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By Jeremy Taylor - FT

Standing on the bridge of the USS Kittiwake, I turn the helmsman’s wheel, check the navigator’s compass and imagine I’m steering a course across the ocean. But the crew has long since jumped ship and the engines are dead.

Earlier this month, the Kittiwake sank close to the coast of the Cayman Islands, not as a result of a storm or an accident, but in a controlled, deliberate operation masterminded by the islands’ tourism authorities.

They had spotted the growth in popularity in scuba diving on wrecks, such as those from the second world war at Scotland’s Scapa Flow and Truk Lagoon off Micronesia, and set about luring a new wreck to their warm, clear waters.

Launched in 1945, the 251ft, 2,200-ton Kittiwake was originally built to rescue sailors from downed submarines. During 50 years of service, she took part in countless missions around the world.

They included recovering the black box from the Challenger space shuttle disaster, as well as saving the lives of many in peril on the sea.

This is the first time the US navy has donated a decommissioned ship to a foreign country for wreck diving and tourism officials behind the plan soon discovered it was a process wrapped up in enough red tape to sink a battleship.

“Our original plan was to sink five ships at different locations around Grand Cayman and call it Shipwreck City,” explained Nancy Easterbrook, who first came up with the idea of sinking a ship in the Cayman Islands and spent seven years bringing the project to fruition.

A member of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association, she also runs Divetech, one of the island’s biggest diving companies.

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By Wayne Ayers - Tampa Bay Newspapers

Claims by a local treasure hunter that there is a century-old shipwreck off our shores got a boost from a former diver in the area.

“I’ve seen that wreck,” said Joe Mecko, of Madeira Beach, after reading a story on the subject in the Beach Beacon.

The article told about Jim Leatherwood’s discovery of shipwreck artifacts while metal detecting on the beach in Indian Rocks Beach and Indian Shores. Leatherwood said he believed his finds were the remains of an as-yet-undiscovered shipwreck not far offshore.

The story revived Mecko’s memory of a dive he made a few years back. He was searching for a friend’s boat that had gone down. Mecko, who was a charter boat captain at the time, said sunken boats often make ideal reef material that attract fish.

The fiberglass boat he was looking for was missing, except for its anchor.

“I followed the anchor rope,” Mecko said, “and at the end I saw metal spikes sticking out of the ground.”

The spikes were standing straight up in the sand, over a dark area, he recalled. There was no rock exposed, only sand. The location was about 10 to 15 miles offshore from Indian Rocks Beach, in about 40 to 60 feet of water.

From the Outer Banks Sentinel

The Currituck Heritage Park Winter Education Series continues its 'Corolla In Retrospect ~ The Shipwreck Series' with Blackout!

For years after the Currituck Beach Lighthouse was built (1875) the Graveyard of the Atlantic was a safer place for mariners but the torpedoes and submarines of the two World Wars changed that.

• It is a little known fact that there were German submarines directly off the NC coast in WWII, much less in WWI. James Charlet and Linda Molloy from the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station Historic Site will dramatically present some of this history with an emphasis on the most highly awarded US maritime rescue, the Mirlo in 1918.

• Learn from Danny Couch, an Outer Banks historian and owner of Hatteras Tours what life was like for local residents during WWII.

• Why is this area called the Graveyard of the Atlantic ? Nathan Henry, lead conservator with the Underwater Archaeology Branch's Kure Beach preservation laboratory, will share his knowledge gained from working on dozens of shipwrecks in the U.S.

By Mitchell Smyth - Toronto Sun

The little heritage museum in this Alabama gulf coast community of 675 souls houses all the things you'd expect. There are vintage farm implements, old-time dresses, Victorian kitchen utensils, tools, a blacksmith's forge, a Victrola phonograph, etc.

But there is also something else, something you would never expect in a small-town museum: Artifacts from a multi-million dollar treasure trove recovered from a shipwreck out in the Atlantic.

A mural, captions on the exhibits and a video tell the story of the ill-fated SS Republic, a sidewheel paddle-steamer, as she sailed from New York to New Orleans in October 1865.

The U.S. Civil War had ended earlier that year and the South was suffering from shortages of everything, including coinage (paper money was widely distrusted).

The Republic was carrying a reported $400,000 in gold and silver coins (worth something like $100 million today) for New Orleans banks and businesses.

On the third day at sea the ship ran into a fierce storm. Crew and passengers threw freight overboard (but not the coinage) to lighten the ship but she could not be saved. Finally, the captain gave the order: "Abandon ship!" The crew and the 59 passengers climbed into four lifeboats and onto a raft. And the Republic went to the bottom.

Fast forward to the 1990s. Odyssey Marine Exploration, a treasure-hunting outfit headed by Tampa entrepreneurs Greg Stemm and John Morris, took an interest in the story. But how could they find the wreck ?

Modern computer technology gave them the answer. They fed information on wind speeds, bearings from rescue ships' logs, survivors' accounts (all but 12 of the crew and passengers survived) and other data into a computer and came up with a square measuring 50 km each way, about 160 km southeast of Savannah, Ga.

