HOT NEWS !

From Yahoo News
 

Chinese authorities are seeking permission to explore Sri Lanka's coastline for possible Chinese ship wrecks from the ancient Silk Route era, an official said Wednesday.

Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean island, was a key trading post along the ancient Silk Route which saw silk, spices and handicrafts travel by road and sea between Asia and Europe.

The seas around the island's southern port of Galle are known to have at least 75 ancient ship wrecks, of which 25 have been well documented.

The unsolicited offer by Science Foundation of China to deploy experts to look for vessels along Sri Lanka's coast was under consideration, Director General of Archaeology Senarath Disanayake told AFP.

He said, however, that the Chinese had asked to keep half of all antiquities brought up from the ocean bed -- a condition Sri Lanka could not agree to.

"They also want us to pay for a vessel to carry out the exploration and that is something we can't afford," Disanayake said.

China is increasing its presence in Sri Lanka with the construction of a deep-sea port in the island's south as well as several other key infrastructure projects.

Sri Lanka's immediate neighbour India has become sensitive about increasing Chinese influence on the island.

From Santa Rosa Press Gazette
 

The Blackwater Pyrates are sponsoring a lecture featuring Dr. Della Scott-Ireton of West Florida Archaeology Network and Dr. Brian R. Rucker of Pensacola State College.

Dr. Scott will speak on shipwrecks of the Blackwater River and Dr. Rucker will speak on lumber mill history.

Dr. Scott specializes in maritime archaeology and will cover the extensive maritime history of our waterway, the Blackwater River. Blackwater River is home to over 18 sunken vessels. From the Tampa Ferry in the south end of the river to the Blackwater Bethune schooner at the north end you will be transported to the 1800’s when Milton and Bagdad were prosperous mill towns.

Dr. Rucker will speak on the numerous lumber mills that were once located in and around the Blackwater River basin. Dr. Rucker is a professor of history at Pensacola State College and has authored numerous books including Treasures of the Panhandle: A Journey through West Florida, Arcadia: Florida’s Premier Antebellum Industrial Park and Image and Reality: Tourism in Antebellum Pensacola.

Several local organizations have been invited to display information and artifacts pertaining to their organization. Scheduled to participate are the Bagdad Village Preservation Association, Santa Rosa Historical Society, Arcadia Mill, Coast Guard Auxiliary and Bagdad Waterfronts Florida Partnership.

By  Thomas Spencer - The Birmingham News

A battle over historic artifacts hidden below the surface of Alabama's rivers, lakes and bays is surfacing in advance of the opening of Legislature's 2012 regular session on Feb. 7. 

Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, has introduced a bill to amend the Alabama Cultural Resources Act, a law that requires underwater explorers to get a permit from the Alabama Historical Commission before going after submerged wrecks and relics.

In Ward's version, the law would still require permits for recovery of artifacts related to shipwrecks and would forbid disturbing Native American burial sites. But treasure hunters would otherwise be able to search state waters and keep what they find. 

"The waters, just like the air, belong to the people," said Steve Phillips, an advocate for the changes to the law. Phillips, an owner of Southern Skin Divers Supply Company of Birmingham, is the only person to ever have been arrested under the Alabama Cultural Resources Act.

At trial, Phillips was found not guilty of felony theft of a cultural resource but was convicted of misdemeanor third-degree theft. The charge stemmed from Phillips' 2003 expedition in the Alabama River near Selma in search of Civil War relics, which ended with his arrest and the confiscation of a Civil War era rifle he'd found.

The incident sparked a still simmering conflict pitting Phillips and his fellow divers and collectors against the state Historical Commission and professional archaeologists who fear that removing the restrictions would lead to raids on underwater historic sites.

Aside from the protection of burial sites, there are no restrictions on the recovery of historic artifacts on private property, but artifacts on state-owned property -- whether on land or under water - should not be available for wanton scavenging, opponents of the changes say.

