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By Leila Macor - Times Live

The big question is if the shipwreck is that of "La Trinite," the 32-gun flagship of a fleet led by Jean Ribault, a French navigator who tried to establish a Protestant colony in the southeast US under orders from King Charles IX.

They probably are, say authorities in Florida, the French government and independent archeologists.

And if they in fact are, this is an unparalleled find, said John de Bry, director of the Center for Historical Archeology, a not-for-profit organization. "If it turns out to be 'La Trinite,' it is the most important, historically and archaeologically, the most important shipwreck ever found in North America," he told AFP.

All indications are that the shipwreck found is the real thing. The artefacts found at the site off Cape Canaveral include three bronze cannons with markings from the reign of King Henri II, who ruled right before Charles IX; and a stone monument with the French coat of arms that was to be used to claim the new territory.

The remains are "consistent with material associated with the lost French Fleet of 1565," said Meredith Beatrice, director of communications with the Florida Department of State.

In 1565, Ribault set sail from Fort Caroline, today Jacksonville, to attack his arch-enemy, the Spaniard Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who had been sent to Florida by King Philip of Spain to thwart French plans to set up a colony.

But Ribault got caught in a hurricane, which destroyed "La Trinite" and three other galleons and ended French dreams of claiming Florida. Ribault and hundreds of other French Huguenots were massacred by Menendez de Aviles.

"If the French had not been driven south and ships sunk by the hurricane, we would have a totally different story," said de Bry. "Florida could have been speaking French for a number of years."

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By Matt Soergel - The Florida Times

France has filed a legal claim to an ancient shipwreck discovered off Cape Canaveral, saying it was part of the French fleet that in 1565 went to the aid of that country’s doomed colony at Fort Caroline in Jacksonville.

That follows a claim by the private treasure salvage company that found the wreck, and seems likely to lead to a dispute in U.S. District Court in Orlando over ownership of the artifacts.

It would be a high-stakes battle: A state archaeology report says the wreck, if it is indeed connected to the French fleet, “would be of immense archaeological significance.”

The wreckage includes at least one particularly spectacular artifact — a granite monument adorned with a symbol of France’s coat of arms, the fleur-de-lis. It’s similar to the one, never discovered, that French Capt. Jean Ribault left at the mouth of the St. Johns River in 1562 to stake a claim to Florida.

“That’s your crown jewel there, that’s your holy grail,” said Chuck Meide, a marine archaeologist who led a 2014 expedition that searched for, but did not find, the lost fleet. “I never would have dreamed this.” That marker’s not likely to be the one left at Jacksonville, however, said Meide.

Evidence though shows Ribault’s 1565 fleet carried several other stone markers to be used in its exploration of the New World, he said. Meide, director of the maritime archaeological program at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum, is among those who believe the wreck is that of the Trinité, Ribault’s flagship, which played a fateful role in the early history of the New World.

Ribault’s fleet of four ships left France to support the small, struggling French Protestant colony at Fort Caroline.

The Spanish came at about the same time, with orders to wipe out the French outpost in land that Spain claimed for itself. Ribault sailed to attack the new Spanish settlement in St. Augustine, but his ships were driven south in a hurricane, leaving Fort Caroline virtually undefended.

During the storm, the Spanish marched north and took over the French colony, seizing firm control of Florida for the next couple centuries.
 

By Henry Holloway - Daily Star

Hitler's bullion stash has been the subject of myth and legend for nearly nearly a century as treasure hunters try to track down the fortune.

Now, a British diver claims the lost gold is not in a bunker or aboard a buried train, but it is instead lying beneath the waves of the icy Baltic Sea off Poland's coast.

Nazi officers tired to smuggle three tonnes of stolen gold bars out of Germany in the dying days of WWII on board refugee ship the MV Wilhelm Gustloff. At today's gold prices, the bars will be worth £100m.

Third Reich officers were notorious for plundering any treasure, and stored valuable gems, metals and artworks in vaults and banks across their empire.

But the ill-fated Wilhelm Gustloff never reached its destination as it was sunk by the Soviets – with 9,500 passengers onboard all perishing – in a shipwreck disaster six times worst than the Titanic.

