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By Simon Crerar - Cairns

100 years ago tomorrow, the passenger cruiser SS Yongala was approaching Mackay on route from Melbourne to Cairns on its 99th voyage in Australian waters.

On March 23, 1911, disaster struck. The Yongala steamed into a cyclone and sank south of Townsville with the loss of all 122 people on board.

Tragically, a Marconi wireless that would have alerted the Yongala to the cyclone arrived from England shortly after the disaster.

To commemorate this tragic event, Woodward has chartered the M.V Sea Esta to visit the Yongala on the anniversary.

Accompanying Woodward are his wife Pip and Cairns tourism identities John and Lyndell Ross of Reef Encounter, Bob McGill of Kuranda Scenic Railway, Tim North of Reef Magic Cruises, Gabriel Thallon of Tropic Days Backpackers and Angus Baker of The Hotel Cairns.

All participants have donated money in lieu of fees to help with post-cyclone Yasi rebuilding efforts in Tully, with all funds donated to the Tully Lions club to assist with a community project.

“It is too late to do anything for the victims of the Yongala except to honour their memory," said Woodward, "but we can at least contribute to the victims of Cyclone Yasi.”

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By Jef Otte

Besides maybe monster-truck driver, Barry Clifford has about the most badass job that exists: He's a real-life, bona-fide treasure hunter.

His 1983 discovery of the Whydah, a pirate ship wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod, provides the backbone of the Real Pirates exhibit currently at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and tonight, Clifford will talk about the process of finding that ship and the projects he and his crew are currently working on. But we got to him first.

In advance of that appearance, we caught up with Clifford to chat about growing up on the Cape and the particulars of what it takes to find a shipwreck.

Westword: Being a treasure hunter is not exactly the most common occupation. How did you get into that line of work ?

Barry Clifford: As a kid -- well, I wasn't really a kid, but when I was younger -- I was doing a lot of work related to diving; I had a salvage business, I was doing rescue work on ships that were distressed, and I had a major in history and sociology. So that and the folklore of shipwrecks, I just kind of mixed them together and made my own career.

WW: And it was your uncle who told you about the Whydah when you were a kid, right ?

BC: It was sort of one of those old Cape Cod folk stories, and he used to talk about it all the time. He used to say he knew somebody who went looking for it right after World War II and never found it. But it was something that always resonated in my subconscious, and the more I learned about sunken ships and archeological digs, the more I realized that there were all these sunken ships around the world that nobody had really looked for. They just never had the technology.

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By Patrick George  -  Statesman

Archaeologists searched in Panamanian waters for sunken pirate ship.

In 1671, the English pirate-for-hire Captain Henry Morgan spearheaded a raid on Panama, then the richest city in Spain's colonial empire, leading thousands of men and a naval fleet armed to the teeth.

But while Morgan was a brilliant military strategist, he wasn't much of a navigator, according to Texas State University underwater archaeology professor Frederick Hanselmann.

Not long after one of Morgan's advance parties captured a Spanish fortress at the mouth of the Chagres River, Morgan crashed his flagship, the Satisfaction, into a reef, causing it and three or four other ships to sink.

The ships disappeared into the water and were forgotten until last year when Hanselmann and fellow archaeologists unearthed cannons that might have belonged to Morgan's fleet.

It was the first archaeological study of the area and the first direct evidence of the presence of Morgan or his men.

After the wreck, Morgan continued up the river on foot to lead a devastating and politically controversial raid on what's now Panama City.

The guns recovered in September are undergoing restoration in Panama, where they will eventually be displayed in a museum. The team made the announcement of the discovery in late February.

Hanselmann, who joined Texas State in December, said the discovery is significant because it sheds light on an exciting time in human history, one that has captured people's imaginations in books and movies — such as Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" — but isn't well-documented archaeologically.

"Archaeology is all about our shared past," said Hanselmann, the chief underwater archaeologist and dive training officer with the River Systems Institute and the Center for Archaeological Studies . "This is a global story."

By Patrick George - My Fox Houston

In 1671, the English pirate-for-hire Captain Henry Morgan spearheaded a raid on Panama, then the richest city in Spain's colonial empire, leading thousands of men and a naval fleet armed to the teeth.

But while Morgan was a brilliant military strategist, he wasn't much of a navigator, according to Texas State University underwater archaeology professor Frederick Hanselmann.

Not long after one of Morgan's advance parties captured a Spanish fortress at the mouth of the Chagres River, Morgan crashed his flagship, the Satisfaction, into a reef, causing it and three or four other ships to sink.

The ships disappeared into the water and were forgotten until last year when Hanselmann and fellow archaeologists unearthed cannons that might have belonged to Morgan's fleet.

It was the first archaeological study of the area and the first direct evidence of the presence of Morgan or his men.

After the wreck, Morgan continued up the river on foot to lead a devastating and politically controversial raid on what's now Panama City.

The guns recovered in September are undergoing restoration in Panama, where they will eventually be displayed in a museum. The team made the announcement of the discovery in late February.