Teresa Paglione, president of the Alabama Archaeological Society, said without legal protections, artifacts from the Civil War, the settlement of the state, the age of European exploration and thousands of years of Native American history could be extracted, kept privately or sold, and lost to history.

Those artifacts in state waters belong to all the people of the state, Paglione said.

Full story...

From Paul Fraser Collectibles

Rare watches and memorabilia items from the estate of legendary UK deep sea diver Carl Spencer are auctioning in Birmingham, England on Monday 23 January.

Walsall-born Spencer is well-remembered as a talented technical diver and for his dives during various famous expeditions. He lead a modest life which included his day job as a heating and air conditioning engineer.

As Spencer himself used to tell people, he was "just a plumber from Cannock."

Highlights in the sale include Spencer's Rolex Sea Dweller watch with an estimate of £3,000 - £4,000.

Two limited edition Doxa diving watches will also be auctioned, each with an estimate of £1,000 - £1,500.

One of Spencer's famous expeditions was in 2000. He joined the Bluebird project to locate and recover the body of the world water-speed record holder, Donald Campbell, from the waters of Coniston.

A few years later, in 2003, Hollywood came knocking. Famous film director James Cameron asked Spencer to join his team to dive to the wreck of R.M.S Titanic (pictured top right) as part of a Discovery Channel expedition.

From MSNBC

Confederate Civil War vessel H.L. Hunley, the world's first successful combat submarine, was unveiled in full and unobstructed for the first time on Thursday, capping a decade of careful preservation.

"No one alive has ever seen the Hunley complete. We're going to see it today," engineer John King said as a crane at a Charleston conservation laboratory slowly lifted a massive steel truss covering the top of the submarine.

About 20 engineers and scientists applauded as they caught the first glimpse of the intact 42-foot-long (13-meter-long) narrow iron cylinder, which was raised from the ocean floor near Charleston more than a decade ago.

The public will see the same view, but in a water tank to keep it from rusting.
"It's like looking at the sub for the first time. It's like the end of a long night," said Paul Mardikian, senior conservator since 1999 of the project to raise, excavate and conserve the Hunley.

In the summer of 2000, an expedition led by adventurer Clive Cussler raised the Hunley and delivered it to the conservatory on Charleston's old Navy base, where it sat in a 90,000-gallon tank of fresh water to leach salt out of its iron hull.

On weekdays, scientists drain the tank and work on the sub. On weekends, tourists who before this week could only see an obstructed view of the vessel in the water tank, now will be able to see it unimpeded.

Considered the Confederacy's stealth weapon, the Hunley sank the Union warship Housatonic in the winter of 1864, and then disappeared with all eight Confederate sailors inside.

The narrow, top-secret "torpedo fish," built in Mobile, Ala., by Horace Hunley from cast iron and wrought iron with a hand-cranked propeller, arrived in Charleston in 1863 while the city was under siege by Union troops and ships.

In the ensuing few months, it sank twice after sea trial accidents, killing 13 crew members, including Horace Hunley, who was steering.

"There are historical references that the bodies of one crew had to be cut into pieces to remove them from the submarine," Mardikian told Reuters.

"There was forensic evidence when they found the bones (between 1993 and 2004 in a Confederate graveyard beneath a football stadium in Charleston) that that was true."

The Confederate Navy hauled the sub up twice, recovered the bodies of the crew, and planned a winter attack.

Full story...

From Online.wjs

The 1622 wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a Spanish ship laden with New World gold, became the fixation of a chicken farmer turned deep-sea diver named Mel Fisher. He searched doggedly for the treasure for 16 years (and tragically lost his son and daughter-in-law when a salvage boat capsized during the search).

In 1985, the Fisher team came upon a large portion of the wreckage. The treasure they've extracted since then is worth some $500 million, the Fishers say. A fraction of that is about to go under the hammer at a Philadelphia auction house.

Three large silver bars, two small gold "finger" bars and one gold disc that went down with the Atocha will be featured in Freeman's Jan. 25 Fine English & Continental Furniture & Decorative Arts sale. (Items from the sale are on view at the auction house's Philadelphia headquarters starting Friday).

