removing the bench is one of the final steps in preparing the submarine for conservation and display.

The 40-foot Hunley rammed a spar with a black powder charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic on Feb. 17, 1864. The sub then sank.

It was found off Sullivans Island several years ago. It was raised in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Naval Base where it sits in a tank of chilled water.

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Itar Tass
January 30, 2005



KALININGRAD - The Baltic Fleet has been celebrating the 60th anniversary since a historic attack undertaken by Soviet submarine C-13 during World War II.

On January 30, 1945 the Soviet submarine sank the Nazi liner Wilhelm Gustlow with a displacement of around 25,000 tons and 10,000 passengers on board, including 70 submarine crews that Hitler planned to use in a total submarine war and enforce a naval blockade on Great Britain, in particular.

The submarine crew under command of Captain Alexander Marinesco frustrated Hitler's plans. The Soviet submarine overtook the Nazi ship on the surface and torpedoed the ship.

The attack on the Nazi ship went down in history as the "attack of the century." In 1990, the legendary Soviet captain was awarded the Order of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously.

A commemoration ceremony devoted to the heroic exploit of the Soviet submarine crew will be held at a monument to Captain Marinesco built in Kaliningrad in 2001.

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Do autor do Marítimo...



O autor, João Pedro Vaz, convida todos os leitores e curiosos das coisas marítimas, históricas e militares para a apresentação do livro Campanhas do Prior do Crato, 1580-1589: Entre Reis e Corsários pelo Trono de Portugal, no próximo dia 2 de Fevereiro (4.ª-feira) às 18:00 horas no Palácio Almada (também conhecido por Palácio da Independência) em Lisboa, próximo do Teatro D. Maria II.

Este estudo segue-se à Invencível Armada, 1588: a Participação Portuguesa, realizado em co-autoria com o Comandante Augusto Salgado e publicado em 2002 na mesma colecção.


Tribuna da História -
Edição de Livros e Revistas, Lda

Rua Pinheiro Chagas, nº 38 - 1º Dt.º
1050-179 LISBOA

Tel/Fax: 21 315 04 38

e-mail: tribunadahistoria@iol.pt

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The Day
By Bethe Dufresne
January 28, 2005

Civil War Submariners And Kennewick Man Are Among His Projects


Photo Chip Clark: Doug Owsley, right, confers with
artist Sharon Long while working on facial reconstructions
made of each sailor's remains from the Civil War submarine
CSS Hunley.

Doug Owsley, right, confers with artist Sharon Long while working on facial reconstructions made of each sailor's remains from the Civil War submarine CSS Hunley.

What intrigued Doug Owsley most about the 19th century submarine, raised from its ocean grave in the 21st century, was the position of eight skeletons inside.

“These men didn't scramble to the back hatch before they died,” says Owsley, a renowned forensic scientist from Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution who is at the University of Connecticut in Storrs this week. “They died in their positions.”

Owsley helped analyze the remains of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which sank during the Civil War. “It's a very calm interior,” he says. The ship fired a torpedo into the Union sloop Housatonic to sink that vessel in Charleston harbor in 1864.

The Hunley was the first submarine to sink a ship in combat, but its crew didn't get to celebrate for long. The Hunley sank before it could return to shore.

Owsley has a theory about the sinking, but says he's “not at liberty to divulge” it. He'll tell more Saturday in Glastonbury, during an illustrated lecture hosted by the Friends of the Office of State Archaeology, the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and the Connecticut Archaeology Center at UConn.

Owsley is a celebrity in forensic circles. He has examined thousands of human remains, working on such high-profile sites as the Pentagon after Sept. 11, 2001, and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, after it was stormed by federal agents.

His is not a household name around here, however, like Jeff Benedict, the author who made Owsley the hero of his non-fiction book, “No Bone Unturned.”

In the earlier book, “Without Reservation,” Benedict challenged the legitimacy of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. He followed that with “No Bone Unturned,” the story of the legal battle over a 9,600-year-old human skeleton that washed up in 1996 on the banks of Washington state's Columbia River.

Owsley was called in to study what came to be known as Kennewick Man. But before he could begin, the Army Corps of Engineers seized the skeleton on behalf of local Native American tribes that wanted to bury it.

The Army acted under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), designed to return to tribes some of what had been stolen from them over centuries – bones, artifacts, et cetera.

But this skeleton was special because of its age and its Caucasian-like appearance. It is so old, Owsley and other scientists argued, there is no way to connect it to any existing tribe.

Eight scientists, including Owsley, sued the U.S. government for custody of the bones. It took years of legal maneuvering, but the scientists won. In December Owsley finally got together with Kennewick Man.

“Right now I'm working on refinement of a detailed study plan,” says Owsley, “who will do it, how long it will take, what we want to learn.” The project will involve “very elaborate imaging techniques.”

Contrary to what some might assume, Owsley says he's not a persona non grata among Native American tribes. All the letters and responses he has gotten because of the book have been positive, he says.

Kevin McBride, chief archaeologist for the Mashantucket Pequots, hoped Owsley could visit the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research center this week, but it appeared Owsley wouldn't have time.

“He's one of the best researchers in the field,” says McBride, who has “a million questions” for Owsley.

“No Bone Unturned” isn't sold at the museum bookstore, says McBride, but not because of bitterness toward Benedict. “The bookstore is abysmal,” he says, and needs an expanded and updated inventory.

As an archaeologist, McBride says, he's thrilled by the decision allowing study of Kennewick Man. His concern, he says, is that it could undermine NAGPRA in other instances.

Owsley says not to worry.

“I've been doing analyses of human remains for 30 years,” he says, “of European ancestry, African American and Native American. On a number of occasions I've analyzed human remains at the request of tribes for the purpose of repatriation.”

“You have to know how to read those bones,” says Owsley, adding that tribes don't want to bury other people's ancestors.

Most Native Americans, like most everyone else, are “very interested in the past,” says Owsley. “There are a lot of different views out there,” he says, even among Native Americans, about Kennewick Man.

It's been generally accepted that the first humans migrated to this continent from Asia via a land bridge across the Bering Strait. But many now believe, and Kennewick Man could support, that people came by boat from other continents.

Modern techniques can reveal Kennewick Man's diet, his health, and other clues to his origins and how he came to be in what is now the American Northwest.

“We're intensely interested in the story of this man,” says Owsley, “not because we want to damage it (the skeleton). This man lived his entire life and not a word was written about him. His bones are his legacy.”

Owsley says he wasn't trying to circumvent NAGPRA when he sued to study Kennewick Man. Bones clearly linked to an existing tribe should be returned, he says, as you would return any human remains to a family.

“The problem,” he says, “is that when a skeleton is 1,000 years old, or 5,000 or 9,000, the story really belongs to all Americans.”

The law states that if no other relation can be determined, bones or artifacts found on Native lands are assumed to be Native. But in this instance, Owsley says, “The Corps of Engineers was over-interpreting the law.”

People will always be curious about those who came before them, says Owsley, and therefore scientific research will always flourish.

Connecticut state archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni, who arranged Saturday's lecture, helped Owsley solve a mystery involving a sailor on the Hunley.

This week the two men were working on UConn's collection of Euro-American remains, using bone samples to reveal what they ate and thereby determine if they came from Europe or colonial America.

Saturday's 2 p.m. talk is at Smith Middle School, 216 Addison Road in Glastonbury. Admission is $10, $5 for students. Snow date is Sunday.

Owsley will tell how he and others used forensic techniques, including DNA analysis and facial reconstruction, to identify human skeletal remains excavated from the Hunley. “It's an amazing time capsule,” he says.

Based on their diet, says Owsley, four of the sailors were from the United States, two from England and two from Germany.

One sailor carried an I.D. plate issued to Connecticut Private Ezra Chamberlin of Killingly, who disappeared in battle and was presumed dead. “It was a real shocker,” says Owsley. “You had a Union soldier, and now you have a Confederate sailor. Could he effectively have gone over to the other side?”

The man turned out not to be Chamberlin. “We really don't know how he got the name plate,” says Owsley, adding coyly, “but we know who he is.”

