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By Chris Ciaccia - Fox News

The USS San Diego was the only major warship the U.S. lost during World War I. Now, nearly 100 years after it sank, and countless theories as to what caused the wreck, researchers believe they have determined the cause of it — a German U-boat in conjunction with a mine.

Presenting the theory at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) fall meeting, Dr. Alexis Catsambis said new survey data – based on additional research into archives, computer impact, flood models and surveying the area of the ocean floor where it lays – all point toward the Germans.

“The legacy of the incident is that six men lost their lives on July 18, 1918,” said Catsambis in a statement obtained by Fox News.

“With this project we had an opportunity to set the story straight and by doing so, honor their memory and also validate the fact that the men onboard did everything right in the lead up to the attack as well as in the response. The fact that we lost six men out of upwards of 1100 is a testament to how well they responded to the attack.”

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By Fiona Stocker - BBC News

Australia is a nation built on beer. When Port Jackson, the site around which the city of Sydney sprang up, was settled in the late 1700s, the people there were hungry not just for food, but for a steady supply of ale and other types of liquor.

In 1796, the colonial trading firm Campbell and Clark commissioned the ship Sydney Cove to sail from Calcutta in India to Port Jackson, with a cargo of provisions including ales, wines and spirits as well as essential supplies such as grain and timber. The ship never reached its destination.

Foundering off Tasmania’s treacherous north coast near the aptly named Preservation Island, the Sydney Cove ground to a halt on a sandbank and sank slowly while the crew salvaged what they could. Artefacts from excavations of the survivors’ camp indicate that this included some of the beer.

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By Paul Cooper - Discover Magazine

For centuries, the medieval fishermen who sailed in the placid waters of Lake Nemi, 19 miles south of Rome, knew a secret. It was said that the rotting timbers of a gigantic ancient shipwreck lurked below the water’s quiet surface.

But the lake was tiny, with an area of only 0.6 square miles. And with no other body of water connected to it, what could a vessel of that size be doing there?

Still, the stories about the gigantic ship persisted. They couldn’t have known then, but at the bottom of this tiny lake were two of the most unique artifacts ever to be uncovered from the ancient world.

Their story would span millennia, bridging the eccentricities of Rome’s most notorious Emperor and one of the twentieth century’s most reviled rulers — only to be lost forever in the fires of war.

Looking at the placid waters of Lake Nemi in the 15th century, none of that would have seemed plausible. But for years now, fishermen had been using grappling hooks to bring up ancient artifacts from the legendary wreck that lay beneath, and selling them in the markets.

An investigation was warranted. In 1446, a young Cardinal and nephew of the Pope named Prospero Colonna, decided to probe for himself the rumours of an unlikely shipwreck at the bottom of Lake Nemi.

He sailed out onto the lake, and sure enough, he could just make out a sprawling lattice of wooden beams. He and his men tried to send down ropes with hooks on the end to retrieve parts of this mysterious structure, but at a depth of 60 feet they didn’t have much luck.

All they managed was to tear off some planks. Colonna had confirmed that the wreck existed, but from there the mystery only deepened.

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By Tom Metcalfe - Live Science

A maritime salvage company of "treasure hunters" discovered some of the United States' oldest European artifacts in shipwrecks near Cape Canaveral in 2016.

Now, the finders are suing the state of Florida for millions of dollars in damages, alleging a conspiracy of sorts between the governments of France and Florida to deprive the company of its share of the spoils.

Global Marine Exploration (GME) alleges that some Florida state officials misused their knowledge of the location of the artifacts — including several 16th century cannons, estimated to be worth $1 million each — and colluded with France to help that nation take control of the shipwreck sites and artifacts.

Between May and June of 2016, GME's divers discovered the cannons and other debris from three colonial-era shipwrecks buried beneath a few feet of sand on the shallow. 

The company was operating using six underwater-exploration permits for the Cape Canaveral area that the state of Florida had approved. But after the company reported its find to state officials, the shipwreck sites and artifacts became the subject of a legal dispute between GME and the nation of France, which was supported in its legal claim by the state of Florida.

Earlier this year, a judge in a U.S. federal district court ruled that the shipwrecks and any artifacts they contained belonged to France, because the ships had been part of the expeditions to Florida in 1562 and 1565, which were funded by the French government of the day and led by the explorer Jean Ribault. GME's research suggests that the ships were Spanish, not French, and that GME would have been able to prove the ships were Spanish if the state of Florida had issued underwater-recovery permits to let GME recover some of the artifacts for identification.

