HOT NEWS !

By Ceimin Burke - The Journal.ie

A host of historically significant vessels are among the thousands of shipwrecks that can be found on a new interactive map that was launched this week.

The ‘Wreck Viewer’ features exact locations for around 4,000 recorded wrecks, while information on an additional 14,000, whose location has not been fully confirmed, is also available to download.

The oldest wrecks on the map are logboats found in inland lakes and rivers, many of which date back into prehistory.

A recently recorded logboat from Lough Corrib has been dated to 1100 BC. Six Spanish Armada wrecks from the attempted invasion of England in 1588 were successfully identified and plotted.

They are La Trinidad Valencera (Kinnagoe Bay, Donegal), La Juliana, Lavia and Santa María de Visón (Streedagh, Co Sligo), Santa Maria de La Rosa (Blasket sound, Co Kerry) and the Girona (Antrim). You can scout around and try to find the ships of your own accord or even use the handy search function to locate a particular wreck you are looking for.

A spokesperson for the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht said the map has generated a lot of interest since it was launched on Wednesday.

“Because of the international dimension to many of the vessels wrecked in Irish waters there has also been a strong interest from abroad,” the spokesperson said.

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By Jeremy Berke - Business Insider

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are conducting an expedition to explore shipwrecks in the uncharted waters of the deepest parts of the Gulf of Mexico, and they're returning to the surface with some stunning footage.

As part of the mission, the researchers are using remote-operated submersibles to investigate a number of shipwrecks — some of them previously unidentified — that are resting thousands of feet underwater in the deepest, least-explored parts of the Gulf of Mexico.

From a tugboat that was the subject of a daring rescue mission during a tropical storm in the 1960s to German U-boats and pirate ships from the 19th century, the scientists and archaeologists are seeking to learn all they can about the histories of these ships, as the ocean slowly reclaims them.

"On September 29, 1965, New Hope encountered the strong winds and high seas of Tropical Storm Debbie off the Louisiana coast. With the crew having trouble pumping water out of the hull, the U.S. Coast Guard received a distress call around 1 AM and dispatched an aircraft to deploy a backup pump.

Also on board the aircraft was the latest in Search and Rescue technology: a floating radio beacon for use with a radio direction finder. In use, the beacon is dropped close to the distressed vessel to mark its position and to act as a drifting reference.

The seven-member crew boarded a life raft and abandoned the foundering New Hope at 3 AM, just as the aircraft arrived to mark its position with the beacon. Staying on scene until daylight, the aircraft vectored a Coast Guard helicopter to the raft to conduct a safe rescue of the entire crew."

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By Daniel Terdiman - Fast Company

On September 30, 1951, a Navy AD-1 Skyraider on its way from Seattle to Sacramento lost its escorts in the fog off the coast of Northern California.

Low on fuel, the pilot had to ditch. He and his passenger survived impact, but the swim back to shore, off Point Reyes, was rough and they barely made it. But survive they did. And the modern history of American filmmaking is far richer because of it.

The passenger who nearly drowned on that fall day in 1951 was a then-unknown army private named Clint Eastwood.

For 66 years and change, that Skyraider has been lost in the ocean. Now, a team from a Berkeley, California, has set itself an ambitious goal: “We’re going to find that plane.”

Today, National Geographic announced it has acquired Open Explorer, an online storytelling platform for explorers and scientists to document and share their projects.

Open Explorer was originally launched by OpenROV, the Berkeley operation that has built a $1,500 underwater drone known as Trident that’s capable of performing tethered camera operations up to 100 meters from a small hub that sits on the surface.

When OpenROV CEO and founder David Lang started Open Explorer in 2014, he meant the site as an answer to this question: “If Darwin were alive today, how would he have kept his notes?”

With the relaunch of the site, National Geographic is highlighting the work being led by OpenROV lead electrical engineer Walt Holm, who since last August has been using Open Explorer to document the archival research he’s done to try to pinpoint the location of the Eastwood plane.

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By Emily Petsko - Mentafloss

In the fall of 1829, a ship had departed from Put-in-Bay, Ohio, but failed to reach its final destination.

Now, researchers believe they have finally found its remains, which would make it the oldest shipwreck ever recorded in Lake Erie, if their theory is confirmed.

Remote sensors detected the wreckage three years ago, and the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, Ohio, has been working to identify the ship ever since then, according to The Blade newspaper in Toledo.

Experts believe they have narrowed down their search from 200 possible shipwrecks to three. The museum is now raising money via Indiegogo to fund an underwater survey and partial excavation of the ship.

Strong evidence suggests that the wreckage belongs to one particular schooner—a sailing vessel with at least two masts—that was built in Cleveland in 1821.

It was named the Lake Serpent in reference to a carving of a sea serpent on its bowsprit, according to the museum. In the fall of 1829, it left from Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island in Lake Erie, where crews loaded limestone onto the ship.

It's unknown what happened after that, but we do know that the ship never reached its final destination. Local newspapers reported that the bodies of the captain and other crew members washed ashore in Lorain County, located about 25 miles from Cleveland, the ship’s intended destination.