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NWEMail
December, 2004


STRIKEN SUB: HMCS Chicoutimi,
the Canadian submarine being brought
into the Clyde after a fire 300 miles off
the coast of Scotland and (inset) HMS
Olympus, the submarine a Barrow
museum wants to bring home, which is
now in a Canadian naval dockyard in
Halifax, Nova Scotia.

CAMPAIGNERS for a submarine museum in Barrow cannot afford to thumb a lift from Canada for their favourite boat.

The lift, on a special semi-submersible ship, would cost at least £1m and the Submarine Heritage Centre Ltd has very little money in the bank.

Apart from a few thousand pounds, all it has is a promise of £2.6m in regeneration grants if matching money can be found.

SHC Ltd officials asked an agent to get in touch with Norwegian shipping specialist Eide which runs heavy lift ships. The company has just been hired by the Canadian Navy to carry the fire-damaged submarine HMCS Chicoutimi from Faslane in Scotland to Halifax Nova Scotia in January.

Ever one to spot a bargain, the former submariners in the SHC thought it would be great opportunity if the Norwegian ship taking the Chicoutimi home could return to Norway via Barrow carrying the Furness-built diesel electric submarine HMS Olympus.

The 300ft long boat will become the chief exhibit in the proposed Barrow museum if they can get it back after the SHC Ltd agreed to pay the Canadian Navy £32,000 for the 1964 vessel.

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Delawareonline
By Molly Murray
January 27, 2005

Army Corps says it will tread lightly


The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN
Workers load sand onto the beach at Laurel
Street in Rehoboth Beach on Monday as part
of the replenishment project.

State and federal officials are eagerly awaiting the broad expanses of sand that should be ready for beach-lovers in Rehoboth and Dewey this summer.

But they want to be sure that the price tag attached to building the beaches is not another hunk of Delaware's history.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in February will start a $15 million beach replenishment project from Rehoboth south to Dewey, digging into the ocean bottom southeast of Indian River Inlet to suck up a million cubic yards of sand, which will then be piped onto the storm-ravaged shoreline.

But the corps and state officials said they will take special care to make sure the dredging gear does not ravage an underwater historical site, as a similar project did last fall in Lewes.

Taking sand from a site 200 feet off the Lewes shore, corps dredgers in September and October chewed into an underwater historical site - an old settlement or a shipwreck - and piped artifacts onto a beach near Roosevelt Inlet. Many items were shattered by the dredge and scattered along the sand for beachcombers to discover.

After the relics were spotted on the Lewes beach, state officials were unable to completely close the public beach. Two state legislators plan to propose a bill that would make it easier for the state to protect and quarantine historical sites discovered along the shore, including underwater locations in Delaware Bay or the Atlantic Ocean.

The bill from Rep. Joseph W. Booth, R-Georgetown, and Rep. Gerald W. Hocker, R-Ocean View, will provide authority for a 90-day moratorium on public access to historical sites that might be discovered in the future.

"The intent here is to prevent valuable archaeological sites from being disturbed before we have a chance to understand what we have and whether it needs to be further researched or protected," Booth said.

State scientists and corps officials hope that authority won't be necessary during the project that starts next month.
But they said it is difficult to say with any certainty what lies beneath the mud and sand on the bottom of the bay, or under the ocean along a continental shelf that has, over hundreds of thousands of years, intermittently been underwater or exposed.

A wealth of treasures
The sediment includes a wealth of treasures, ranging from the bones of mastodons to wrecks of sunken ships from Colonial days to Native American and early European settlements.

Kelvin Ramsey, a senior scientist and geologist with the Delaware Geological Survey, said the mud and sand found along Delaware's coastal plain also can be found off the coast, deep underwater.

That is clear from core samples taken from the sea floor, some with the silty deposits that might be found at the bottom of Delaware's Inland Bays, and others with fine sand that is common along the state's ocean beaches.
"That shoreline has moved back and forth in the last 10,000 to 12,000 years," he said.

Army Corps officials and state scientists have pored over images of the site where sand will be drawn for the Rehoboth-Dewey project - a sand bar south and east of the inlet.

Three sites protected
Underwater surveys revealed three potential "targets" - areas that might be shipwrecks or something significant because they contain enough metal to register on a magnetometer scan or are large enough to show up on side-scan sonar. Those sites have been marked and will be avoided by the dredge crews.

But Corps officials also thought they had a clear dredging site when they began the Lewes project, said Robert Dunn, the archaeologist with the corps' Philadelphia District.

The only hint of something amiss were two "sonar anomalies," he said, which experts thought were piles of rocks that had scattered off the nearby jetty. Corps officials do not typically dive on dredge sites because of the cost.

Dunn said the Rehoboth-Dewey dredging plan calls for avoiding all the identified "targets" and having the dredge work in narrow swaths across the bottom. If something is hit, the disturbance would be less significant than with a wider dredge path.

The corps also will not be using the type of dredging head used at Lewes, which is thought to have chopped up artifacts.

The dredge for the Rehoboth-Dewey Project will work like a giant vacuum, sucking sand and water from the bottom. The sand will be pumped to an offshore barge, transported north to the beaches and then pumped onto the shoreline.
In addition, a 1 1/2 -inch mesh screen will cover the suction end of the vacuum hose to keep out large objects.

That also should prevent the dredge from bringing ashore military ammunition that could be buried in the sand. The military used the beach south of Indian River Inlet more than three decades ago for target practice on drone airplanes that flew over the ocean.

Corps inspectors and the dredge crew also have been trained to better recognize broken glass, artifacts, arrowheads or even ancient elk bones that might end up on the beach with the sand.

Dunn has recommended inspectors who find bits of glass or unusual things to "pretend it's historical even if it may turn out to be a Budweiser bottle."

Looking to the summer
Officials said they expect their precautions will counter some of the risks in what is an important project for the state's tourism economy, and for protection from ocean flooding.

Once the beaches are built up from the 50 to 70 feet width they had eroded to, a tall dune to help against storm surges will be built, said Anthony P. Pratt, the state shoreline and waterway administrator.

Delaware environmental officials have for years been working to win federal funding for a beach repair project for Dewey-Rehoboth. Once the initial renourishment is done - with the corps absorbing most of the cost - the federal government also will maintain the beach every few years for the next 50 years.

Plastic piping for the project is already staged at the beach off Dagsworthy Avenue in Dewey Beach.

Pratt said the dredge crew will start in the center of Dewey Beach and work south, then move the pipe and start working north. The Dewey part of the project is expected to be complete in early April, he said.

The piping then will be moved north to Rehoboth Beach and staged in the center of the city's beach. The pumping will go from mid-beach south, then shift to the north, Pratt said.

Work is expected to be complete in Rehoboth by June 1, he said. The end result will be beaches five times as wide as last summer.

"This summer, we'll have the desert to cross," Pratt said.

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Delawareonline
By Molly Murray
January 27, 2005

State archaeologists who studied artifacts found late last year on a Lewes beach now think a federal dredging crew may have struck two underwater historical sites on the bottom of Delaware Bay.

In the weeks following a $3.9 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project at Roosevelt Inlet, beachcombers found pieces of glass and pottery on the renourished beach.

The artifacts include green glass, a wide array of pottery and metal toys such as ship models and solders thought to date from 1720 to 1740.

State and federal officials first thought the dredging crews dug up the items from a buried site about 2,000 feet off the beach. But in recent weeks, they have begun to surmise the artifacts are from two sites.

State historic preservation officer Dan Griffith said he thinks part of what lies offshore is a shipwreck such as a shallop that would have been used to deliver smaller loads of cargo to and from shore. The rest may be from a settlement overrun by the ocean.

The origin of the artifacts will likely remain a mystery until a team of divers explores the site, likely next month. State archaeologists have been working to survey the beach by sifting through thousands of cubic yards of sand on the Lewes beach. The next step is to begin preserving the artifacts.

State archaeologists want to take a careful inventory of the pieces to get an idea of how much glass and pottery was disturbed by the dredge. The pieces will be weighed and measured, said Craig Lukezic, a state archaeologist.

Lukezic said archaeologists also will start researching the pieces and may travel to other Colonial settlements, such as St. Mary's County in Maryland or Jamestown in Virginia.

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China Economic Net
January 26, 2005



The Ningbo Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology announced this month that, after a 4-month excavation of 725 square meters, they have confirmed the discovery of a 7,000-year-old village of the early Hemudu culture.

