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By Katherine Fleming - The West Australian

It was an autumn day in 1963 when Hugh Edwards sought refuge from pounding waves in an underwater cave near Ledge Point.

As the silvery bubbles from his diving gear pooled on the roof, he picked up a dark object from the sandy floor.

When he rubbed the black corrosion, it revealed the name of a Spanish king and the year 1654. It was a silver "piece of eight" from the Vergulde Draeck, a Dutch East India Company ship that sank 124 years before the Endeavour reached Botany Bay.

A friend's reaction - Dead Men's Silver - gave Edwards the name of his autobiography, released today.

It details his extraordinary life as a shipwreck hunter from his first boyhood glimpse below the ocean's "silver skin" to his part in discovering the wreck of the notorious Batavia, filming great white sharks and being waved through a Cambodian road block by Pol Pot.

Shipwrecks, Edwards said, were found either through "outrageous good fortune" or extensive research.

A reluctant student, he found his "spiritual home" at Perth's Daily News, where his appetite for stories on shipwrecks led him to several expeditions.

But the Batavia, made famous by a mutiny and massacre, remained elusive. When the paper would not pay for another expedition and government funding was largely unforthcoming, Edwards paid for most of the trip.

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From gCaptain

Five crewmembers from the cargo ship M/V Swanland are missing after the vessel sank in heavy seas in the Irish Sea early Sunday morning.

A mayday call was received at 2am Sunday morning from the vessels captain shorlty before sinking.

Two crew members were rescued from the water by an Irish Coast Guard helicopter piloted coincidentally by Prince William. So far one body has been recovered and five remain missing. Rescure efforts have been suspended overnight.

The ‘Swanland’, with a crew of 8 Russians, reportedly sank very quickly after being hit by a large wave that caused catastrophic failure to the hull approximately 80kms southeast of Dublin, off Wales’ Bardsey Island.

The 1,978 gross tonnes Swanland was carrying limestone from Raynes Jetty near Colwyn Bay to Cowes on the Isle of Wight when it sank.

The vessel is flagged in the Cook Islands.

Conditions in the area were described as extremely bad, with poor visibility and strong winds.

At least five crewmembers were reported to be wearing survival when the wave hit. The video below released by the Royal Air Force shows the rescue of the two survivors who were found in a life raft.

By Dan Linehan - Monterey County Weekly

“Life support is functional,” says pilot Tym Catterson into the hydrophone.

“We are ready to dive, dive, dive. Over.”

The message travels through the water as sound waves from the little yellow submarine Antipodes to the support vessel Kraken, the same way whales communicate with each other.

Catterson opens a bank of valves, and water floods the ballast tanks as air blows out, escaping to the surface in bubbles the size of jellyfish. Antipodes plunges downward.

It reaches the sea floor, a depth of 60 feet, in two minutes. It will remain submerged for nearly two hours.

“It’s primal,” Catterson says. “You are going back to the sea. It’s kinda where we came from such a long time ago.”

He’s also going back to a shipwreck covered by starfish, spider crabs and the occasional octopus. Sealife thrives around this artificial reef off of San Carlos Beach, known to local underwater explorers only as the “barge,” 600 feet from the breakwater.

So does a marine mystery: What is a barge doing there ? When did it sink ? Why did it sink ? Was it even a barge ?

By diving where the sun’s rays hardly penetrate, though, things get a little clearer.

Normally a favorite destination of local scuba drivers, the sunken barge received a number of visits this fall from a less common kind of swimmer: Antipodes, a 7-ton, 15-foot-long leviathan carrying as many as five submariners at a time, uses six electric motors to cruise along the seafloor.

Antipodes is like a giant tube with 5-foot wide viewing domes capping off each end.

Looking outside is like watching from inside a fishbowl. When a fish swims at it head-on, then stops right in front of the dome I’m in, it stares straight at me with bulging eyes. Its face seems to read, “What the heck are you and what the heck are you doing here?”

Powerful LED floodlights illuminate an area within 15 feet of the submersible. As a result, not much of the wreckage can be seen at any one time. Scuba divers get even less of a view since they are more limited by lesser lights.