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By Colin Nickerson - Boston

The archeological digs at  have yielded neither mummies nor grand monuments.

But Boston University archeologist Kathryn Bard and her colleagues are uncovering the oldest remnants of seagoing ships and other relics linked to exotic trade with a mysterious Red Sea realm called Punt.

“They were the space launches of their time,’’ Bard said of the epic missions to procure wondrous wares.

Although Nile River craft are well-known, the ability of ancient Egyptian mariners to ply hundreds of miles of open seas in cargo craft was not so fully documented.

Then the team led by Bard and an Italian archeologist, Rodolfo Fattovich, started uncovering maritime storerooms in 2004, putting hard timber and rugged rigging to the notion of pharaonic deepwater prowess.

In the most recent discovery, on Dec. 29, they located the eighth in a series of lost chambers at Wadi Gawasis after shoveling through cubic meters of rock rubble and wind-blown sand.

Only a few days earlier, Bard had been grading term papers in chilly Boston; now, with flashlight and trowel, she was probing a musty manmade cavern, one that might date back more than 4,000 years.

“When the last layer of sand was removed, stale, fetid air rushed from a crack,’’ Bard said by mobile phone from the dig site, a dried-out water course beside the Red Sea.

The reconnaissance of the room and its relics will take time and caution. The chamber’s most likely contents include ship parts, jugs, trenchers, and workaday linens, as well as hieroglyphic records.

“It’s a storeroom, not a royal tomb,’’ Bard stressed.

However prosaic they seem, the finds at Wadi Gawasis - including the ancestor of the modern package label - really speak of the glitter, gold, and glory of a long-ago civilization that bewitches us still.

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Photo Timmy Carey

From RTE

Divers have described their discovery of a WWI German U-boat that historians believe was destroyed in 1919.

All 27 crew on board the UC42 died when the submarine sank at the entrance to Cork Harbour on 10 September 1917.

It had been laying mines when an explosion was heard.

A team of five amateur divers from Cork discovered the submarine in good condition in 27m of water just off Roches Point on 6 November after a 12-month search.

Diver Ian Kelleher said they were very surprised and ecstatic to find it with little obvious explosive damage.

Positive identification was possible when they found its number stamped on a propeller.

Mr Kelleher, a chemistry student, said that two days before Christmas, the dive team laid a plaque of remembrance near the propellers as a memorial to the 27 German submariners who died.

They plan to return to the site over the coming weeks and continue their research into the submarine and its crew, including trying to contact relatives of the crew. 

From First Coast News

Their excitement rang through every word.  They had found a ship's bell, one of the most rare discoveries off the coast. 

Divers from LAMP at the St. Augustine Lighthouse were on a routine site check of a shipwreck when Dr. Sam Turner saw what he described as a "horizontal shadow."

"And it was a bell," said Dr. Turner. "There was no mistaking it. I mean, there was stuff encrusted onto it, but it was very clearly a bell."

Employees with LAMP said only two bells have ever been recovered off the First Coast.

"The bell is traditionally known as the diver's holy grail," explained Chuck Meide, Director of LAMP.

"That's because a ship's bell is extremely rare and also, a ship's bell is often the best clue to the identity of a shipwreck."

Crews spent time Sunday removing some of the concretion that covered the bronze bell after years of sitting below the surface.

They had hoped to find a date or a maker's mark on the metal that would help them figure out the name of the ship.

However, with about 75 percent of the surface cleared, there was no clue to help them determine the ship's identity.

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Photo Robin Maguire

By Jeremy Lee - ABC South West Victoria

Peter Ronald loves diving. His face lights up when he talks about the sensation of flying and the joy of discovery and exploration in the underwater world, and the results of his exploring have been on display in Warrnambool for many years now.

Born in Terang, Peter came from a great swimming family - his dad taught him (and most of Terang) to swim which led to snorkling and spearfishing, along with a great familiarity with the local coastline and its history, including the many shipwrecks here in the south west.

By the 1970s he was exploring those shipwreks in detail and beginning the process of recovering artefacts.

Peter says his feeling was always that the artefacts belonged to 'public hands and public display' - and as the concept of Flagstaff Hill emerged in the mid 70's, he thought it would be the perfect home for these objects.

The lack of legal protection for shipwrecks in the 1970s made the recovery dives all the more important as much of what was there was being taken, looted, and sold as scrap to be melted down. Many artefacts were lost as a result.

Flagstaff Hill and one of Peter's greatest finds - the Schomberg diamond - played a crucial part in getting the legislation changed to protect shipwrecks.

The diamond was shown to Sir Rupert Hamer who was visiting Flagstaff Hill. When Sir Rupert asked why it wasn't on display, he was told that if people knew where it had come from the potential for looting would dramatically increase. As Peter puts it, Sir Rupert 'got it', and the legislation to protect the shipwrecks followed fairly swiftly.

Since then, the salvaging of items has been much more tightly controlled with many factors coming into play including the state and rarity of the item and the real value of bringing it to the surface.

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