The site is at Fujiashan in the Jiangbei District of Ningbo City, in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

According to a specialist from the institute, the site is one of the largest-scale, highest-yield and best-preserved sites in the province after the Hemudu site itself.

The relics excavated showed it to be a Neolithic site in the early stage of Hemudu culture, which involved cultivation, fishing, hunting and gathering.

Chu Xiaobo, the institute's deputy head, said the Fujiashan site is 20 kilometers from the Hemudu site and 5-6 kilometers from the recently discovered Tianluoshan site, which belongs to the same culture. The position of the three sites indicates that the Yaojiang River may have been the home of the Hemudu culture.

The Fujiashan site was wood-based, facing east and with Fujia Mountain to its west. It's more than 30 meters wide and 16 meters deep. Wares have been found that were constructed using slots and pairs of tenons -- the first time these have been found in the Hemudu culture.

Archeologists said the inhabitants built houses and settled down as their lifestyle shifted from hunting animals to planting vegetables, raising livestock and making handicrafts.

They found many fragments of charcoal, connected with the marks made by fire on the top and surface of crossbeams, suggesting that it may have been fire that destroyed the village eventually.

Wu Xiangdong, the head of the institute, said they had unearthed a large number of relics. The most numerous were earthenware -- recoverable items totaled more than 470 -- and some were first examples in Hemudu culture, as were the patterns engraved onto them.



Among the relics, the most delicate and vivid was an eagle-head-shaped piece of ivory, chiseled on both front and back. The eagle's beak is hook-shaped and its eyes wide open, giving it a fierce and powerful countenance.

Another eagle-shaped earthenware item was also recovered, in the form of a bird spreading its wings, and was another first time discovery for this period. Archeologists conjectured that it may have been used in sacrifices.

Another interesting find was a pot full of cooked water chestnuts. The archaeologists speculated that it might have been abandoned after a sudden disaster, such as a flood, fire, or an attack from wild animals or enemies.

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St. Petersburg Times
By Scott Barancik
January 26, 2005

A South Carolina man, suing over the SS Republic, tangled with Clive Cussler over the HL Hunley.

Bestselling novelist Clive Cussler. Tampa shipwreck-hunter Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc.

Two very different animals with something in common: Both have been sued by a South Carolina man who claims he deserves credit for shipwrecks they discovered.

Shipwreck hunter E. Lee Spence is one of four men who recently sued Odyssey over the SSRepublic, a side-wheel steamer that sank in the Atlantic Ocean about 100 miles off the Georgia coast with thousands of gold and silver coins aboard in 1865. Odyssey found the ship in June 2003 and parlayed it into a National Geographic TV special and millions of dollars in coin sales.

Spence and his co-plaintiffs claim the company used their research to find the ship but failed to share the booty.

Odyssey says it relied on its own data.

Spence, who did not respond to requests for an interview, has rowed this path before.

For more than three decades, he has claimed he discovered the HL Hunley, a hand-cranked Confederate submarine that successfully torpedoed a Union warship in 1864 and disappeared the same night. Spence says he was fishing off Charleston Harbor in 1970 when a fish trap snagged on something. According to a court filing, he dove down and, "realizing what he had found, raced to the surface and repeatedly screamed, "I've found the Hunley."

Spence continued to make the claim even after a nonprofit that Cussler founded, the National Underwater Marine Agency, discovered the Hunley in 1995 and after the South Carolina Hunley Commission deemed NUMA the ship's official founders in 1997.

NUMA sued Spence for defamation in 2001; he countersued. The case has dragged on for four years. It is scheduled for trial in April.

At times during the case, it has seemed as if Spence might fold. In 2003, he asked the U.S. District Court judge in Charleston, S.C., to delay the proceedings because they were aggravating his "severe depression and bipolar disorder" and twice led him to be hospitalized.

Cussler asked U.S. District Court Judge Sol Blatt Jr. to order a mental evaluation for Spence and alleged Spence was seeking a delay not because of mental illness but because he had run out of money to pay his lawyers.

Indeed, Spence's lawyers dropped him for nonpayment that year. He has represented himself since.

Spence and Cussler each wrote a nonfiction book containing details about their hunts for the Hunley. In 1995, Spence self-published Treasures of the Confederate Coast: The "Real Rhett Butler' & Other Revelations. A year later, Cussler released The Sea Hunters: True Adventures With Famous Shipwrecks.

Spence claims Cussler engineered the Hunley's discovery in order to boost sales of Sea Hunters. Cussler's attorney, John Lay Jr. of the Ellis Lawhorne law firm in Columbia, S.C., said his client had given far more money to NUMA than he had received in royalties from the book.

The Hunley was exhumed in 2000. It is housed at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, S.C.
Spence's involvement in research on the Republic is well-documented. A 1995 news release issued by Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology, a company founded by Odyssey co-founders Greg Stemm and John Morris, identified Spence as one of two researchers on the project. Another credited Spence and co-plaintiff Alan Riebe with helping prove that the Republic was carrying gold coins when it sank.

A 1995 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Seahawk gave Spence 40,000 shares of its stock in exchange for his 10 percent share of the Republic, if found.

Stemm and Morris say they never had access to the plaintiffs' research because they resigned from Seahawk a year prior, in 1994. They formed Odyssey in 1997.

Odyssey spokeswoman Laura Lionetti Barton declined to comment.

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NPR
January 16, 2005


USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear
powered warship.

Fifty years ago this month, the U.S. Navy launched the world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. Now a floating library and museum in Groton, Conn., the vessel ultimately changed the nature of naval warfare.

From the beginning, the submarine proved worthy of her motto, "The First and Finest." Nautilus underwent extensive trials and shattered all submerged speed and distance records. With her infinite power supply and ability to make oxygen and purified water from seawater, Nautilus had only one limitation: food.

Her first commander, 87-year-old retired Vice Admiral Eugene Wilkinson, knew this gave the ship a clear advantage over the era's diesel submarines. "Eventually they would have to run their diesel," he tells reporter Susan Perrin.

"And when they did, my sonar man would hear them and we'd sneak up on them and the world was ours."

In 1958, the submarine embarked on her most secret mission, Operation Sunshine. With 116 men on board, the voyage made USS Nautilus the first vessel in the world to travel under the North Pole.

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Red Deer Advocate


Canadian Pacific (CP) ship SS Mount Temple; undated.
The photograph is credited to Stewart Bale.

EDMONTON (CP) - Ever since he was a kid, Darren Tanke has been fascinated by a ship full of dinosaur bones from Alberta's badlands.

The ship is sitting at the bottom of the North Atlantic after a German naval attack during the First World War.''I first read about them when I was about eight years old,'' said Tanke, 44.

Tanke is a technician with the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller.

''I never dreamed that one day I would be trying to recover them.''Tanke, along with professional diver and marine archeologist Rob Rondeau, are in the early stages of a salvage effort that could someday bring dinosaur bones from the shipwreck SS Mount Temple - including a rare 75-million-year-old duck-billed hadrosaur - back to the surface.

Next month, Rondeau, 40, will lead a diving expedition to the Oldenberg, the German ship that sunk the Mount Temple before it, too, sank off the coast of Norway at the end of the Second World War.

That's just a prelude to the more ambitious task of recovering the fossils.Rondeau hopes the first dive will attract a film producer, such as James Cameron who produced the mega-movie hit Titanic.

He also seeks sponsors with deep pockets to cover the Mount Temple costs, which will be in the millions of dollars.

The story starts in the summer of 1916 in what is now Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks. American fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg, working under contract with the British Museum of Natural History, collected a treasure trove of fossils, including a nearly complete hadrosaur skeleton and an equally rare turtle.

The fossils were loaded onto the steamship Mount Temple, destined for London to be put on display.But en route to England, the Mount Temple was intercepted by a German ship, SMS Moewe, which was later renamed the Oldenberg.

After firing on the Mount Temple, the crew of the Moewe boarded the Canadian merchant ship and planted explosives on the hull.

The scuttled the craft and sent its precious 75-million-year-old cargo to the bottom of the ocean.

Four of the Canadian crew were killed and the rest were captured. The ship now sits somewhere in a remote patch of the ocean, about 700 km northwest of the western Azores.

