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By Yasmin Popescu - The Freeport News

Hearing about pirates of long ago some assume that they no longer exist.

But, The Bahamas recently worked on laws to fight piracy which would mean that we are at possible risk.

And while some feel that the thought of treasure maps and seeking treasures in our waters are as far fetched as the finding of Atlantis, we may find ourselves in for a bit of a shock.

The Bahamas' very history tells of ships that sank off its shores laden with gold and silver headed to the old world, even right off the shores of Grand Bahama.

The only Bahamian Archeologist, Michael Pateman recently spoke to the Rotary Club of Lucaya about the Antiquities Act and its importance to the country, at which time he also told of pirates who have been in our waters attempting to bring up treasure and removing it from the country unnoticed.

Pateman noted that in the past persons would come into the country asking for permission to salvage wrecks, on which they would find many items which would leave the country without anything coming to the country.

By Josephine McKenna - The Telegraph

Young Peruvian waitress Erika Fani Soriamolina, whose body was recovered from the shipwrecked Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, has been hailed a heroine.

Erika Fani Soriamolina's body was found by divers on the sixth deck of the vessel wearing the ship's uniform but no life jacket.

Witnesses said Soriamolina had helped dozens of terrified passengers into lifeboats on the night of the disaster before giving the life jacket to an elderly man.

A tourism graduate, Soriamolina was working on only her third cruise on the Costa Concordia .

The recovery of the young woman's body ended a desperate search by her parents and sister Madeleine who were among the family members of passengers and crew waiting for news of their loved ones on Giglio.

On Saturday the body of a woman found several days ago was identified as German passenger Inge Shall.

Seventeen people are now confirmed dead after the cruise ship struck rocks and ran aground on January 13 with 4,200 passengers and crew on board and more than 15 people are still missing.

The 17-deck Costa Concordia was run aground in the rocky bay about an hour after its captain, Francesco Schettino, misjudged a 'sail-past' of the Italian island of Giglio and rammed it into rocks, ripping a massive tear in its hull.

Schettino is under house arrest at his home near Sorrento, accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship along with first officer Ciro Ambrosio.

Meanwhile, there were fresh concerns on Sunday about a potential environmental disaster after experts discovered the ship had moved 1.4 inches over a six-hour period from midnight to 6am.

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From CBS News

A treasure hunter said he has located the wreck of a British merchant ship that was torpedoed by a German u-boat off Cape Cod during World War II while carrying what he claims was a load of platinum bars now worth more than $3 billion. 

If the claim proves true, it could be one of the richest sunken treasures ever discovered.

But an attorney for the British government expressed doubt the vessel was carrying platinum. And if it was, in fact, laden with precious metals, who owns the hoard could become a matter of international dispute.

Treasure hunter Greg Brooks of Sub Sea Research in Gorham, Maine, announced that a wreck found sitting in 700 feet of water 50 miles offshore is that of the S.S. Port Nicholson, sunk in 1942.

He said Wednesday that he and his crew identified it via the hull number using an underwater camera, and he hopes to begin raising the treasure later this month or in early March with the help of a remotely operated underwater vessel.

"I'm going to get it, one way or another, even if I have to lift the ship out of the water," Brooks said.

The claim should be viewed with skepticism, said Robert F. Marx, an underwater archaeologist, maritime historian and owner of Seven Seas Search and Salvage LLC in Florida. Both an American company and an English company previously went after the contents of the ship years ago and surely retrieved at least a portion, Marx said.

The question is how much, if any, platinum is left, he said.

"Every wreck that is lost is the richest wreck lost. Every wreck ever found is the biggest ever found. Every recovery is the biggest ever recovery," Marx said.

Brooks said the Port Nicholson was headed for New York with 71 tons of platinum valued at the time at about $53 million when it was sunk in an attack that left six people dead. The platinum was a payment from the Soviet Union to the U.S. for war supplies, Brooks said.

The vessel was also carrying gold bullion and diamonds, he said.

