HOT NEWS !

By Mark Willacy

This week marks the 65th anniversary of one of Australia's darkest moments in World War II.

Two hundred and sixty eight people died when the hospital ship Centaur was sunk by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Stradbroke Island near Brisbane, in what was denounced as a despicable war crime.

Now victims' families say the time has come to put the Centaur's ghost to rest and find the wreckage of the vessel.

And the shipwreck hunter who discovered HMAS Sydney says he would love the challenge.

"I think it's like the HMAS Sydney, a loss that has touched people and maybe scarred people for generations," David Mearns said.

In the early hours of May 1943, the Centaur was steaming en route to Port Moresby to pick up casualties.
 

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By Henry A. Stephens

Staffers at Mel Fisher's Treasure Museum say they are excited about a Fellsmere treasure diver's "spectacular" find — two pieces of gem-studded gold jewelry.

Capt. Greg Bounds, master of the salvage ship MV Gold Hound and a Fisher subcontractor, found the items on Sunday at the 1715 fleet shipwreck site known as "Corrigans," said museum office manager Nichole Abt, granddaughter of the late Mel Fisher.

She said Bounds and crew members Chaz Francoviglia, Emigeio Gil, and Doug Kaye got ready and got out to sea as quick as they could on Sunday.

It's a good sign, she said, to find gold this early in the summer treasure hunting season.

"There are only 100 workable days at sea, and the season has just started," Abt said. The second piece may be an earring, she added, but said further research is needed.

After Bounds drops off the pieces, Abt said, they will be on display at the museum, 1322 U.S. 1, Sebastian, for the remainder of the summer.

Corrigans, near the Wabasso Beach area, is the location of one of 11 Spanish galleons that sank during a hurricane in July 1715.

By Simon Worrall


Simon Worrall sets sail for a southern island to meet a man fighting the looters of China's underwater treasure.

It isn't easy getting to Hailing Island. As ever in China, there is the language barrier.

I have been told to head for Yanjiang, a provincial city about three hours south-west of Guangzhou, or Canton, as it used to be. But the receptionist at my hotel hears the name of the city as Zhangjiang. Finally, after much poring over maps, we get the right place...

I am not here for a holiday, though. I have come to meet a man called Zhang Wei, head of China's marine archaeology unit. An energetic man of 52 with a winning smile and a mop of black hair, he drives an Audi and dresses in smart western clothes.

Dangling from a silver chain under his pink cotton shirt is a chunk of jade worth more than £1,000. His cellphone rings incessantly.

"We estimate that there are 2,000 ancient shipwrecks in the territorial waters of China," he says, as we sit drinking "Kungfu" tea from thimble-sized cups at the marine archaeology unit's base, which doubles as a hotel.

In a classroom below us, a group of students, including two from Kenya, pore over barometric tables. Through the window, we can see brightly painted fishing boats bobbing on the waves.

"We have identified more than a hundred sites off the coast of Guangdong and Fujian alone."
 

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From Think Spain

The wreck of a 13th or 14th century ship has come to light on a construction site in Barcelona's Barceloneta district - beside the Balaurd del Migdia and behind Francia train station - that used to be under water.

The remains were discovered at around seven metres below sea level on the site of a new residential apartment block being built by the Sacyr Vallehermoso company on a plot previously owned by Renfe.

Since July 2006, when work began, experts from Barcelona's Archaeological Museum and the regional Heritage department have been supervising the project given the site's central location.

Mayor Jordi Hereu has visited the dig accompanied by the curator of Barcelona's History Museum, Joan Roca, who commented that the wrecked ship seems to have been designed for the North Atlantic which suggests that the port's trading activity was not limited to the Mediterranean.

By Randy Boswell


Canadian scientists will lower robotic probes to the bottom of Lake Ontario next week to conduct the most detailed examination ever of two American ships that sank in a storm during the War of 1812.

The investigation of the wrecks of the Hamilton and the Scourge -- part of the buildup to bicentennial commemorations of the 1812-14 war between Britain and the United States, fought largely in Canada -- could include the first glimpses inside the sunken vessels, which contain the remains of about 50 American sailors lost in the failed invasion of Upper Canada.

The project involves experts from Parks Canada, the Canadian Navy and Coast Guard, as well as private archeologists and officials with the provincial, municipal and American governments.

The five-day, around-the-clock operation -- which is to conclude with a memorial service honouring those who died when the ships went down in August 1813 -- should also quell concerns expressed recently by critics in Canada and the U.S. that too little has been done to research the wrecks or exploit their value as symbols of an epic military struggle, one that ended in a virtual stalemate but shaped the identities of two nations.

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By Werner Menges


The discovery of a treasure-laden shipwreck, estimated to be around 500 years old, in Namdeb's Mining Area 1 near Oranjemund early last month is only the first chapter in what could turn into a long slog of archaeological detective work to unravel the secrets of an ill-fated pioneer of sea travel off the Southern African coast.

The easy part of working on an archaeological site like this is the digging up of the site and recovering relevant material from it, archaeologist Dieter Noli, who played a leading part in the first examination of the wreck site in April, told The Namibian in a telephonic interview from Cape Town yesterday.

The hard work is analyzing what was found at the site, he said.

That is expected to be painstaking labor that could take months before it is even known what the real significance of the discovery is, he said. 

He is convinced, though, that he and his colleagues who will be helping to study the wreck and its contents will eventually be able to find out whose ship this was and what business it was on when it came to an end on that barren stretch of Namibian coastline, Noli indicated.

"We have to piece together the puzzle. It's a fascinating story," he said.

The discovery of the ship has been worldwide news, with Namdeb claiming in its announcement of the find last week that this may be the oldest sub-Saharan shipwreck ever discovered.

By All Hungary News


The legend goes something like this: after the disastrous Battle of Mohács in 1526, the twenty-one-year-old Queen Mary of Hungary fled the encroaching Ottoman army on a caravan of ships headed to Vienna.

But, on her way up the Danube a few ships sank along with their valuable cargo.

It is said that to this day they remain hidden in the murky depths of the river.

Soon, any truth to this story may soon be discovered, or disproved.


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By Ben Sills

Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc.'s 17 ton-haul (15,400 kilograms) of sunken treasure from the Atlantic Ocean came from a Spanish warship and must be returned to the country, a lawyer said after an inspection of the artifacts.

Spain expects the new evidence from the inspection will persuade a U.S. court in Tampa, Florida, to order Odyssey to return the treasure without compensation, James Goold, a lawyer for the government, said at a press conference in Madrid today.

"What Odyssey has done is morally and legally unacceptable," Goold said. The company secretly stripped a Spanish ship of coins and other artifacts then tried to hide them by claiming that it did not know the identity of the ship.''

Representatives of the Spanish government visited Tampa last month to inspect the artifacts recovered from a wreck that Odyssey codenamed "Black Swan." Spain contested the company's claim to the wreck in a U.S. court case in Florida.