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By Lena Smirnova - The Moscow Times

It’s been nearly 100 years since a jewel case containing family and imperial jewelry crashed through the ice to the bottom of Lake Baikal. The last hands it touched before disappearing into the watery depths were those of a Russian woman who was fleeing the country to save her life.

The year was 1917. The Bolsheviks had seized power, and White Russians were forced to move out of their homes or face execution.

Vadim and Zinaida Smit had no hope of staying in the country. Vadim was railway minister for the east-west Siberian route and a personal friend of Tsar Nicholas II, and Zinaida was the godchild of the queen mother.

With little time to think, they packed up whatever they could and fled St. Petersburg to China, from which they would catch a boat to Europe. They traveled by any means and walked when no transportation was available. They trudged through the Siberian snow and ice, losing their belongings in their haste to get to safety.

Just when they were crossing the frozen Lake Baikal, they heard the crack.

The ice had shattered beneath them, and the case that Zinaida was carrying slipped from her grip and plummeted to the bottom of the lake. It contained jewels that her husband and the imperial family had given to her. The Smits couldn’t afford to stop to search for it. They continued on, paying bribes at border checkpoints until they finally arrived at their destination in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

The story of the jewel case was passed down through generations of the Smit family until it reached Helen Cleary, Vadim and Zinaida Smit’s great-granddaughter. Cleary, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, was in her 40s when she first heard the story from her mother.

Cleary’s grandmother and father, direct descendants of the Smits, have already died, but her 81-year-old mother still hopes to find out what happened to the sunken treasure.

“It would be amazing for it to be found,” Cleary said by telephone. “It’s astonishing that it all happened.”

The family has waited 94 years to solve the mystery of the lost treasure chest. Now some people in Russia could be getting close to the answer.

By Patrick Cassidy - Cape Cod Times

The waters off Cape Cod are known as a graveyard for ships that fail to round the peninsula's greedy, outstretched arm.

Now local divers and shipwreck enthusiasts have a watery destination that is both eerily familiar and brand new: a recently discovered section of the Pendleton, one of two large tankers that split in half off the Cape during a storm in February 1952.

The stern of the Pendleton, about a mile east of Monomoy Island, has long been a popular dive spot. The ship is famous not so much for its sinking as for the four Coast Guardsmen who braved 60-foot seas and fierce winds in a 36-foot motor lifeboat to rescue 32 of the ship's crew stranded on the stern. The rescue has been called the greatest small boat rescue in Coast Guard history.

When the Pendleton split in half, eight men, including the ship's captain, were stranded on its bow, which drifted south and eventually grounded near the Pollock Rip Lightship southeast of Monomoy. All the men onboard the bow section were lost.

Only one frozen body was found when the Coast Guard and salvagers boarded the wreck a week later, according to "The Finest Hours" by Michael Tougias and Casey Sherman.

The bow of the Pendleton was eventually towed — first to New Bedford and then to New York City — to be cut up and sold as scrap metal. For a half century, the story of the 503-foot, 10,448-ton T-2 tanker's bow seemed complete.
Until now.

Chuck Carey, a 61-year-old Hyannis-based commercial real estate broker and shipwreck enthusiast, was searching the ocean bottom around Pollock Rip at the end of August with a sidescan sonar towed from his 29-foot catamaran.

"I happened to blunder right over it," he said this week about finding a 100-by-170-foot section of the Pendleton's bow in about 30 feet of water. From the sidescan imagery, Carey couldn't tell exactly what he was seeing, and at first thought it might have been a scallop dredge.

Once he and other divers explored the wreck, however, it was clear that the heap of metal and marine life was part of the Pendleton, he said. "It's like unmistakable," he said.

The ride back after that first dive was "quite a thrill," he said.

While the T-2 tankers are not unique or extraordinarily old, the historic rescue connected to the Pendleton makes the find exciting, Carey said.

"As soon as we got under water, within minutes I (thought), 'God, this looks awful familiar,'" said Carey's fellow diver, Don Ferris, 52, an East Sandwich resident and the author of several books on shipwrecks, including an anthology of wrecks off the Cape.

