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WET & HOT NEWS ! > Parks & Protected Sites
News about protected wreck sites and new discoveries.Explorer, state, France ink deal on shipwreck
The 22 Jul. 2010 at 11:29Parks & Protected Sites
By Steve Zucker - Charlevoix Courier
With a few pen strokes Monday, Charlevoix resident Steve Libert moved one big step closer to finding out if a shipwreck he found at the bottom of Lake Michigan in 2001 is in fact the long lost French vessel the Griffon.
Sitting in the Charlevoix City Council Chambers and in the presence of a few family members, and Charlevoix Mayor Norman “Boogie” Carlson Jr., Libert signed documents formalizing a deal between his organization, the State of Michigan and the French government granting Libert permission to continue exploring the shipwreck site.
In 2001 Libert, president of Great Lakes Exploration Group, found a shipwreck on the bottom of northern Lake Michigan that he believes is the Griffon — the first European vessel to sail the upper Great Lakes.
Built by the legendary French explorer, Rene-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, the Griffon was intended to carry out lucrative fur-trading commerce which would support La Salle’s expedition in search of the mouth of the Mississippi.
According to Libert’s Website, on Sept. 18, 1679, on its return maiden voyage the Griffon, loaded with 6,000 pounds of furs, sailed out from present day Washington Harbor on Washington Island in northern Lake Michigan in and was never seen again.
In the years since his find, Libert has been engaged in a protracted legal battle with the state over ownership of the vessel.
He said the deal he signed Monday marks a major milestone in his 28-year quest to find the Griffon. Libert said the agreement permits his organization to continue in its efforts to verify the identity of the shipwreck.Undersea probe to seek out lost port city
The 22 Jul. 2010 at 11:05Parks & Protected SitesBy Jaya Menon - The Times of India
Encouraged by the zeal witnessed at the recent world classical Tamil conference, the DMK government has decided to fund an undersea expedition to excavate the remains of a 2,000-year-old town, Poompuhar or Kaveripoompattinam, submerged under the sea off the Nagapattinam coast in Tamil Nadu.
The marine archaeology wing of the Goa-based National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) will be assigned the task. The expertise of the underwater wing of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which was involved in past explorations of the ancient sunken towns of Dwaraka and Mamallapuram on the east and west coasts, will also be used.
Reams and reams of ancient Tamil literature and even early geographers and historians like Ptolemy and Pliny have described the early Chola period town of Kaveripoompattinam as a vital maritime port that had trade links with the Roman empire and China until it was washed away by tidal waves, now recognised as a tsunami.
A few onshore and offshore excavations since the 1960s have given archaeologists an exciting glimpse of this once flourishing port town and capital of the Chola kings ring wells, brick structures, semi-precious stones and amphora pieces. Some artefacts and remains are displayed in the museum at Poompuhar town and preserved in the NIO.
Confirming the proposal, state minister for school education and archaeology Thangam Thennarasu told TOI that the government-sponsored excavation would be a significant step towards preserving Tamil culture. "We have initiated talks with the NIO and are exploring the scope of such an excavation, not just off Poompuhar but also other ancient ports," he said.Nova Scotia risks losing sunken wrecks
The 19 Jul. 2010 at 06:47Parks & Protected SitesBy Mark Iype - Montreal Gazette
For decades, treasure hunters from around the world have been lured by the romance of finding fortune among the skeletons of ships lost to Nova Scotia's temperamental waters and craggy coastline.
But one of Canada's most celebrated salvage divers says a decision last week by the Nova Scotia government to stop treasure hunting among the thousands of shipwrecks that litter its coastal waters will leave Canadian history to be literally washed away.
"Unless something changes in the next few months, shipwrecks that could piece history together will be lost forever," said Alex Storm, a pioneering treasure hunter who, in the 1960s, discovered two of Canada's most important 18th century shipwrecks: Le Chameau and HMS Faversham.
Last week, the Nova Scotia government announced its Treasure Trove Act would be repealed by the end of the year, putting a halt to all commercial treasure-hunting in provincial waters. Under the current law, treasure hunters can keep 90 per cent of their booty, with the remainder being ceded to the province.
The proposed changes would prohibit anything discovered among the estimated 10,000 ships that have sunk along Nova Scotia's rocky coast over the past 500 years from being removed from the province.
The government says it wants to help preserve the artifacts and mementoes of Canadian maritime history that might otherwise be taken from the province.
"There is an opportunity here, from a heritage and tourism perspective, to experience whatever is found in the natural environment," said Michael Noonan, a spokesman with Nova Scotia's Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Heritage.
