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By Eti Bonn-Muller - Archaeology

An unprecedented find off the coast of Crete.

Crete has seduced archaeologists for more than a century, luring them to its rocky shores with fantastic tales of legendary kings, cunning deities, and mythical creatures.

The largest of the Greek islands, Crete was the land of the Minoans (3100-1050 B.C.), a Bronze Age civilization named after its first ruler, King Minos, the "master of the seas" who is said to have rid the waters of pirates.

According to Thucydides, he also established the first thalassocracy, or maritime empire. The Minoans were renowned for their seafaring prowess, which opened trade routes with the powerful kingdoms of Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant.

Depictions of ships abound on Minoan seals and frescoes. They are detailed enough to show that the vessels were impressive: generally, they had 15 oars on each side and square sails, and were probably about 50 feet long.

But little more was known about actual Minoan seafaring--until Greek archaeologist Elpida Hadjidaki became the first to discover a Minoan shipwreck.

Hadjidaki, a self-described "harbor girl," was born and grew up in the Cretan seaside town of Chania. An experienced and passionate diver trained in classical archaeology, she received funding from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory in 2003 to search for early ships near Crete.

"I always wanted to find a Minoan shipwreck," she says, "so I started looking for one."

For nearly a month, she and a team of three sponge and coral divers aboard a 20-foot-long wooden fishing boat trolled up and down the island's shores.

Together with George Athanasakis of Athens Polytechnic University, they used side-scanning sonar and detected some 20 "targets," or anomalies, that Hadjidaki sent her divers to investigate, often reaching depths of 400 feet.

One by one, they turned out to be a depressing array of natural geological formations and portions of the seafloor ripped up by the nets of deep-sea trawlers, as well as a World War II airplane, a 19th-century shipwreck, and several pairs of shoes.

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By Ted Hayes - East Bay RI 

A Provincetown, Mass. shipwreck hunter has pulled out of a plan to bring a pirate museum and conservation and research center to the Thames Street Armory.

Barry Clifford, who had been chosen by the Newport Redevelopment Agency as a partner in plans to renovate the landmark structure, officially withdrew his plan for the Armory Tuesday afternoon, saying the process had just become too political.

“It just got way too confusing,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got other options, but it’s too bad. We definitely would have come to Newport if it hadn’t gotten out of hand like this.”

Mr. Clifford had been on the fence about quitting the project for nearly a month, and in fact submitted a withdrawal letter to the city on Thursday, Jan. 21. However, he was persuaded by some city officials to “put the letter in a drawer.” That changed Tuesday when one of his representatives had a meeting with city officials that did not go well, he said. That's when he decided to re-submit the letter.

“They knew where I stood, but in the end there was just too much going on. We don’t have time for this,” he said.

Specifically, Mr. Clifford was referring to several issues that have sprung up around the Armory over the past several weeks.

They include differences of opinion on what the best use of the building is, questions raised by some over Mr. Clifford’s financial plan, and other questions about whether the Ann Street Pier would be available for use by his research vessel, the Vast Explorer II.

He said the project needn’t have become so convoluted.

“All we were really looking to do was rent the space,” he said.

“We weren’t looking to really get into a major development. But then to find they want you to spend millions of dollars and then have to rent the building ? It was too much.”

From New Tang Dynasty Television

What does a shipwreck and dentistry have in common ?

It's a riddle that's just been unraveled by Tonga police. Suspicions were aroused when people began turning up to this dental practice with lumps of gold to be melted.

[Teisi Taimani, Dental Surgery Assistant]:
"From last year to this year many people were coming in with it. The end of each side, you see it's like it's gold there, because its shiny on the edge where they cut it."

The pieces being brought in were mostly too big to be melted. Police issued search warrants for five suspects.

[Chris Kelley, Tongan Police Commander]:
"The addresses yielded items and objects as well as the quantity of ammunition which we were also very interested in."

The recovered booty led authorities to a previously unknown shipwreck off the Tonga coast. Four people, including the older man seen here, have been charged with taking items from a sunken vessel.

[Chris Kelley, Tongan Police Commander]:
"Shipwrecks within the territorial waters are government property."

But all that glitters is not necessarily gold - tests are yet to determine whether the yellow metal is the real thing.

See the video...

From TVNZ

Police have found a shipwreck in Tonga after large numbers of people started turning up at dentists wanting to melt down gold items.

The ship is a mystery but four men have been charged with removing items from a wreck and not reporting it.

One of those four is navigator Tuakalau Loufau, who along with three others, has been charged with finding a shipwreck and taking items from it.

The police were tipped off about the mystery shipwreck off the main island of Tongatapu, when people started turning up to dental surgeries wanting to melt down what appeared to be gold.

"From last year to this year many people were coming in with it&the end of each side it's like gold there because it's shiny where they cut it," dental surgery assistant Teisi Taimani said.

The gold-like tubes measured up to 12 centimetres.

"When they came in we can't do anything with it. It's too big, we told them we cant do anything," says Taimani.

But when the police heard - they did do something, issuing five search warrants.

"Shipwrecks within the territorial waters are government property and so you're required when you find one to notify authorities and not to remove any items from that wreck," says Tongan Police Commander Chris Kelley.

