HOT NEWS !

By Angela Daughtry - News-Leader

Everyone knows about Amelia Island's pirate heritage, but what about the possibility of priceless sunken treasures in our surrounding waters ?

According to Doug Pope, president of Amelia Research and Recovery of Fernandina Beach, there is a good chance the San Miguel - a Spanish galleon that sunk in 1715 - could be submerged in the waters of Amelia Island.

An experienced treasure salvager, Pope plans to search for the legendary ship and its treasures in the near future.

In the meantime, with help from friends, volunteers and donations, Pope has opened The Maritime Museum of Amelia Island at 1335 S. Eighth St.

The museum has on display many marine artifacts that have been salvaged from historic shipwrecks around the Florida coast, and will focus on the shrimping industry and the U.S. Navy submarine program, as well as the salvaged shipwreck items.

Most of the shipwreck artifacts were displayed at the Amelia Island Museum of History until 2004, according to Pope. Then they found a home at the dive shop at Hall's Beach Store. Now the ancient marine artifacts can once again be properly displayed in their own museum.

Pope says the museum will eventually have a research center, a reference library, a chart room, WiFi and other rooms dedicated to different historic time frames. It will also be an outlet for people who want to sell salvaged treasures, and eventually there will also be a museum store, he said.

There will be no charge to enter the museum, he said, but anyone who donates $5 or more will receive a free poster that identifies different sharks' teeth.

"We want to share all we can with the community," Pope said. "One of our main focuses will be the shrimp industry." Local shrimper David Cook has offered to donate photographs and artifacts highlighting the island's shrimping history, says Pope.

Pope is also bringing back to Fernandina Beach the Polly-L, a 71-foot research boat that will be located in the ocean waters near the end of Sadler Road.

Pope said he plans to do treasure diving within the next few months in search of the San Miguel, a frigate that sailed from Spain in 1715 and was sunk in the waters north of St. Augustine.

By Raphael G. Satter - CBS News

Many know of Captain Kidd, the Scottish-born buccaneer who terrorized the Indian ocean and was hanged as a pirate at London's Execution Dock.

Fewer know of his services to the British crown, his royal seal of approval, and the powerful, well-connected noblemen who Kidd believed double-crossed him.

A new exhibit at the Museum of London Docklands argues that Kidd's career wasn't as black-and-white as the skull-and-crossbones, and invites people to ask whether the 17th century adventurer was made a scapegoat for other men's schemes.

Curator Tom Wareham said he wanted to highlight the degree to which corrupt lawmakers, conniving noblemen, and greedy London merchants all played their part in funding, outfitting and organizing pirate expeditions.

There was little doubt about Kidd's guilt, Wareham said. But those who backed him shared in it too.

"They are guilty," he said. "Of avarice, basically."

The beginning of William Kidd's story remains unclear. The famed seaman was born in Greenock, Scotland around 1645 and moved to New York — then merely an outpost of Britain's budding empire — sometime thereafter. By 1689 he was cruising the Caribbean as a British gun-for-fire against the French.

It was a respectable enough life. T

he seasoned sea captain was routinely called upon by authorities in New York and Massachusetts to help clear their coasts of enemy ships.

He married one of New York's wealthiest widows and even lent equipment to help build the city's famed Trinity Church.

But his involvement in a shadowy get-rich-quick scheme — backed by some of the most powerful men in Britain — would prove his undoing.

Kidd's mission was to prowl the Indian Ocean, hunting pirates and plundering French vessels. Several well-connected noblemen were involved, including Lord Somers, who arranged to get Kidd a royal seal of approval, and Lord Bellamont, who helped organize the expedition and would later serve as governor of New York.

But the plan was of shaky legality, and in any case things went wrong from the start. Kidd set sail on Feb. 27, 1696, but his crew made rude gestures at a warship as they floated down the River Thames.

The Royal Navy, unamused, pressed many of them into service, which meant Kidd had to make a lengthy detour to New York to recruit more sailors.

He made it to waters off East Africa, but the constraints set on him by his sponsors meant he needed to earn cash quickly.

Kidd unsuccessfully attacked a convoy of Muslim pilgrims from Africa and preyed on Indian Ocean shipping, infuriating the subcontinent's Mughal rulers, with whom the British East India Company was doing a lucrative business.