Former professional diver Phil Sayers exclusively spoke to Daily Star Online about the gold believed to be hidden beneath the Baltic at 450m down on the seabed.

The 61-year-old made the claims after meeting a survivor of the sunken vessel who revealed the tragic ship's incredible secret.

Rudi Lange was the ship's radio operator at the time of the sinking, and witnessed crates of what is thought to be the Nazi gold being loaded on the Wilhelm Gustloff at port in Poland.

The then 17-year-old was the one who sent the SOS after the liner was torpedoed by Soviet submarine S-13. Mr Sayers used Lange's incredible story as the basis of his historical novel Baltic Gold.

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By  Oliver Holmes and Luke Harding - The Guardian

Three British ships and a US submarine that sank in the Java Sea during the second world war have been destroyed by illegal scrap metal scavengers, the Guardian can reveal.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence said it condemned the “unauthorised disturbance of any wreck containing human remains” and requested Indonesian authorities investigate and take “appropriate action”.

The commercial salvaging of war wrecks has caused significant upset among veterans, historians and governments who want to preserve the final resting place of sailors who went down with their ships.

A preliminary report from an expedition to document sunken ships, seen by the Guardian, shows that the wrecks of HMS Exeter, a 175m heavy cruiser, and destroyer HMS Encounter have been almost totally removed. Using equipment that creates a 3D map of the sea floor, the report showed that where the wreck “was once located there is a large ‘hole’ in the seabed”.

A 100m destroyer, HMS Electra, had also been scavenged, the report found, although a “sizeable section” of the wreck remained.

The 91m US submarine Perch, whose entire crew were captured by the Japanese, had been totally removed, the report said.

All four sank during operations in the Java Sea in 1942, when Japanese forces overpowered Dutch, British, American and Australian sailors. The battle was one of the costliest sea skirmishes for the allies during the war and led to the Japanese occupation of the entire Dutch East Indies.

The Ministry of Defence said in a statement that the British government had contacted Indonesian authorities to express “serious concern” and request they investigate and take “appropriate action to protect the sites from any further disturbance.

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By Caroline Torie - WSBT

On this Veterans Day, we remember an important part of World War II history that took place on the waters of Lake Michigan.

The U.S. Navy used the lake to train thousands of pilots heading to fight in the Pacific. Pilots learned how to take off and land on makeshift aircraft carriers. When Pearl Harbor was attacked - the U.S. Navy was not prepared to wage a large-scale war.

The U.S. had to ramp up airplane production and train pilots to fly them. Lake Michigan proved to be a great spot for this naval aircraft training. It was protected from enemy fire because it's insulated by U.S. and Canadian territory.

17,000 pilots became certified naval aviators over the lake. About 130 aircraft were lost to the depths of the lake, and 10 pilots lost their lives there between March 1942 and September 1945.

Close to 50 of those have since been recovered. Many of those efforts are thanks to A & T Recovery, a company that works to rescue these forgotten aircraft. "It was a dangerous operation – especially having to do it all year long. And they had to, because the war didn't stop.," says Taras Lyssenko, A&T Recovery General Manager.

Decades after the last plane dove into the lake, A & T Recovery seeks to bring them back out to see the light of day. They use a side-scan sonar to find the aircraft underwater. It's similar to an ultrasound. Lyssenko says, "It uses a sound wave, and it listens for an echo return, and draws an image of it."

The process of recovering and restoring the planes is a long process. Three of recovered planes are currently at the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo. One is fully restored, while two are undergoing restoration.

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From Mail Online

A former deep sea treasure hunter is allegedly faking memory problems to avoid revealing the location of missing coins minted from gold he discovered in an 1857 shipwreck.

Tommy Thompson rose to fame decades ago when he discovered the sunken SS Central America, better known as the Ship of Gold, in 1988. But now Thompson - who was on the lam for three years - is behind bars, and allegedly refusing to reveal the location of 500 gold coins said to be worth millions.

Thompson has been held in contempt of court since December 2015 for violating a plea deal in which he was required to answer questions about the coins' location.

But a federal prosecutor said Thompson's answers were evasive and concerning during the first hearing in October 2015. At the next hearing, he refused to cooperate at all and a judge also ordered him to pay $1,000 a day until he decides to cooperate.