Brooks said he located the wreck in 2008 using shipboard sonar but held off announcing the find while he and his business partners obtained salvage rights from a federal judge. Salvage rights are not the same as ownership rights, which are still unsettled.

Full story...

By Eleri Harris - ABC

One of the Royal Australian Mint's most treasured items is a curious formation of coral, indented with old, foreign coins.

The coins are Dutch cobs, the coral once grew on wreck of the Vergulde Draek or 'Gilt Dragon', one of the oldest recorded wrecks on the infamous Western Australian coast.

The Gilt Dragon met its end in 1656 and, of the 78,600 guilders-worth of silver coin it was carrying, a few have become part of Australia's National Coin Collection and are on permanent display in the Royal Australian Mint's Gallery.

Among the coins recovered are two eight reale coins, which are more commonly known as 'pieces of eight', the much sought after coins of pirate lore. 

The 'Gilt Dragon' was a 260-tonne, 42-metre 'jacht', a light, fast sailing vessel used by the Dutch navy.

On board was a crew of 193 and eight chests of silver coin to be used in the purchase of spices.

On its second voyage to the spice-trading headquarters of the United (Dutch) East Indies Company at Batavia (Jakarta), it sailed too far east and struck a reef on 28 April 1656, just 5.6 kilometres off the Western Australian coastline.

While 118 went to a watery grave, the remaining 75 crew managed to get to shore in two small boats, including Captain Pieter Albertsz.

He decided to send seven men in the one remaining seaworthy boat to seek help from Batavia, some 1400 nautical miles to the north.

Although they managed to reach their destination and raise the alarm, all of the subsequent rescue missions failed to find any trace of Albertsz and 68 other castaways.

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By  Garret Ellison - Mlive

A substantial hull piece that shipwreck experts believe comes from the schooner Jennie and Annie, which sunk in the Manitou Passage in 1872, has washed up on a remote stretch of Lake Michigan beach north of Empire in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

The 140-year-old shipwreck piece was discovered by photographer Mark Lindsay of Kingsley, who was taking a walk through the dunes with his camera on Sunday morning when he came across the relic in the shoreline waves.

“I just happened upon it,” he said. “It was incredible.”

Sleeping Bear Dunes historians believe the schooner fragment, estimated to be about 40-feet long and peppered with twisted metals spikes, is part of the ship’s bilge keelsons, which the Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archeology says were long timbers running most of the ship’s length, strengthening the keel.

It’s one of several fragments of the wreck to wash ashore over the years, said Laura Quackenbush, museum technician with park service.

In fact, wreck fragments from the Jennie and Annie, as well as other ships which foundered off the dunes coastline, wash ashore once or twice a year.

“It’s a very dynamic shoreline,” she said. “It’s a common occurrence around there.”

The fragments are technically owned by the state of Michigan, said Quackenbush, although the Sleeping Bear Dunes is a national park.

The Manitou Passage is a state underwater preserve and control over the myriad of shipwrecks on the bottom is governed as if they were in a museum.

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By Vanessa Gera - MSNBC

In the chaotic evacuation of the Costa Concordia, passengers and crew abandoned almost everything on board the cruise ship: jewels, cash, champagne, antiques, 19th century Bohemian crystal glassware, thousands of art objects including 300-year-old woodblock prints by a Japanese master.

In other words, a veritable treasure now lies beneath the pristine Italian waters where the luxury liner ran aground last month.

Though some objects are bound to disintegrate, there is still hoard enough to tempt treasure seekers — just as the Titanic and countless shipwrecks before have lured seekers of gold, armaments and other riches for as far back as mankind can remember.

It may be just a matter of time before treasure hunters set their sights on the sunken spoils of the Costa Concordia, which had more than 4,200 people on board.

"As long as there are bodies in there, it's considered off base to everybody because it's a grave," said Robert Marx, a veteran diver and the author of numerous books on maritime history and underwater archaeology and treasure hunting. "But when all the bodies are out, there will be a mad dash for the valuables."

The Mafia, he said, even has underwater teams that specialize in going after sunken booty.

