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Photo Helen Kristmanson

From CBC News

P.E.I.'s provincial archeologist is starting an excavation of the remains of a ship found near Poxy Island, near Georgetown.

The ship was found on the beach last week by a Georgetown couple.

Most of it is buried in the sand. Archeologist Helen Kristmanson has been examining it, and sent pictures to Maritime ship expert Marvin Moore.

"He's seen a lot of these ships. Based on the photographs, he gave a very preliminary interpretation of the wreck as a 19th century vessel," said Kristmanson.

"The ship has collapsed, so the sides have collapsed down, so it's flat on the ground.

There's a lot of wooden planks and some metal hardware. Really, what we'll be looking at is trying to get a feel for what the dimensions of the timbers were, types of fastener, the species of wood."

Kristmanson said the vessel could be P.E.I.-made. It could have wrecked and drifted into the beach, but it is also possible it was simply tied up and left to rot.

The excavation will begin Monday with a crew of students and volunteers, and will last a few days

By Daniel Miller - Mail Online

A US deep-sea exploration company says it has recovered about 48 tons of silver from a British cargo ship that was sunk by a torpedo during World War II.

The haul comes from the SS Gairsoppa, which was hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat about 300 miles off Ireland's coast in 1941. It now sits 15,420ft deep.

Salvage firm Odyssey Marine Exploration said it is the heaviest and deepest recovery of precious metals from a shipwreck ever made.

So far, workers have brought up more than 1,200 silver bars, or about 1.4 million troy ounces, worth about £23.7 million (about $37 million). 

The company is under contract with the British Government and will get to keep 80 per cent of the haul after expenses. The remaining 20 per cent will go to the Treasury.

SS Gairsoppa was steaming home from India in 1941 while in the service of the Ministry of War Transport when she was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat.

She sank in British waters about 300 miles off the south west coast of Ireland. Only one of her 84 crew members survived.

The 412-ft steamship has remained sitting upright on the seabed with its holds open, nearly three miles under water.

The ship, recognisable by the red-and-black paintwork of the British-India Steam Navigation Company and the torpedo hole in its side, was sailing in a convoy from Calcutta in 1941.

Buffeted by high winds and running low on coal, the captain decided he would not make it to Liverpool and broke from the convoy to head for Galway.

A single torpedo from U-101 sank her in 20 minutes, on February 17, 1941.

Three lifeboats were launched, but only Second Officer Richard Ayres made it to land, reaching the Cornish coast after 13 days.

Full article and photos...

From BBC News

The site of a shipwreck whose crew was rescued by Grace Darling is one of 88 lost wrecks in the seas around England to be investigated by archaeologists.

Nine people were rescued by her and her father when SS Forfarshire sank off the Northumberland coast in 1838.

Now divers are to explore dozens of wrecks lost before 1840 in a bid to find the most important historic sites.

The project, which begins late August, includes vessels which sank off the Isles of Scilly and the Cumbrian coast.

The aim of the project, being carried out by English Heritage on the 40th anniversary of the Protection of Wrecks Act, is to give the most important sites protected status.

Maritime designation adviser Mark Dunkley, said: "Watercraft tell a fascinating story of England's military, industrial and social history, but very little is known about those that existed before 1840.

"That's why we are taking the initiative to investigate pre-1840 ships and boats, from wooden sailing vessels to the very start of iron hulled steam ships.

Full story...

By Leslie Holland - CNN

"Constantly searching for a needle in a haystack" is what Brent Brisben says he does for a living, and on days like Saturday, the payoff makes the work worthwhile.

Brisben owns the 1715 Treasure Fleet Queen's Jewels salvage company.

This weekend, he and his crew of three found quite a few "needles" in their oceanic "haystack" -- 48 gold coins that date back 300 years, to be exact.

The coins, called escudos, were part of the treasure aboard a fleet of 11 Spanish galleons wrecked by a hurricane off the Florida coast on July 31, 1715. It was this famous shipwreck that gave this part of Florida its nickname, The Treasure Coast.

The coins appear to be in good condition, and still have some legible dates and markings. The oldest bears the date 1697; the youngest is dated 1714.

The 48 coins have an estimated value of $200,000 to $250,000, said Brisben.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the expedition is that the coins were found just 100 feet from the shoreline, in only six feet of water.

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From Shangai Daily

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday dived to the bottom of the Baltic Sea aboard a submersible to explore the wreck of a ship that sank in 1869.

State television pictures showed Putin climbing aboard the Sea Explorer 5 underwater research vessel for the half-hour dive to the wreck of a frigate that sank in the Gulf of Finland.