The silver bars range in weight from 39 to 87-plus pounds, $15,000 to $45,000 in price. The gold is far lighter, ranging from four to 14.5 ounces at an estimated $8,000 to $30,000 apiece. The items were sold once before: In 1988, Christie's auctioned off part of the Atocha treasure, raising $2.6 million.

In the early 1600s, the Spanish monarchy dispatched armadas regularly to stock up on gold, silver and gems from the Americas to help fund its army. The Atocha was one of several ships that fell prey to Caribbean hurricanes en route home from Cuba and sank off what would become Key West, Fla. On the Atocha, 260 people drowned and about 70 tons of treasure were lost. (The other ship, the Santa Margarita, ran aground.)

Mel Fisher's heirs have stayed in the family business and continue to mine the Atocha wreck and several others. Two Florida museums, the Mel Fisher Center and Museum in Sebastian and the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, always have Atocha objects on display. In June, the Fisher crew came ashore with an emerald ring that Mel Fisher's grandson Sean says was recently appraised at $1.2 million.

Full story...

By Patrick Mcgeehan - City Room

Robert Ballard has made quite a few notable discoveries in deep waters around the world in the last 27 years. But most people still want to hear him use the T-word.

He will do it, as he did for about half an hour on Wednesday at the Explorers Club in Manhattan, but he does not have to like it. Indeed, the stated purpose of his appearance was to promote a coming exhibition in Mystic, Conn., that will be devoted to his discovery on Sept. 1, 1985, of the wreckage of that most famous of ocean liners. You know, the really big one.

The one that hit an iceberg.

Oh, all right. Yes, yes, it’s the Titanic again.

Mr. Ballard, the great explorer of the seas, is lending his name and his expertise to yet another attempt to capitalize on the public fascination with a century-old shipwreck.

Now 69, he would rather talk about another ship, one that floats and which he plans to use to survey the sea floor of the South Pacific. But he knows that there will be no escaping the Big T this year, the 100th anniversary of its sinking.

James Cameron is re-releasing his blockbuster movie about it in 3D. There will be a winner-take-all auction of artifacts from the ship at Guernsey’s, the Manhattan auction house. Another attraction dedicated to the ship is about to open in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the ship was built.

When the planners of the exhibition in Mystic, which is scheduled to open in April to coincide with the anniversary of the Titanic’s striking an iceberg, approached him for help documenting his find, Mr. Ballard recalled, “I had put a lot of that out of my mind and moved on.”

Full story...

By Richard Luscombe - The Guardian

HMS Olympus struck a mine off the coast of Malta as it tried to evade German and Italian warships on 8 May 1942.

Explorers have discovered the wreck of a British submarine that sank off the coast of Malta in one of the worst naval disasters of the second world war.
Nearly 90 men lost their lives when HMS Olympus struck a mine and sank as it tried to evade German and Italian warships blockading Grand Harbour in the early hours of 8 May 1942.

A team of divers from a Florida-based exploration trust found the wreck while surveying the ocean floor off Malta last year. They announced their findings to the British government and the Royal Navy this week.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is expected to now formally designate the site.

"We are extremely excited by this discovery, it's a very important piece of Malta's history during the war," said Timmy Gambin, archaeological director of the Aurora Trust, a foundation set up to promote knowledge of maritime cultural history.

"The Royal Navy ran a large number of operations using submarines in and out of the island for many purposes, not least as a magic carpet ferrying fuel, ammunition and food, and Olympus played an extremely important role."

The trust, which has headquarters in Key Largo and a logistical base in Malta, visited the wreck, seven miles off the coast, twice last summer. During the second dive in September it sent down a remotely operated vehicle equipped with video cameras to capture images that confirmed the 80-metre-long vessel's identity.

"We had suspicions it was the Olympus. Armed with our research on the features of the submarine, where the guns were, the placing and types of the rudder and propeller, we were able to identify her," Gambin said.

Full story...