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By Henry Holloway - Daily Star

Experts claim they have found a biblical shipwreck as they discovered what they believe is the ship's anchor.

The Biblical book Acts claims St Paul's boat was shipwrecked off the coast of Malta. It is said that St Paul was travelling with Jesus Christ’s apostle Luke as they were on their way to Rome.

St Paul was heading to the centre of the Roman Empire to issue an appeal to Caeser when the ship ran aground in a storm and was smashed to pieces by the waves. Holy lore recounts that the sailors desperate the survive the choppy waters cut away four of ships anchors and left them at sea.

Biblical explorers BASE Institute have claimed that they identified one of the anchors, and thus the real location of St Paul’s shipwreck.

BASE founder and Bible scholar Bob Cornuke travelled to Malta where he claims that he discovered the one surviving anchor. He said the surviving anchor verifiably dates to the first century, and the location matches the description in Acts.

Cornuke claims that St Thomas’s Bay on the southeastern shore of Malta is the most likely location of St Paul’s shipwreck. And the anchor BASE claims on their website is the icing on the cake for the discovery, alleging that the four anchors were discovered by four divers in 60s.

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By Victoria Stunt - BBC

It was on 8 June 1708 that Spanish galleon San José erupted into flames off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. The ship had been at battle with the British since late afternoon, and by night, the 62-cannon galleon had disappeared into the Caribbean Sea.

With it, sunk nearly 600 people and up to $20bn worth of gold, silver and jewels.

For centuries, the San José galleon lay lost on the ocean floor. But the mystery surrounding the ship began to unravel in 2015, when the Colombian government announced it had officially been found. Four years later, the galleon is still 600m deep in Colombian waters. Now, it’s at the centre of a custody dispute among parties all staking claim to the San José’s riches.

The Colombian government hasn’t revealed the exact location of the famed galleon, which is often called the “holy grail” of shipwrecks.

But the San José is said to be located close to the Rosario Islands, a tropical archipelago and national park 40km from Cartagena.

Throngs of small motorboats zoom over the waters as they transport beach-going tourists to the islands each day. While being carried across the sea, it’s difficult not to imagine the San José and its treasure, somewhere out there below.

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By Brandon Specktor - Livescience

One-hundred-and-seven years after sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, the ruins of the RMS Titanic continue to rapidly disintegrate into the sea, according to a team of ocean explorers who recently revisited the wreck for the first time in 14 years.

Led by Victor Vescovo — who set a new deep-diving record after piloting a submersible to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (and finding plastic trash there) in May — the team descended 12,500 feet (3,810 meters) to the Titanic's wreck site off the coast of Newfoundland in a series of five dives earlier this month.

They found that the famous wreck has degraded considerably in the past 14 years, particularly near the officers' quarters on the ship's starboard side, resulting in the loss of some of the wreck's most iconic features.

"The captain's bathtub is a favorite image among Titanic enthusiasts, and that's now gone," Titanic historian Parks Stephenson said in footage filmed for an upcoming documentary on the expedition.

"That whole deck house on that side is collapsing, taking with it the state rooms. And that deterioration is going to continue advancing."

First discovered in 1985, the wreck of the Titanic sits in two pieces some 370 miles (600 kilometers) south of Newfoundland. While the ship's king-of-the-world bow and many interiors remain well preserved, much of the wreck is collapsed, corroded and encrusted in "rusticles" of brittle, deteriorated metal.

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By James Rogers - Military.com

The bow of the World War II submarine USS Grunion has been discovered 77 years after the sub went missing off the remote Aleutian Islands in Alaska on her first war patrol.

The Gato-class submarine (SS 216) was sent to the islands in June 1942, according to the Lost 52 Project, which locates lost U.S. World War II submarines. Operating off the island of Kiska with a crew of 70 sailors, the Grunion sank two Japanese patrol boats before being ordered back to base in Dutch Harbor on Amaknak Island on July 30.

But the submarine, which reported heavy antisubmarine activity during its final transmission, was never heard from again. Declared overdue from patrol, the Grunion was assumed lost with all hands on Oct. 5, 1942.