Nova Scotia's Treasure Trove Act became law in 1954 after treasure hunters flocked to the notorious Oak Island, on the province's South Shore, where, it is rumoured, everything from Black Beard's buried booty to the hidden gems of Marie Antoinette are hidden.
Over time, the original Treasure Trove Act had evolved to cover Nova Scotia shipwrecks.
Noonan said now a new law will be passed to cover Oak Island, leaving treasure hunters free to keep searching for pirate spoils.
One famous wreck found off the coast of Nova Scotia was the controversial discovery by a U.S. salvage company of the British frigate HMS Fantome.A Treasure Trove in the Baltic Sea
The 17 Jul. 2010 at 06:03Parks & Protected SitesBy Frank Thadeusz - Strategy Page/Spiegel
In the early 1940s, engineers of the Third Reich conducted a series of tests that involving firing Henschel HS 293 glider bombs into the Baltic Sea. They were disheartened when the tests failed, because the steering systems of the massive projectile didn't work properly.
Now, almost 70 years later, one of the bombs -- weighing in at about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lbs) -- has been found in the path of the 1,220-kilometer (763-mile) pipeline that will link Germany to Russia's natural gas network. Early last week, specialists used a crane to hoist the obstacle out of the Baltic Sea near Lubmin, a coastal town in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Officials at Nord Stream, the company that will operate the pipeline, seemed relieved when the Nazi bomb had been removed. In recent weeks and months they had learned about the unpredictable side of the Baltic, as pipeline construction crews stumbled across debris from centuries gone by.
The remains of a thousand years of maritime trade, as well as the products of dozens of wars, are crumbling in the mud and silt at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. In addition to items with great cultural and historical value, the depths conceal the rusting remains of poison gas grenades, high explosive shells and aircraft bombs, all of which represent obstacles to pipeline construction. "It was not an easy situation," says Nord Stream spokesman Steffen Ebert. "We were under considerable time pressure."
For experts, salvaging war material at sea is a delicate operation, and one that is far more difficult than recovering similar objects on land. Divers use handheld probes to pinpoint suspicious objects in the water, which they then carefully expose. Only then do they face the anxious question of whether the objects are dangerous.
That question isn't always easy to answer, because the lumps have often been corroded into a hard-to-identify mass. "It looks like a placenta," says one of the divers.
The salvage teams are most fearful of gas grenades from World War II. A filled grenade shell, its structural integrity compromised by rust, can be a deadly hazard for a diver. In these cases, Eckhard Zschiesche and his team from the ordnance disposal service of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania use special containers to retrieve the hazardous waste.
The team usually detonates unexploded high-explosive shells and depth charges underwater. Other munitions remains are disassembled on the island of Usedom.
To rule out all hazards, Ebert says reassuringly, his team has employed far more complex procedures than usual. To avoid complications, the pipeline consortium has collected everything that could be found in the sediments, including rusty anchor chains.
While environmentalists are sharply opposed to the construction of the new Baltic Sea pipeline, archaeologists are delighted. The massive Nord Stream project to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany has uncovered dozens of shipwrecks and other historic artifacts.Treasure hunters will skirt new law
The 16 Jul. 2010 at 05:54Parks & Protected Sites
From CBC NewsThe Nova Scotia government's crackdown on treasure hunters won't do anything to protect the province's cultural artifacts, a salvage diver said Wednesday.
Duane Dauphinee, who has worked all over the world both as an underwater archaeologist and treasure salvager, said that when the government claims everything found, it encourages cheating.
"You're not going to stop inquisitive sport divers," he said. "And if they find things, now that they know that the government will take it if they mention it, nothing will be mentioned — it'll go underground. "
The Treasure Trove Act will be radically changed by the end of the year, making all historic artifacts government property.
The current law divides the spoils 90 per cent to the treasure hunter, and 10 per cent to the province. That means only some of the treasure recovered from Nova Scotia ship wrecks wind up on display in local museums.
But Dauphinee said that putting an end to treasure hunting will result in a greater cultural loss in the long-term because the province can't afford the multi-million dollar cost of under-sea recovery work.
Without the marriage between archaeology and treasure hunting, Dauphinee said that treasure and history alike will stay forgotten on the ocean floor.
Jeff MacKinnon said the decision could spell the end of his treasure salvage company — Sovereign Marine Explorations Associates International.
"I think it was careless on the part of the minister of natural resources," he said. "I don't think he looked at the economic impact. I don't think that he took the time to sit down and discuss it with us."
But, the province believes it's important to keep all historic items, including treasure, inside Nova Scotia.
"People can still do underwater heritage research," Mike MacDonald, executive director of the mineral resources branch of the Natural Resources Department, said.
"But any of the material that's found would be considered to be artifacts, and would be the property of the Crown."