"It is lying on its right side," Putin said in televised reports afterwards, saying the vessel was well-preserved.

"Indeed, it's in perfect state, the name of the ship can be clearly read.

"It's not scary, it's very interesting," he added, referring to the experience.

Television broadcast green-tinted footage showing the Russian strongman carefully inspecting the shipwreck from inside the submersible.

He said he was not at the controls himself, noting he was not skilled enough. "You have to have lots of experience to operate this machine," he was quoted as saying.

The naval frigate Oleg was discovered by Russian divers in 2003 and is now being studied by scientists.

It lies at a depth of 60 meters between the islands of Gogland and Sommers.

The 60-year-old sports-mad president, who returned to the Kremlin for a third term last year, prides himself on keeping in peak physical condition and has raised eyebrows with a series of media friendly stunts in recent years.

From Hydro International

The sinking of the ocean liner Titanic in the night of 14 April 1912 is perhaps the most famous--and most studied--disaster of the 20th century.

A team of astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos, USA, has applied its celestial sleuthing to the disaster to examine how a rare lunar event stacked the deck against the Titanic.

Their results shed new light on the hazardous sea ice conditions the ship boldly steamed into that fateful night.

Inspired by the visionary work of the late oceanographer Fergus J. Wood of San Diego who suggested that an unusually close approach by the moon on 4 January 1912 may have caused abnormally high tides, the Texas State research team investigated how pronounced this effect may have been.

What they found was that a once-in-many-lifetimes event occurred.

The moon and sun had lined up in such a way their gravitational pulls enhanced each other, an effect well-known as a “spring tide“.

The moon’s perigee—closest approach to Earth—proved to be its closest in 1,400 years, and came within six minutes of a full moon.

On top of that, the Earth’s perihelion—closest approach to the sun—happened the day before, the closest approach in 1,400 years.

Full article...

By Cammy Clark - The Miami Herald

On shallow Pickles Reef, 3 1/2 miles off the shore of Key Largo, the sun lit up a mishmash of metal, iron and barrel-shaped cement artifacts that have been commingling with colorful coral and tropical fish for a century or more.

As two curious spotted eagle rays cruised by, a group of divers from the Washington-based Maritime Archaeological and Historical Society surveyed the unidentified wreckage that hurricanes, tropical storms and strong currents have scattered over a site larger than a football field.

“Mother Nature has a way of mixing it up in a soup that is hard to sort out what we have,” the society’s president, Steven Anthony, said during a June trip to the Keys.

“We are trying to put all that puzzle back together, like putting back together Humpty Dumpty, to solve the mystery.”

Is the submerged debris field primarily a single wreck, perhaps one of the 23 ships with names that include Lion, Mimi, SS Oxford and Hope of London that Key West Admiralty court records document as sunk, abandoned, lost or wrecked on that reef in the 1800s ?

Or is it the remnants of several wrecks, from different eras ?

And are the numerous cement cylinders even connected to the wreckage ? Or was it cargo a boat’s crew offloaded to lighten the load enough to get off the treacherous reef, which at some points is less than 10 feet deep ?

“We don’t know, but we have enthusiastically been trying to pin this wreck down for a number of years now,” said Brenda S. Altmeier, program support specialist with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary — in which the wreck site is located.

By Rossela Lorenzi - Discovery

A key episode of the Punic Wars has emerged from the waters near the small Sicilian island of Pantelleria as archaeologists discovered a cluster of more than 30 ancient anchors.

Found at a depth between 160 and 270 feet in Cala Levante, one of the island’s most scenic spots, the anchors date to more than 2,000 years ago.

According to Leonardo Abelli, an archaeologist from the University of Sassari, the anchors are startling evidence of the Romans’ and Carthaginians’ struggle to conquer the Mediterranean during the First Punic War (264 to 241 B.C.).

“They were deliberately abandoned. The Carthaginian ships were hiding from the Romans and could not waste time trying to retrieve heavy anchors at such depths,” Abelli told Discovery News.

Lying strategically between Africa and Sicily, Pantelleria became a bone of contention between the Romans and Carthaginians during the third century B.C.

Rome captured the small Mediterranean island in the First Punic War in 255 B.C., but lost it a year later.

In 217 B.C., in the Second Punic War, Rome finally regained the island, and even celebrated the event with commemorative coins and a holiday.

Following the first conquer in 255 B.C., Rome took control of the island with a fleet of over 300 ships.

“The Carthaginian ships that were stationing near Pantelleria had no other choice than hiding near the northern coast and trying to escape.

To do so, they cut the anchors free and left them in the sea. They also abandoned part of their cargo to lighten the ships and gain speed,” Abelli said.

Full article...