At the end of the First World War, the Moewe was seized by the British and later sold back to the Germans, who renamed it the Oldenberg.

Pressed into military service in the Second World War, it sank in a rocket attack in 1945 near Vadheim, Norway.

With a team of commercial divers from Canada and Norway, Rondeau plans to spend the first two weeks of February exploring the Oldenberg, submerged in a relatively shallow 20 to 70 metres of water.

Renowned underwater photographer Dave Basiove from Vancouver will film its contents for the Discovery Channel.


Know more about it in www.ssmounttemple.com.

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Title: Underwater Archaeology and the SS Mount Temple Project

Abstract: In the summer of 1916, American fossil collectors Charles H. Sternberg and son Levi worked under contract to the British Museum of Natural History, London, England, in the badlands of Alberta, now Dinosaur Provincial Park and collected numerous dinosaur and other fossil specimens to be shipped to London.

Charles Sternberg envisioned public dinosaur exhibits of a caliber rivaling those in New York and Ottawa. SS Milwaukee successfully transported the first shipment, but the second lot, consisting of 22 wooden crates, was aboard the Canadian Pacific Railway steamship Mount Temple.

On December 6, 1916 the Mount Temple was attacked by the German surface raider SMS Moewe and sank in the waters about 14,440 feet (4,375 meters) deep and 455 miles N.W. of the western Azores.

The ship was to have stopped in Brest, France, then England where the fossils were to be off-loaded. The great depth of Mount Temple is not beyond the reach of current deep water technologies and there have been some suggestions of trying to relocate it and salvage some of the fossils if present.

Date: 2005-03-16

Speaker: Geoffrey McCafferty

University of Calgary

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No âmbito do programa “Conversas ao final da tarde” realiza-se no próximo dia 26 de Janeiro, um debate sob o tema “A importância da arqueologia subaquática na costa algarvia”.

O debate, que contará com a participação do Dr. Tiago Fraga, realiza-se no próximo dia 26 de Janeiro, às 18h00, nas instalações do Museu Nacional de Faro.

Para mais informações:
Museu Nacional de Faro
Largo D. Afonso III, Faro
Tel. 289 897 419
Fax: 289 897 419
E-mail: dmm.drp@cm-faro.pt

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Payvand
January 20, 2005

Tehran, (Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency) – Researchers from the Copenhagen Museum in Denmark have traveled to the coasts of the Caspian Sea, northern Iran, in search of clues of relationships between Iranians and Vikings.

A few years ago, a researcher from the Copenhagen Museum, Nadia Haupt, discovered more than one thousand coins and relics that did not belong to the Danish or other Scandinavian cultures, and therefore set to find out more about the historical roots of the Danish civilization.

The ancient items that took the attention of experts included more than one hundred thousand coins that are not part of the Danish history, Viking shipwrecks that Haupt believes their style of construction and the kind of trade they used to undertake differentiate them from those of their ancestors, clothes and accessories used today in some Scandinavian cities and villages, and red and blue colors included in the clothes of the residents under study.

The findings prompted archeologists and anthropology enthusiasts to find out more about their ancestral roots, and where these items have originally come from. The first hypothesis that these items originated from southwestern Europe such as Spain was overruled with more studies.

The next hypothesis focused on the northeastern countries in Europe, or more specifically Russia. Relics found in the excavations of the area have confirmed the existence of trade relationships between Denmark and Russia, but Haupt intends to get to the main roots.

She has followed her leads in Russia and has now come to the Iranian side of the Caspian Sea, hoping to prove that Eastern cultures had influenced the Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark.

Director of the research center of the Cultural Heritage Department, Mazandaran province, Ali Mahforouzi, told CHN that Haupt’s field work will continue for 2 weeks, after which she would go back to Denmark to hopefully announce the results of her studies in 3 months.

Mahforouzi believes that further excavations in European countries may show that old Asian civilizations, especially Iran, have had a more important role in the booming of the European cultures.

If her hypothesis is proved, Mahforouzi said, a great project concerning the relations between the Iranian and residents of the coastal areas of the Adriatic Sea will be triggered. According to him, such discoveries can help attract many scholar-tourists to Iran.

The Cultural Heritage & Tourism Department in the northern province of Mazandaran has some plans to prepare the residents in this region for hosting foreign tourists and has started some archeology classes and exhibitions of their heritage.

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Al.com
By Angela Rand
January 23, 2005

Archaeologist Bonnie Gums from the University of South Alabama will present a talk titled "Prehistoric peoples at Orange Beach" at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Orange Beach Senior Activity Center on Canal Road (Alabama 180), next to the Orange Beach Public Library, 1/4-mile east of Alabama 161.

She will discuss archaeological discoveries such as two large pits filled with shells and fish bones left by prehistoric peoples of the Weeden Island culture, who lived along the waterways of Orange Beach between A.D. 700-900. She will also bring artifacts for show and discussion.

The presentation is co-sponsored by USA Center for Archaeological Studies, the southwest chapter of the Alabama Archaeological Society, and Orange Beach Public Library. This is a free event.

For more information, contact Bonnie Gums at 460-6562 or bgums@jaguar1.usouthal.edu, or Angela Rand at 981-2923 or arand@cityoforangebeach.com.

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Published by the Marine Archaeology Committee of the Marine Technology Society

The Marine Archaeology Committee of the Marine Technology Society islaunching a new journal entitled the Journal of Marine Archaeology &Technology.

The journal will be an on-line publication, published twice ayear. Submissions will be reviewed by the editorial board and focus onapplied research, not archeological theory.

We are now accepting articles for inclusion in the inaugural issue of JMAT scheduled for May of 2005.

Topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:

- General underwater archaeological exploration and excavation

- Conservation of marine archaeological material

- Deep-water exploration and excavation projects

- Deep-water exploration and excavation technology

- Archaeological survey techniques and mapping technologies


EDITOR
Ayse Devrim Atauz, Ph.D. Department of Oceanography Geological Section Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843 . (979)458-3577 ayse@promare.org


EDITORIAL BOARD
Dr. John Broadwater, Program Manager of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Maritime Heritage Program and Manager of the MonitorNational Marine Sanctuary.

Dr. Jack Iron, Chief of the Social Sciences Unit of the Minerals ManagementService (MMS).

Laura A. Landry, President, L. A. Landry & Associates, Inc., Hitchcock,Texas. Independent consulting marine archaeologist providing survey planningand interpretation of high resolution geophysical data in the Gulf ofMexico.

Dottie Gibbens, recently retired after 20 years of service with the ArmyCorps of Engineers in Mobile, Alabama as their chief marine archaeologist.

More information at: http://www.mtsociety.org/pro_committees/marine_archaeology/JMAT.html

Source: Subarch List

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PRESS RELEASE

Treasure of the Atocha A $400 Million Archaeological Adventure by R. Duncan Mathewson III Ph.D.

Published by the National Center for Shipwreck Research Ltd., Key Largo, Florida.

Retail: $34.95; Wholesale 40% discount off retail price.

Duncan Mathewson's 1986 edition of his best seller, Treasure of the Atocha, has just been reprinted by the National Center for Shipwreck Research Ltd.

This book vividly depicts, with some 100 artifact illustrations, maps and color photographs, the full archaeological story of Nuestra Senora de Atocha sunk in 1622 off Key West, FL.

The modern-day detective story of how this Spanish galleon and its great treasure cargo came to be discovered in 1985 has become famous around the world through the widely acclaimed National Geographic Explorer Production of "Quest for the Atocha".

Photographs of the Atocha treasure and archaeological excavation have been added to this edition which have not been available since the first E.P. Dutton edition sold out 18 years ago as an alternate title of the "Book of the Month Club".

This limited edition is personally autographed by the author. This collector's item tells the story of Mel Fisher's famous 16 year undersea search for one of the world's most fabulous treasures.

This lavishly illustrated book brings history to life as the reader becomes a participantalong with the author in solving the complicated archaeological jigsaw puzzlethat finally came together with the finding of the "Mother Lode" after searchingover 100,000 linear miles.

Duncan Mathewson has often been characterized as the most controversial archaeologist in America by being the first professional marine archaeologist to openly work with commercial salvors instead of against them.

