HOT NEWS !

By Felicia Kitzmiller - News Herald Writer

Millions have enjoyed the sugar sand beaches and clear waters of the Emerald Coast, but far fewer have seen the attractions that wait off the coast, below the surface of the inviting waters.

The Panhandle is the No. 2 most popular drive-to recreational diving location in the country, only behind the Florida Keys, dive instructor and enthusiast Danny Grizzard said.

The Panama City Beach Convention and Visitor’s Bureau’s website lists more than a dozen popular dive locations including shipwrecks, bridge remnants, sunken Army tanks, aircrafts and more than 50 artificial reefs teeming with marine life.

In the months following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster that devastated the economy of the Florida Panhandle, Roger Smith, an archeologist with the Florida Department of State’s Division of Historical Resources, said he found himself contemplating ways to help boost tourism in the struggling region.

Having recently completed two successful public education and interpretation projects related to diving – a collection, or trail, of underwater archeological preserve wrecks from the Keys to Pensacola, and another trail of the very popular fleet of sunken Spanish galleons in South Florida – Smith decided to stick to what he knows and honed in on the region’s already successful diving industry.

After contacting friends in the region, an idea has begun to take shape for an interactive map and trail of Panhandle shipwrecks that will hopefully pique the public’s interest and help bring people back to the Panhandle.

“This would present your classic shipwreck, because when people go diving, that’s what they want to see,” said Gizzard, who is helping to organize local dive shops to assist in the effort.

By Wes Helbling - Bastrop Daily Enterprise

Professional archaeologists may have finally solved the mystery behind a sunken steamboat in Bayou Bartholomew that has intrigued local residents for decades.

Dennis Jones with the state Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism, Division of Archaeology and Allen Saltus Jr. with Archaeological Research Inc. conducted the first formal study of the site Friday.

As a result of their work, the sunken vessel can now be confirmed as a steamboat and will be recorded with the state archaeologist’s office.

The shipwreck had been exposed for a few weeks during the recent drought. By Friday, the boat was once again submerged and buried in sand.

Jones and Saltus determined the boat’s dimensions -- close to 150 feet long and up to 17 feet wide -- by marking the unseen perimeter with metal probes and then mapping it in sections via tape measure and graph.

In addition to the size, Saltus, who specializes in underwater archaeology, found several hidden clues that may help identify the boat.

“This vessel shows evidence of burning,” he said, noting a charred piece of cross planking that has become detached from the hull.

Evidence of burning has caused past visitors to wonder if this could be the Jim Barkman, which was captured and burned by U.S. Col. E.D. Osband in 1865. Saltus noted the wreck is too large to be the Barkman, which only measured 93 feet in length.

Saltus found the possible ruins of a metal boiler midship, and evidence at the stern to indicate this was a sternwheel boat. That rules out another proposed candidate, the Bastrop, which was a side-wheeler.

“We’ve eliminated those two boats,” said Saltus. “Based on preliminary observations, I would say it fits the Big Horn.”

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Photo Richard Glueck 

By Nick McCrea - Bangor Daily News

A chance meeting in November in a New Jersey rest stop parking lot between two Mainers — one a U.S. Coast Guard veteran and the other a shipwreck buff — led them to bond over an Italian liner that sank 55 years ago.

Bob Wallace, 75, of Penobscot, who retired in 1973 after a 20-year Coast Guard career, saw another driver getting out of a car with a Maine license plate. The two struck up a conversation.

The other Mainer, Richard Glueck of Winterport, noticed a Coast Guard decal on Wallace’s truck, which led to a discussion of Wallace’s career.

One of Wallace’s most important memories, he said Thursday, was the morning of July 26, 1956, when the 80-foot Coast Guard cutter he was on, the Evergreen, responded to calls that the Andrea Doria of the Italian Line had been rammed by the Swedish liner Stockholm late the previous night off Nantucket, Mass.

“[Glueck] happened to be an Andrea Doria buff who was just 6 years old when it happened,” Wallace said.

