HOT NEWS !

By Kim Stephens - Brisbane Times

For 200 long years, the Great Barrier Reef has concealed the answers to three maritime mysteries that are now on the verge of being solved.

Three shipwrecks, all believed to belong to vessels sunk in the early 1800s, have been discovered in Far North Queensland waters in the past four months.

Heritage experts are now excitedly working to determine the story behind each one.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority's Bruce Elliott said the three discoveries - two in remote Cape York waters and one off the coast of Gordonvale, south of Cairns - were exciting because they were largely intact.

"These three are all thought to be sailing vessels from the 1800s, all are fairly large and all are in relatively good condition," he said.

"We don't have any of the detail yet, heritage experts are trying to identify the ships, so we don't know at this stage if they were passenger ships or cargo ships."

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By Michael "Beach Mick" Hudson - Beach Carolina

Many unknown treasures and concretion-encased surprises await researchers on the wreck of Blackbeard’s flagship,  Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), near Beaufort. Part two of this year’s dive season resumed this week, and the plan is to recover artifacts from 60 five-foot by five-foot units by Oct. 31.

After nearly 300 years on the sea floor, the artifacts often are locked in a concrete like crust of sand, shells and marine life that is removed during the conservation process.

This summer’s earlier dive ended in mid-June with the recovery of two eight-foot long cannons. To date 15 cannons have been recovered, and six other cannons that then could not be retrieved now await recovery. Plans to lift them in June were upset by unfavorable wind and weather.

“We still hope to recover the other cannons; one is already in place and ready to go,” says Project Director Billy Ray Morris.

“We are seeking a vessel to lift the others since the retirement of the R/V Dan Moore, by Cape Fear Community College.

It was a wonderful partner with us for many years.” The team will ask the college about use of its new vessel, R/V Hatteras, for further cannon recoveries.
 

By Jasper Copping - The Telegraph

But in spite of years of painstaking work, two tantalising details about the vast wooden ship lying off the Dorset coast remain elusive - its identity and how it came to its meet its end.

But tomorrow, as the recovery phase ends, the biggest clue yet will come to the surface when the vessel’s 27ft, 2.4 tonne rudder, complete with Baroque carved face, is brought to the surface.

The team behind the project hope this piece can be added to the jigsaw to allow them to finally solve the 400 year old mystery of what is known only as the Swash Channel Wreck, after its location.

So far, they have established several clues, including more than 1,000 recovered artefacts, to hint at the ship’s real identity and have pieced together a most likely chain of events to explain how it came to be resting in 22ft of water, off the south coast.

The wreck was found in 1990, after a dredger hit an obstruction while conducting routine work in the approaches to the harbour.

Closer inspections revealed it to be the wreck of a 130ft ship, of which more than 40 per cent remained, including parts of the ship’s forecastle, complete with galley and gunports,

An early suspect was the Spanish Armada vessel, San Salvador, lost in the area in 1588.

However, it was eliminated after the tests dated the vessel’s timber frame to wood felled in 1628, from forests in the coastal region of the Netherlands-Germany border, near the modern city of Emden.

Analysis of the artefacts suggest they came from the second quarter of the seventeenth century, giving experts a window of 1628 to 1650, during which the vessel was lost.

Ornate woodwork on the vessel, including four other baroque-style carvings recovered, mark it out as a high status vessel. It was also heavily armed, with 34 gun ports, but the design suggested it was not a warship.

The galley was located in the bow castle, keeping the hull clear for cargo, indicating the vessel was an armed merchantman.

Frustratingly, there remains no sign on board of a possible cargo, suggesting it has either not survived almost four centuries on the seabed or was salvaged at the time.

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By Tia Ghose - LiveScience
 

The oceans surrounding Antarctica may be littered with buried shipwrecks in pristine condition, new research suggests.

Researchers came to that conclusion, detailed Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, after burying wood and bone at the depths of the Antarctic oceans and analyzing the handiwork of worms and mollusks more than a year later.

"The bones were infested by a carpet of red-plumed Osedax worms, which we have named as a new species — Osedax antarcticus — but the wood planks were untouched, with not a trace of the wood-eating worms," study co-author Adrian Glover, an aquatic invertebrates researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, said in an email.

"The wood was hardly degraded either, after 14 months on the seafloor."

That finding suggests that some of the most iconic shipwrecks — including the Endurance, the most famous ship to ever sail to Antarctica — could be perfectly preserved in the icy waters near the southern continent.

Sir Ernest Shackleton first set sail for Antarctica aboard the Endurance. At the time, the ship was the strongest one ever built. Yet it was crushed by icebergs in the Weddell Sea near Antarctica in 1915 and sunk.

More than nine months later and a after a series of harrowing ordeals, the entire crew was eventually rescued.

In any other ocean, wooden ships like the Endurance are quickly devoured by shipworms or wood-boring mollusks.

Antarctica, however, has been treeless for the last 30 million years. Instead, the region is teeming with whales and other cetaceans whose bones sink to the ocean floor.

That raised the possibility that, whereas ocean dwellers feast on wood in other regions, local organisms may have adapted to devour bone in Antarctica.

