HOT NEWS !

From Cyprus Mail


The Department of Antiquities has completed a second season of excavations of the Mazotos shipwreck.

The team continued the systematic excavation of a trench, first opened in 2010, at the southern part of the assemblage, which the archaeologists have taken to be the bow of the ancient ship.

Meanwhile, transport amphorae recovered at the site came from the island of Chios in the Aegean. One amphora from Cos was also found outside the main assemblage and it may have been part of the crew’s provisions.

Parts of two anchor stocks were also excavated which, added to the one found last year, provide valuable information on the sailing equipment of ancient ships. 

The keel and part of the wooden hull of the ship were also unveiled, proving that a considerable part of the ancient ship is still lying under the main concentration of the amphorae.

All recovered materials were transported to the special lab for underwater finds at the Larnaca District Museum, where they will remain for desalination and conservation.

Many students from the University of Cyprus took part in the project. Apart from the archaeological excavation, they were also trained in ancient sailing during a seminar organised in collaboration with the Kyrenia-Chrysocava Foundation, on the ‘Kyrenia-Liberty’ ship. The ship sailed from the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base in Mari, where it was moored, to the Mazotos shipwreck area.

During the trip, the Kyrenia-Liberty crew, under Captain Giorgos Paphitis, taught the basic principles of ancient sailing.

Divers and archaeologists came from 16 different countries.
 

From Marion James - Today's Zaman

Being surrounded on three sides by water, Turkey’s wealth of coastline means its history is intricately linked with the history of the sea.

The Turks may have swept into Anatolia on horseback from Central Asia, but they soon discovered, as the Romans and Byzantines had done before them, that an important plank in defense of their realm had to be naval defenses.

The Ottomans fast developed naval prowess. Shipbuilding became an art, just as horsemanship had been, and Ottoman sea captains moved into positions of supremacy. The result was that the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean became Ottoman lakes.

There are a number of exciting finds from around the coast of Turkey housed in various museums. The Underwater Archaeological Museum at Bodrum is world famous. Not only are there hundreds of amphorae and gold coins salvaged from shipwrecks on display, but some of the ships themselves.
The treasures range in date over the centuries and represent powers as diverse as Phoenician, Lydian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman.

Underwater archaeology is so valued that even the massive engineering enterprise of the Marmaray Project, set to join the Asian side and European side of İstanbul by rail tunnel, came to a halt when digs for the project uncovered an ancient Byzantine harbor near the old walls of Constantinople, replete with ships.

The findings from this harbor are housed in the İstanbul Archaeological Museum. Walking round the exhibition, visitors can imagine life in a bygone era, the age of sail, when international trade was carried out mainly by ship.

The raised wrecks seem so serene: a silent witness to the economic life of those who inhabited these lands before us. They appear calm and lifeless.
But, of course, their last moments afloat would have been anything but calm and serene. What passions and terrors they were witness to! What panic and horror caused their sinking !

Maybe it was ferocious weather conditions that caused them to take on water and sink, despite desperate bailing by the crew, or even financial suicide of jettisoning a valuable cargo.

Full story...

By Dan Corcoran - WPTV

It was supposed to be a typical scuba dive. Randy Jordan, owner of Emerald Charters in Jupiter, grabbed his gear and ferried a small group of divers to a spot about four miles east of the Jupiter Inlet.  "Completely random drop and the captain just dropped us right on it," said Jordan. "It was just totally by accident.

The group dove about 185 feet to the ocean floor.

"We get down to the bottom and I see some fish that are swimming over to the right and I followed them," said Jordan. "They swam right up to this airplane. It was the most amazing thing."

Right in front of them, Jordan said, were the remains of an aircraft.  "When you backed up, you said 'that's an airplane,' " he said.

Underwater video taken by Jordan shows the aircraft upside-down on the ocean floor. 

"The wings were intact, the tail was intact and if you go to the front of it, the engine's there and the propellers," he said.

Jordan sent his images to the Warbird Information Exchange, an online source for historical aviation information.