The steel girders were the same as those on the stern section of the Pendleton, located more than five miles to the north of where the bow section was found, Ferris said. The rows of girders supported the ship's deck, he said, and they are now exposed because this section has been flipped upside down.

Ferris speculates that when salvagers towed the bow away, a section caught on the bottom. The tug operator probably increased power to pull it loose, and ripped a section off close to the original break, Ferris said.

Full story...

From This is Plymouth

Treasure hunters who believed they were on the verge of finding Sir Francis Drake’s final resting place have failed to locate his coffin.

The international team last month found two ships which were scuttled off the coast of Panama over 400 years ago.

They believed Drake’s lead-lined coffin could be near to the location of the two wrecks ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Delight’ and launched a search for the historical artefact.

Pat Croce, who led the underwater expedition, said the mission was unsuccessful – but pledged to return to the site to continue his search.

The 56-year-old, a self-confessed pirate enthusiast and former president of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team, said: “The expedition was unsuccessful in locating the lead-lined coffin of Sir Francis Drake.

But we do have several anomalies or hotspots discovered by the sophisticated remote sensing equipment that coincide with my research. One in particular.”

He said that before he left Portobello, he urged researchers he was travelling with to explore the exact location. They sent a diver down to the 100-foot seabed with a hand-held metal detector to investigate.

Mr Croce said: “Unfortunately, the current was so strong that our diver, who was tethered to the survey vessel by an ‘umbilical’ breathing apparatus, considered the conditions too dangerous and he wisely abandoned the search.

“For now, I say to Sir Francis Drake, ‘I’ll be back!’.”

Full story...

By Norma Connolly - Compass Cayman

Strong waves resulting from Hurricane Rina have shifted the Kittiwake wreck about 60 feet out to sea, divers who dove the site over the weekend have reported.

Jason Washington of Ambassador Divers said the former USS Kittiwake, which was deliberately sunk as a dive attraction off West Bay in January, is now sitting 10 feet deeper in sand and 60 feet closer to the sea wall than before the storm.

“It is incredible. I thought, honestly, that if it was going to move, it would move toward the beach. However the storm worked and however the water moved, it moved the Kittiwake towards the wall,” he said.

An enormous anchor chain on the ship has snapped and metal plates on the side of the vessel have also disappeared.

Mr. Washington and others dived the Kittiwake on Saturday and took video footage of the wreck to show how far it had moved and what damage had been done in the storm.

The wreck is now much closer to the Sand Chute dive site.

The thing that struck me was how close it now is to Sand Chute. Before, when you did the Sand Chute dive, you could just make out that there was a wreck on the sand flat. Now, it’s about 30 feet from the wreck. You can see it clearly,” he said.

He added, “The whole wreck is about 10 feet deeper than it was. At the wheelhouse at the helm station, prior to the storm, it was in about 15 feet of water. Now, according to my depth gauge, it’s at 26 feet, about 10 feet deeper than she was.

Rod McDowall, operations manager of Red Sail Sports, said a team had gone to check the moorings and confirmed the seven moorings were intact, but the wreck had indeed moved, although he was unable to say how far.

We’ll be checking that in the next day or two,” he said.

He said the wreck was still upright and positioned the same way as it had been before the storm.

It’s surprising it moved in the way it did,” he said.

The Kittiwake was sunk on 5 January, after eight years of planning. At the time of its sinking, the ship rested in 64 feet of water, at its deepest. The wreck has become on the most popular dive sites in Cayman.

DiveTech’s Nancy Easterbrook, who headed the operation to bring the ship to Cayman and sink it, is off-island and has not been able to dive the wreck to see the impact of the storm.

She said she had only received second-hand reports on the effect Rina had on the wreck and was awaiting more information.

Mr. Washington said the ship did not appear to have slid toward the wall, rather with the force of the sea, she “walked standing up”. The movement shoved a bank of sand between the ship and Sand Chute, embedding the Kittiwake firmly in the seabed, he said.

“She’s built up so much sand between herself and Sand Chute that I don’t think she can move any closer to the wall. She’s settled,” Mr. Washington said.

The huge propellor of the ship is still visible, though is now in a hole in the sand, which Mr. Washington said was likely to fill in during the next few months.