Two of his captures were French-flagged ships — legitimate targets, from his point of view — but he was already being denounced as a pirate for abusing natives, torturing sailors, and clashing with allied vessels.

His relationship with his crew was dreadful; at one point he mortally wounded his gunner, William Moore, by smashing his head with a bucket.

By Trent Toone - Deseret News

Audiences clamor to see "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" in theaters today, they will meet a well-known, notorious high-seas villain with a cold and fearsome demeanor, clad in heavy black leather and with a braided black beard.

His name is Blackbeard, and his infamous, legendary reputation precedes him, right ?

"He had a really good press agent," says Lawrence Babits, a distinguished academic who teaches in the Department of History and Maritime Studies at East Carolina University, the home of the Pirates.

"There is no evidence that he killed anybody until his final flight, when people were trying to kill him," he said. "You can create an image of terror and mayhem and everything, then people are liable to bend and let you have your way."

Apparently, Blackbeard is not who we thought he was.

Babits and his colleague, Charles Ewen, a professor of anthropology at ECU in Greenville, N.C., are among many who are excavating the shipwreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge, believed to be Blackbeard's flagship that ran aground in shallow water offshore North Carolina in the early 1700s.

Who was Blackbeard ?

"Nobody knows much about him," Babits said. "We don't even know what his real name is."

Here is what is known about the famed pirate, according to the experts.

His is commonly known as "Edward Teach" or "Thatch." He is reported to have served as a privateer during Queen Anne's War (1701-1714), then turned pirate.

Sometime in the fall of 1717, Blackbeard and other pirates captured a French slave ship called La Concorde. The slaves and crew were released on shore, and many believe this ship was remodeled with extra guns and renamed Queen Anne's Revenge. It may also be possible, Babits speculates, that this ship was traded for another one because of a foul-smelling stench.

Full story...

 
Photo Ken Blevins

By Jason Gonzales - Star News

On Friday, Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge will be resurrected on the big screen in the fourth "Pirates of the Caribbean" film, but a less flashy event next week could signal something more historic.

That's when the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources will attempt to retrieve a 3,000-pound anchor from the Queen Anne's Revenge shipwreck in the waters near Beaufort.

Buried in 20 feet of water, the notorious pirate Blackbeard's prized flagship has sat since June 1718. Both Cape Fear Community College and the University of North Carolina Wilmington will help pull the anchor to the surface on May 26.

Linda Carlisle, secretary of the state cultural resources department, said it will be a historic day for North Carolina during a press conference Wednesday at UNCW's Center for Marine Science.

"I can assure you when the anchor is brought up next week, it will be an event of international significance," she said.

The nearly 300-year-old shipwreck was discovered in 1996 by Intersal Inc., a marine recovery and consulting company. Since then, archaeologists have been able to recover more than 250,000 artifacts.

Many of those artifacts are on display at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

Carlisle said the state is hoping to find private funding to help pull up the wreck by 2013.

"(We) really need the extra funding and are looking for those private dollars," she said.

Full story...

From NOAA

NOAA-sponsored explorers are searching a wild, largely unexplored and forgotten coastline for evidence and artifacts of one of the greatest seafaring traditions of the ancient New World, where Maya traders once paddled massive dugout canoes filled with trade goods from across Mexico and Central America.

One exploration goal is to discover the remains of a Maya trading canoe, described in A.D. 1502 by Christopher Columbus’ son Ferdinand, as holding 25 paddlers plus cargo and passengers.

Through the end of May, the team is exploring the remote jungle, mangrove forests and lagoons at the ancient port site of Vista Alegre (“happy view” in Spanish) where the Caribbean meets the Gulf of Mexico at the northeastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.

Scientists believe the port was part of an important trading network and was used at various times between about 800 B.C. and A.D. 1521, the date scholars use to designate the start of Spanish rule.

“The maritime Maya have been described much like ancient seagoing Phoenicians. They traded extensively in a wide variety of goods, such as bulk cotton and salt, and likely incense from tree sap called copal, jade, obsidian, cacao, Quetzal and other tropical bird feathers, and even slaves,” said Dominique Rissolo, Ph.D., expedition co-chief scientist and director of the Waitt Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

“Maya trade was far-ranging between the Veracruz coast of modern Mexico and the Gulf of Honduras, with each port a link in a chain connecting people and ideas. Yet there is still much to learn about the extensive history and importance of the maritime Maya and how they adapted to life by the sea.”

