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WET & HOT NEWS ! > Ancien Maritime History
Historical naval battles and other marine tales.Searching for Zheng
The 08 Mar. 2010 at 19:29Ancien Maritime History
By Ishaan Tharoor - Times
One of the more famous paintings of the medieval Ming Dynasty, which ruled China for three centuries, is that of a court attendant holding a rope around a giraffe. An inscription on the side says the animal dwelt near "the corners of the western sea, in the stagnant waters of a great morass."
According to legend, the giraffe was found in Africa, along with zebras and ostriches, and brought back with the grand 15th century expeditions of Zheng He, China's greatest mariner.
More than half a millennium later, Zheng has become a potent symbol for modern China. In 2005, the country marked the 600th anniversary of the seven voyages undertaken between 1405 and 1433 by Zheng's vast "treasure fleets" with nationwide celebrations; the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing dramatized his explorations from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and the shores of Africa.
On Feb. 26, China's Ministry of Commerce announced it was funding a three-year project with the assistance of the Kenyan government to search for Ming-era vessels that had supposedly foundered off the East African coast. "Historical records indicate Chinese merchant ships sank in the seas around Kenya," Zhang Wei, a curator for a state museum, told China's official Xinhua news agency. "We hope to find wrecks of the fleet of the legendary Zheng He."
There is more than historical curiosity behind these new efforts. For centuries after his expeditions, Zheng — a Muslim eunuch — slipped out of public awareness, obscured by the rise and fall of new dynasties. Talk of his exploits was revived briefly at the beginning of the 20th century as the fledgling Chinese republic sought to build a navy in the shadow of imperial Japan.
But experts say his place as a patriotic national hero has only been truly cemented in the past two decades, in parallel with China's geopolitical rise — and the growth of its significant economic presence in many African nations and other countries around the Indian Ocean.Searching for Paul's Shipwreck on Malta
The 26 Feb. 2010 at 03:11Ancien Maritime History
By Chuck Holton - CBN
The tiny island of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea has a rich history as one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.
It all started with a shipwreck, as told in the book of Acts, about 60 AD while the apostle Paul was enroute to Rome. Boarding an Alexandrian grain freighter on the isle of Crete, a fierce Nor'easter blew the ship off course. It looked like all was lost.
"On the fourteenth night, they were still being driven across the Adriatic sea when the sailors sensed land approaching," said Douglas Gresham, producer of Chronicles of Narnia and a resident of Malta. "They took soundings and found that the land was 120 feet deep. A short time later they took soundings again and found that it was 90 feet deep. Fearing that we would be dashed against the rocks, the sailors dropped four anchors from the stern, and prayed for daylight."
"When daylight came, they did not recognize the land. But they saw a bay with a sandy beach, where they decided to run the ship aground if they could," he continued. "Cutting loose the anchors, they left them in the sea."With the storm still raging, the ship struck a sandbar, and began to break apart. With the vessel and her cargo a total loss, the nearly 300 men on board swam for their lives. Miraculously, everyone survived.
"Once safely on shore, we found out that the island was called Malta," Gresham explained of the sailors experience.
And so began a Christian influence in Malta that has continued down through the centuries. Today, it is the most religious nation in Europe -- 98 percent of its citizens are members of the Catholic Church.
Saint Paul is memorialized throughout the island, no where more than in Saint Paul's bay, where tourists come to visit the Shipwreck Cathedral, and see the spot where most believe Paul's ship ran aground nearly 2,000 years ago.Sailing Against Conventional Wisdom
The 13 Feb. 2010 at 05:42Ancien Maritime History
By Dalya Alberge - The Wall Street Journal
It takes a brave soul to rewrite history by sailing against current thought. More than 500 years after Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, another seaman is doing just that, entering previously uncharted academic waters with claims that other "Europeans" -- the Minoans -- got there first, thousands of years earlier.
Gavin Menzies, 72 years old, is drawing on his experience as a former British Royal Navy submarine commander to prove in a book he is writing that the Minoans were such supreme seafarers that they crossed an ocean and discovered the New World 4,000 years ago.
Eight years after he made controversial headlines with his first American history book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America," which sold more than a million copies in 130 countries, he may spark debate anew by claiming that the Bronze Age civilization of Crete, which built magnificent palaces, devised systems of writing and developed a trading empire, got rich on vast quantities of copper mined in America.