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By Chris Dyer - Mail Online

A Nazi submarine described as an 'underwater Chernobyl' is being sunk into sand to stop deadly chemicals leaking into the sea and the surrounding bed. The wreckage of the German U-boat was left with 1,800 canisters of toxic mercury seeping into the sea off Bergen in Norway.

U-864 was torpedoed by a British submarine in early 1945 as it headed for Japan carrying jet parts. The vessel left Kiel in Germany on December 5, 1944, but the hull was damaged in an attack and the captain headed for Norway to carry out repairs.

Since the battle the U-boat has stayed 500ft below the surface, split into two parts, around two miles from Fedje, an island of 600 people, leaking dangerous mercury into the sea from the rusted containers.

Around 8lb (4kg) a year has oozed into the water of the Norwegian Sea causing boating and fishing in the area to be banned due to the toxicity coming from the wreck. The leak caused high levels of contamination in of cod, torsk and edible crab around the 2,400-tonne wreck.

As a result the Norwegian government is to seal off around 11 acres of the seabed under up to 40ft of rubble to stem the leakage from the cargo on board. A specially-built rig was made by Dutch contractors to dig around the boat and without damaging the hull any further and contaminating the sediment in the seabed.

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By Sallyann Nicholls - Euronews

Almost 60 shipwrecks dating from ancient Greece to the 20th century have been found in the Aegean sea. Thought to be the biggest discovery of its kind in the Mediterranean, divers stumbled upon the find while conducting an underwater survey by the small island archipelago of Fournoi.

The remains of the 58 ships are laden with treasures and antiquities, most spanning the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine eras.

“The excitement is difficult to describe, I mean, it was just incredible. We knew that we had stumbled upon something that was going to change the history books,” said underwater archaeologist and co-director of the Fournoi survey project, Dr Peter Campbell.

“I would call it, probably, one of the top archaeological discoveries of the century,” he added.

Over 300 objects, most of them amphorae (plural of amphora) – ancient Greek or Roman jugs – have been recovered from the shipwrecks.
 

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From Times of Israel

Divers in the Sea of Galilee are searching for a fabled sunken treasure, 100 years after the boat purportedly carrying it was drowned in a World War I battle.

The Ottoman steamboat Sharia was sunk by the British Royal Air Force on September 25, 1918 in the north of the lake, as it sought to flee advancing British and Australian forces during battles for control of the region.

Rumors swirled after Sharia’s sinking that the boat was loaded with gold when it was sunk.

“Sharia served as a bank for the Turkish government,” underwater photographer Amir Weizman of Aquazoom told Channel 10 news, relating the tales.

“The Turks feared leaving the gold and silver used to pay the salaries of soldiers…on dry land due to robbers, so they put it on the boat. At night the boat would sail to the middle of the Sea of Galilee and that’s how they avoided theft.”

The Sharia lay undisturbed at the bottom of the lake for decades.

In 1989 its wreckage was discovered by divers, though no gold was found — only the ship’s name plate and several ancient swords.

Divers returned to the wreckage in 2012 and filmed it for the first time but did not find any gold. In recent days the boat is once again being examined by teams from the Yam-Yafo underwater survey company.

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From Yle.fi

About eight years ago, many bottles of what was purported to be the world’s oldest champagne were discovered in a shipwreck among the islands of Åland, the semi-autonomous maritime province off Finland's south-west coast.

There were hopes the champage, bottled around two centuries ago by famed champagne house Veuve Clicquot, could be auctioned off or mixed with a newer vintage.

However, an analysis of the shipwreck bubbly by the French vintner that made it found the beverage to be undrinkable, according to public broadcaster Åland Radio.

Åland's culture minister Tony Asumaa visited France last week, to hear about the champagne firm's analysis. A sample bottle of the shipwreck bubbly was sent to Veuve Clicquot last year.

At the time, the champagne treasure discovery made headlines around the world. It also caused local controversy when Finland's deputy chancellor of justice reprimanded the Åland regional government for recovering the shipwreck cargo before receiving permission from the National Board of Antiquities.

In 2011 and 2012 Åland's government had sold off some of the bottles for record prices at auction and pocketed the considerable proceeds.

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