“Maritime economies were strengthened and far-ranging trade routes were established between A.D. 850 and 1100,” said Jeffrey Glover, Ph.D., expedition co-chief scientist with Georgia State University’s Department of Anthropology in Atlanta.

“It was during this time when the Maya at Chichen Itza relied increasingly on maritime commerce to maintain and extend control over much of the Yucatan peninsula. The period most associated with Maya seafaring followed, between A.D. 1100 and 1521.”

Recent archaeological work at Vista Alegre included completion of an architectural map of the site, test excavations to obtain cultural materials, and a 13-mile reconnaissance of coastal environments that revealed a number of small ancient and historical sites and cultural features.

Full story...

From The Nation

The wreckage of two ancient sail ships, built during the Ayutthaya period 400 years ago, have been found at separate locations in the Gulf of Thailand, with a large number of celadon ceramics and other artefacts.

One ship was found north of Koh Tao, 6 nautical miles off the Surat Thani coast in the South. The other was discovered 60 nautical miles off Chanthaburi in the East, said Erbprem Watcharangkoon, a senior Fine Arts Department official.

Both sailing ships were bound for several countries in the region on regular routes used by cargo ships, before they sank to a depth of about 70 metres.

They were built and used during the Ayutthaya period (1351-1767).

Apart from the wreckage, there were about 10,000 celadon items found in both ships, mostly still intact, but some were broken or damaged because of the use of fishing nets by modern trawlers. A number of the items have been recovered for study by the department's archaeologists.

Erbprem said the items were made in the Si Satchanalai area in the Kingdom of Sukhothai (1238-1583) in the area of modernday Sukhothai province, where a large number of historic kilns have been found.

A training session sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) is now underway in Chanthaburi to mark the site of one of the wrecks using geographic information system (GIS) technology. There are underwater archaeologists from 11 countries undergoing the training, which will end by June.

From Paul Fraser Collectibles

The power of Titanic collectibles is again in evidence, this time at Cato Crane.

A cigar box that once belonged to the captain of the Titanic has sold for £25,000 in Liverpool. Bearing the mark of the White Star Line shipping company and the initials of captain Edward John Smith, the box far surpassed its £20,000 high end estimate at Cato Crane Auctioneers.

The walnut box incorporates a cigar cutter and locking mechanism.

It is unknown how it made its return to the UK. Captain Smith went down with his ship on the fateful voyage in April 1912, just six days after guiding it out of Southampton docks.
 

By Jannette Pippin - EncToday

As moviegoers catch a glimpse of Blackbeard in the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, state underwater archaeologists will be on a real pirate adventure as they dive on the shipwreck presumed to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

The wreck of the flagship of the infamous pirate rests approximately 20 feet below water in Beaufort Inlet where it ran aground nearly 300 years ago.

A spring dive expedition is set to begin next week to complete a number of projects on site in anticipation of the final stages of work to recover the remaining artifacts.

“Our plan is still to recover all of the artifacts by 2013, and this short expedition is to prepare the site for that,” QAR Project Director Mark Wilde-Ramsing said.

Among the objectives is to recover either one of the cannons or an anchor from a large artifact pile located toward the central area of the wreck site.

“There’s the potential that we will be bringing up another large artifact,” Wilde-Ramsing said. “We’re considering different scenarios, but we want to look at recovering one of the artifacts from the top of the pile. It could be another cannon, but more likely it will be one of the anchors.”

Wilde-Ramsing said recovering the anchor would allow them greater access to the pile of artifacts and give them a better idea of what they need to do next to conserve the artifacts.

“This will allow us to look down into this pile and that’s something we’ve been eyeing to do for a long time,” he said.

The QAR Project Team and N.C. Department of Cultural Resources are holding a news conference Wednesday in Wilmington to give a preview of the spring recovery expedition.

The QAR team is partnering on the spring dive with the University of North Carolina Wilmington Center for Marine Science, as well as Cape Fear Community College.