 
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By Craig Idlebrook - Working Waterfront

Some of the best mysteries begin as open secrets.

Seal Cove residents have long known about the skeletal remains of a wooden schooner, even if national park officials don’t disclose its location officially. The hull of the ship is like a tidal phantom, only appearing at the water’s lowest ebb for a brief time before disappearing back into the ocean. Little else has been known about the ship.

But this summer, a Florida-based archeologist, an intern and a group of volunteers have teamed up to find out more about the ship’s past. For a week in August, the team slogged through the tidal mud to measure and draw what’s left of the ship.

The effort was led by Franklin H. Price, senior archeologist for the Florida Bureau of Archeological Research. Price grew up on Mount Desert Island and spent several years as a lobsterman before going to graduate school to study archeology; he undertook the project during his summer vacation time.

For Price, it was more than the geography that made him feel like he was coming full circle with this project. He too was once an eager volunteer helping out with an archeology project, excavating a Roman graveyard in Valencia, Spain. Price said he was pleased to give others the same thrill of discovery.

“It went very well,” Price said. “People seemed to have a lot of fun.”

Volunteers included some Acadia park staff and members of Friends of Acadia, a nonprofit group. Muriel Davisson, a genetics professor at Jackson Laboratory and a coordinator for the Tremont Historical Society, said she enjoyed herself immensely. Originally scheduled to volunteer for one day, Davisson took time off work to come back for another.

She served as an artist, sketching the contours of the hull on waterproof material. Having once volunteered for an Mount Desert Island archeological land dig, Davisson said the thrill of discovery far outweighed the discomfort of working in the muck.

“There’s something about history [and] being part of a team that’s trying to find out something about history,” Davisson said.

The project was a collaboration between Acadia National Park, the Schoodic Education and Research Center and the Institute of Maritime History, with funding provided by the Submerged Resource Center of the National Park Service and a grant from L.L. Bean, according to Rebecca Cole-Will, Acadia Park Cultural Resources Program Manager.

Acadia officials liked the idea of teaming Price with volunteers to help establish a local corps of budding archeologists to help out on future discoveries, said Cole-Will.

Full story...

By Geoff Ziezulewicz - Stars and Stripes

With his ship ablaze and much of his crew dead, John Paul Jones had the chance to surrender to the British on Sept. 23, 1779. Instead, Jones, dubbed the father of the U.S. Navy, is said to have declared: “I have not yet begun to fight !”

After the British surrendered, Jones’ men tried to save his Bonhomme Richard, but it sank in the North Sea.

Now, more than 220 years later, a team of scientists, Navy enthusiasts and archaeologists is trying to find its remains.

“Bonhomme Richard would be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in U.S. naval history,” said Alexis Catsambis, manager of the Naval History and Heritage Command’s underwater archaeology branch.

“Discovery would bring with it knowledge of the historic battle, life aboard a ship of the Continental navy, and information about the construction and armament of the ship itself.”

Led by the Ocean Technology Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to undersea research and education, the annual expeditions are slowly ruling out chunks of the sea floor as they look for the ship’s iron ballasts, cannons and other bits that would not have deteriorated over the centuries.

Last summer, the Navy supplied the salvage ship USNS Grasp to aid in the expedition.

Onboard the Grasp during the 27-day expedition were members of Mobile Diving Salvage Unit 2.

“Coming out here and actually diving in the ocean in a real-world situation was very unique,” Chief Warrant Officer Raymond Miller said, adding that most of the crew’s dives consist of shallower water training in Maryland’s Patuxent River.

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By Willie Drye - Newswatch National Geographic

A 2,000-pound cannon hauled up from the wreck of Blackbeard’s flagship off the North Carolina coast last week has stirred more interest in the infamous 18th-century pirate and brought more visitors to Beaufort, a small seaport near the site of the wreck.

And since state funding for the work on the Queen Anne’s Revenge has all but dried up, archaeologists may have to rely on that public interest to resume work at the shipwreck next spring.

North Carolina State Archaeologist Steve Claggett said funding for next season’s work is uncertain. “We’ll do our darndest to find money and keep working,” Claggett said. “I’ll be optimistic and say there’s a small chance we won’t go back.”

