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From Beaufort Observer

Artifacts recovered this fall from the wreck of the presumed Queen Anne's Revenge (QAR), Blackbeard's flagship, will be displayed by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources for the media at the QAR Conservation lab in Greenville on Tuesday, Dec. 14, at noon.

Other artifacts that will be transferred to the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort also will be displayed at the news conference at the QAR Conservation lab on the West Research Campus of East Carolina University.

Altogether they offer glimpses of life at sea in the 1700s.

Among the 122 items recovered this fall is part of a sword handle with a grip made of antler, which seems to fit a sword guard recovered in 2007.

This sword likely would have been a pirate's prize as the sword guard had a copper alloy quillon block from a hanger sword.

The quillon block (the attachment point for the blade) will be transferred to the Maritime Museum. This event will showcase the journey of objects from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean to exhibit at the Maritime Museum, the N.C. Museum of History, and other tourist venues.

Artifacts to be conserved and to be transferred will be displayed, some at the Maritime Museum before Christmas and at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh in January.

WHO: N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Secretary Linda Carlisle, QAR Shipwreck Project Director Mark Wilde Ramsing, QAR Chief Conservator Sarah Watkins-Kenney, Dr. Diedre Mageean, East Carolina University faculty, and others.

WHAT: Presentation and examination of presumed Blackbeard shipwreck artifacts

WHEN: Tuesday, Dec. 14, noon

WHERE: QAR Conservation Lab, West Research Laboratory, 1157 VOA Site C Road, ECU, Greenville, NC 27834

From Coin Link

Sea Search Armada, a US-based salvage company, claims the Republic of Colombia owes it $4 billion to $17 billion for breaching a contract granting it the right to salvage the galleon San Jose, sunk by the British Navy on June 8, 1708.

The Spanish galleon San Jose was trying to outrun a fleet of British warships off Colombia on June 8, 1708, when a mysterious explosion sent it to the bottom of the sea with gold, silver and emeralds owned by private Peruvian and European merchants, and lies about 700 feet below the water’s surface, a few miles from the historic Caribbean port of Cartagena, on the edge of the Continental Shelf.

Jack Harbeston, managing director of the Cayman Islands-registered commercial salvage company Sea Search Armada, who has taken on seven Colombian administrations during two decades in a legal fight to claim half the sunken hulk’s riches.

“If I had known it was going to take this long, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place,” said Harbeston, 75, who lives in Bellevue, Wash.

The 41-page federal lawsuit outlines a long, tortuous jpurney through the Colombian courts after the Glocca Morra Co. identified six shipwreck locations, between 1980 and 1985, operating with permission of Colombia’s Direccion General Maritima.

Harbeston claims he and a group of 100 U.S. investors – among them the late actor Michael Landon and the late convicted Nixon White House adviser John Ehrlichman – invested more than $12 million since a deal was signed with Colombia in 1979 giving Sea Search exclusive rights to search for the San Jose and 50 percent of whatever they find.

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From WBOC

Delaware archaeologists turned to a Sussex County hospital this week hoping to find some clues surrounding a marine mystery.

On Wednesday, radiology staff at Beebe Medical Center X-rayed multiple artifacts pulled from the waters of the Roosevelt Inlet near Lewes.

The pieces belong to an unidentified shipwreck about 15 feet below the surface but are too difficult to identify by plain eye. The hope was an X-ray could provide an inside look at artifacts that may help identify the sunken vessel.

"We're using techniques we've never really used before," radiology technician Josh Wyatt said. "It was through trial and error that we got the images we got."

The vessel was first discovered by accident during a beach replenishment project in 2004, archaeologist Faye Stocum said. Thousands of artifacts from the shipwreck were pulled from the water during a dive operation about two years later or washed ashore, Stocum said. Initial guesses from experts suggest the ship went down no earlier than 1772 and possibly as late as 1780.

Stocum arrived at Beebe with a green shoe box full of items, including a cylinder-shaped object believed to be an old piece of medical equipment, possibly a syringe. The problem, the outer shell was so dense even the equipment had trouble penetrating the covering.

Images of another item, believed to be a piece of wax, showed small metal objects inside similar to safety pins. Stocum quickly noted that the safety pin had not yet been invented at the time of the perceived sinking.

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By Stephen T. Watson - Buffalo News

In October, a team of shipwreck hunters found a submerged canalboat that possibly dates from the 1830s, making it the oldest boat of its kind found in the Erie Canal system.

The boat, buried in the murky Oswego River, has kept its secrets for more than 150 years, but canal history buffs are now hoping to uncover valuable information.

"I'm so excited by this find," said Daniel Franklin Ward, curator of the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse."There really aren't any canalboats from that period that survived, so finding one underwater is about the only way we'll be able to experience one."

For Erie Canal enthusiasts on this end of the state, the discovery may provide new details for planned replicas and further fuel efforts to build a Buffalo museum to honor the canal's key role in this region's early growth.

Those advocates are optimistic about a recent shift in focus for development of the inner harbor, but they say Buffalo lags behind Syracuse, Rome and Lockport in honoring its canal heritage.