By collaborating from 1973 to 1989 with Mel Fisher, the world's most renown treasure hunter, Mathewson has demonstrated how the preservation of maritime heritage can be accomplished through a delicate balance of education and entrepreneurial enterprise.

Dr. Mathewson's work on Nuestra Senora de Atocha and her sister ship, Santa Margarita, has led to a number of important bench marks in the development of Marine Archaeology as a science over the last 30 years.

This book provides an insiders account of the controversy that continues to rage over who shall have access to shipwrecks.

Readers will learn how the Atocha project led to the formulation of a successful model forpublic-private sector partnerships in the location and excavation of historic shipwrecks around the world.

Dr. Mathewson has recently retired as a university professor to run for the Monroe County School Board upon which he is currently serving afour-year term. He is now devoting more time to his on-going archaeological research on the lost 1622 galleons and other historic shipwrecks in Florida and around the world. He lives in the Florida Keys with his wife Arlene, their 10 year-oldtwins, Rachael and Duncan (R.D.) and 7 year-old Eric.

To order, please call Duncan Mathewson at (305) 664-1353 (cell), (305)872-3090 or E-mail at reddog1690@aol.com.

Source: Subarch List

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St. Petersburg Times
By Scott Barancik
January 22, 2005

Odyssey Marine Exploration struck it rich in a shipwreck, but now competitors claim they're due a piece of the prize.

Since spotting a missing shipwreck off the coast of Georgia 18 months ago and scooping up more than 50,000 Civil War-era coins from its belly, Odyssey Marine Exploration has prospered.

Coin sales pushed the Tampa company's revenues well beyond $14-million last year, up from zero in 2002. A National Graphic article and TV special about the S.S. Republic's discovery provided unprecedented buzz.

The company ditched its small, rented offices in Tampa for a $3.3-million, 23,500-square-foot headquarters nearby.

And long-suffering CEO John C. Morris cashed in enough bulked-up stock to buy a $525,000 waterfront home in Pass-a-Grille, a 2004 Lincoln Navigator and a 2005 Mercedes Coupe, according to public records.

It's a remarkable reversal of fortune for a company that survived by paying some bills with stock rather than cash, selling stakes to investors like St. Petersburg millionaire Jim MacDougald, and skipping annual shareholder meetings to save money.

But a new lawsuit might toss cold water on the celebration.

In a complaint filed with the South Carolina Circuit Court in Charleston, maritime researchers claim Odyssey used some of their confidential data to find the Republic but did not share the treasure or the credit. The plaintiffs argue they are entitled to some of both and punitive damages.

Odyssey called the claims "outlandish." "People can claim wild fantasies in a lawsuit," the company said in an e-mail Friday. "They don't have to have any proof or evidence."

But the stakes are significant. Having to share the riches of the shipwreck could tamp down Odyssey's stock price and starve future missions of necessary capital.

After years of preparation and legal wrangling, for example, the company is poised to begin recovering the wreck of the HMS Sussex, a 17th-century British warship that sank in the western Mediterranean with a cargo of coins potentially worth more than $1-billion.

Whoever is right, the dispute illustrates that even success can be perilous in the uncertain world of treasure hunting.

Both sides claim a lengthy pursuit of the Republic.

Odyssey co-founders Morris and Greg P. Stemm say their search efforts date to 1991; at the time, they were managing a publicly traded Tampa company called Seahawk Deep Sea Technologies Inc., which is a named defendant in the suit. The plaintiffs, Republic & Eagle Associates Inc. of Summerville, S.C., and Sea Miners Inc. of Baltimore, say their key officers were hunting the ship as far back as 1980.

The group includes Alan Riebe, author of a 762-page book titled Chronicles of Shipwrecks and Sunken Treasure, 900-1900 A.D.: A Guide for Undersea Explorers; Mark Hylind, who profited handsomely from a 1985 shipwreck discovery off the Florida coast by the late treasure hunter Mel Fisher; and Lee Spence, who began hunting the Republic, which sank in a storm en route to New Orleans in 1865, 25 years ago.

Both parties agree that all three companies, Seahawk, Sea Miners and Republic & Eagle, signed a contract in 1995 to share research on the elusive shipwreck, then code named "Golden Eagle." A July 1995 St. Petersburg Times article described the deal and quoted the principals.

"It makes sense to join forces and minimize the risk to investors," Sea Miners president Hylind said. "This should get Seahawk's offshore team back on the water with some competent partners," Seahawk CEO John Lawrence added.

But by then, Morris and Stemm were no longer employed by Seahawk. They had left the company in 1994 and signed a three-year noncompete agreement.

The key dispute, it appears, is whether Odyssey somehow obtained the research Sea Miners and Republic & Eagle helped generate in the mid 1990s and used it to find the Republic on June 3, 2003.

In Friday's e-mail, Odyssey denied the allegation. Because Morris and Stemm were gone by the time Seahawk signed the joint venture, it said, they never got access to the group's research.

"Odyssey did its own research," it said. The article published in National Geographic's September issue called the shipwreck search a "tenacious 12-year research effort" by Stemm and Morris.

The plaintiffs, in turn, claim Morris and Stemm got hold of the data and used it. They allege the pair, who remained Seahawk shareholders after leaving the company, conspired with Seahawk spokesman Dan Bagley to sue Seahawk, gain access to its confidential joint-venture research, and fold the information into the computer model Odyssey used to find the ship.

Bagley is one of three other former Seahawk officers who were named as defendants but have yet to be found by the plaintiffs. "(Morris and Stemm) have had no influence over the business of Seahawk since the date of their resignations," Odyssey officials said in the e-mail.

As the plaintiffs await a response to their lawsuit, Odyssey continues to probe for treasure from the Republic.
Its search of the ship is complete. But because it has found only 25 percent of the coinage its research suggests was on board, Odyssey is scouring the ship's debris field.

Also in the works are two traveling and one permanent exhibit for showing off some of the Republic's other artifacts - including bottles, religious items and domino sets - and Odyssey's wreck-finding methodology.

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DiveWeb.com

The Underwater Intervention Committee is currently accepting abstracts for technical papers to be presented at the upcoming UI 2005 event, which will be held Feb. 14-16, 2005 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Technical program papers, panels and tutorial sessions are expected to be expansive and reflect the diversity of the international underwater industry.

Authors interested in submitting papers should email a 50 word abstract directly to editor@doylepublishing.com The deadline for submission is July 15, 2004.

You may now view abstracts from the UI 2004 Technical Program:
- AUV Track
- Diving Track
- Manned Submersibles Track
- Marine Technology Track
- NOAA Track
- Offshore Operations Track
- ROV Track
- US Navy Track
- Shipwrecks Track

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UI 2004 Shipwrecks Track

The Art of Search and Recovery
Steve Saint-AmourThis paper will discuss the intricacies of search and recovery of lost objects. Items that will be discussed will be the development of the ROV and sidescan as search and recovery tools, federal agency loss planning, loss data evaluation, inter-agency cooperation and search plan development.

We will also discuss the process by which a turnkey search and recovery mission is planned and the factors that are considered in the initiation of the plan.

Also we will discuss the factors by which the appropriate salvage equipment is identified as well as the various types of equipment and their use. We will walk through an actual case study, the recovery of a F-14B and a SH-60 Helicopter lost during separate operations in the Eastern Mediterranean by Phoenix International in 2002.

We will conclude with a lessons learned and the difficulties encountered during at sea search and recovery missions.

Prestige Wreck Survey In 4000m
Ian FlorenceThis paper covers the survey of the two sections of the Prestige oil tanker, which sunk in 4,000m off Spain, focusing on the challenges of integrating an underwater navigation system that was accurate to +/-20cm relative and +/-5m absolute and the integration of this with an ROV-mounted multibeam.

The paper also looks at the post-processing software that did not have a front end for the user and asks if we are becoming an industry that just wants "next, next, finish" without really understanding the process.

Underwater Pollution Intervention: Subsurface Petroleum Product Recovery
Mauricio Garrido, Titan Maritime, LLCTim Beaver, Global Diving & Salvage, Inc.The inefficiency and high cost of open water recovery of spilled petroleum products is well known.

Damage to coastline habitat and wildlife from sea-borne pollution causes outcry from environmentalists and the general public.

