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Photo Todd Dudek

By Wallace McKelvey - USA Today

For Don Shomette, coastal waterways in the Delaware, Maryland and Virginia region offer a treasure trove of history beneath the waves.

"In the Chesapeake, there are a total of eight sunken fleets," he said. "It's the most fought-over body of water in the Western Hemisphere."

The Delaware Bay is a close second, Shomette said.

Now, at least part of that history is being told in a map of the Shipwrecks of Delmarva, commissioned by Delaware Bay.

Shomette, who's written volumes about nautical history, was tasked with culling the 7,000 known shipwrecks to the 2,200 featured ones on the map. Based on predictive modeling, he said between 10,000 and 12,000 wrecks are believed to lie on or beneath the sea floor.

"It was an embarrassment of riches," he said. "There were so many important sites, and a number of them couldn't be included."

The latest map follows a similar one of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, issued in the 1970s. That map can still be found in bait shops, hobby stores and museum gift shops across the country, Shomette said.

But Delmarva's waterways rival — and possibly surpass — the Outer Banks as the "graveyard of lost ships," he said.

The process of selecting the sites to be included took more than a year, Shomette said.

He and cartographer Robert Pratt made the selections based on cultural and historical relevance, as well as diversity. Revolutionary War-era privateers exist alongside 1850s paddle steamers, Navy submarines and modern pleasure cruisers.

"We didn't want to put every work boat and every barge — even though some of them are enormous in size — in there," Shomette said.

Assembling the list meant pulling from his life's work: decades spent poring over government documents, letters and old newspapers, determining the location and details of wrecks across the region.

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Photo Wendy M. Welsh

From National Geographic

Could this partly gilded hilt have held Blackbeard's sword ? There's no way to know for sure, though it was found amid the North Carolina wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of the infamous 18th-century pirate.

Since 1997, archaeologists have been excavating the Queen Anne's Revenge. The sword hilt—found in pieces but reassembled for this picture—is among their latest finds and was revealed to the public this month.

After running aground on a sandbar in 1718 near the town of Beaufort, the ship was abandoned but likely remained intact and partly above water for as long as a year before collapsing and disintegrating, according to archaeologist David Moore of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

"In any event," he said, "the pirates would have had ample opportunity to take anything that they thought valuable."

The newfound hilt may have been left behind because it was unwanted, or it may have been inaccessible, according to Moore's colleague Wendy Welsh, a conservator on the project.

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By Lindsey Kelly - Bizjournals

An internationally watched deep-sea treasure case, set to be heard in federal appeals court in Atlanta this March, is a good example of why shipwreck salvage companies don’t leave port without their attorneys.

The “Black Swan” case centers on a $500 million undersea treasure — 17 tons of silver coins and other artifacts found off the Atlantic coast of Spain in 2007. The treasure was discovered by Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc.

The stunning legal entanglements that can arise from these types of recovery cases is why Odyssey Marine Exploration’s board of directors is chaired by Emory...

Photo U.S. Naval Historical Center

From Our Amazing Planet

Conservationists are slowly restoring the steam engine of the USS Monitor, an iron-armored warship from the Civil War.

The order to abandon ship came just after midnight. The USS Monitor, a Union ironclad, was taking on too much water, caught in a violent storm.

At approximately 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 31, 1862, the Monitor was overcome, engulfed by the crashing waves.

Almost 150 years later, conservators are getting the first up-close look at the sunken Monitor's 30-ton steam engine, an engineering wonder of its day, and the mighty heart of a ship that played a notable role in America's Civil War.

The USS Monitor went down in treacherous waters 16 miles (25 kilometers) off North Carolina's Cape Hatteras. The wreck was discovered in 1973, resting upside down on the ocean floor in about 235 feet (71 meters) of water.

In a massive undertaking in 2001, the ship's engine was brought to the surface.

It was no ordinary steam engine. Designed by Swedish inventor John Ericsson, it was a "vibrating side-lever" engine with pistons that worked horizontally, an innovation that had allowed the compact, 400-horsepower engine to be entirely belowdecks, behind the Monitor's armor and impervious to enemy fire.

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From Soo Evening News

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society announces a significant change in its structure, mode of operation and leadership responsibilities.

In recognition of the essentially seasonal nature of the Shipwreck Society’s business operations, the Board of Directors has elected to re-focus its efforts to a more seasonal role.

Part of this shift will involve elimination of the year-round Executive Director’s position, held for many years by Society founder and underwater explorer Tom Farnquist. Farnquist will remain with the GLSHS in a “Director Emeritus” capacity.