Hanselmann, who joined Texas State in December, said the discovery is significant because it sheds light on an exciting time in human history, one that has captured people's imaginations in books and movies, such as Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean," but isn't well-documented archaeologically.

By Matt Vande Bunte - The Grand Rapids Press

Sure, a 1990s movie about the Titanic brought in nearly $2 billion at the box office. But that’s not to say the infamous sinking has a corner on the market for shipwreck tales.

In fact, “Michigan is incredibly endowed with gripping stories” of great historical significance, said an underwater expert who will speak this week in Grand Rapids.

Ken Vrana and others will discuss two explorations in particular from 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Van Andel Museum Center, 272 Pearl St. NW. Admission is $5.

The presentation will whet visitors’ appetites for a museum exhibit on shipwrecks planned next year.

“Shipwrecks are often characterized as time capsules. But I like to characterize them as evidence,” said Vrana, president of the non-profit Center for Maritime & Underwater Resource Management.

“They’re direct evidence of the past that we can use in interpreting the life ways of those before us. We need these treasure troves of scientific evidence to separate the wheat from the chaff and make better interpretations (of history).”

Full story...

By Brian Hicks - The State

After sitting in the same spot for 10 years, the H.L. Hunley is finally ready to move.

Well, a few feet anyway.

This summer, the team at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center will take the 19th century submarine out of the lift cradle that’s held it since 2000 and set it upright for the first time since 1864.

It sounds pretty simple, but it’s a significant step in the project — and an ordeal that has taken nearly as long as it took to recover the sub from the ocean floor.

“We’re almost done with the final plan,” said Mike Drews, who manages the lab for Clemson University. “We sent it out for review to the (Hunley) Commission and the Navy. They looked at the preliminary plans and found nothing I would call red flags.”

The rotation, as the scientists call it, will set into motion the final phase of the sub’s rehabilitation — and may answer lingering questions about its disappearance in the dark days of the Civil War. People have waited a long time for those answers, but the crew at the Lasch lab has moved cautiously because, well, they don’t want to drop it.

Since the sub was delivered to Warren Lasch in 2000, archaeologists and conservators have removed several pieces of the sub and emptied it of sediment, crew remains and other artifacts. That has potentially changed the strength of the sub and created new stress points. But computer models show that the plan to slowly inch the sub upright and to the floor of the tank it sits in will work flawlessly.

The planning for this has been more than simple engineering. Maria Jacobsen, senior archaeologist on the project, has been mapping the intricate pattern of sand, shells and sea life stuck to the sub’s hull — a chore that had to be finished before the sub could be moved.

Because the Hunley was taken from the spot where it sank in 1864, that concretion holds the only record of the sub’s 130-plus years on the ocean floor.

The concretion also serves as an extra level of strength and protection for the sub, so it’s to the scientists’ advantage to leave it on through the move. But once that’s finished, all the concretion — and evidence recorded in it — will be removed.

By Joanna Davis - Dorset Echo

A coastguard who became intrigued by a local shipwreck mystery has donated research that he spent years building up to a national museum. 

Philip Chappell’s project on Landing Craft Tank 254 running aground off Chesil Beach on October 13, 1944, started off as a work assignment and evolved into a three-year passion.

Weymouth resident Mr Chappell, who works for the Portland Coastguard as a watch assistant, began researching the naval disaster in which 11 men died, as a station requirement.

He said: “I found out that two coastguards died as a result of a Looking Back piece in the Dorset Echo.

“It was the coastguard connection that interested me and as soon as I found out about the two coastguards, I delved into it because of the local interest.

“That’s when I decided to take it on as a personal research project and it took off.

“Before I knew it I had amassed rather a lot of information.”

Grandad Mr Chappell spent hours in Weymouth Library looking through microfiche and scouring through national archives and officer service records to find out more.

He researched the life of Captain John Legh, the first coastguard who died and whose body was never recovered from the sea.

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From Herald Gazette

Union Historical Society will present a program on Remarkable Shipwrecks of New England at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 6 in the sanctuary of People's United Methodist Church, Depot Street, Union.

Marine journalist and historian Jon Johansen of Winterport will discuss New England shipwrecks from the loss of the circus ship Royal Tar in 1836 to the sinking of the SS Andrea Doria in 1956.

Johansen relates that although only 46 people died out of more than 2,000 on board the Andrea Doria, earlier disasters offer horrible stories of rapid sinking, endurance and suffering. Often any women and children on board were abandoned to their fate, as in the 1904 sinking of the General Slocum in the Hudson River, N.Y., when 1,400 women and children perished.

While the lack of navigational aids contributed to marine disasters, the biggest hazard was the risk of hitting a submerged but still floating vessel which had been carrying a buoyant cargo such as lumber. There were hundreds of these in the Atlantic in the 1880s.

The modern equivalent is the partially submerged shipping container, but fortunately today's navigational and marine warning systems have drastically cut the number of shipwrecks.

Publisher of the Maine Coastal News for the past 24 years, Jon Johansen has a lifelong interest in shipwreck history, nurtured by his uncle Brad W. Luther, a shipwreck diver who documented wrecks in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.


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