The benefits of removing oil contained in sunken vessels is easily proven, but often overlooked. This paper presents several case studies where SPPR activities performed by ADC members removed hundreds of tons of potential pollutants from entering the marine environment, illustrating techniques whereby the presence of oil within vessels is assessed.

The environmental community needs to know that our industry is ready and able to respond to such demands, and the diving community needs to bring their expertise to bear on these pressing environmental challenges.

UNESCO and Underwater Cultural Heritage
Dr. Eke BoestenAfter four years of negotiations, the Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted by UNESCO's General Conference by 87 states in November 2001.

The Convention covers underwater cultural heritage submerged for at least 100 years in territorial waters. Many people feared its impact, especially as draft provisions seemed contrary to the current law of the sea, impossible to implement, and unlikely to meet the objective that underwater cultural heritage should benefit humankind as a whole. This paper presents an overview and update on the situation.

Commercial Diving Operations During Salvage and Pollution Response OperationsLCDR.
Jim Elliott, US Coast Guard, Gulf Strike TeamOil spill response personnel encounter commercial diving operations during salvage and pollution response operations.

During an oil spill or hazardous substance release, the National Contingency Plan requires that response operations, including commercial diving operations, be conducted in accordance with OSHA requirements.

Additionally, the US Coast Guard requires that commercial diving contractors meet their own commercial diving regulations (46 CFR 197) during response operations. Incident commanders and safety officers should ensure that an inspection of the on-site diving operation is conducted to confirm that commercial diving personnel, operations, and equipment meet the applicable regulations.

This technical paper provides guidance to response personnel on the inspection of commercial diving operations during marine response operations and an overview of the equipment used to protect divers in contaminated waters. Additionally, this guidance provides checklists to facilitate the inspection of commercial diving operations to protect the health and safety of commercial divers.

Pioneering Technology in Water Depths Greater than 10,000 feet
Moya Crawford, Deeptek LtdThe cost-effective delivery of power, precision and lift to deepwater operations requires a synthesis of technologies.

It necessitates the use of high-voltage power transmission to overcome voltage drop, single mode fiber optics to transmit data and signals, and the harnessing of new materials such as the man-made fiber, high- modulus polyethylene, to overcome the self-weight penalty of steel.

On a record-breaking project in excess of 10,000 feet of water, innovative and patented Winder technology was married to proven salvage techniques to cut access through five deck levels and recover valuable material from a Bullion Room measuring 24 ft long by 4 feet wide. This onsite proof of capability paves the way for application of the equipment within the oil and gas industry.

Hazard Awareness in Ship Salvage Diving
Richard Radecki, Divers Institute of Technology.

Every salvage operation begins with an in-depth survey of internal and external damage.

Once a detailed salvage and contingency plan has been developed, a risk assessment process must be performed to protect the divers who will be working in hazardous environments.

This awareness process must encompass every task and phase of the operation to support the salvage plan - be it on the surface or below the water line.

This presentation outlines risk assessment processes that must examine weight handling, rigging, cargoes, hazardous material handling, hot work around fuels, and flammable cargoes.

The underwater phase of the risk assessment process must look at structural collapses, entrapment, underwater welding and burning, hazardous cargos, confined space work, toxic spaces, hook-ups to remove fuel ships bunkers and cargo oils, or any other type of work that may present a hazard to the divers. All plans must be reviewed for medical emergencies, medical evacuation procedures, and treatment options.

Refloating Sunken Vessels
Alina Pellón, Antillana de Salvamento ComercialThis paper presents automated techniques for refloating sunken vessels.
___________________________________

Underwater Intervention's Technical Program offers three days of presentations, panels and tutorials on commercial diving, ROV and AUV topics related to: Offshore Oil & Gas, Marine Construction, Shipwreck Exploration, Submarine Cable Networks, Sonar and Survey, Hydroelectric Energy, and Marine Salvage.

It is the premiere international conference of interest to the underwater contracting community.

Check back here for a complete listing of technical program sessions and papers.

Authors can access a downloadable Guide to Manuscript Preparation and Copyright Form in PDF format.

Source: Subarch List

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Information for the 2005 North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) conference in Savannah, Georgia is now posted at: www.ecu.edu/nasoh/index.htm.

To be held: May 19-21, 2005 Savannah, Georgia University of Georgia's Continuing Education Centerlocated in the historic district next to the Visitors Center and the Savannah History Museum.

Sponsored by:

The Coastal Heritage Society

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources UnderwaterArchaeology

The Georgia Ports Authority

The Conference Program will be finalized shortly.

Source: Subarch List

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CPNS

This is the first post from the new Centre for Portuguese Nautical Studies in South Africa Forum.

Enjoy and participate.

____________________________________________

Subject Welcome to the new CPNS forum
Posted by Paul on 2005-17-01 15:46

Greetings from Pretoria, South Africa! We hope this forum will be a way by which we can communicate with all who share in our passion: namely Portuguese Maritime history during the 'Carreira da India' period [approx 1480 -1680], the ships and their sailors, trade, shipwrecks, survivor sites and associated artifacts.

Please feel free to use this forum to supply us with comments and suggestions, ask questions or post items which you think might be of interest to all.Our website is still under development and we hope to add items of interest during 2005.

We hope you will all join us in exploring further the exploits of these brave sailors and their small ships.

This is a site for historians, academics, archaeologists, sport divers and 'treasure-hunters' - although we do not agree with any form of treasure-hunting - we realise that we can only maximize knowledge through some form of co-operation.

To all - best wishes for 2005 - may this year be an exciting year with lots of pleasant surprises! Paul Brandt, Valerie Esterhuizen, Andrie MeyerDirectors: CPNS
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The Australian
January 20, 2005

SCIENCE has dealt a blow to a Japanese legend which says the country was twice saved from a Mongolian fleet thanks to a "divine wind," or kamikaze, that destroyed the invaders' ships.

A 900-ship fleet, sent by the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan in 1274, met resistance from Japanese samurai before being forced into retreat by bad weather and was then ripped to pieces by the kamikaze.

Kublai Khan tried again eight years later, amassing a vast fleet of 4,400 ships from China and Korea, most of which were sunk by strong winds off the island of Takashima, in southern Japan.

Ancient documents describing winds that blew down trees suggest that there was indeed a big storm in Japan in 1281, although the evidence is unclear as to how bad the winds really were and how they might have affected the Mongolian fleet.

New evidence, though, suggests that poor design and shoddy workmanship may have been the principal cause of the Mongols' defeat, the British weekly New Scientist says in its next issue, out on Saturday.

Randall Sasaki, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University, has pored over fragmented remains of the 1281 fleet that were found in 1981.

Of about 700 pieces of ship hauled up from the seabed off Takashima, none was larger than 3m, and most are between 10cm and 1m.

The find initially disappointed many who had hoped for something bigger, but a closer examination of these pieces has given insights into Mongolian workmanship, New Scientist says.

Sasaki has studied around 500 of the fragments and says many of the timbers have nails placed very close together, sometimes with five or six in the same location.

"This suggests the timbers were recycled to construct these ships," he told New Scientist. "Also, some of the timbers were themselves of poor quality."

As for the design of the ship, Chinese documents suggest that many of the vessels in the 1281 fleet were flat-bottomed river boats, which would have been unstable in the open sea.

"So far, we have found no evidence of sea-going, V-shaped keels at Takashima," says Kenzo Hayashida of the Kyushu Okinawa Society for Underwater Archaeology, which found the remains of the fleet in 1981.

Sasaki hopes more will be revealed by sonar and ground-penetrating radar, for less than 0.5 per cent of the site where the fleet sank has been studied so far.

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BBC News
January 19, 2005

Wooden and stone artefacts dating back up to 3,000 years found at a flood prevention site in Lincs have been described as "absolutely amazing".

Archaeologists at the site near Lincoln have unearthed an extremely rare wooden bowl and a stone tablet.

About 20 people have been digging at the site since November and have uncovered more than 10,000 items.

The site is located on a major flood bank strengthening scheme on the River Witham near Washingborough.

Mark Allen, Preconstruct Archaeology Environment Agency consultant Peter Senior said: "The level of preservation of timber is absolutely amazing.