The Costa Concordia was essentially a floating luxury hotel and many of the passengers embarked on the ill-fated cruise with their finest clothes and jewels so they could parade them in casinos and at gala dinners beneath towering chandeliered ceilings.

Full story...

 
Photo Odyssey Marine Exploration

By William J. Broad - The New York Times

A deal was struck on Wednesday to save what could prove to be one of the richest treasure wrecks of all time.

Four years ago, in the depths of the English Channel, explorers found the remains of a legendary British warship that sank in 1744 and lost more than 1,000 men.

But intruders disturbed the site, dragging and damaging some of the 44 bronze cannons visible on the sandy bottom and hauling one of them away.

The wreck’s fate became a topic of public debate in Britain, and not just because of the nation’s efforts to preserve its maritime heritage: documents suggested that the warship, the H.M.S. Victory, had carried a secret cargo of gold coins weighing about four tons.

If melted down, the gold might be worth $160 million. But if sold for their historic value, the coins might fetch $1 billion.

On Wednesday, the discoverers of the wreck said they had signed an agreement in which they would document and recover the artifacts, ending a long period of uncertainty. They praised the accord as an innovative new way for nations to save historic wrecks.

“We’ve come up with the model that everybody’s been looking for,” said Gregory P. Stemm, head of the discovery team and chief executive of Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa, Fla., a publicly traded company that specializes in deep-sea exploration and recovery.

Odyssey will recover the warship’s remains for the Maritime Heritage Foundation, a British charity that received the title to the wreck from British authorities. Its chairman, Lord Lingfield, the Conservative peer formerly known as Sir Robert Balchin, said teaming up with Odyssey was aimed at preserving an important aspect of British history.

“Therefore, we have planned an archaeological survey that will record the site before it deteriorates further,” he said.

Lord Lingfield is a relative of Adm. Sir John Balchin, who commanded the Victory when it went down in a gale. The agreement between the foundation and Odyssey is to be formally announced on Thursday.

The Victory was armed with as many as 110 bronze cannons, making it one of the deadliest vessels of the age. The largest cannon weighed four tons and could fire cannonballs of 42 pounds, making it the most powerful gun then used in naval warfare.

In July 1744, the flagship Victory and a fleet of warships were sent to rescue a Mediterranean convoy blockaded by a French fleet at Lisbon. After chasing the French away, the Victory escorted the convoy as far as Gibraltar and then headed home.

A raging storm hit the British fleet shortly after it entered the English Channel, and on Oct. 5, 1744, somewhere off the Channel Islands, the Victory went down with all hands.

A month after the loss, a Dutch newspaper reported that the Victory had been carrying from Lisbon £400,000 destined for Dutch merchants. Odyssey has extensively researched the reliability of that report and concluded that the claimed shipment was most likely genuine and consisted of nearly four tons of gold coins.

Full story...

From Fox News Latino

The Florida firm that salvaged $500 million in gold and silver coins from the bottom of the Atlantic in May 2007 will be forced to hand over the treasure to Spain unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes.

In a brief ruling seen by Efe, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected on Tuesday a motion from Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. to stay the same court's November decision ordering the company to turn over the hoard.

Odyssey has asked the Supreme Court to hear its appeal, but the process put in motion by the 11th Circuit's decision will continue in the meantime.

The 11th Circuit will formally convey its decision to the District Court in Tampa that originally heard the case, which will then establish a timetable for the handover of the coins.

The formal notification should happen within the next 10 days, the attorney representing the Spanish government, James Goold, told Efe Tuesday, suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court is very unlikely to agree to consider Odyssey's appeal.

U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday ruled in December 2009 that Spain was the rightful owner of the treasure Odyssey salvaged off the Portuguese coast in the same area where the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish navy frigate, was destroyed in battle in 1804.

Within days of recovering the $500 million in coins, Odyssey took the loot to Gibraltar and loaded it onto a chartered Boeing-757 for transport back to Florida.

The treasure remains at a secret location in Florida.

Full story...