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From steve Ducharme - Nunatsiaq Online

New details about Sir John Franklin’s doomed Arctic expedition continue to be discovered as archeologists examine two sunken wrecks in Nunavut’s waters.

Following the announcement that the United Kingdom would transfer the shipwrecks to the country that offered them a final Arctic resting place, Parks Canada has released a new trove of underwater images of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus taken this past summer.

New images confirm that the Terror’s anchor remains on board, disproving earlier speculation from 2016 that the ship was “at anchor” when it sank—another important detail as researchers determine the timeline of events in this historic tragedy.

As well, Parks Canada says it has catalogued 64 artifacts from the Erebus, but added that no artifacts were removed from either the Erebus or Terror during the 2017 expedition.

“Through dives, Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology team was able to locate previously unseen artifacts, including wine bottles, on the wreck [of the Erebus],” said Parks Canada communications officer Meaghan Bradley.

The British government’s proposed transfer of the wrecks to Canada would be in exchange for “a small sample of artifacts,” the United Kingdom said in a statement.

What will be contained in that sample of artifacts has yet to be specified but Parks Canada said it “looks forward to working with the United Kingdom in the very near future to finalize the details of the artifact transfer.”

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From Malena Carollo - Tampa Bay Times
 

Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc.’s revenue shrunk to nearly nothing in the year’s third quarter.

The deep-sea exploration company reported just $11,854 in revenue, down from $2.9 million the same quarter last year. The company’s previous multi-million-dollar revenue came from a contract with Magellan Offshore Services, for which Odyssey conducted shipwreck expedition services.

The company recorded a net loss of $2.3 million for the third quarter, amounting to 27 cents per share. In the same quarter last year, the company reported a loss of $2.1 million, or 28 cents per share.

Just last quarter, Odyssey brought in $587,000 in revenue from marine surveys and recovery services for Magellan.

The services stem from a 2015 agreement Odyssey entered with Magellan when it sold $21 million in assets from its shipwreck business. That sale was used to wipe out Odyssey’s $11.7 million in debt.

"I’ve stated for the past nine months that although we intended to focus corporate capital on the mineral exploration side of the business, we do not intend to abandon our shipwreck roots," Odyssey CEO Mark Gordon said in a release at the time.

Per the deal, Magellan owns Odyssey’s proprietary shipwreck database and rights to shipwreck projects. Odyssey was the sole provider of shipwreck search and recovery expeditions for Magellan. It also gets just over 21 percent of proceeds from any shipwreck projects.

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By Steve Dent - Engadget

A little over 76 years ago, the British merchant steam ship SS Thistlegorm was sunk by a WW II German bomber off the coast of Egypt, taking nine souls down with it.

It has only been seen in detail by divers, but a new website from the University of Nottingham and Egypt's Alexandria Universities lets you experience the shipwreck via immersive 3D models and 360-degree VR videos.

The underwater photogrammetry study is one of the first to use 360-degree, 3D video. Divers carried 360-degree Kolor GoPro Abyss rigs, each with six individual cameras shooting 4K Ultra HD footage.

To create a 360-degree virtual "guided tour" of the ship (below), the team mounted the Abyss system on the front of an underwater scooter. Each dive captured 50GB of data, for a total of 1.5TB of footage.

"For me, 360 video is a big step forward as it recreates the diving experience," said University of Nottingham project director Dr. Jon Henderson.

"You can get the impression of swimming over it and through the internal parts of the wreck."

To build the 3D model shown at top, the team took over 15,668 images to capture the external model of the ship and seabed, along with 11,164 interior images for the deck, holds, captain's cabin and other areas.

It took 65 days of continuous computer processing to build the five survey models.

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By Colin Dwyer - NPR.org

In an act befitting "our long shared history and the closeness of our current bilateral relationship," the U.K. has announced it will give Canada the recovered shipwrecks of John Franklin, a British explorer who sought to chart an unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage in the Arctic in the 1840s — and died in the attempt, along with all of his crew.

"This exceptional arrangement will recognise the historical significance of the Franklin expedition to the people of Canada, and will ensure that these wrecks and artefacts are conserved for future generations," British Defense Minister Michael Fallon said in a statement published Tuesday.

For more than a century and a half, the resting place of the two vessels remained a mystery — until a team of archaeologists finally found and identified the HMS Erebus in 2014.

Just two years later, researchers acted on a tip from an Inuit man to find the HMS Terror, the flagship of Franklin's 1845 expedition, sitting "perfectly preserved" nearby in the waters near King William Island.

Reporting at the time the HMS Erebus was found, the Toronto Star explained the enduring riddle Franklin's doomed expedition has represented:

"Sir John Franklin and 128 crewmen were lost in the original expedition. Skulls believed to be of the members of the expedition were found and buried on King William Island in 1945. "But for 167 years it has remained a mystery as to why Franklin and his men were never heard from soon after the Royal Navy had mounted one of the best equipped Arctic explorations in its history to find a possible trade route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans."

