HOT NEWS !

From Mark Gatt - Times Malta
 

I wonder if Frans Said (‘Falsities about the shipwreck’, February 12) actually read my article properly before writing his critique.

Nowhere did I mention the discovery of a Roman anchor. At the end of the article, the editor’s note correctly referred to the discovery of a ‘Roman-period lead anchor stock’. This does not mean that the anchor belonged to a Roman ship. In my article I stated (and even the captions under the pictures show) that the ship was Egyptian in origin.

Said is referring to the discovery of a Roman-period anchor with the names of the Egyptian gods ISIS and SARAPIS embossed on the lead stock. Although I did not mention this discovery, he states that “a lot of fuss has been made about a Roman anchor”.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI thought that this discovery merited further study. He was informed of it by Biblical scholar and bestselling author Michael Hesemann and on his trip to Malta in 2010, he asked to inspect the anchor.

What caught these two theologians’ attention is the fact that Egyptian gods are embossed on this anchor and that the Apostle Paul was travelling on an Egyptian grain ship.

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By Jonathan Rose - Mail Online

An Australian treasure hunter has found 50 safes, handguns, bullets, a BMW motorbike, thousands of bicycles, jewellery and the odd gold coin while travelling across the world for more than 15 years.

Leigh Webber, 40, known as the Bondi Treasure Hunter, specialises in underwater treasure hunting, from magnet fishing in Amsterdam to underwater metal detecting in Ibiza and Thailand.

His passion for treasure hunting began one summer while swimming at Bondi Beach in his hometown of Sydney, Australia.

'I'm a surfer. I grew up surfing and even on the flat days I liked to be in the water,' he told MailOnline Travel.

'On one of the flat days I went for a snorkel and in a spot where people jump in I noticed there were coins on the bottom of the seafloor.

'I dusted away some sand and there were even more coins. I thought "oh my gosh" and a light went on - "I'm gonna get me an underwater metal detector".

I just started to get addicted as it was so much fun. 'I noticed everyone around me was looking for fish and I was like "guys, you don't know what you are missing!"'

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From UK Today

Academics are creating a digital map of ‘The London‘, an ill-fated 17th century warship, based on remains that have been submerged for 350 years. The impressive 120-foot ship mysteriously exploded in the Thames Estuary near Southend Pier in Essex and sank on March 7, 1665, killing 300 people.

Divers have been investigating the remains of the vessel, which originally had 76 guns and was one of the most important ships in the Commonwealth Navy.

The London was one of only three completed wooden second rate ‘large ships’ that were built between 1600 and 1642 – and is the only one whose wreck still survives. 

The London was a 76-gun ship built for the navy of the Commonwealth of England at Chatham by shipwright John Taylor Built in Chatham in Kent by shipwright John Taylor, it played a significant role in British history, serving in both the Cromwellian and Restoration navies.

It formed part of the fleet that brought Charles II back from the Netherlands in 1660 to restore him to the throne, to end the anarchy which followed the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and his son Richard Cromwell taking power.

But it blew up when gunpowder on board caught fire as the ship was en-route to collect supplies after being mobilised to take part in the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665 to 1667.

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By Keith Drew - BBC

Our boat was only half a dozen miles out of St Mary's, the main island in the Isles of Scilly, but the sea had become a different beast entirely.

The waters that lulled against the harbour walls were long gone, and as we arced around the Western Rocks – a notorious cordon of razor-sharp skerries at the very south-westerly reaches of England – the swell surged.

Waves slapped against the bow as the boat keeled to and fro. The water was the colour of midnight, and I peered into the darkness for a sign of the HMS Association, one of 1,000 shipwrecks that lie splintering into the seabed around Scilly.

Two parallel reefs, much of which is submerged at high water, the Western Rocks posed a formidable threat to sailors bound for safe harbour in Tresco or St Mary's. And the names that each cluster of jagged granite has been given over the years – Inner Rags, Tearing Ledge – hint at the devastation wrought.

"It is doubtful if any collection of rocks in the whole of the British Isles has a worse reputation," said Richard Larn OBE, president of the International Maritime Archaeological & Shipwreck Society and author of Sea of Storms: Shipwrecks of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. "This immense area of hidden danger has been the setting for the worst of the many wreck disasters on Scilly."

None, though, have been more tragic, nor played a more significant role in history, than the sinking of the Association in the early years of the 18th Century.