It takes about $150,000 per season to fund the work at the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Archaeologists work at the site when conditions are most favorable in late May and June and in September and October.

The excavation of the Queen Anne’s Revenge is under the supervision of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. Claggett said the state legislature last provided direct funding for the project in 2008. Although some state funds have been used since then, that money was moved from other state departments, he said.

“The prospects for appropriated funds (from the state legislature) in the foreseeable future is pretty dim,” Claggett said. “That’s why we’re mounting an effort to get private corporate funding for the project.”

The eight-foot cannon recovered October 26 was the 13th cannon removed from the wreck since work started at the site in 1997. Archaeologists think about 700,000 artifacts are contained in the wreck site. About 280,000 artifacts have been removed.

A major exhibition of those artifacts has been mounted at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, about 150 miles southeast of Raleigh. About 150,000 visitors have toured the museum since the exhibit opened a few months ago. Jennifer Woodward, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Cultural Resources, said news of the cannon’s recovery brought 800 more visitors to the museum that same day. One visitor drove all the way from Wisconsin, she said.

Visitors lining up at the museum to see the Blackbeard exhibit are proof that the pirate who once terrorized the seas from the Caribbean to the southeast U.S. coast still has a powerful grip on the public’s imagination.

Blackbeard assembled a varied collection of cannon during his brief, colorful career. It’ll be several years before archaeologists know where the most recently recovered cannon was built.

But marks on the other cannon from the site indicate that they were the type of firepower a pirate would assemble.

They were built in England, France and Sweden. The variety of manufacturers is what you’d expect in a pirate’s arsenal since he’d take whatever guns he could get, Claggett said.

Full story...

By Adam Linhardt - Storm Keys news

Fortunes in sunken treasure await discovery off the Colombian coast and new opportunities "beyond anything anyone ever dreamed" lay ahead for salvors, despite a recent U.S. court decision, said a former attorney for a company vying for billions of dollars in treasure. 

A federal court on Monday dismissed a claim by the Seattle-based Sea Search Armada salvage company to half of the treasure it claims is buried within the Spanish galleon San Jose, which sank after an explosion while trying to outrun a fleet of British warships on June 8, 1708.

Salvors say the San Jose now rests in 700 feet of water on the edge of the Continental Shelf near the port of Cartagena, but whether they are right, and whether untold riches lay with the wreck, remains to be seen as no treasure has yet been lifted from the seabed. 

Sea Search Armada has been at legal loggerheads with the Colombian government for 20 years over who owns what some believe to be as much as $17 billion in gold, silver and emeralds aboard the ill-fated San Jose.

"If this really is the San Jose, honest to God, it will be beyond belief," said former Sea Search Armada attorney and Key West resident David Paul Horan.

According to a summary of the Sea Search complaint, Sea Search Armada claims to have found the San Jose in 1981. The Colombian government agreed that it would split the riches with the salvor. But the Colombian government later reneged and passed a law stating that Sea Search Armada could have only 5 percent of the treasure as part of a finder's fee, the complaint states.

That law lit a slow-burning powder keg of legal tumult that appeared to culminate -- barring an appeal -- in Sea Search Armada's claim in U.S. federal court. On Monday, the U.S. court basically said the statute of limitations had run out for Sea Search Armada. 

James DelSordo, an attorney representing Sea Search Armada, told the Associated Press on Monday that his client is considering its legal options and that the U.S. decision was "inaccurate" and "incorrect."

Horan quit working for Sea Search Armada in the mid-1980s, citing fears that drug cartels were controlling the government or their negotiators, but he has been watching the case closely and believes the Colombian government is ready to forge a more permanent accord with salvors.

In other words, lobbyists for treasure salvors are ready to strike a deal with Colombian lawmakers that would better benefit salvors as well as the government.

The government, Horan intends to argue, need salvors to find the treasure. If they run them all off, nobody wins, he said. 

The Colombian legislature is drafting future laws on how to deal with future salvage cases, Horan said. There needs to be standing law that benefits salvors and the government, because both sides benefit, he said.