Transworld Publishers undertook his first book, in which he claimed that a Chinese eunuch led a fleet of junks to America 71 years before Columbus. The book led to invitations to lecture at universities including Harvard, to an honorary professorship at Yunnan University in China, to the sale of film rights to Sky Motion Pictures and to HarperCollins snapping up the sequel in 2008, "1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance."
"Revisionist history tends to sell exceptionally well," says Luigi Bonomi, a leading literary agent who represents Mr. Menzies. "There is a huge audience eager to read new things about history."Spanish twists provoke research
The 28 Dec. 2009 at 10:42Ancien Maritime HistoryBy Annette Lambly - The Northern Advocate
An Oxford-educated researcher is investigating whether Spanish sailors visited New Zealand 116 years before Abel Tasman. Historians generally accept that Tasman, a Dutchman, first sighted the Southern Alps on December 13, 1642.
But Qatar-based researcher Winston Cowie, who spent part of his childhood in Dargaville, is investigating whether
the Spanish visited New Zealand as early as the start of the 16th century.
A sighting of a caravel wreck near Aranga on Northland's west coast by Dargaville's shipwreck explorer Noel Hilliam 25 years ago was the catalyst for Mr Cowie's project. Sketches suggested the caravel is the San Lesmes, which disappeared in the Pacific in 1526.
Mr Hilliam says 22 of the 53 crew listed on the 80-tonne caravel came from a Spanish town called Aranga - the same as the Northland area close to the wreck. Mr Hilliam said in June this year Mr Cowie had spent a month in the northwest Spanish town where the main street was called "Rua Tui" - a Maori name.
Mr Cowie found what he believes are two ancient pohutakawa trees at La Coruna, not far from Aranga.
Mr Hilliam says that in June next year, a Lincoln University scientist, Dr Jonathan Palmer, will take a core samples to determine the age of the Spanish trees.
Further speculation of the Spanish visitors arises from a number of local Maori surnames that also have Spanish derivatives.A Jamestown Shipwreck 400 Years Ago this Month Awakened Shakespeare's Muse
The 14 Jul. 2009 at 08:57Ancien Maritime History
By Hobson Woodward - History News Network
News of shipwrecks reached London regularly during the lifetime of William Shakespeare. The frequency of travel by water and the fragility of wooden sailing vessels made disaster at sea a relatively common occurrence.Thus it is all the more striking that the playwright chose one particular wreck—the loss of a Jamestown ship on uninhabited Bermuda four centuries ago this month—as an inspiration for his ethereal Tempest.
The Sea Venture was voyaging from London to the two-year-old colony on the Virginia coast in the summer of 1609 when it encountered an intense hurricane.After four days of punishing violence the ship came to rest on a Bermuda reef. All 153 people aboard survived to be remembered as the first to occupy the mid-Atlantic isle. A year later when some of them returned home and told their story, Shakespeare ensured they would also make literary history as a source for his last solo play.
Discovered: A sunken island, an Indian Ocean Atlantis ?
The 02 Apr. 2009 at 02:50Ancien Maritime HistoryFrom Groundviews
Marine archaeologists have just discovered evidence of a large submerged landmass southeast of Sri Lanka. They believe it could be a legendary lost island closely linked to the culture and history of Sri Lankan people.
The discovery was made by a team of Dutch and Sri Lankan scientists based on satellite maps and underwater sample extractions from the deep sea. Preliminary data need to be verified by a deep sea submersible expedition during 2009 - 2010, according to a member of the research team who did not want to be identified.
The landmass is estimated to be between 450,000 and 475,000 square kilometres, which is about seven times the total land area of Sri Lanka.
“This could well be the long lost island of Irisiyawa, which is euphemistically mentioned in our chronicles and hinted at in the writings of Greek historians,” said Dr Godwin Samarawickrama, a maritime historian at the Indian Ocean Institute based in Melacca, Malaysia.
He added: “The existence of such an island has been speculated and talked in hush-hush terms among divers and archaeologists for decades. This is the Indian Ocean’s own version of Atlantis !”Archaeology office lets 7,000-year-old boats rot away
The 15 Mar. 2009 at 02:44Ancien Maritime History
From The Local
A pair of stone-age boats, thought to be the oldest in Europe, have been allowed to rot in a partially collapsed shed while the northern German regional archaeology authorities stood by broke and helpless, it emerged this week.