Michael Noonan, with the provincial Department of Tourism, Cultural and Heritage Department, said it's important to protect the province's marine heritage.18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site
The 15 Jul. 2010 at 05:45Parks & Protected Sites
By David W. Dunlap - The New York Times
In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.
On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)
“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.
By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.
The area under excavation, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, had not been dug out for the original trade center. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years.
News of the find spread quickly. Archaeologists and officials hurried to the site, not only because of the magnitude of the discovery but because construction work could not be interrupted and because the timber, no longer safe in its cocoon of ooze, began deteriorating as soon as it was exposed to air.
For that reason, Doug Mackey, the chief regional archaeologist for the New York State Historic Preservation Office, was grateful for the rainfall. “If the sun had been out,” he said, “the wood would already have started to fall apart.”
As other archaeologists scrambled with tape measures over what appeared to be the floor planks of the ship’s lowermost deck, Mr. Mackey said, “We’re trying to record it as quickly as possible and do the analysis later.” All around the skeletal hull, excavation for the security center proceeded, changing the muddy terrain every few minutes.
Romantics may conjure the picture of an elegant schooner passing in sight of the spire of Trinity Church. Professional archaeologists are much more reserved.Great-grandson of L.R. Doty captain sees footage of sunken vessel
The 12 Jul. 2010 at 07:30Parks & Protected Sites
By Meg Jones - Journal Sentinel
For the first time, Christopher Ring glimpsed the deck where his great-grandfather had earned his livelihood.
He looked through the open hatches to see where his ancestor's last cargo still lies. And he saw the rudder, turned hard to port, which his namesake would have ordered moved to turn his great steamship around in a brutal gale.
Ring, 64, was awe-struck.
He heard tales of his great-grandfather, whose body was never found, whose shipwreck was lying somewhere unknown and unseen at the bottom of Lake Michigan. But not until last month when the Salem, Ore., man was surfing the Internet did he learn that his great-grandfather's ship, the L.R. Doty, had finally been discovered 20 miles off Oak Creek in 320 feet of cold water.
So he and his wife booked a trip to Milwaukee and visited Discovery World-Pier Wisconsin on Sunday to see underwater video shot by John Janzen and photographs taken by John Scoles in June, when scuba divers discovered the 291-foot-long wooden steamship, the largest wreck unaccounted for in the Great Lakes.
Capt. Christopher Smith and 16 other crew members were lost when the L.R. Doty, loaded down with 107,000 bushels of corn and towing the schooner Olive Jeanette, disappeared on Oct. 25, 1898, after the tow line between the two ships broke during a ferocious storm. Historians believe Smith was turning his football field-sized ship around to rescue the schooner when it foundered. When the crew of the Olive Jeanette, named after Smith's daughters, lost sight of the L.R. Doty in the huge swells, it was never seen again.
Ring's grandfather Walter, the oldest of Smith's children, was 15 when his father died on Lake Michigan. Walter Smith had also worked on the L.R. Doty as a wheelsman during summer breaks from school.
"I always heard the stories about the Doty," said Ring, whose grandfather raised him. "My great-grandfather complained that the Doty was always overloaded. They knew he would have turned around to go back for the Olive Jeanette."
Before the video was shown during a presentation at Discovery World, Great Lakes maritime historian Brendon Baillod recounted the history of the steamship and said he could find news clippings of only two bodies washing ashore. The remains of the other crew members are probably still below decks on the ship, whose hull is intact.
One of the 1898 news clippings reported that the captain's body had been found. But later it was learned that Smith had only one arm and could not be the body that was recovered.
"When he was a little bitty boy he was in a cotton gin accident in Scotland, that's where he grew up," Ring said about how his great-grandfather lost his arm. "Then when he was about 15, he stowed away on a sailing vessel to New York."
Smith eventually found his way to Detroit and worked for many years on the Great Lakes.
Baillod, who spearheaded the discovery of the shipwreck, read to the audience a gripping account by the cook of the Olive Jeanette who recalled the sailors pumping water from the slowly sinking schooner for two days before the ship was rescued. Frances Browne, who had worked as a cook for many years on Great Lakes ships, recalled water flowing through the cabin as she diligently brewed hot coffee to fortify the soaked and exhausted crew.Duke of Edinburgh joins fight to save historic clipper
The 07 Jul. 2010 at 18:12Parks & Protected Sites
By Craig Brown - Scotsman.com
The Duke of Edinburgh said the plight of the 145-year-old City of Adelaide, currently resting on a slipway on the west coast of Scotland, is "hideous" and appealed for help to restore it to its former glory.