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Photo Boonchob Vijarnsorn

By Scott Marshutz - San Clemente Times

In August of 2010, I signed up as a volunteer diver for the annual Dana Point Harbor cleanup. While I was picking up my gear, one of the guys at the dive shop asked me if I was interested in diving a wreck just a few miles outside of the harbor. I was curious. There’s a wreck outside the harbor ?

The following day, my wife Linda and I joined several other divers on the newly launched Riviera and headed out. The dive master had only bits and pieces of the wreck’s history, but after we descended to 114 feet we realized the vessel wasn’t sunk to create an artificial reef; it was an accident and we wondered what happened.

It’s a story about how a seemingly routine fishing trip goes horribly wrong and a prime example of why commercial fishing continues to be one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health’s Commercial Fishing Incident Database.

But in this case, luck trumps death and serious injury.

This week marks six years since the A.C.E.’s sinking, and the boat has begun a new chapter, attracting sport fishermen and divers alike.

Completely intact and resting on her portside with her mast pointing away from shore, an ecosystem is thriving on the vessel. It’s rich with strawberry and white-plume anemones. Bass are abundant and what looks like rust in several areas are a large number of rockfish that literally carpet portions of the deck.

Back at home that afternoon, I fired up my laptop and searched the Internet. In seconds, several articles popped up about the ship’s sinking and its dramatic rescue.

Early in the morning on November 26, 2005, the A.C.E., a 58-foot drum seiner, was en route to the harbor after a night of bait fishing. The forecast for the area northwest of Oceanside called for strong offshore winds starting after midnight, which kicked up a sharp and quick chop producing vertically shaped waves breaking only seconds apart, according to interviews with crew and news and weather reports.

As the A.C.E. headed on a northeasterly course, the swells, some as high as eight to 10 feet, began slamming its portside. Compounding the problem was a suspect deck hatch, also on the vessel’s portside, recalled crewmembers.

The only access point to check if water was leaking into the compartment was through the hatch itself. But with a foot of water covering it, there was no way the crew could open it without getting washed off the deck.

After more than an hour of relentless pounding, the boat started to submarine itself, and the list was becoming more radical as the boat ran in the trough.

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By Tony Moore - Brisbane Times

Shipwreck experts have pinpointed the exact locations of 26 of Moreton Bay's 102 shipwrecks.

Until now, aside from visible wrecks, the location of many shipwrecks have been word of mouth among divers and boating families.

And those locations have shifted with the shifting sands and currents of Moreton Bay.

Queensland's Historic Shipwreck Survey is the first stage in a five-year study with the Queensland Museum trying to check locations of 1291 shipwrecks along the state's coast.

That number is likely to get to 1400 as the wreck locations are slowly confirmed.

However, throughout Queensland only 85 of the 1291 wrecks have been physically confirmed.

After 12 months of research and first-hand location spotting by divers from the Department of Environment and Resource Management and the Queensland Museum, the locations of just 26 wrecks around Moreton Bay have been tied to exact positions.

"I suspect by the end of the year that number will be up to around 30," said Paddy Waterson, the archaeologist leading the survey.

At the start of Queensland's Historic Shipwreck Survey, the locations of just six shipwrecks could be accurately shown on charts.

"We had six on Moreton Bay, and as it turned out some of those positions were not as exact as we'd hoped," Mr Waterson said.

"So we've gone from having six exact and seven "sharp" positions to now having 26 that we have exact positions for."

Mr Waterson said it has been harder work that he imagined.

"These wrecks come and go - in terms of visibility - because sand largely covers them up and then re-exposes them," he said.

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By Sebastian Lander - Daily Mail

The site where the fateful Titanic sunk in the Atlantic Ocean looks set to be a busy area next year as travel companies cash in and mark a century since the tragedy.

While two cruises - set to trace the exact journey of the Titanic, even hovering above the site where it sank 100 years ago on April 14 at 2.20am - have already sold out, another travel company has gone a step further, charging an eye-watering $66,257 (£41,784) to dive down to the wreck itself.

The 15-day 'exclusive' dive expedition - scheduled to take place from June to August next year - will offer Titanic 'fans' the chance to see the ship's eerie remains 12,500ft below the surface of the Atlantic.