Experts there told Jordan that the submerged aircraft could be a Curtiss Helldiver SBC2.

Some of those airplanes flew in the early 1940s during World War II.
 

Full story...

From BBC News

A Guernsey diver has asked for help to solve the mystery of a 100-year-old shipwreck.

Richard Keen said his research, which started in the 1970s, led him to believe what is known as the Mauve Wreck was the Frier Krupp.

He said based on weather patterns and the ship's expected course and speed he believed it had to be that ship.

Mr Keen said the Krupp shipping company still existed and hoped a German speaker would help with his research.

He said the wreck was first found in the middle of August 1912.

Mr Keen said: "A fisherman, Nicholas Le Sauvage, went out to pull his pots by the Mauve Reef, which is 300 yards from the Hanois Lighthouse, and there was a rock there that wasn't there the year before.

"It turned out to be a ship's boiler, so the following day he went out with George Le Couteur and the Lloyd's agent and a few other fishermen to investigate and there were a few bits of iron sticking out of the water.

"They deemed from the size of the boiler it would be a vessel of about 600 tonnes."

His own interest began 40 years ago: "The wreck site was shown to me by a fisherman. There was nothing of much interest, shallow water, all weed, bits of rusty iron and general junk not even any sign of a ship's engine or propeller shaft.

"It's always known as the mauve wreck and it's one of those mysteries that has always bugged me.

"I researched it 40 years ago and found not a lot, but I got stuck in recently and in the guildhall library of all places I found a record of a German vessel called the Frier Krupp, which left Bilbao [in Spain] on 16 December 1911 bound for Rotterdam with a 1,000 tonnes of iron ore.

Full story...

By Justina Wheale - The Epoch Times

The wreck of Roald Amundsen’s Maud may yet leave its icy resting place in Nunavut, Canada, where it has lain since it sank in 1930.

A group of Norwegian investors who own the Maud say they are appealing the federal government’s denial of an export permit to move the shipwreck to Norway where it would be the centerpiece of a museum to be built near Oslo.

The reason for the refusal of the permit—that an archaeological study must first be carried out on the wreck—came as a surprise according to Maud Returns Home, a website documenting the effort to bring the Maud back to Norway.

“We applied for an export permit based on the fact that Maud was not listed as an archaeological site, as it is not on the official control list,” the website stated.

“Despite this we do not oppose, in principle, an archaeological study, but we consider a further detailed study of the Maud as it lies today at the seabed in addition to what is already gathered through our Survey and Documentation of 2011 to be of marginal value.”

Amundsen, a national hero in Norway, was the first explorer to travel the Northwest Passage and reach both the North and South poles.

He set out in the Maud, named after one of Norway’s former queens, in 1918 in hopes of reaching the North Pole. After several attempts, the voyage proved unsuccessful (he later reached the pole by seaplane in 1925), and amid escalating debts, the ship was seized by his creditors.

Upon being sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1925, the ship was renamed the Baymaud and used as a floating warehouse and wireless radio station in Cambridge Bay until it sank over 80 years ago.

Full story...

From You Story 

The Ministry of Communications and Works, Department of Antiquities announces the completion of the second excavation season of the Mazotos shipwreck (2/5/2011 – 25/6/2011).

The fieldwork was conducted by the Archaeological Research Unit of University of Cyprus, under the direction of Dr Stella Demesticha, in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus and the THETIS Foundation.

During this last field season, the team continued the systematic excavation of a trench, first opened in 2010, at the southern part of the assemblage. In the preliminary view of the archaeologists, this would have been the bow area of the ancient ship.

Most of the transport amphorae recovered belong to the main type of the cargo and came from the island of Chios in the Aegean. One amphora from the island of Kos was also found outside the main assemblage and it may have been part of the crew’s provisions.

Moreover, parts of two anchor stocks were also excavated which, added to the one found last year, provide valuable information on the sailing equipment of ancient ships.

Of prime importance was the discovery of the keel and part of the wooden hull of the ship, as it proves that a considerable part of the ancient ship is still lying under the main concentration of the amphorae.