Farnquist is recognized as the inspirational leader and founder of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society established in 1978. His passion, vision and professional diving and museum accomplishments are being applauded by the technical diving and professional museum community throughout North America.

Before Farnquist founded the Shipwreck Society, the historic light station at Whitefish Point was deteriorating.
Farnquist transformed that site into the maritime heritage center it is today.

Working with an all volunteer board of directors he systematically restored the interiors and exteriors of the historic 1861 lighthouse and keeper’s quarters, the 1923 Coast Guard Crew Quarters, Lookout tower and Boathouse.

He also initiated measures to help protect the surrounding dunes environment and created a museum dedicated to the sailors and shipwrecks that perished on Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast.

Anna Grau - ABC Cultura

Odyssey Marine Exploration, la empresa de Tampa, Florida, obligada por los propios tribunales de Estados Unidos a restituir a España el tesoro del galeón español «Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes» del que se había apropiado, trata ahora de darle la vuelta a aquella sentencia agarrándose a los cables secretos de Wikileaks.

Concretamente a aquellos que relatan que el Departamento de Estado habló con el ministerio de Cultura español tanto de este asunto como de la petición de devolución a una familia de California de un cuadro de Camille Pissarro sustraído por los nazis, y que actualmente es propiedad del Museo Thyssen.

A Odyssey le ha faltado tiempo para coger el rábano por las hojas y concluir, no que el gobierno americano trataba de mantener unas relaciones de intercambio cultural respetuoso entre los dos países, sino que habría «sacrificado» los intereses de los piratas de Florida a los de los descendientes californianos de los expoliados por los nazis.

Entonces se han dirigido a los tribunales para ver de impugnar la sentencia en su contra, presentándola como un manejo de la Casa Blanca.

Ciertamente, el Departamento de Justicia se pronunció a favor de la devolución del tesoro a España.

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From Gibraltar Chronicle

Odyssey Marine Exploration, the US deep-ocean exploration company, has filed a Motion to Strike a brief filed by the United States government in support of Spain in the ‘Black Swan’ case.

The case is currently pending in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the US, where Odyssey appealing a lower court’s decision to order the company to return the ‘Black Swan’ treasure to Spain.

If the US motion is not struck out, Odyssey has asked the court to direct the US government to amend its statement to accurately reflect its interest in the case.

The latest filing follows a number of revelations about the Black Swan case detailed in leaked diplomatic cables published by the whistleblower website Wikileaks last month.

Odyssey said the released cables suggest that the US State Department offered special assistance to Spanish officials in the ‘Black Swan’ case in exchange for assistance in acquiring, on behalf of a US citizen, a French painting confiscated by the Nazis during World War II and now on display in a museum in Madrid.

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Antonio Villarreal - ABC

ABC entra en el Institute of Nautical Archaeology, en Texas, el centro de referencia mundial para el patrimonio naval, de la mano del arqueólogo portugués Filipe de Castro.

Imaginen que estamos en el año 2525. En un desierto remoto yace polvorienta la nave Apolo XI en la que el hombre viajó por primera vez a la Luna.

Unos exploradores encuentran el transbordador, despojan su interior de cualquier objeto y lo abandonan, dejando tras de sí el artefacto en el que la humanidad, por una vez, dejó de mirar sombras dentro de la cueva y se propuso dar un gran paso.

Puede parecerles ciencia ficción, pero para Filipe Vieira de Castro, director del Laboratorio de Reconstrucción de Barcos en la Universidad de Texas A&M, es tan sólo una metáfora de lo que está ocurriendo hoy en día bajo nuestros mares y océanos.

«Es una pena que un pecio único como el San Diego todavía no esté publicado», dice De Castro. Este galeón español, «dibujado, concebido y construido para realizar una de las rutas más largas y difíciles de este periodo, un space shuttle del siglo XVI» fue hundido cerca de Manila, Filipinas, por navíos holandeses en 1600.

En 1991, el arqueólogo francés Frank Goddio lo encontró, extrayendo del buque cada una de los 6.000 piezas que allí se encontraban. Sólo quedó allí el barco y los huesos de trescientos marineros.

«El pecio ha sido excavado y sabemos de los cañones, de las monedas, de las porcelanas… pero el buque, lo realmente interesante desde el punto de vista intelectual, no ha sido publicado», se lamenta De Castro.

Originalmente un ingeniero civil en su Portugal natal, De Castro comenzó a interesarse por la arqueología náutica a principio de los noventa, colaborando de manera amateur con el Museo Nacional de Arqueología de Lisboa.

En 1997, atormentado por el descarado saqueo que los cazadores de tesoros estaban infligiendo a los pecios portugueses, colaboró en la creación del Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquáteca.

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