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Ouest France

Une lettre d’un naufragé du Titanic, l’Américain Oscar Holverson, adressée à sa mère, a été vendue aux enchères, samedi en Angleterre, pour la somme de 126 000 livres sterling, soit 141 000 euros. L'hôtel des ventes Henry Aldridg Andson a publié un extrait de la lettre sur son compte Instagram. 

La missive datée du 13 avril 1912, soit la veille du naufrage, est composée de trois pages avec l’en-tête du Titanic, rapporte la BBC.

L’homme détaille la splendeur du paquebot. « Le bateau est d’une taille gigantesque, il est aménagé comme un palace », écrit-il avant de préciser : « Si tout va bien, nous arriverons à New York, mercredi » L’homme d’affaires américain périra le lendemain dans le naufrage.

En revanche sa femme Mary réussit à survivre.

La lettre a été retrouvée sur l’épave du Titanic, à l’intérieur d’un carnet de notes retrouvé sur le corps du défunt. Le courrier a été acheté par un collectionneur britannique.

By Peter B. Campbell - The Guardian

The shipwreck at Antikythera, Greece, continues to reveal its secrets and surprise archaeologists. As reported last week, recent excavations on the 1st century BC shipwreck have revealed statue fragments, bronze ornamentation, and wooden remains from the ship’s hull.

The finds are sensational, but the artifacts and the project have broader importance. Among the finds was the bronze arm of a statue, which may be the most significant find.

When the shipwreck was first found and excavated in 1900-1901, a number of bronze and marble statues were recovered. However, the arm is the first piece that has been found recently and it might point to more intact statuary in the area.

The arm is one of several limb fragments that do not have corresponding bodies. The Antikythera team hypotheses those statues could be in the vicinity of the undisturbed deposit that they excavated this year.

New bronze statues would be a sensational discovery. Bronze statues are among the rarest artifacts to survive from antiquity; however, ancient authors tell us that they were quite common.

Pausanias wrote a Roman travel guide of Greece and he describes the many bronzes statues filling cities like Athens. In Greek Bronze Statuary Professor Carol Mattusch writes, “all ancient literary accounts indicate that freestanding bronze statuary was the primary mode of artistic expression in Classical Greece.”

Ancient cities like Athens and Rome were filled with bronze sculptures, with bronze being preferred over marble.

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By Emily Kent Smith - Daily Mail

The remains of a ship in which more than 820 British prisoners of war drowned at sea after being locked inside by Japanese guards is believed to have been found decades after the tragedy.

Now, 75 years after one of the most shocking crimes committed during the Second World War, a debate over whether the ship’s wreckage should be recovered has been sparked by the only living British man who survived the atrocity.

The Lisbon Maru had some 1,800 captured British soldiers on board when it sunk in the East China Sea in September 1942 after being hit by an American torpedo.

As the 7,000 ton boat started to take on water, Japanese guards battened down the hatches with planks and tarpaulin to try and drown those stranded aboard and leaving many unable to escape.

Of those who made it off the ship, some were shot in the water. More than 820 stayed trapped in the boat and their bodies have remained underwater with no hope of the wreckage ever being found again, until now.

Sonar images have tracked a vessel 98ft below the surface and four miles from the island of Dongfushan, off China, with researchers saying they are ‘100 per cent sure’ they have found the Lisbon Maru.

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From The Siberian Times
 

The name of Benjamin (Ben) Leigh Smith may not seem too familiar among Arctic explorers, but it should be.

The intrepid explorer born into a radical English family named the cape where his vessel sank after being trapped between two giant icebergs after his famous relative Florence Nightingale, known as 'The Lady with the Lamp' for tending the wounded in the Crimean War, an English social reformer and statistician who is seen in her country as the founder of modern nursing. 

On his fateful voyage which culminated in the fateful sinking of his elegant steam yacht, the Eira, a remarkable photograph records a meeting at sea with two other ships from Peterhead in Scotland, the Hope and the Eclipse.

Leigh Smith invited on board the Eira the captains of both these ships and an historic picture records the occasion. 

After the Eira sank, the crew built a shelter - Flora's Cottage, made from driftwood, rocks and ship masts - and somehow survived six months of total darkness, intense cold, and bone cracking gales in the Arctic winter thanks in no small measure to ship's dog Bob.   

They were rescued the next summer after a perilous journey in storm force winds in the Eira's four lifeboats - with sails made of table cloths purloined from the sunken vessel -  to the waters off Novaya Zemlya where they were found by an expedition sent from England to rescue them.

For years researchers have sought to locate the wreck of the Eira, which had been specially built as an Arctic vessel for Leigh Smith. 

It is now revealed that in August 2017, the expedition 'The Open Ocean: Archipelagos of the Arctic' during a survey of the seabed at Cape Flora discovered 'an object' the size of the Eira.

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