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By Jim Mcbeth


They are scenes from a world at war, a unique bird's-eye view from which death and destruction are diluted by great distance. An aircraft propeller beats high above boats criss-crossing the English Channel on the morning of the D-Day landings at Normandy.

In another, the battleship Bismarck lies at anchor, its crew unaware that a photograph taken high above will, within days, lead to their deaths.

And, from such a height above Clydebank, it is difficult to appreciate the destruction of an entire community. The pictures are just a few of millions of images being brought to Scotland to create the world's largest collection of its kind.

The Aerial Reconnaissance Archive - known as Tara - contains 10million photographs taken by surveillance aircraft during the Second World War.


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From Travel Video TV


The late Mel Fisher, one of the 20th century's best-known shipwreck salvors, is to be honored with a Key West festival that also commemorates the 23rd anniversary of his most famous find.

Mel Fisher Days is set to begin Thursday, July 17, and continue through Sunday, July 20 -- the anniversary of Fisher's discovery of the shipwrecked Spanish treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha in the waters off Key West.

Fisher and his Treasure Salvors crew uncovered a huge cache of Atocha treasure and artifacts, hailed by the world press as the shipwreck find of the 20th century, in 1985 after a 16-year search.

The galleon was wrecked during a 1622 hurricane approximately 35 miles southwest of Key West.

History aficionados can view Atocha artifacts and treasures at Key West's Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, 200 Greene St., operated by the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society that Fisher established in 1982.

Objects on display include gold and silver bars and coins, rare navigational instruments, cannons and smaller weapons, religious and secular jewelry and even a 77.7-carat emerald.

From The Times

It has been a source of enduring fascination for archaeologists and amateur Egyptologists everywhere: what exactly happened to the sarcophagus of Menkaure, one of Egypt's greatest Pharaohs ?

Now, more than 170 years after it was found and lost, the mystery could be solved.

Built from polished blue basalt to transport the king's earthly remains to the next world, the elaborately decorated vessel lay hidden inside the third-largest of Giza's renowned Pyramids for more than 4,000 years.

In 1837 the British colonel Richard William Howard Vyse blasted his way into Menkaure's sepulchral chamber using gunpowder and discovered the stone casket.

The mummy was missing by that time — ancient Arabic graffiti indicated that the colonel was not the first to find the chamber — and he realised that his discovery could open the way for a new generation of grave robbers.

“As the sarcophagus would have been destroyed had it remained in the Pyramid,” he noted in his diaries, “I resolved to send it to the British Museum.”

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By Shannon Molloy


Two con-artist treasurer hunters who duped 130 investors out of $630,000 by promising to salvage gold from shipwrecks on the bottom of the ocean have been sentenced to jail. 

Lawrence James Phillips, 37, and Christopher Paul Woolgrave, pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count each of operating an unregistered managed investment scheme and faced sentencing today. 

Brisbane's District Court heard the pair had sought money from private investors to salvage treasure from shipwrecks sitting at the bottom of the ocean in South-East Asia. 

A total of 130 Australian investors coughed up $US590,490 ($AU629,071) between January 2002 and May 2003. 

Phillips and Woolgrave produced an information memorandum that was circulated amongst potential participants of the scheme.

 

By Rebecca Morelle


A treasure trove of artefacts is being recovered from what experts describe as one of the most important maritime discoveries since the Mary Rose. 

The late 16th Century shipwreck hails from a pivotal point in England's military history. 

The raised haul includes a 2m-long (7ft) cannon, which will give archaeologists an insight into Elizabeth I's naval might. The wreck, discovered 30 years ago, is situated off the coast of Alderney. 

Dr Mensun Bound, excavation leader and marine archaeologist from Oxford University, said: "This boat is really grade A in terms of archaeology - it is hard to find anything that really compares with it."

By Patrick White


The last time anyone laid eyes on her, the Ontario was the most-feared ship on the Great Lakes. 

It was 1780. Yankee militias were threatening to storm across Lake Ontario and seize Montreal from the British. And if it weren't for the intimidating profile of the 226-ton Ontario – 22 cannons, two 80-foot masts, a beamy hull with cargo space for 1000 barrels – they just may have. 

But six months after she launched, the pride of the Great Lakes fleet sailed into a Halloween squall with around 120 passengers on board and was never seen again. It remains the worst-ever disaster recorded on Lake Ontario, according to Kingston historian Arthur Britton Smith. 

For 228 years, the Ontario eluded countless shipwreck-hunters, thwarting any explanation of her disappearance and fanning rumours of a priceless booty on board.

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From the Independent

Laden with jewels and treasures plundered from Madagascar, the French galleon La Vierge du Bon Port was barely a day from home and safety on 9 July 1666, when it was attacked by British privateers off the Channel Islands.

It was a testimony to the value of the French vessel's cargo, and the greed of its captors, that 36 English sailors drowned while trying to drag the riches from their sinking prize.

The loss of La Vierge, the pride of the newly-founded French East India Company, along with two more of the four vessels in its flotilla ended the ambitions of Louis XIV, the Sun King, to turn Madagascar into one of the first colonial possessions of France.

>The ship's booty was valued at £1.5m at the time and included gold, silver, spices and ambergris, the waxy discharge from sperm whales that was prized as a base for perfume. In modern terms, its value could be as much as £200m.

A report of the arrival in Guernsey of the Orange, the vessel that sank La Vierge, said: "Here arrived His Majesties Shipp the Orange whoe having ben in fight with a French ship, which came from the Isle of Madagascar, very richly laden upon account of the East India Company of Fraunce, her ladinge did consist of cloth of gold, silk, amber grease, gould, pearls, precious stones, corall, hides wax and other commodities of great value."

La Vierge would enter the ranks of near mythical "El Dorado" wrecks that have been the subject of swashbuckling stories and, more recently, attempts by a new generation of controversial salvage companies to pinpoint their watery resting place.

By Benjamin Gohs

After years of legal wrangling over salvage rights to what may be a 17th century ship, explorer Steve Libert now has at least some assurance Michigan officials will not swoop in and pilfer 28 years of sweat equity and intellectual property.

Libert’s Great Lakes Exploration Group (GLEG) won this most recent battle following the April 22 opinion of the U.S. Sixth District Court of Appeals of Cincinnati, Ohio, demanding the Michigan U.S. Western District Court, Southern Division to correct its mid-March decision not to issue an admiralty arrest to Libert’s GLEG, the lower court has issued the arrest.

“The court shall issue a conditional warrant for the arrest of defendant unidentified, wrecked, and, for salvage-right purposes, abandoned sailing vessel,” stated Chief United States District Judge Robert Holmes Bell in the June 2 filing.

“Upon the Marshal’s execution of the arrest warrant the Court SHALL have jurisdiction over Defendant and no person shall seize, remove, take physical possession of, or otherwise disturb Defendant without prior authorization from the Court.”

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