"We are led to believe that this is a site of European importance."

Mark Allen from Preconstruct Archaeology said the items probably date from 800 to 1,000 BC.

"We have uncovered a wooden bowl that is as thin as glass and beautifully made.

"We also found a small stone tablet with circles that is mould for smelting metal.

"The tin or gold would be used to make rivets for decorative purposes - possibly on knife handles.

"We have known about the site since the 1970s - when the pumping station was built.

"Workmen called in the museum when they found bones and the researchers found late Bronze Age to early Iron Age pottery."

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VietNam News
January 19, 2005


History afloat: Archaeologists work on the
2000-year-old burial boat, unearthed from
the Red River. — Photo Courtesy of Australian
Embassy

HA NOI — A joint Australian-Vietnamese archaeological team has unearthed a well-preserved burial boat belonging to the Dong Son culture that resided in the Red River region around 100BC.

The boat was discovered at Dong Xa Village in Kim Dong District in the northern province of Hung Yen during the team’s recent excavations investigating Dong Son textiles at waterlogged sites.

Members of the team regard it as an important find and, according to Professor Peter Bellwood of Australian National University, it may be the oldest existing log canoe in southeast Asia.

The coffin contained pottery and copious quantities of prehistoric matting and textiles which reveal a great deal about the role of cloth in Dong Son burials, said Dr Judith Cameron, head of the team.

The team’s excavations are the first phase of a project of archaeological co-operation between the two countries funded by the Australian Research Council.

The project brings together archaeologists from Australian National University, the Vietnamese Institute of Archaeology and the Centre for Southeast Asian Prehistory in Ha Noi, and conservators of the National Museum of Australia.

Conservation technology and laboratory skills for preservation of Viet Nam’s heritage are a main element of the project. A senior conservator from the National Museum of Australia, Nicola Smith, was surprised at the good condition of the burial boat with the bark lid, textiles, matting and wood all well-preserved.

Over the next year, conservators will impregnate the wood with polyethylene glycol to protect the artefact for future research and display in the Hung Yen Museum.

Australian ambassador Joe Thwaites said that he was impressed by these early and significant results.

"Australia recognises that Viet Nam has a rich, deep and diverse heritage," he said. "Following the successful conservation of the Em Thuy painting by the late Vietnamese late painter Tran Van Can by Australian conservator Caroline Fry last year, I am delighted to see growing technical and research co-operation between us in this important field of archaeology."

The team has also excavated the grave of a 2- or 3-year-old child at the Yen Bac site in Ha Nam Province, providing further information about the burial customs of the Dong Son culture. — VNS

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Kent Online
by Barnaby Chesterman
January 19, 2005


The remains of the SS Richard Montgomery, pictured in the 1970s.

A SHIPWRECK laden with explosives and lying off the Kent coast may have to be detonated at sea.

The SS Richard Montgomery, which went down off Sheppey during the Second World War, contains about 13,700 bombs and explosives, including mercury fuses and phosphorus munitions, all of which could be harmful to the surrounding environment.

The ship sank in 1944 and has been left, but monitored, ever since. However, a new Government document has confirmed fears that the wreck cannot be left indefinitely and drastic action, such as blowing it up, may have to be taken.

MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey Derek Wyatt, is pushing Transport Secretary David Jamieson over the issue. He said: "Just surveying the wreck is no longer a long-term option and that is what is in the report.

"There are two and a half options. One is to put a steel bund around it, the second is to blow it up and the third is to move it and blow it up.

"Putting a steel bund around the wreck is the least likely option and the one Mr Wyatt describes as a half as that bund would not prevent an explosion and could even exacerbate the situation if it was fired into the air by multiple explosions within it.

The MP added: "The second two are the only real options and both of those involve high risk. That is why the public need to know now because it is a big change and it needs to sink in.

"There will be a critical moment whenever we do it and all that will require huge amounts of intelligence to be shared with the public.

"Mr Wyatt said the Government decided to release the previously secret document because they were afraid of information being leaked and sparking a press witch-hunt.

Report from Sheerness Times Guardian

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MyrtleBeachOnline.com
By Travis Tritten
January 16,2005

Archaeologist tells of findings
James Hunter never met Arnold Becker in life but felt a personal connection when he finally gave the Confederate sailor a burial after 139 years.

Becker was one of eight crewmen entombed in the Civil War-era H.L. Hunley submarine, which sank in 1864 and was recently discovered in waters off Charleston.

Hunter, an underwater archaeologist, was part of the team that found the H.L. Hunley, and was a pallbearer for Becker during a Charleston funeral for the crew in 2004. He spoke about the mystery surrounding the submarine and answered questions Saturday at the H.L. Hunley exhibit in Myrtle Beach.

"For me, [the funeral] was a personal experience," Hunter said "I was the one who took [Becker] out of the sub, and I was the one who put him in the ground."

The 40-foot submersible was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship in battle, though American submarine technology dates back to the Revolutionary War.

The H.L. Hunley is famous for scuttling the USS Housatonic, a Union war ship that held the North's blockade around Charleston harbor. It was the submarine's only mission and a desperate attempt to break a blockade that was strangling the port city.

The H.L. Hunley successfully sank the Housatonic with a torpedo attached to a long lance but mysteriously never returned to port.

The Hunley may have been lost because of fractures in the hull due to the torpedo blast, tidal currents that drove it to the bottom or it may have been scuttled by a ship coming to the Housatonic's aid, Hunter said.

Hunter and other researchers are dissecting the submarine and its contents, preserved in the iron hull like a time capsule, to learn more about the crew and possibly solve the sub's mysterious fate.

"It is a snapshot of one day in 1864," Hunter said. "We found buttons that obviously came off a Union navy peacoat."
It was winter when the submarine sank, and the Union coat may have been all a Confederate crewman could find to keep warm because of the blockade, he said.

Also, the submarine might have run out of oxygen. The air locked in the hull when the hatches sealed was all the crew had to breath. A single candle measured the amount of remaining oxygen.

The crew sat side by side and cranked a long shaft to propel the submarine through the dark nighttime waters.

Kim Saxon of Washington, D.C., and his two sons spoke with Hunter about the sinking and the H.L. Hunley crew.

"At the time, it would have taken some brave men," Saxon said. "It was pretty much a suicide mission."

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Cape Gazette
By Henry J. Evans Jr.
January 16, 2005

State archaeologists are preparing to move to the next phase of work with artifacts found on Lewes Beach: lab work, research and detailed analysis on hundreds of pottery shards and various other items.

Archaeologists and about a dozen volunteers have worked through the week’s good weather and bad to see if there were areas of the beach that contained heavier deposits of artifacts than others.

The results have been mixed, with much of what’s been found being more of the same - pieces of pottery, fragments of storage containers, bricks and fragments of other materials.

This week, however, a few more metallic items were also uncovered. A pewter spoon, a small, metallic, flat, highly-detailed image of a ship, still bearing fragments of blue and red paint; a stamp used for sealing wax and a candle holder.

Conservators and state archaeologists will examine the artifacts to figure out where the materials originated, where they were going and how they ended up beneath the waters of the Delaware Bay.

“We’ll be washing and labeling some of the artifacts and then do some basic analysis, sorting, and figuring out some of the dates,” said state archaeologist Craig Lukezic. He said volunteers would do some of that work just as they’ve done much of the recovery work.

State archaeologist Chuck Fithian said a conservator with extensive knowledge about the metallic artifacts will give them a better idea of what they have.

“The fun part now, I think, is going to be the lab work. It’s in the lab where you make the additional discoveries and get the new insight into what’s going on by looking at the artifact collection,” Fithian said.

As more artifacts have been found, theories of their origin have changed. One of the recent theories is that what are now artifacts might once have been merchant goods aboard a shallop, a small sailing vessel that moved goods between coastal seaports.

“There are a number of research pieces that Chuck has found in newspapers of the time, ads and other things, of that kind of shallop mercantile activity going on,” Lukezic said.

Lukezic said there are 17th century maps of the Lewes coast containing dotted lines labeled as shallop routes. Lukezic said so far, not a single sunken shallop has ever been discovered in the Delaware Bay.