A 90-gun, second-rate English warship, HMS Association was the flagship of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, who had worked his way up from lowly cabin boy to become Admiral of the Fleet in 1705.

Shovell had distinguished himself in the Nine Years' War and in early skirmishes of the War of the Spanish Succession, but after a summer spent (unsuccessfully) laying siege to the French port of Toulon, he set sail for home, departing from Gibraltar for England in late September 1707.

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By Rebecca Speare-Cole - Sky News

Two divers are missing and presumed dead after they were reported to be trapped on a wreck off the coast of Cornwall. HM Coastguard confirmed that the rescue phase of their search is over and it has now become a recovery operation.

The two divers were exploring HMS Scylla, a popular diving destination near Whitsand Bay, when their dive boat reported to HM Coastguard that they had become trapped.

A third diver managed to get to the surface and is being treated for decompression at DDRC in Plymouth.

The coastguard launched a coordinated search with a helicopter from Newquay as well as both Plymouth RNLI lifeboats and Looe's RNLI lifeboat. Devon and Cornwall Police are also involved.

The coastguard said the search continued until the early hours of the morning but the divers were not found.

From The Conversation

In collaboration with the United States Navy’s Underwater Archaeology Branch, I taught a computer how to recognize shipwrecks on the ocean floor from scans taken by aircraft and ships on the surface.

The computer model we created is 92% accurate in finding known shipwrecks. The project focused on the coasts of the mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico. It is now ready to be used to find unknown or unmapped shipwrecks.

The first step in creating the shipwreck model was to teach the computer what a shipwreck looks like. It was also important to teach the computer how to tell the difference between wrecks and the topography of the seafloor. To do this, I needed lots of examples of shipwrecks.

I also needed to teach the model what the natural ocean floor looks like. Conveniently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps a public database of shipwrecks.

It also has a large public database of different types of imagery collected from around the world, including sonar and lidar imagery of the seafloor. The imagery I used extends to a little over 14 miles (23 kilometers) from the coast and to a depth of 279 feet (85 meters).

This imagery contains huge areas with no shipwrecks, as well as the occasional shipwreck.

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By Ellen Gustoskey - Mental Floss
 

By the time divers recovered 168 bottles of champagne from a trade schooner shipwreck near Finland, the bubbly beverage had had plenty of time to mature—about 170 years, to be precise.

But while the Baltic Sea had kept it in technically drinkable condition, the champagne didn’t age all that gracefully. Tasters compared its flavor to “animal odor” and “wet hair” (though it did mellow out once it had a chance to air out).

On this episode of The List Show, Mental Floss editor-in-chief Erin McCarthy is diving deep to unearth all the most fascinating stories behind objects that went down with their ships.

The champagne isn’t the most questionable shipwreck item that adventurous tasters have sampled—that distinction probably goes to cheese salvaged from a 17th-century vessel.

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By George Mair - Mail Online

A rare bottle of whisky salvaged by The Mail on Sunday from a shipwreck that inspired the film Whisky Galore! has fetched a record £12,925. The sum is thought to be the highest ever paid at auction for a single bottle of Scotch from the wreck of the SS Politician, which ran aground in 1941 near the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides.

The blended whisky was recovered during a dive sponsored by the MoS in 1987, and offered as the first prize in a poem competition won by Donald McLaren of Dundee, who passed away aged 78 in 2016.

Mr McLaren’s daughter, Nicola Hastie, offered the bottle in The Grand Whisky Auction’s online sale, where it attracted global interest, and a bidding war saw the price soar to double its £5,000-£6,000 estimate.

Mrs Hastie, 57, who will share the proceeds with brother Andrew, said: ‘It was amazing.

Dad was an avid reader of The Mail on Sunday and read it from cover to cover every week. ‘He was delighted to win such an historic bottle thanks to his poem, but he would be very happy with this outcome.

It feels like Dad’s still looking after us. ‘I don’t know who bought the whisky, but I would love to think that it might go on display for people to enjoy.’

Of her plans for her share of the proceeds, she added: ‘I’m going to visit Rothesay, where my dad grew up, for the first time, to see where he lived and went to school.

‘Dad and I enjoyed art so I’ll look for a painting of Rothesay to hang next to his framed poem as a reminder of him. Also, I’ve never seen Whisky Galore! so I’ll buy it on DVD.’

The 8,000-ton SS Politician was bound for Kingston in Jamaica and New Orleans when it ran aground.

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