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By Pamela V. Krol - Naples News

For years, sunken treasure off Florida’s coast has been a relative free-for-all for anyone with the time and ability to find it.

But proposed rules could make it harder for treasure hunters to collect the prized relics.

Some commercial salvers suggest the waters off of Florida contain more Colonial-era sunken treasure than any other place in the world, with a value estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

Salvage companies estimate at least a million dollars worth of treasure is in the Naples/Fort Myers area alone and artifacts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars are salvaged in and around Southwest Florida, by both commercial and recreational divers, each year.

Treasure hunting has been legal in Florida since the 1960’s. Recently, however, groups of marine archaeologists are fighting to have the practice outlawed.

Many in this camp consider treasure hunting to be little more than state-sanctioned looting of what they believe should be deemed historical sites. These groups are pushing for tougher laws and outright bans in many cases.

Over the past decade, marine archaeologists have successfully championed greater restrictions on Florida’s treasure hunting industry and have recently brought requests for modifications to the state’s rules governing the recovery of historical shipwrecks by private sector salvers.

Their requests would limit salvage permits to a period of one year and narrow search areas to one mile. They would also mandate that an archeologist be on board the search vessel.

The proposal would prohibit hunters from searching for treasure up to 500 yards offshore — the range that is considered the most treasure-rich because storms and hurricanes naturally wash shipwrecks toward the shore.

The rules could threaten the livelihoods of local treasure hunters, such as Captain Kym Ferrell, a Florida native who has been working aboard salvage vessels since he was 14.

He and a small crew of three to four people choose search sites based on historical research, instinct and knowledge of the local waters. Ferrell said he’s found treasure near Naples but would not say where.

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By Matthew Aid with William Burr and Thomas Blanton - National Security Archives

The CIA's Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer.

For the first time, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declassified substantive information on one of its most secret and sensitive schemes, "Project Azorian," the Agency codename for its ambitious plan to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean in order to retrieve its secrets.

Today the National Security Archive publishes "Project Azorian: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer," a 50-page article from the fall 1985 edition of the Agency's in-house journal Studies in Intelligence. Written by a participant in the operation whose identity remains classified, the article discusses the conception and planning of the retrieval effort and the creation of a special ship, the Glomar Explorer, which raised portions of the submarine in August 1974.

The National Security Archive had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the CIA for the document on December 12, 2007.

National Security Archive director Tom Blanton commented that "the Navy alternative to the Glomar Explorer--investigation by a deep sea submersible--sounds more convincing than the claim in the Studies in Intelligence article that Project Azorian advanced the cutting edge of deep sea exploration the way the CIA did on aerial and satellite reconnaissance. To me, Glomar resembles the Bay of Pigs more than U-2 or Corona.

On the latter, they brought in the best people, Ed Land and the Skunk Works, on the former, they only talked to themselves."

Also published today for the first time are recently declassified White House memoranda of conversations from 1975 which recount the reactions of President Ford and cabinet members to ongoing news of press leaks about the Glomar Explorer, including Seymour Hersh's exposé in The New York Times on March 19, 1975.

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Other link of interest

By Jasper Copping - Telegraph

One of the world's oldest shipwrecks has been discovered off the coast of Devon after lying on the seabed for almost 3,000 years.

The trading vessel was carrying an extremely valuable cargo of tin and hundreds of copper ingots from the Continent when it sank.

Experts say the "incredibly exciting" discovery provides new evidence about the extent and sophistication of Britain's links with Europe in the Bronze Age as well as the remarkable seafaring abilities of the people during the period.

Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to around 900BC, as being a "bulk carrier" of its age.

The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze – the primary product of the period which was used in the manufacture of not only weapons, but also tools, jewellery, ornaments and other items.

Archaeologists believe the copper – and possibly the tin – was being imported into Britain and originated in a number of different countries throughout Europe, rather than from a single source, demonstrating the existence of a complex network of trade routes across the Continent.

Academics at the University of Oxford are carrying out further analysis of the cargo in order to establish its exact origins.

By Bill Goldston - Avstop.com

Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the loss of the U.S. Navy airship USS Macon, NOAA on Thursday announced that the wreck site on the seafloor within Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Macon, a 785-foot dirigible was one of the largest airships in the world – comparable in size to the RMS Titanic. It was intended to serve as a scout ship for the Pacific Fleet and had the ability to launch and recover Sparrowhawk biplanes.

In service less than two years, the Macon, based at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, Calif., was damaged in a storm on Feb. 12, 1935, and sank in the Pacific Ocean off Point Sur, south of San Francisco. All but two of the Macon’s 83 crewmen were rescued by nearby Navy ships.

“The USS Macon and its four associated Sparrowhawk biplanes are not only historically significant to our nation’s history, but have unique ties to our local communities, where public museums highlight the airship’s history,”

“The National Register listing highlights the importance of protecting the wreck site and its artifacts for further understanding our past” said Paul Michel, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary superintendent.

The National Register of Historic Places is the nation’s official list of cultural places considered worth preserving.

Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Register is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate and protect America's historic and archeological resources.

Properties listed in the National Register can qualify for federal grants for historic preservation.

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