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By Marex

A crown court in Newcastle, UK has sentenced a Dutch salvage company to a fine of nearly $320 million for illegally scrapping a WWI-era shipwreck in the Celtic Sea. 

In August 2016, the Royal Navy vessel HMS Severn was on patrol around the Isles of Scilly when she was tasked to investigate the movements of the Dutch-registered salvage ship Friendship. Severn's crew found the Friendship lifting steel and copper from the bottom with a grapple. This scrap came from the wreck of the SS Harrovian, a steamship that was sunk by a German U-boat during WWI.

The Severn launched a boarding party, and when the crew came aboard the Friendship, they found that the vessel's master did not have a salvage license for the $115,000 in metal on board. They put a scratch crew together, impounded the vessel and sailed her to the port of Fowey, where she was handed over to the UK Maritime Management Organization.

Prosecutors pressed charges against the Friendship's captain, Walter Bakker, and shipowner Friendship Offshore BV for three unlicensed salvage operations at the wreck site. In the course of the trial, Bakker admitted that he did not have the relevant marine licence and showed how he had manipulated the vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) in order to avoid detection.

After an 18-month trial, the prosecution won their case and secured steep fines and penalties for the owner. The master also received a small fine of about $2,600. 

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By 9News

Daryl Weathers remembers trying to pull men from the sea off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands after a US Navy destroyer hit a mine left by the Japanese following the only World War II battle fought on North American soil.

The explosion, which ripped the stern off the USS Abner Read, also covered many of the men in oil, which prevented some from being rescued.

“They were so slippery, you couldn’t get ahold of them,” the 94-year-old Weathers said this week from his home in Los Angeles.

The remaining 250 crew members made the ship watertight, and it limped back to the West Coast for repairs. Only one body among the 71 men killed was recovered. Nearly 75 years later, scientists using multi-beam sonar have discovered the 23-metre stern about 88 metres below the Bering Sea.

The scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Delaware found it last month during a research mission funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The researchers confirmed the discovery with a remotely operated craft, which provided high definition video in real time to those on the research ship.

“To hit success is obviously extremely joyous for everybody. There’s lots of cheering you know, it’s like scoring a touchdown,” said Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist with Scripps.

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From Korea Joongang Daily

Police issue travel ban on Shinil CEO for defrauding investors.

The Korean authorities are ratcheting up their investigation into Shinil Group, the company that claimed to have found a sunken Russian shipwreck, as key figures in the firm allegedly pulled off a cryptocurrency racket that promised to pay investors in sunken treasure.

Seoul’s Gangseo District Police issued a travel ban Monday on Choi Yong-seok, the CEO of Shinil Group, and others associated with the company for allegedly plotting to encourage investors to buy its own cryptocurrency by reimbursing them with gold from the ship, which Shinil estimated was worth around 150 trillion won ($131.8 billion).

The police are expected to summon the head of the company and other related individuals. Experts and some local media outlets raised doubts over the claim, and the CEO himself admitted that there is no firm evidence that the ship contained anything of value in a media briefing held last week.

Despite the lack of evidence, the group attracted tens of billions of won worth of investment by launching its own cryptocurrency, called Shinil Gold Coin. In return for the investment, the group promised to pay investors with gold from the ship.

This point prompted the Financial Supervisory Service to begin its probe into the company. Behind the investment scam was Yu Ji-beom, head of an affiliated Shinil Group based in Singapore.

He spearheaded the establishment of a cryptocurrency exchange called Donskoi International Exchange and uploaded postings regarding the shipwreck on a blog and Instagram account.

Yu has previously been convicted of real estate fraud, according to his acquaintances.

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By Iain Burns - Mail Online

The first submarine to down an enemy ship was sunk itself after its crew failed to release an emergency weight to help it resurface.

Crew aboard the Confederate vessel HL Hunley did not disconnect the 1,000lb keel blocks to help it rapidly resurface, resulting in the sub being trapped underwater and the men dying from lack of oxygen.

Scientists who removed the corrosion, silt and shells from the boat found the levers all locked in their regular position, solving a mystery dating back to 1864. The blocks would typically keep the sub upright, but also could be released with three levers.

That would allow it to surface rapidly, archaeologist Michael Scafuri, who has worked on the submarine for 18 years, said.