Lukezic said underwater archaeological survey methods using metal detectors or sonar don’t necessarily find vessels like a shallop. Those survey methods find larger vessels with large metallic objects such as cannons, he said. “We know a lot of shallops wrecked and they’re all over the place but our methods just don’t pick them up because there’s not much iron in them.”

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Times Daily
The Associated Press

An archaeological diver from Mobile said he thinks it's possible that a piece of a British warship that was sunk during the War of 1812 has been hiding in plain sight for seven years, standing on display in a historic fort's parking lot on this Alabama barrier island.

Presently, a plaque tells visitors that the hunk of hardwood and corroded iron is the keel of an unknown ship "built in the 1800s or earlier."

Glen Forest, a marine archaeologist who did dive work during the excavation of the USS Monitor, is now working on dry land, trying to conclusively identify the 30-foot ship fragment that has been sitting in the center of Fort Gaines' parking lot since Hurricane Georges heaved it from the sea floor and onto an island house in 1998.

"At the very least, we need to get this thing out of the sun and the rain, and we need to get all the bugs and termites out of it," said Forest, 45, pacing around the fragment's pocked and pitted length. "Of course, nobody will put any money into it until it's been identified. I'm trying to do that."

Forest's theory is that the massive flotsam is actually the top, left, rear side of the British warship HMS Hermes, a sloop-of-war carrying about 20 guns. The vessel was set on fire and exploded during the first of two British attacks on Fort Bowyer in Baldwin County during the War of 1812. This century, archaeologists have launched periodic searches for the vessel's remains and found nothing.

Forest said the fragment was erroneously identified as a ship's keel, the "backbone" that runs along the center of the bottom of a ship's hull.

"It was lying on its side, and from that angle, it looked like a keel. But stand it up on its side, and you can see the futtocks on one side," Forest said. Futtocks are the "ribs" that run from the keel of a ship, upward to the deck. Those, by themselves, clearly show that the fragment is the side of a ship, not its keel, he said.

Mike Henderson, director of the Dauphin Island Park and Beach Board, which runs Fort Gaines, said his organization took possession of the huge hunk when Federal Emergency Management Agency cleanup crews threatened to throw it away as storm debris after Hurricane Georges.

"It was in the middle of the wreckage of a house, and they just wanted to toss it, but they knew it must be something historical. We said we'd pay to transport it down to the fort," Henderson said.

He asked the Alabama Historical Commission to have an expert identify the fragment.

Sid Shell, a retired Mobile lawyer who at the time was a member of the Historical Commission's maritime advisory board, said he was one of several commission representatives who looked at the ship fragment.

"I can't look at it and say, 'That's part of the upper stern of the Hermes.' There is nothing that would indicate that to me. I and a number of people looked at it, and we didn't see anything that would indicate whether it was the side walls or the bottom of a vessel or even part of a dry dock," Shell said.

Henderson said he never received an official report from the Historical Commission about the fragment. A group of academics from the University of South Alabama and the University of West Florida visited, and one of them said it looked to him like the keel of a ship, he said.

"It was still lying on its side at the time I think, but nobody knew that," Henderson said. "I took what he said and wrote what appears on the sign now."

Forest, who makes his living as a diving instructor for the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers based in Miami Shores, Fla., said he was giving instructions in this area in May when he saw the fragment for the first time on Dauphin Island.

"I knew the moment I saw it that it was important," Forest said. He quickly found that no one had done an in-depth study to determine what ship it came from, he said.

He then set about analyzing the wreck, seeking to fit it into the complex puzzle of maritime history in Mobile Bay, where 500 years have left hundreds of wrecks in the sand, waiting to be unearthed and tossed onto land.

He determined that it must be the rear left portion of the left side of the hull of a warship - the part that would support the rear left edge of the deck. Above the place where the decking would have laid, a wall would have risen with square gun ports cut into it. It was the height and thickness of its "spirketing" - the railroad tie-like strip of wood that would have been the base of a wall, into which the gun ports would have been cut - that made him think it must be a warship, he said.

"It's better than a foot thick. You wouldn't see that on a commercial vessel," Forest said. He also points to the fact that the ship apparently didn't have traditional wooden "knees" - supports directly under the deck. The Hermes would have had iron knees that supported the deck at an angle from deep in the hold of the vessel.

Forest said he also thinks the fragment's 30-foot length is significant. The Hermes was 100 feet long, and vessel components at the time were often built in lengths equal to one third of the length of the whole vessel, he said.

The wooden tree nails that hold much of the chunk together appear to be red oak or some similar wood, Forest said. That squares with the fact that, after 1820, British ship builders started using white oak and other lighter-colored woods because they were easier to use, he said. He plans to take samples of the wood and have it tested by the National Park Service, he said.

He said he'll also take samples in order to identify the rest of the wood in the fragment.

Museum of Mobile director George Ewert said it's unlikely that such a large piece of the Hermes would travel the seven or so miles from its resting place, presumably about 1,000 yards south of present-day Fort Morgan, to the place it finally landed on the western portion of Dauphin Island.

Jack Friend, a Mobile naval historian, agreed.

"Now, I don't doubt that someone with the right expertise needs to identify that thing, and I hope Glen is successful," Friend said. "But throwing around the name 'Hermes' this early in the game is really sticking your neck out."

Friend was the impetus behind an unsuccessful University of West Florida search for the HMS Hermes in 2000. The project was funded by an $8,250 grant from the Alabama Historical Commission.

Scott Douglass, a professor of civil engineering at the University of South Alabama who specializes in beaches and wave action, said it's possible Georges dislodged a piece of such a faraway ship and deposited it on Dauphin Island.

"There were some weird things on that beach after Georges - giant shells I've never seen diving. A coal barge sank, and the coal washed up. Lots of things that wouldn't float well were on the beach," Douglass said.

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Yahoo News
January 16, 2005

CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt launched a major operation to drain off water from the Nile threatening two prized pharaonic temples in the Luxor region in the south of the country.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities, responsible for the country's historical monuments, said the river's water table had risen due to extensive irrigation of nearby fields, posing imminent danger to the Karnak and Luxor temples in one of the most popular tourist areas of Egypt.

In recent decades, the encroaching salty water has already done extensive damage to the 5,000-year-old complexes.
In certain areas, the waters have risen by a meter and a half (five feet), submersing the base of the renowned columns and jeopardizing the foundation. Meanwhile the salt has faded the brilliant color of the temples and the exquisite statues flanking the columns.

The council's chief engineer, Khaled Abdel Hadi, said that the Aswan Dam, which stabilized the level of the Nile, had largely created the problem.

In the more than 5,000 years since the construction of the temples, the seasonal flooding by the Nile dissolved the salt that accumulated on the columns during drought periods.

But the Aswan Dam, by fixing the level of the water table throughout the year, has increased the temples' exposure to salt, as well as chemical residue from fertilizers and other pollutants from the surrounding sugar cane and rice fields.

Stagnant water around the columns also fosters the growth of bacteria and fungi, compounding the problem.
Authorities initially recommended that farmers change their irrigation methods to spare the two temples but the measures did little to help.

The current rescue plan is expected to last 18 months and calls for the construction of several drainage trenches next to the temples to redirect the flow of excess water and then pump it into a canal.

The operation also revives an old drainage system which had been filled in by local farmers, according to Sabri Abdelaziz, the Supreme Council's chief archaeologist in Upper Egypt, who said the aim was "to resolve the problem once and for all".

Work on the Karnak Temple, Egypt's largest religious complex, began in about 3,300 BC. Later extensions were completed in the 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasties and later under the Greeks and the Romans.

The smaller Luxor Temple was built 4,000 years ago by the legendary pharaohs Amenhopis III and Ramses II.
But this is the first time over the millennia that the structure has been threatened by the waters of the Nile.

Abdel Hani said that the drainage operation itself posed no danger to the two monuments but that a reserve team of engineers was on stand-by for any emergencies.

Abdelaziz added that the Supreme Council had begun a study for plans to salvage the Esna Temple, on the west bank of the Nile south of Luxor, which is threatened with collapse by a rise in the water table due to the construction of a dam nearby in 1993.

He said there were two options: a pumping operation to lower the water level below the base of the columns or to remove the structure from its foundations and replace it after increasing the height of the base.

Two similar operations were conducted on temples at Philae and Aswan in recent years.