HOT NEWS !

From AP

German military divers are working to hoist the wreck of a Stuka dive bomber from the floor of the Baltic Sea, a rare example of the plane that once wreaked havoc over Europe as part of the Nazis' war machine.

The single-engine monoplane carried sirens that produced a distinctive and terrifying screaming sound as it dove vertically to release its bombs or strafe targets with its machine guns. There are only two complete Stukas still around.

The Stuka wreck, first discovered in the 1990s when a fisherman's nets snagged on it, lies about 10 km off the coast of the German Baltic island of Ruegen, in about 18 metres (60 feet) of water.

The divers have been working over the past week to prepare the bomber to be hoisted to the surface, using fire hoses to carefully free it from the sand.

They have already brought up smaller pieces and also hauled up its motor over the weekend.

They are now working to free the main 9-metre (30-foot) fuselage piece and expect to bring it up on Tuesday, depending on the weather, said Capt. Sebastian Bangert, a spokesman from the German Military Historical Museum in Dresden, which is running the recovery operation.

Initial reports are that it is in good condition despite having spent the last seven decades at the bottom of the sea, he said.

"From my perspective there's a lot of damage — it's been under water for 70 years — but our restoration crew says it's in really good condition for being restored," said Bangert, speaking from the deck of the Navy ship being used for the operation. "That's our goal — a complete restoration and not conservation as a wreck."

From Austrian Times

Deep sea divers are about to solve the out-of-this-world riddle of how an object just like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars got to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Amazing sonar images taken by Swiss treasure hunters appeared to show Han Solo’s spaceship the Millennium Falcon resting on the ocean floor.

Now the explorers - who had originally been looking for booze on a merchant ship sunk in World War I - and their ship the Ancylus say they could be just hours from revealing the truth.

Initial checks have revealed no hazards to divers, who are expected to start their first attempt to reach the object nearly 300ft below the surface at a secret location between Sweden and Finland.

"We are all convinced that what we are looking at is something unique. There is definitely something really unusual on the bottom of the sea here – a real mystery," said a spokesman for the Ocean X search team.

Research head Peter Lindburg added: " I have never seen anything like it."

 

By Rob Waugh - Daily Mail

Until now, filming underwater has required teams of divers and expensive underwater camera rigs - but a new iPad-controlled robot does the lot itself.

The battery-powered Aquabotix Hydroview shoots in Full HD and swims independently, letting users see through its eyes with an app that works on iPads, smartphones and Windows laptops.

The $4,000 machine comes with a 75-foot cable and battery pack that lets it 'swim' for three hours - its makers suggest the tiny submarine could be used to find lost keys underwater, or for underwater documentaries.

Complete with on-board LED lights for underwater, the HydroView travels at up to five knots forward and one knot in reverse while shooting video or capturing still images at depths up to 150 feet down.

It can also capture information on water conditions.

The Hydroview costs $4,000 - more prosaically, you can also 'explore the depths' with a camera mounted on a boat hook for just $475.

The HydroView communicates wirelessly from the user’s handheld device to the HydroView’s top-side box, which is in-turn connected to the submersible via a cable tether.

Full story...

By Bonnie James - Gulf Times

A team of maritime archaeologists will conduct extensive underwater surveys in the northwest coast of Qatar from October to look for signs of ancient trade and human inhabitation before the Gulf was flooded by sea level rise thousands of years ago.

“Considering that the Gulf has been part of a maritime trade network extending back into the 7th millennium, the region has the potential for shipwrecks from both the historic and prehistoric periods,” Qatar National Historical Environmental Record (QNHER) Project co-director Richard Cuttler told Gulf Times.

QNHER is being developed as part of the Remote Sensing Project, a joint initiative between the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) under the guidance of Faisal al-Naimi (Head of Antiquities), and the University of Birmingham, where Cuttler is a research fellow.

More recent work by the team of marine archaeologists included underwater inspections of areas in advance of the dredging of new channels for the New Doha International Port to the south of Wakrah.

Recently concluded under the supervision of Cuttler’s colleague Eoghan Kieran, the project did not lead to any substantial findings other than two anchors, abandoned fish traps and several old reefs.

Kieran and his team of maritime archaeologists Jamie Lewis, Konstantina Vafidou, Jenny Breslin, Saad al-Naimi, master scuba diver Rosheen Khan, and scuba cameraman Cathal Twomey were engaged in the geophysical survey and marine inspections since February.

The exercise investigated the archaeological potential of the north and south channels before dredging commences for the new port project.

From Fox News

Eleven bottles of some of the world's oldest champagne found on the bottom of the Baltic sold for more than $156,000, with a single bottle of 200-year-old Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne going for for $18,600.

AFP reported that the organizers of the auction, which was held in Finland this week, got less than half what they had hoped.

"We are quite happy about the money raised although we expected a new world record," Rainer Juslin, an Aaland provincial government official, told AFP.