When the Evergreen, which had been pulled from oceanographic research to help with the rescue effort, arrived at the wreck site, Wallace grabbed a camera and snapped pictures as the Andrea Doria slipped beneath the waves.

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By Shawn J. Soper - The Dispatch

A local girl with a penchant for collecting sea glass made a rare discovery last week when she uncovered a centuries-old coin dating back to 1655 in the dune on the beach in Fenwick Island.

Last weekend, 9-year-old Ella Peters was combing the beach in Fenwick when she came across a rather rare find, an old coin dating back to 1655 that likely washed ashore sometime in the last 350 years or so.

From a young age, Bishopville resident Ella Peters has had a fascination with beach combing and collecting sea glass, according to her mother, Gretchen Peters.

Ella received a metal detector for Christmas this year, but wasn’t utilizing her new equipment last weekend when she uncovered the old 1655 coin buried in the sand in the dune on the beach in Fenwick.

“She was combing the beach and uncovered what looked like at first like an old bracelet,” said Gretchen Peters this week. “It had a lot of rust on it and we couldn’t make out what it was at first.”

Ella and her mother took the odd discovery to the nearby DiscoverSea Museum in Fenwick, which houses a vast collection of old coins and other artifacts from centuries of shipwrecks off the Maryland and Delaware coasts.

Museum proprietor Dale Clifton, who has seen more than his share of old shipwreck artifacts, submerged Ella’s find in a solution to remove rust and centuries worth of decay to reveal an old coin clearly dated 1655 that had attached itself to a piece of wire, likely from the same shipwreck.

“Ella lit up like a light bulb when the object was cleaned and turned out to be a very, very old coin,” said Gretchen Peters this week. “It was clearly dated 1655. We’re going to take it to a gentleman who collects coins to find out what it’s worth, but I don’t think she’ll give it up no matter what he tells us.”

Ella, an avid collector at age nine, is also not about to give up the location of the find.

“She said she doesn’t want to disclose the exact location because she intends to go back and search it again,” said Gretchen Peters. “It’s like she wants to stake a claim to the area where she found it.”

Clifton said Ella’s find itself was not entirely unusual in an area with dozens of known shipwrecks dating back to the 1600s, but the way she found it was what made the discovery so special.

“It’s really incredible that she found it just sifting through the sand close to the surface without the use of a metal detector,” he said. “What makes it really special is the idea that Ella might be the first person to have touched that coin in 350-plus years.”

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By Leah Leach  - Peninsula Daily News

A dive team has found the ship’s bell of the SS Governor, which sank off Point Wilson 90 years ago.

Divers from the Maritime Documentation Society found the bell Sunday, said Robert Wilson of Marysville, who, along with Benjamin Nussbaum of Lynnwood, discovered the bell buried in silt 240 feet below the Admiralty Inlet surface.

“One of the things you always look for is the ship’s bell,” said Wilson, the spokesman for the group of shipwreck divers dedicated to documenting the history of maritime disasters.

“This is the holy grail of all shipwreck artifacts,” agreed Dan Warter, vice president of the Maritime Documentation Society and one of three partners of DCS Films.

Waved over by the two divers who found the bell, Warter documented the find on video.

A sunken ship’s bell “is what is sought after on any major maritime disaster,” Warter said.

“It’s kind of the monument of the shipwreck,” he said, adding that ship’s bells often are exhibited in museums while copies are made and engraved with the date of the shipwreck.

“It’s a really big thing to find,” Warter said.

The Governor, a steamship on a routine run to Seattle from San Francisco, sank at 12:04 a.m. Friday, April 1, 1921.

Eight of the 240 people aboard did not survive.

The Governor had just dropped off some passengers in Victoria before heading southeast toward Puget Sound.

As the ship rounded Port Townsend, the SS West Hartland, which was leaving Port Townsend for India, rammed into the Governor amidships on her starboard side, ripping open a 10-foot gash in the iron hull.

Reports later said the Governor’s pilot mistook the West Hartland’s running lights for fixed lights on Marrowstone Point and so didn’t yield the right of way.

Maritime Documentation Society divers have examined the shipwreck at least annually for years, Wilson said.