'It's more evidence there wasn't much of a panic on board,' Scafuri said. The Hunley and its eight crewmembers disappeared in February 1864 in Charleston Harbor shortly after signaling it had placed explosives on the hull of the Union ship the USS Housatonic.

The Hunley had delivered a blast from 135 pounds of black powder below the waterline at the stern of the Housatonic, sinking the Union ship in less than five minutes.

Housatonic lost five seamen, but came to rest upright in 30 feet of water, which allowed the remaining crew to be rescued after climbing the rigging and deploying lifeboats. Ever since the Hunley was raised from the ocean floor in 2000, scientists have worked to determine why the sub never returned to the surface.

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By Keiligh Baker - Mail Online

Scientists exploring the wreck of a ship which sank off the Kent coast claiming all 237 crew have found a cache of silver coins which had been sewn into the clothes of those who died.

The crew and cargo of the 18th-century Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship the Rooswijk were wrecked on the treacherous Goodwin Sands near Dover.

Maritime archaeologists have been diving on the site, 85ft down on the sea bed, continuing the excavations which started last summer, with the aim of revealing more of the ship's story. The Rooswijk sank on the notorious sand bank - known as 'the great ship swallower' - in January 1740 with all 237 crew lost while carrying a cargo of silver ingots, cut stone and iron bars.

But archaeologists have now uncovered lots of other, older coins at the wreck site including ducatons from the Republic and the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium) that were not part of the sanctioned cargo. This suggests that the Rooswijk's passengers and crew were carrying extra silver to trade illegally.

Other coins found during the dives have small holes deliberately made in them, an indication that the crew sewed them into their clothes to smuggle to the Dutch East Indies. Concealing the coins in this way also kept them safely hidden from others on board.

At this time historians know people were smuggling silver in their shoes and belts, such was the demand overseas.

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From the Dutch News

The Netherlands and Indonesia are to set up a joint team to protect Second World War shipwrecks being plundered on the sea bed.

Foreign affairs minister Stef Blok said he had agreed with his Indonesian counterpart to set up a team to locate and protect vulnerable wrecks by the end of the year. It follows the discovery last year that three Dutch wrecks had disappeared from the bottom of the Java Sea, having apparently been taken by scrap dealers.

At least 110 Dutch ships that were sunk during the Pacific Ocean campaign are currently lying in Indonesian waters.

On a visit to Jakarta, Blok said the Indonesian government was aware of the cultural significance of the shipwreck sites to the Netherlands.

The locations of the three missing vessels – the SNLMS De Ruyter, Java and Kortenaer – will be marked as commemorative sites. The ships were sunk by the Japanese fleet in 1942, with the loss of around 1,100 sailors.

From Haye Kesteloo - Drone DJ

A couple of days ago, drone enthusiast David Eighteen took his Yuneec Typhoon H to the waterfront of the River Medway and sort of stumbled upon this almost 100-year-old U-boat while flying his drone.

David’s hi-res aerial photos and some additional research into this shipwreck make for a very interesting story and it is a great example of how drones can open up a new world that otherwise may go unnoticed.

The almost 100-year-old German U-boat from the First World War was first spotted around 2013 after a big storm had reshaped the mudflats of the River Medway near Humble Bee Creek at Stoke Saltings in England. After the First World War, many German U-boats were brought up the Thames Estuary to be dismantled and re-purposed.

The diesel engines that powered the submarine, for instance, are believed to have ended up at a cement factory. The hulls were typically scrapped.

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From Connor Boyd - Daily Mail

A pair of shipwreck divers who stripped thousands of pounds worth of metal from a sunken World War One ship have been jailed.

Kent Police said Nigel Ingram, 57, and John Blight, 58, of Winchelsea, East Sussex, looted a Royal Navy vessel - HMS Hermes - at the bottom of the English Channel in 2014.

The protected 19th century cruiser was converted into an aircraft ferry and depot ship ready for the start of the First World War but was sunk by a German submarine in the Dover Strait in October 1914, causing the loss of 44 British lives.

A jury at Canterbury Crown Court found both men guilty of fraud for not disclosing the recovered items in order to make a financial gain. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Ingram, who was convicted of four counts of fraud and one count of money laundering, was jailed for four years.

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