The controversial voyage is offered by Kensington Tours and embarks from St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada, 329 miles from where the ship ran into trouble.

Titanic enthusiasts will take a submarine trip to explore the remains of the ship which famously struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on April 15 1912. Dubbed the 'unsinkable' ship, it went down in under three hours, killing 1,517 passengers and crew of the 2,224 on board.

The wreck lay undiscovered on the ocean floor until 1985, when an American-French expedition pinpointed its final resting place south-east of Newfoundland.

The Kensington Tours itinerary starts with time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which takes in a permanent exhibition, the pier from where ships were sent to rescue victims and Fairview Cemetery, where over 120 victims now lie.

From there, guests will travel to St. John's, attending an 'introductory expedition dinner' before going aboard the dive expedition ship which takes them to the site in the Atlantic Ocean, where they will spend seven days.

The group's arrival at the site will be 'marked by a short ceremony to commemorate the loss of this fine ship' before diving starts.

Participants will enjoy a deep-sea dive - during the day or at night - down to the wreck in a Russian MIR submersible dive unit, which is able to plunge to depths of up to 20,000 feet (6,090m).

There will be lectures and briefings to prepare travellers and orientation sessions, plus films and presentations from experts. The journey down to the ocean floor takes around two and a half hours.

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From NTD Television

Archaeologists in Guatemala have retrieved artifacts from ancient Mayan ruins submerged in picturesque Lake Atitlan that officials estimate could be more than 2,000 years old.

Scuba divers exploring the underwater ceremonial site of Samabaj found the remarkable pottery pieces intact and with detail of carvings and color still evident despite the artifacts spending thousands of years at the bottom of Latin America's deepest lake.

[Rosendo Morales, Exhibition Coordinator, Museo Lacustre Lago De Atitlan]: "We have found pieces in Samabaj dating back 200, 300 B.C. to 300 A.D. of different types such as incense burners that are 1.5 meters tall with four incredible cardinal points.

We are still asking questions about how these items could have been preserved for 2000, 2200 years in the lake until now and still retain a texture that you can appreciate.

Now, the pottery pieces are housed at Museo Lacustre Lago de Atitlan. Researchers believe the artifacts were housed on an island until a catastrophic event, like a volcanic eruption or landslide, raised water levels and drowned out the ancient site of Samabaj.

With investigations still taking place, the exact location of the site is a closely guarded secret, since archaeologists want to protect it from looters who fish in the ruins for artifacts to be sold, sometimes for thousands of dollars, on the black market.

Once complete tourist officials hope to open Samabaj to curious international visitors.

By Sheldon Gardner - The St Augustine Record
 

Archaeologists unveiled two centuries-old cannons, one with a very important inscription, at the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum Friday night.

“It’s been hidden away for centuries,” said archaeologist Chuck Meide, director of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Progam (LAMP), as he awaited the unveiling.

“It hasn’t been touched for centuries.” The cannons rested under a tent Friday night in the courtyard under the towering St. Augustine Lighthouse.

They were unveiled amid a crowd historians, archaeologists, professors and others at an invitation-only event.

Sam Turner, director of archaeology at LAMP, found the cannons in December at a shipwreck site off the coast of St. Augustine that archaeologists discovered two years ago.

“That was wonderful,” Turner said. “I wasn’t expecting to find a pile of cannons.” After a summer filled with careful cleaning and removal of concretions, the guns were ready to be unveiled.

One cannon is a four pound long gun, named because it could fire cannon balls that weighed up to four pounds. The second cannon, the shorter one, is a more powerful carronade, also referred to as a gunnade.

Carronades were invented in Scotland during the time of the American Revolution.

The shorter cannon has the date 1780 inscribed on its side.

From the cannon’s date and other artifacts found at the site, LAMP archaeologists believe that the cannons could belong to one of a series of loyalist transport ships that wrecked in the area.

Around 16 loyalist ships sunk as they were seeking refuge after the British evacuated Charleston in 1782. At the time, St. Augustine was a British-occupied city.

That is just a hypothesis at this point, Meide said. The shipwreck could be also merchant ship.

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