The Sunderland-built ship, which predates the Cutty Sark, took people and wool between Australia and Britain on 28 round trips.
Built from teak and iron in 1864, the clipper once completed the Britain to Australia route in a record 65 days, cutting 35 days off the normal journey.
Later known as the Carrick, it subsequently fulfilled many roles, including acting as a floating isolation hospital, a Royal Navy drill ship and finally, during the Second World War, as a floating clubhouse for the Royal Navy Reserve.
After its final decomission, it has been left to the elements at Irvine, North Ayrshire, and could still face being dismantled for display in a museum.
The Scottish Government is considering a number of options for the future of the ship, with campaigners hoping to refloat the vessel and take it to Australia or back to Sunderland.
In a rare interview, the duke lamented the difficulties in securing money to restore old ships like the Adelaide.
He said: "As long as I've been alive, there's never been a good moment to raise money.
"Mind you, the sums back then looked smaller, because no-one seems to know anything about inflation, least of all the Treasury.
"People had got it into their heads that we are looking after historic buildings, but it was a completely new concept that we should look after historic ships.
"The National Trust was there for old buildings, but there was no-one there for old ships.
"We've still got a hideous problem with the City of Adelaide, which belongs to the Scottish Maritime Museum but is caught in a trap. Because it was falling to bits, they pulled it out of the water and it's now become a listed building.
"But they can't raise the money to do anything about it. You can't seem to concentrate the interest. It's a great pity."
His comments came as Scottish culture minister Fiona Hyslop yesterday met campaigners who want to save the clipper.
Earlier this year, Ms Hyslop announced that Historic Scotland had commissioned real estate advisers DTZ to review options for the category A-listed ship.
Those under consideration include moving the ship to Sunderland, to Adelaide in South Australia, or moving it to a different location in Scotland.Researchers uncover origin of cannons found on beach at Arch Cape
The 30 Jun. 2010 at 12:50Parks & Protected Sites
By Lori Tobias - The Oregonian
Researchers are one step closer to identifying the origin of two historic cannons found more than two years ago near Arch Cape. They also can now say conclusively where the remarkably well-preserved cannons were made.
Tualatin beachcomber Miranda Petrone spotted a part of one of the cannons while walking on the beach with her dad, Michael Petrone, in February 2008. They didn't know what they'd stumbled upon until they dug deeper and recognized the emerging shape. The second cannon was soon discovered nearby. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department removed the antique weapons from the beach and stored them first in water tanks, then moved them to the Center for Marine Archaeology and Conservation at Texas A&M University.
Now, researchers said, after months of working to delicately remove the hard layer of sand and rock coating the cannons, they have uncovered the symbol of a broad arrow engraved on the surface of one of the cannons.
"That broad-headed arrow mark indicates the cannon originated with the British Royal Navy," said Chris Havel, parks spokesman. "That's conclusive as to the maker of the cannon."
It also leads researchers to believe that, as suspected, the cannons likely came from the USS Shark, a Navy vessel that sank on the Columbia River bar. Three of the Shark's cannons broke away from the wreck. One was found in 1898 in the Arch Cape area, but the other two remained missing.
"The Shark was built in 1821," Havel said. "It was in that period that the U.S. Navy was buying a lot of its armaments from the British Royal Navy. Those two pieces of the puzzle fit together pretty well."
But that still doesn't prove that the cannons came from the Shark. To do that, researchers will need to uncover more evidence.Feds Assess Threat From Sunken Lake Champlain Tug
The 25 Jun. 2010 at 19:05Parks & Protected Sites
From The Associated Press
For almost 50 years a tugboat that once hauled barges between Vermont and New York on Lake Champlain has sat upright 160 feet underwater, hardly changed since the November night in 1963 when it ran aground on a reef and went down.
The paint on the William H. McAllister appears barely faded in recent video footage, and fire hoses remain coiled on the deckhouse walls. There's also a chance that the tug's fuel tanks still could be holding as much as 14,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
That has federal officials, environmentalists and residents who know about it concerned.
The threat of what could happen if those tanks were to fail and belch fuel into the 120-mile-long lake that separates Vermont and upstate New York drew an expedition last week of federal environmental officials and engineers to the lake. They sent a remotely operated vehicle onto the McAllister to try to determine if there's fuel that could leak out.
"It's in such good condition after all these years," said Don Dryden, a commercial diver who was there to provide technical expertise about the condition of the tugboat for McAllister Towing and Transportation of New York, the successor to the company that owned the tug in 1963.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency will analyze last week's findings and perhaps send divers into the tug later this summer to determine how much fuel is in the tanks. If necessary, the remaining fuel would be pumped out, said Paul Kahn, a coordinator for the EPA working at the scene.