But it was not until Wilson’s 13th successful dive in 10 years that the bell was found.

“It was half-buried” on its side, Wilson said. “We pulled it out of sand and set it out.”

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By Brian Crandall - Turn to 10

A total of 46 people died when the Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria collided with another ship off Nantucket 55 years ago this week.

Just a day before Monday's anniversary, a diver died while exploring the wreck. Sixteen divers have lost their lives at the site.

NBC 10 talked to dive expert Michael Lombardi, the diving safety officer at the University of Rhode Island, about the dangers of diving at the Andrea Doria site.

"It's deep, dark, and cold. It's also covered with fishing nets, trawl lines, fishing lines. So there are lots of entanglement hazards. The currents are also extremely strong out there," Lombardi said.

Lombardi said he believes many divers who visit the site are not qualified to do so.

Lombardi has been diving all over the world, to much greater depths than the Doria, but he has not gone to the Dorea site.

"If you have a need to go to a place like that, then you go. I think, unfortunately now, people are seeking adventure, seeking a thrill. The Doria's been considered analogous to Everest for mountain climbers. So, it's kind of like the conquest in diving. And to me, you can't justify putting your life on the line for a conquest," Lombardi said.

Another diver died Thursday near a different shipwreck off Montauk, N.Y. He was reportedly diving off the same charter boat that the Andrea Doria victim was diving from on Sunday.

  
Photo Frederick Price

By Emerson Whitney - Fence Viewer

The skeleton of an unidentified wooden schooner is slowly disappearing into the muddy inter-tidal zone here. The official location is being kept secret and the history of the timbers scattered along the shoreline is a complete mystery.

But Franklin Price, a Mount Desert Island High School graduate and accomplished shipwreck archeologist, will return home this August in an attempt to uncover the wreck and its story.

The “Seal Cove Shipwreck Project” spiraled out of a grant that Mr. Price received through the Acadia National Park Service and the Institute of Maritime History.

Mr. Price plans to explore the site at low tide for several days, from Aug.1 to 5, incorporating the help of any interested volunteers in the process of identifying and dating the remains. Mr. Price will conduct a mapping of the site, as well as a scale drawing of the features.

“I remember seeing the wreck as a kid,” said Mr. Price, speaking about his connection to shipwreck archeology through his life on MDI. “I went to Tremont (Consolidated School) and remember wandering out there one day and stumbling across it.”

He said, “We’re going to make a site plan and get various measurements of parts so we can try and get an ID on it,” he said. “There isn’t a lot left of the vessel, but we can learn some from the original dimensions.

Its timbers are huge, so I imagine we’re looking at something that’s 18th century – but Maine had access to larger timbers longer than other states so it might very well be 19th century. We just don’t know.”

From Hydro International

The remains of the German submarine U-513 have been discovered off the coast of Brazil. The sub was sunk by bombs dropped from an American plane in July 1943.

Only seven of the 53 men on board survived the attack. Researchers from Kat Schurmann Institute and Vale do Itajai University located the U-513 almost 68 years to the day after it sank.

On 14th July 2011 the side-scan produced definitive images of the remains of a pressure hull on the ocean bottom. The final resting place of the U-513 had been uncovered.

Although Brazil had been technically neutral at the beginning of the war, it allowed the US to establish air bases from which it could launch attacks on submarines that were becoming a serious threat to allied shipping. As a result, Brazilian ships became a prime target for the U-boats.

During the first half of 1942, German subs sank 13 Brazilian merchant vessels. In August, the U-507 sank 5 Brazilian ships in two days killing more than 600 people.

In all, 21 German and two Italian submarines were responsible for the sinking of 36 Brazilian merchant ships, causing 1,691 drownings and 1,079 other casualties. The sinkings were a major reason the Brazilian government ultimately declared war against the Axis. 

The 252 foot long submarine was discovered lying at a depth of 245 feet, 75 miles off the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.

The family had procured a JW Fishers side scan system shortly after opening the institute, an organization that was devoted to fostering sustainability and preservation of the oceans and coastal habitats. The primary use for the sonar was to map the reef structures off the Brazilian coast.

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