The former treasure hunter has maintained that he suffers from a rare form of a chronic fatigue syndrome that has created problems with his short-term memory and made it harm for him to provide complete answers. Thompson also said he could refresh his memory by reviewing documents in 75 boxes held by the US Marshals Service, but that he hadn't been allowed access to that information, according to court records.

But on Thursday a judge ruled that psychiatric evaluations prove that Thompson's isn't suffering from a condition that would prevent him from complying with his plea deal. A test by a court-ordered psychiatrist turned up minor memory problems, the psychiatrist said in a sealed document, part of which the judge quoted in his order.

Thompson 'routinely made references to things that demonstrated his retention of information from minutes and hours earlier,' the evaluation read.

'He remembered things from one day to the next, he recalled aspects of his various cases with great specificity, and he recalled information about his career and business adventures dating back decades,' it continued.

Thompson previously said that the coins had simply been turned over to a trust in Belize, a claim the government does not believe. He is now waiting to serve a two-year prison sentence for failing to appear before a judge three years ago to answer questions about the coins.

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By Merrit Kennedy - NPR

Three Dutch shipwrecks dating back to World War II have mysteriously disappeared from the sea floor, Dutch defense officials say.

The three warships were sunk by the Japanese during the 1942 Battle of the Java Sea, near the coast of Indonesia.

In 2002, amateur divers found the wreckage, where 900 Dutch and 250 Indonesian-Dutch soldiers are buried. A team of divers recently went down to shoot footage of the wrecks prior to the 75th anniversary of the deadly battle, Dutch Navy spokesperson Paul Middelberg tells The Two-Way.

"They dived for the wrecks to find that the wrecks were gone," he says. Using sonar, the divers were able to see the imprints of the missing ships on the sea floor.

The remains of HNLMS De Ruyter and HNLMS Java are completely gone, the Defense Ministry says, while a large portion of the HNLMS Kortenaer is missing.

The ministry says that as the final resting places of soldiers killed in battle, they are seen as war graves and desecrating them is a serious offense.

An investigation is trying to solve the mystery of why the wrecks disappeared, Middelberg says.

He declined to speculate out of respect for the families of the dead. "We don't want to give misinformation or half information," he adds. "We want to find out what happened and come out with that message." This comes on the same day

The Guardian reported that the wrecks of three British ships and a U.S. submarine in the same area have been "destroyed by illegal scrap metal scavengers." The newspaper says it was able to obtain 3D maps of the seabed, which show large holes where the ships used to be.

"The commercial salvaging of war wrecks has caused significant upset among veterans, historians and governments who want to preserve the final resting place of sailors who went down with their ships," the Guardian adds.

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By Zachary Lewis - The Plain Dealer

Cleveland's museums don't house all the city's treasures. Plenty of other great artifacts lie in Lake Erie, just waiting to be beheld.

Beneath the surface, in some cases just so, and often not far from Cleveland ports, sit any number of fascinating old shipwrecks, victims of Erie's violent and unpredictable temperament.

All one needs to interact with them are the right training, equipment and interest. Neither is Lake Erie the only such sanctuary. All the Great Lakes, including those adjacent to Erie, are home to underwater ruins, many of them well over a century old, making of Northern Ohio and the Upper Midwest a kind of playground for the amateur wreck diver.

Intrigued by this portal to history, I've spent the last few years obtaining the proper certification and gear to scuba-dive in the Great Lakes.

Now that effort is paying off. In the last two months, I've visited four separate wrecks and come away from each with what I hope are fascinating images and memories.

Around this time of year in 1864, while the Civil War was still raging, a novice captain on Lake Erie ignored warnings and made the foolhardy choice to press onward out of Cleveland in a storm.

He ended up paying the ultimate price. Six lives, including his own, were lost that September day, when his ship laden with huge grindstones listed and sank in tumultuous waters roughly a mile off-shore, well within sight of what is today Burke Lakefront Airport.

The Sultan was my intro to wreck diving. Resting in just 35 feet of water a quick boat ride out of the Flats, it's relatively shallow and easy to visit and navigate.

All one needs to dive it are basic open-water certification and conditions clear enough to make its features visible. A small buoy marks its location on the surface, and to find it, a diver simply follows a line down to a nearby anchor.

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