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BBC News

Dr Margaret Rule clearly remembers receiving a phone call from diver Richard Keen on Christmas Day 1982 saying he had found a ship wreck.

The ship was located in the mouth of St Peter Port and was suspected to be a medieval barge. Closer inspection in summer 1983 revealed it was in fact a Roman ship and so work began to "rescue" it. 

It was raised between 1984 and 1986 and since 1999 has been at the Mary Rose Trust undergoing preservation work.

Dr Rule described raising the ship as "a rescue operation" because "the ship was being destroyed by the propeller wash of the large vessels entering and leaving the harbor". 

She said that discovering it was a Roman vessel was "the most exciting moment of my life" from both a personal and historical perspective.

She explained that the discovery was very important as it is a rare sea going Roman ship, while most found are canal or river vessels and that it would shed light on the trade routes used due to the pottery found from as far away as Spain and Algeria !

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Thalassa - Le Magazine de la Mer

Hier, ils étaient pirates, flibustiers, contrebandiers. Aujourd’hui, ils sont chasseurs de trésors ! Thalassa vous fait découvrir l’univers de ces aventuriers modernes.

En mer, au cours des siècles, des milliers de navires ont fait naufrage sur toutes les routes commerciales du monde. Mais comment les retrouver ? Ce qui était difficilement réalisable il y a encore quelques dizaines d’années, est aujourd’hui possible : rechercher les épaves dans les archives, trouver leur position, les repérer sur place, puis les exploiter.

Ces progrès technologiques ont donné naissance à une nouvelle profession : chasseur de trésors ! 

Qui sont-ils alors, ces aventuriers des temps modernes ? Entre illégalité et légalité, Thalassa part à la découverte d’un monde fascinant où se mêlent la grande Histoire et les faits divers.

Nous rencontrerons Luc Heymans, chasseur de trésors aux Philippines, nous vous dévoilerons les déboires de l’Italie qui veut récupérer un trésor volé par les Anglais, nous croiserons une mystérieuse société américaine de chercheurs de trésors dont les activités sont bien opaques, nous suivrons enfin la police maritime italienne dans sa traque contre les trafiquants d’amphores.

Au fond de l’eau, il y toujours des milliers d’épaves en attente d’être visitées… Alors, chasseurs de trésors, un métier d’avenir ?
 

From the Japan Times

A Japanese-Turkish research team announced Monday the discovery of a British-minted gold coin and a Japanese silver coin from a Turkish warship that sank 120 years ago off Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture.

"Still there should be lots of gold coins" inside the ship Ertugrul, said Tufan Turanli, who heads the underwater archaeological team.

The gold coin, dated 1856, measures 2.2 cm in diameter and weighs 8 grams.

Ertugrul, a 76-meter wooden ship of the Ottoman Turks, sank in a typhoon in 1890 after the Turkish delegation on board delivered a message and decoration to Emperor Meiji.

Of the 650 crew members, 69 were rescued by local residents. The rescue has become a symbol of Japan-Turkey friendship.

The gold coin was retrieved at a depth of 12 meters. The team, which launched a three-year survey in 2008, has already discovered about 5,800 items from the wreck.

WW II Russian tank with German markings uncovered after 62 years.

WW II Buffs will find this interesting. Even after 62 years (and a little tinkering), they were able to fire up the diesel engine !

A Komatsu D375A-2 bulldozer pulled the abandoned tank from its tomb under the boggy bank of a lake near Johvi, Estonia.

The Soviet-built T34/76A tank had been resting at the bottom of the lake for 56 years. According to its specifications, it's a 27-ton machine with a top speed of 53km/hr.

From February to September 1944, heavy battles were fought in the narrow, 50 km-wide, Narva front in the northeastern part of Estonia .

Over 100,000 men were killed and 300,000 men were wounded there. During battles in the summer of 1944, the tank was captured from the Soviet army and used by the German army.

(This is the reason that there are German markings painted on the tank's exterior.) On 19th September, 1944, German troops began an organized retreat along the Narva front.

It is suspected that the tank was then purposefully driven into the lake to conceal it when its captors left the area.

At that time, a local boy walking by the lake, Kurtna Matasjarv, noticed tank tracks leading into the lake but not coming out anywhere.

For two month s he saw air bubbles emerging from the lake. This gave him reason to believe that there must be an armored vehicle at the lake's bottom.

A few years ago, he told the story to the leader of the local war history club 'Otsing'. Together with other club members, Mr. Igor Shedunov initiated diving expeditions to the bottom of the lake about a year ago. At the depth of 7 meters they discovered the tank resting under a 3 meter layer of peat.

Enthusiasts from the club, under Mr Shedunov's leadership, decided to pull the tank out. In September of 2000 they turned to Mr. Aleksander Borovkov, the manager of the Narva open pit company AS Eesti Polevkivi, to rent the company's Komatsu D375A-2 bulldozer.

(Currently used at the pit, the Komatsu dozer was manufactured in 1995, and has recorded 19,000 operating hours without major repairs.)

The pulling operation began at 09:00 and was concluded at 15:00, with several technical breaks. The weight of the tank, combined with the travel incline, made for a pulling operation that required significant muscle. The D375A-2 handled the operation with power and style.

The weight of the fully-armed tank was around 30 tons, so the active force required to retrieve it was similar. A main requirement for the 68-ton dozer was to have enough weight to prevent slippage while moving up the hill.