Almost 80 years later, the bow was discovered in 2,713 feet of water near Kiska by underwater drones and sophisticated photogrammetry imaging. The discovery completes another piece in the puzzle of the Grunion's fate.

The main wreckage of the sub was found in August 2007, thanks to the efforts of John, Bruce and Brad Abele, sons of the Grunion's captain, Mannert Abele. The wreck was verified by the U.S. Navy in October 2008.

The latest discovery was made a short distance from the main wreck, with researchers noting that the bow is resting on a volcanic slope on the seabed.

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By James Rogers - Fox News

Archaeologists in South Africa have found the long-lost wreck of a Dutch merchant ship that played a crucial role in the country’s colonial history. The Dutch East India Company vessel “Haarlem” or “Nieuw Haarlem,” wrecked in Table Bay on the evening of March 25, 1647.

The African Institute for Marine and Underwater Research Exploration and Education (AIMURE) explains that, while 58 people traveling on the ship were taken back to Europe by other merchant vessels, 62 were left behind to salvage as much of the ship’s cargo as possible.

The salvagers built a makeshift camp dubbed “Fort Zandenburch,” which they lived in for about a year after the shipwreck. They also came into contact with local indigenous people.

When they returned to the Dutch Republic, the management of the Dutch East India Company decided to establish a “stopover for ships” at the location where they founded their camp. Informally known as the “Tavern of the Seas,” this eventually became the modern city of Cape Town.

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From Space Coast Daily

Robert F. Marx of Indialantic, Florida, passed away peacefully at the age of 82 on the Fourth of July 2019 surrounded by his devoted wife and daughters.

Bob was born on December 8, 1936, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Leaving home at an early age, he embarked on a life of adventure that took him around the world and under the sea.

A pioneer SCUBA diver, Bob was internationally known for his achievements in marine archaeology and maritime history.

Besides being a mentor to many and a famous raconteur, Bob is best known for the archaeological excavation of the sunken city of Port Royal for the government of Jamaica as well as the discovery of the 1656 Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas shipwrecked off Grand Bahama Island.

His expedition was featured in a network television documentary Treasure Galleon narrated by Rod Serling.

A proud United States Marine, Bob was a Staff Sargent and the Director of the USMC Diving School, Vieques, Puerto Rico in the 1950s and a Korean War combat veteran.

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By Jake Rossen - Mentalfloss

For nearly 80 years, two Dutch submarines have been occupying the ocean floor off the coast of Malaysia, with the remains of their crews still inside. They were among dozens of shipwrecks in the same area, all of them casualties of underwater World War II battles.

Now, the ships— known as HNLMS O 16 and HNLMS K VII—are gone.

There’s nothing paranormal at work, though. Instead, the ships have vanished as a result of greed. Scavengers in the area have made a profitable pursuit of placing explosives within the wrecks, blowing them into manageable pieces and taking off with the scrap metal using a crane.

Copper and bronze materials can also be resold. It’s estimated that about 40 ships in Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia have been demolished as a result of such efforts in recent years.

Because the ships are typically considered unmarked graves, the thieves may be committing the crime of desecrating corpses. After several British ships were found ransacked, the UK’s Ministry of Defense urged Indonesia to increase their efforts to protect the ships.

The United States has dispatched representatives in Indonesia to guard ships they believe have been targeted by the scavengers.

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By Allen Kim - CNN

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has designated the first new national marine sanctuary since 2000.

Forty miles south of Washington, the 18-square-mile stretch of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland, has been named the Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary.

It was nominated in 2014 in order to protect World War I-era steamships and vessels, historic shipwrecks dating to the Civil War and archaeological artifacts from nearly 12,000 years ago that have become part of the environment.

"The designation of Mallows Bay as a national marine sanctuary is an exciting milestone for NOAA and an opportunity for the public to celebrate and help protect this piece of our nation's rich maritime history," Acting Administrator Neil Jacobs said in a statement Monday.

"We look forward to working with the state of Maryland, Charles County and other local partners to foster education and research partnerships as well as support and enhance local recreation and tourism along this historic stretch of the Potomac River."

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