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Nature Rated, exploring the connection between us and nature

By Paul Whithers - Express
 

Some 1,800 British PoWs crammed into three cargo holds of the Lisbon Maru in 1942 but the vessel was shot down by Japanese guards, with the 7,000-tonne vessel sink to the bottom of the East China Sea.

Most scrambled to safety but in one hold, hundreds lost their chance for survival when their only escape ladder snapped. Now 64-year-old Chinese-American businessman Fang Li is searching for offspring and relatives of those that went down with the war wreck.

He said: "It’s time the hundreds of souls that have been detained for nearly 80 years go home. "They spent the last moments of their lives trying to break out, but after so many years, they remain incarcerated."

The businessman has been encouraged after relatives of those on board contacted him and expressed their wish that the remains be retrieved.

He first heard the story of the Lisbon Maru in 2013 when his studio, Laurel Films, was producing a film in the eastern Chinese archipelago of Zhoushan, and was told by a local fisherman that sunken Japanese boat was resting on the seabed.

The businessman began to research the tragedy, finding out it was transporting British soldiers to labour camps in Japan after the surrender of Hong Kong when a torpedo from a US submarine struck it on the morning of October 1.

Japanese guards placed wooden planks and a tarpaulin over the hatches of the holds in an attempt to prevent a revolt but the PoWs broke through and the guards opened fire. Mr Fang has commissioned underwater probes to take pictures of the sunken Lisbon Maru and is convinced he has located the vessel.

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By David Brennan - Newsweek

The wreck of the USS Helena, sunk 75 years ago by Japanese torpedoes, has been found in the Pacific Ocean.

The St. Louis-class light cruiser was discovered almost 3,000 feet below the surface of the New Georgia Sound, off the coast of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The ship was found by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen’s RV Petrel research vessel; the third to be discovered by the team in the past two months.

The Helena sank during the battle of Kula Gulf on July 6, 1943. She was hit by three Japanese torpedoes and went down with the loss of 168 of her roughly 900-man crew.

Under continued enemy fire, groups of survivors drifted to a number of small nearby islands, with some on lifeboats and others clinging desperately to the sides.

Some sailors had to wait 10 days before they were rescued, as other U.S. warships were repeatedly told to cancel rescue operations and pursue nearby Japanese ships. A large group of survivors ended up on the island of Vella Lavella, where locals helped care for the wounded.

Many sailors fled into the thick jungle to avoid being spotted by Japanese patrols. After days in hiding, they were eventually rescued by Navy ships.

After the battle, the Helena’s crewmembers were praised for their heroism and determination to survive, despite the desperate situation in which they found themselves.

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By Doloresz Katanich - Living it

Over 700 personal letters were by chance preserved in an airlock onboard the SS Gairsoppa as it sank to the bottom of the Atlantic in 1941.

A selection of those is now going on show in London. The exhibit in London's Postal Museum tells the story of steam cargo ship, the SS Gairsoppa, which was attacked by German U-boats while travelling from India to Britain in February 1941.

Torpedoed around 300 miles off the coast of Ireland, the ship then sank almost 4,700 metres to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

It lay there forgotten for 70 years. Fast forward to 2011, marine archaeologists discovered the long-lost shipwreck. In its cargo sat millions of ounces of silver, sent from colonial India to the UK to help fund the war effort.

But as divers sifted through the wreckage, another surprising discovery appeared. "And in the conservation lab, slowly and suddenly words and phrases started to appear.

And now this turned out to be a collection of some 700 letters, written from British India in November and December 1940.

It's the largest collection of letters to survive on any shipwreck, anywhere in the world, since people started to write," said Marine Archaeologist and Guest Curator Dr. Sean Kingsley.

"It shouldn't have been preserved, but because there was no light, there was no oxygen, it was darkness, it was like putting a collection of organics in a tin can, sealing it up and putting it in a fridge freezer," explained Dr. Kingsley.

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By James Rogers - Fox News

A massive World War II shipwreck has been raised from the bottom of a harbor in Sri Lanka 75 years after the vessel was sunk following an attack by Japanese forces.

The SS Saigang, a British passenger and cargo ship, was hit by Japanese bomber attacks on April 9, 1942, while at anchor in Trincomalee harbor. With fires raging, the ship was abandoned.

On August 24, 1943, the damaged vessel was deliberately sunk in 35 feet of water to create a pier for naval ships. Authorities in Sri Lanka, however, have decided to move the wreck to create more space in the harbor.

After a five-month operation, the huge 453-foot hull was recently raised by Sri Lanka’s Navy. As part of the mammoth salvage effort, Navy divers worked to restore damage on the rusted hull and strengthen the ship’s structure.

Divers even installed an artificial side to the vessel as part of an effort to recover lost buoyancy by “dewatering” the ship, according to a Sri Lankan Navy statement.

The ship started its ascent to the surface on March 22. News 1st reports that after being towed to the sea off Trincomalee, the wreck was sunk again on Friday as part of an effort to preserve it.

Launched in 1924, the merchant ship was used to transport passengers and goods between the U.K. and Burma, according to the Wrecksite website.

On the day of the Japanese attack, the Saigang was transporting aircraft and ammunition for the allied war effort, most of which was saved.

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