In 2010, divers exploring the wreck of a schooner sunk in the Baltic waters between Finland and Sweden discovered a total of 162 bottles of champagne.

The bottles were part of the booty from a shipwreck dating from between 1825 and 1830. Of these, 79 were drinkable.

The nearly 200 year old champagne auctioned off this week were in such perfect condition because they were lucky to land horizontally, under pressure, at a low temperature and in the dark.

In 2011 a bottle of Veuve Clicquot raised from the same shipwreck was auctioned for a record-setting $37,000.

By Willie Drye - National Geographic News

A warship submerged for two centuries in a river near Washington, D.C., could provide new insight into the relatively obscure War of 1812, say archaeologists who are preparing to excavate the wreck.

The war started because the British, who had been fighting with France since 1803, imposed restrictions on U.S. trade with the French, infuriating Americans.

Relations worsened when British ships began intercepting U.S. vessels on the high seas, removing any British-born sailors, and forcing them to serve in the British navy.

The U.S. Congress declared war on the British—including their Canadian colonists—in June 1812. Scientists have known about the unidentified wartime shipwreck, which lies in the Patuxent River about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the nation's capital, since the early 1970s. (Related: "Blackbeard's Ship Confirmed off North Carolina.")

In the 1980s archaeologists removed a few artifacts from the site that suggested the wreck might be the remains of the U.S.S. Scorpion, the flagship of the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, which staged daring hit-and-run attacks against British invaders during the war.

The entire flotilla, including the Scorpion, was deliberately sunk in the Patuxent in 1814.

Starting in early 2013, archaeologists with the Maryland State Highway Administration, the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, and the Maryland Historical Trust will build a temporary watertight container called a cofferdam around the wreck, pump the water away, and start detailed excavations.

Thanks to ideal preservation conditions in the river, experts examining the wreck will be able to "pull back the layers of time," said Julie Shablitsky, an archaeologist with the Maryland State Highway Administration.

Full story...

From Paul Fraser Collectibles

11 bottles of Veuve Cliquot could break the current world record for champagne at auction, in a Finnish sale today (June 8).

The 200-year-old bottles were salvaged from a wreck in the Baltic Sea by diver Christian Ekstrom, who immediately surfaced and tasted a bottle with his fellow divers.

The 140 bottles were found to be in excellent condition, as confirmed by champagne expert Richard Juhlin, who helped identify the bottles. It is said that the precious cargo, discovered in 2010, was intended for the court of Russian emperor, Nicholas I.

The Veuve Cliquot lots are the oldest champagne bottles ever discovered. Made between 1782 and 1788, they significantly pre-date the 1893 Veuve Cliquot bottle which is currently on display in the Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin visitor centre in Reims.

The bottles, which are being sold individually, could break the record price set last year by another bottle of Veuve Cliquot from the same shipwreck.

In June 2011, a single bottle from the wreck sold for $43,630, smashing the world record previously set in 2008 by a bottle of 1959 Dom Perignon.

Full story...

By Ken Shayne - Jamestown Press

A fascinating 20-year journey through the history of this region took a major step forward Sunday.

The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project announced that eight of the 13 sites from the 18th century that they have been seeking in Newport Harbor have been identified.

The sites are the final resting places of 13 British transport ships that were scuttled into the harbor in 1878.

While all of the sites are potentially important, by far the most interesting aspect of the search is that one of the ships that was sunk by the British in an effort to blockade the harbor against the French fleet was known as the Lord Sandwich.

That ship, in an earlier part of its career, was known as Endeavour, and it was on that bark that Capt. James Cook accomplished his first circumnavigation of the globe.

According to Dr. Kathy Abbass, director of RIMAP, the findings mean that there is now a 63 percent chance that Endeavour has been found.

While work will continue in an effort to locate the remaining five sites – which may no longer exist – the priority for RIMAP now is excavation of the sites that have been located, which means that funds will be needed to create a lab in which artifacts from the sites can be analyzed, and a museum to house them.

The organization, which takes no state or federal funds, has launched a capital campaign to raise the required funds.

“The search for the Endeavour is a really big deal,” Abbass said. “It is also a big deal for international heritage tourism, and in this economy that could be very signifi cant for the state.”

Although the fundraising process is expected to take several years, Abbass hopes that the building can be open by June 3, 2019, a date that would mark the 250th anniversary of Cook’s observation of the transit of Venus while in Tahiti.

Cook’s Endeavour is of great importance with regard to the maritime history of the United States, but the ship has even greater meaning to the people of Australia.

It was Endeavour, sailing between 1668 and 1671 with a group of scientists aboard, that first surveyed the eastern coast of Australia.

Their work allowed Great Britain to lay claim to the continent and colonize it. It is often said that Endeavour is to Australia what the Mayflower is to the United States.

Full story...