The photogrammetric mapping of the site was conducted in collaboration with the Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics at the Cyprus University of Technology, under the direction of Dr Dimitris Skarlatos.

All recovered materials were transported to the special lab for underwater finds, in the Larnaka District Museum, where they will remain for their desalination and conservation by the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus.

Many students from the University of Cyprus took part in the project.

Apart from the archaeological excavation, they were also trained in ancient sailing, during a special seminar that was organised in collaboration with the Kyrenia-Chrysocava Foundation, on the ‘Kyrenia-Liberty’ship.

The ship sailed from the Naval Base ‘Evangelos Florakis’ in Mari, where it was moored, to the Mazotos shipwreck area.

During the trip, the ‘Kyrenia-Liberty’ crew and their Captain Mr Giorgos Paphitis taught the basic principles of ancient sailing to the students and guided them in performing several tasks of the procedure themselves. 

From Art Daily

The first of the farewell letters written in the Antarctic by Captain Robert Scott as he realised that he and his team would not survive is for sale at Bonhams Polar Sale in London on 30 March 2012. It is estimated to make £100,000-150,000. 

The letter, which was found on Scott’s body in November 1912, was written on the 16th March of that year to financier Sir Edgar Speyer, honorary treasurer of the fund-raising committee for the ill-fated trip. In it, Scott expresses his great concerns for his family and the families of his companions and asks that the nation provide for their future.

Sensing that the position was hopeless, Scott wrote, “I fear we must go...but we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen – I regret only for the women we leave behind. If this diary is found it will show how we stuck by our dying companions and fought this thing out to the end. 

“We very nearly came through and it’s a pity to have missed it but lately I have felt that we have overshot our mark – no-one is to blame and I hope no attempt will be made to suggest that we lacked support.” 

The letter was at one time owned by the famous American polar explorer, Rear Admiral Richard E Byrd, and was presented to him at a dinner in his honour in 1935 by Sir Edgar Speyer’s widow. 

The recipient of the letter, Edgar Speyer, was a well known business, political and philanthropic figure before the First World War. He had played a major role in raising funds for Scott’s expedition and Mount Speyer in the Arctic was named in his honour by Scott.
 

From TAMU Times

Sunk in 1606, the Portuguese merchant ship Nossa Senhora dos Martires is sailing again — in 3-D presently but perhaps one day in reality.

If the cyber-replicated vessel ever does hit the high seas, the way will have been paved by the research of a persevering Texas A&M University nautical archaeologist combined with the high-tech applied study of a graduate student well versed in computer-based visualization techniques.

The 3-D resurrection of the 17th century vessel, whose name translates to “Our Lady of the Martyrs,” is the handiwork of Filipe Castro, an associate professor of anthropology who grew up in Portugal, and Audrey Wells, who made the three-year project the basis for her master’s degree thesis in visualization sciences. Wells is now a freelance artist in Austin.

A unique set of circumstance brought them together, combining the work of two of Texas A&M’s best-known programs worldwide. Castro had been a civil engineer in Portugal’s Ministry of Culture, and been assigned to the ship’s excavation project.

Leaders of the project encouraged him to obtain a graduate degree in nautical archaeology, which he successfully pursued through the world-renowned program at Texas A&M, for which he now serves on its faculty.

Wells is a product of the Visualization Laboratory, a trailblazing program that incorporates computer-generated graphics and animation in particularly innovative manners. The program’s graduates are highly sought by Hollywood producers, among others who want state-of-the-art video graphics.

Their work is the basis for an extensive article published in the fall edition of American Bureau of Shipping’s publication, Surveyor, with a follow-up article posted on the website of the Department of Visualization in Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, which provides a link to the Surveyor article.

The model Castro and Wells produced is described in the Surveyor article as replicating the vessel “in its entirety, including full scantlings, internal construction details, outfitting and the sail plan, such that seakeeping, stability and other analyses can be performed.”

The meticulous work was accomplished even though only about 10 percent of the ship’s hull was ever recovered, meaning Castro and Wells had to reply heavily on analysis and interpretation — and applied visualization.