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By Marc Lallanilla - LiveScience
 

For fans of Italian cuisine, the news of a well-preserved ancient Roman shipwreck — whose cargo of food might still be intact — will surely whet their appetites.

The ship is believed to be about 2,000 years old and is buried in the mud off the coast of Varazze, Italy, according to The Age.

The mud kept the wreck hidden for centuries, but also helped to preserve it and its cargo, held in clay jars known as amphorae.

"There are some broken jars around the wreck, but we believe that most of the amphorae inside the ship are still sealed and food-filled," Lt. Col. Francesco Schilardi, commander of the police diving team that found the shipwreck, told the BBC.

Local fishermen suspected there might be a wreck in the area, because pieces of pottery kept turning up in their nets.

Police divers used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to locate the shipwreck about 160 feet (50 meters) underwater.

"This is an exceptional find," Schilardi said. "Now, our goal is to preserve the ship and keep thieves out.

We are executing surveys and excavations to study the contents of the boat, which is perfectly intact."

Using sophisticated technologies like ROVs, sonar mapping equipment and genetic analysis, marine archaeologists have had considerable success in recent years in recovering well-preserved artifacts from shipwrecks.

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By Jeff Newpher - Your Houston News

The discovery of three shipwrecks last week in the Gulf of Mexico 170 miles from Galveston made possible by a mixture of technology, exploration and science has generated facts, assumptions and a list of questions that may grow to the 4,300 foot depth of water at the wrecks.

For now, the area of the historic discovery is called the "Monterrey Shipwreck” because Monterrey is what Shell Oil had named the area when they were exploring it for potential drilling.

They alerted government scientists that there was something unusual on the floor of the Gulf.

What the scientists from three federal government agencies, one state agency, three universities and a few private foundations know is that during their eight-day adventure, they participated in the country’s deepest archeological and scientific shipwreck artifact recovery.

On Thursday, July 25, at Moody Gardens in Galveston, the participants explained the significance and in some cases, the mystery that is still attached to the wrecks by displaying a handful of the 60 items they recovered from Monterrey.

Fact: the three wrecks are within five miles of each other. Each schooner was approximately 83 feet long and 25 feet wide.

Using a remote-operated vehicle “steered with the precision of a video gamer,” and controlled from the surface almost a mile away, members of the expedition carefully investigated, photographed (more than 600,000 images) and in some cases retrieved the salt water-preserved items from the seabed including dishes, a toothbrush, books, navigational tools, medicine bottles, jugs, bell, animal hides, a corked bottle of ginger, demijohns (bottles) and Spanish olive jars.

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By Justin Murphy - Democrat and Chronicle

Almost 175 years ago, a 52-foot boat carrying a load of limestone ran into a violent storm as it approached the port of Oswego.

The combination of high winds, tall waves and a heavy cargo proved fatal to the five sailors aboard.

But the ship itself, the Atlas, has been located by a team of Rochester-area shipwreck hunters, who hailed it as the oldest confirmed commercial shipwreck site in the Great Lakes.

The find was made last month by a three-man team using a torpedo-like sonar device and a remote-controlled underwater camera the size of a microwave.

Matching the wreck location with the cargo and the ship’s size and construction proved the pile of timber, seaweed and mussels was in fact the Atlas.

The condition of the wreck indicates the ship, sailing from Chaumont, Jefferson County, went down in a hurry after its heavy cargo shifted suddenly in the bad weather.

The deck collapsed on impact, the sides fell away and the two masts toppled to the side.

The boat came to rest at a depth of 300 feet and had not been noticed since it settled there in 1839.

It went down like the stone it was carrying,” said Jim Kennard of Perinton, one of the explorers.

“With a strong northwest gale, the buildup of the waves can get pretty fierce. A boat like that gets hit by a strong wave and that’s all it takes.”

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From Wales Online

Treasure worth £1m remains undiscovered in a shipwreck off the Welsh coast, an explorer claims.

The Royal Charter was on the final leg of her voyage from Australia to Britain when she was smashed to pieces by one of the biggest storms ever to hit Britain off the coast of Anglesey on October 25, 1859.

The ship was carrying hundreds of passengers and crew and a fortune from Australian gold fields.

The death toll of 497 is the highest of any shipwreck on the Welsh coast and was written about by Charles Dickens.

Treasure hunter Vincent Thurkettle, a full-time gold-panner who is leading the exploration of the wreck, admits it's increasingly difficult to find anything of value amongst the remains – but said there’s likely to still be £1m of gold on the sea bed.

“She was probably carrying well over £100m in gold – at least £80m in cargo plus the passengers' personal belongings – and even if 99% has been recovered now that still leaves at least £1m undiscovered,” said Vincent, whose exploration is being filmed for S4C series Trysor Coll y Royal Charter (Lost Treasure of the Royal Charter).

Vincent said: "The debris scattered on the seabed includes everything from broken plates to dress-making pins and coal. The last of the gold may never be found.”

Vincent has uncovered relics which would have been very dear to some of the ship's passengers, including a small, beautifully crafted ring of gold, opal and diamonds and a snuff box engraved with the name Edward Bennett.

Vincent said: “£1m is roughly 1% of the money that sunk with the ship.

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