The two 7,000-year-old wooden boats and a third one thought to be around 6,000 years old, were hailed as a sensation when they were found during construction work on the Baltic coast near Stralsund in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern seven years ago.
But now they are effectively ruined, after a lack of funds resulted in them being stored inappropriately. “It is a loss for Germany if not for the whole world,” said Andreas Grüger, director of the Stralsund historical museum.Is this Atlantis?
The 21 Feb. 2009 at 03:13Ancien Maritime History
By Virginia Wheeler and Rhodri Phillips
This is the amazing image which could show the fabled sunken city of Atlantis. It shows a perfect rectangle the size of Wales lying on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean nearly 3½ miles down. A host of criss-crossing lines, looking like a map of a vast metropolis, are enclosed by the boundary.They seem too vast and organised to be caused naturally. And last night the possibility of an extraordinary discovery had oceanographers and geophysicists captivated.
The site lies 620 miles off the west coast of Africa near the Canary Islands — a location for Atlantis seemingly suggested by the ancient philosopher Plato. He believed it was an island civilisation sunk by an earthquake and floods around 9,700BC — nearly 12,000 years ago.
The “grid” showed up on Google Ocean, a Google Earth extension that uses a combination of satellite images and marine surveys."Les trésors de la Méditerranée" : Les épaves de Mahdia et l'aventure de l'archéologie subaquatique
The 06 Feb. 2009 at 05:24Ancien Maritime HistoryFrom Actualités de Tunisie
Savez-vous que le Commandant Jacques Yves Cousteau, le grand marin et explorateur français, qui a dévoilé le mystère de l'univers peuplant le monde sous marin, a entrepris avec son équipe, en 1948, la première campagne en Méditerranée en explorant l'épave romaine de Mahdia.
C'était la première opération d'archéologie subaquatique après la découverte en 1907 par des pécheurs d'éponge, de l'épave d'un navire grec qui a échoué il y'a plus de 2000 ans sur les côtes tunisiennes et les fouilles entreprises entre 1908 et 1913. Cette opération a été couronnée par la production du film "Carnets de plongées" primé au festival de Cannes en 1951.
Les aventures de cette opération sont racontées, d'ailleurs, dans les deux livres "Le monde du silence" de Cousteau et "Plongées sans câble" du plongeur sous-marin français Philippe Tailliez.
L'histoire des épaves de la ville de Mahdia, considérée par les archéologues comme un véritable musée sous les eaux, est ressuscitée également dans un film documentaire 26 minutes en 1994, "Le trésor de Mahdia" qui raconte l'histoire des recherches et des 30 ans de fouilles pour exploiter entièrement l'épave, portée à jour en 1993 grâce à une opération menée conjointement entre l'Institut national du patrimoine et le musée de Bonn.
Aujourd'hui, six salles du musée du Bardo à Tunis exposent cette découverte de l'archéologie subaquatique, dans un pavillon baptisé "Trésors de la Méditerranée", inauguré le 31 juillet 2000, par le Président Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Le pavillon comporte plus d'une centaine de pièces antiques récupérées sur le navire qui aurait fait naufrage entre 80 et 70 avant J.C et qui transportait à son bord un étonnant chargement de colonnes en marbre et de statues en bronze.Greek warship explored in slide show
The 11 Nov. 2008 at 01:33Ancien Maritime Historyfrom ConnPost.com
S. Ford Weiskittel, president of the U.S. Trireme Trust, which supported a Greek initiative to test a replica of a fifth century BCE warship, will present a slide lecture on the adventure at Fairfield University on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Multimedia Room of the DiMenna-Nyselius Library. The lecture is free.
A remarkable technological achievement, the Greek trireme was designed to ram other ships. Powered by both sail and oar, with a crew numbering 120, the warships are credited with saving Greek civilization from Persian conquest because of their role in the Athenian victory over the Persian fleet at the battle of Salamis.
About 30 years ago, several British scholars undertook to establish definitively just what a trireme looked like and how it was rowed. Their task was made difficult because nobody had ever found a trireme.While archaeologists had found numerous wrecks of ancient merchant vessels on the bottom of the Mediterranean, it is thought that the trireme ships, built of light wood, probably broke up in the surf, decomposed or were towed away by victorious enemies.