After the tank surfaced, it turned out t o be a 'trophy tank' that had been captured by the German army in the course of the battle at Sinimaed (Blue Hills) about six weeks before it was sunk in the lake. Altogether, 116 shells were found on board.

Remarkably, the tank was in good condition, with NO RUST, and all systems (except the engine) in working condition. This is a very rare machine, especially considering that it fought both on the Russian and the German sides. Plans are underway to fully restore the tank.

It will be displayed at a war history museum in the Gorodenko village on the left bank of the River Narv.

From FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology

A team of chemists from the University of Valencia (UV) has confirmed that the substance used to hermetically seal an amphora found among remains at Lixus, in Morocco, was pine resin.

The scientists also studied the metallic fragments inside the 2,000-year-old vessel, which could be fragments of material used for iron-working.

In 2005, a group of archaeologists from the UV discovered a sealed amphora among the remains at Lixus, an ancient settlement founded by the Phoenicians near Larache, in Morocco. Since then, researchers from the Department of Analytical Chemistry at this university have been carrying out various studies into it components.

The latest study, published recently in the journal Analytical Letters, focuses on the resinous material that sealed the vessel.

There are remains of a circular rope-effect decoration around the mouth of the amphora, and on which some fingerprints of the craftsman who moulded it can still be seen.

It would probably have been sealed with a lid of cork or wood, of which nothing remains, possibly including a ceramic operculum, such as those found nearby.

"We have studied the substance that was used to seal the container using three different techniques, and we compared it with pine resin from today", José Vicente Gimeno, one of the authors of the study and a senior professor at the UV, tells SINC.

The results confirm that the small sample analysed, which is 2,000 years old, contains therpenic organic compounds (primaric, isoprimaric and dehydroabietic acids), allowing this to be classified as resin from a tree from the Pinus genus.

The researchers have identified some substances that indicate the age of resins, such as such as 7-oxo-DHA acid, although this kind of compound was not abundant in the sample due to the amphora's good state of preservation.

In addition, Gimeno says that the archaeological resin of the amphora found was hard and blackish with yellow spots, unlike present-day resin, which is more malleable and orangey in colour, similar to the fresh sap of the tree.

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Desde Elcorreo Digital

Era un secreto a voces. «Sólo en el Golfo de Cádiz hay más oro que en el Banco de España», dijo hace ya dos décadas el catedrático Manuel Martín Bueno.

Lo sabían aventureros como Robert Max, el arqueólogo norteamericano que cuantificó el botín hundido en la desembocadura del Guadalquivir en 116.000 millones de euros. O el investigador Gonzalo Millán del Pozo, que estima que la cifra supera los 160.000 millones.

Lo tenían claro especialistas del prestigio de Javier Nieto, que denunció en los 70 que buceadores franceses venían de vacaciones a nuestro país y aprovechaban el vacío legal para saquear los fondos marinos. Y las 28 empresas que en EE UU se dedican, oficialmente, a «localizar y rescatar pecios».

Lo intuían los documentalistas del Archivo de Indias, los aficionados a las inmersiones superficiales que desde los 60 acumulan colecciones particulares dignas de cualquier museo, los tasadores, los compradores y los anticuarios.

El litoral era un filón, inmenso y desprotegido. Se trataba de llegar, sondear las coordenadas, cargar la botella, 'pescar' las piezas y venderlas, a ser posible, dentro de nuestras fronteras.

Algunos cazatesoros, como el italiano Claudio Bonifacio, hasta concedían entrevistas, y posaban tan tranquilos para la foto de primera, bronceados y con gesto intrépido, emulando a los viejos lobos de mar.

Al circuito sólo le faltaban anuncios en prensa, vallas publicitarias y luces de neón. Reinaba la impunidad.

A mediados de los 80, el Gobierno dio los primeros y tímidos pasos para atajar el desavío, incluyendo los yacimientos submarinos en la Ley de Patrimonio Histórico.

En los 90, los Centros de Arqueología Subacuática (Cataluña, Cartagena, Andalucía) se convirtieron en las primeras entidades especializadas en la investigación histórica de los fondos.

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By Expos Unlimited - Collectors Universe

A decade after its first appearance, the precedent-setting "Ship of Gold" display showcasing California Gold Rush-era sunken treasure recovered from the 1857 shipwreck of the SS Central America again will dock in Long Beach, California.

"The ‘Ship of Gold’ exhibit is coming out of dry dock and returning to its first port of call, the Long Beach Expo," said Ronald J. Gillio, Expo General Chairman.

"The eye-opening display on the convention center floor is housed in a specially-constructed 40-foot long representation of the famous ship’s hull. This will be the first public appearance of the ‘Ship of Gold’ exhibit anywhere in the country in six years."

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By Mark R. Kent - Al
 

A Virginia archaeologist is using modern technology to locate and mark gravesites in the older half of Old Plateau Cemetery.

The cemetery is at Bay Bridge Road and Cut-Off Road, near the Cochrane-Africatown Bridge.

Often known as Africatown Cemetery, it is the final resting place for Cudjoe Lewis and 109 other surviving African slaves from the slave ship Clotilde.

On a Sunday in July 1859, the Clotilde, also known as the Clotilda, struck a sandbar the Mobile River.

The federal government had outlawed slave importations since 1808, but slavery still was legal in Southern states. The Clotilde was the last ship known to have carried African slaves to the United States.

After the ship's slaves were freed, they founded Africatown in what is now Plateau and Magazine Point.


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