"We are really the destination of the Erie Canal, and we ought to own it as a cultural entity. And we have done nothing but bury it at our end," said John S. Montague, co-founder of the Buffalo Maritime Center.

Jim Kennard has spent years searching for boats buried in the Erie Canal system, the Finger Lakes and elsewhere.

Two years ago, the Fairport resident and his team found a 1780 schooner, the HMS Ontario, in Lake Ontario that was believed to be the oldest shipwreck discovered in the Great Lakes. This fall, Kennard was on the Oswego River, which connects Lake Ontario to the Erie Canal, because the Oswego Maritime Museum asked him to conduct a survey.

He and partner Roger Pawlowski went out three times in October in their boat, slowly sweeping the riverbed with a high-resolution sonar scanner.

"It's very similar to the ultrasound that doctors use to see your heart function or a baby in a woman's womb, but on a much bigger scale," Kennard said. Kennard said he has found about 200 boats in his time, so he knew what they had as soon as he saw the sonar image.

"We weren't expecting to see this boat there. All of a sudden, it shows up, and we go, 'Whoa, we've got something here,'" Kennard said. Pawlowski dove into the river on one visit in hope of getting photos of the boat, but the rain-swollen waters were too dark with silt for him to see anything or take pictures.

Sonar images do show the outline of a boat, with some lower-deck cqcrosshatching and what appears to be a stove.

The boat was found at a point between Fulton and Onondaga Lake, but Kennard declined to be more specific in the interest of protecting the site.

Less than a foot of the boat's structure sticks out from the floor of the river, but the length offers a hint at its age.
 

By  Debra J. Groom - The Post Standard

Two Rochester-area men think they’ve found a treasured bit of Erie Canal history lying in the mucky silt at the bottom of the Oswego River.

A 78-foot Erie Canal boat, barely six inches of it visible, was discovered by veteran underwater divers and explorers James Kennard, 67, of Fairport, and Roger Pawlowski, 62, of Gates. They used a high-resolution side scan sonar device to find what they believe is the oldest Erie Canal boat to be discovered.

Kennard said the length of the boat is key; canal boats were built longer as years went on. He has found about 30 canal boat wrecks in state canals and in the Finger Lakes, all “as big as 98 feet long. We had never seen one this short before.”

Kennard and Pawlowski learned canal boats in the 78-foot size were common from 1830 to 1850, placing this discovery in that period. “So this appears to be the oldest canal boat found yet,” Kennard said.

The men became involved in this quest a few years ago, when some people with the Oswego Maritime Foundation told them they were “curious about what’s in the Oswego River.” “We thought about it and figured we’d get around to it sometime,” Kennard said.

When they finally started exploring the river’s bottom, in October, they weren’t sure what they would find. “We had a few wrecks marked on a map, but we didn’t know for sure what was there,” he said.

They searched the bottom of the Oswego River “from Onondaga Lake all the way to Lake Ontario,” Kennard said. “We found another canal boat and a smaller boat, but they were pretty much buried with silt over the years.”

But south of Fulton, they found the 78-foot boat. They could see its outline, the tiller on the back and what looks like the remnants of a stove. It is down about 30 feet. Kennard’s theory is the boat was tied along the Oneida, Seneca or Oswego rivers at one point and broke loose.

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From Sun Journal

The Maine State Museum is marking the 300th anniversary of one of Maine’s most storied nautical disasters with a new exhibit of objects recovered from the underwater wreck site of the British merchant ship, the Nottingham Galley.

Loaded with butter, cheese and cordage, the Nottingham Galley and its 15-man crew set sail for Massachusetts from Ireland in September 1710. After days of worsening weather, the ship crashed into a ledge on Boon Island near York’s Cape Neddick during the stormy night of Dec. 11, 1710.

The men survived but the ship and its contents were destroyed.

“The grisly fame of the Nottingham Galley’s story lies in what followed during the 24 days that the ship’s crew was marooned on Boon Island,” said Maine State Museum Chief Archaeologist Dr. Bruce Bourque.

“Faced with starvation, cold and extreme privation, they cannibalized one of their fellow crew members who had died of exposure. The museum’s small exhibit makes reference to that story.”

 “Additionally, we spotlight another aspect of survival related to the Nottingham Galley,” Bourque said.

“That survival concerns the ship’s cannons and related cannon-firing supplies recovered from the sea floor by archaeologists in 1995.

Following a challenging, emergency recovery effort and subsequent conservation of the water-logged and deteriorating objects, the cannons and supplies survive to this day as a remarkable, permanent part of the Maine State Museum’s collection.”

By Lara Lutz - Bay Journal

Traditionally, marine archaeology has little to do with the restoration of the Bay's troubled ecosystem. But the new federal action plan to restore the Bay may change that.

The plan gives fresh focus to places of historic and cultural value, including those that rest on the Bay's bottom.

As a result, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants to see new protected areas in Chesapeake waters selected for their historic or cultural value rather than ecology. The federal action plan specifically tasks the agency with finding candidate sites in the Bay region.

Recognizing that the Bay and its rivers lie entirely in state waters, NOAA will bring resources to the effort, but ask for state leadership in identifying potential sites and the ways in which a protected area might be managed.

"Our hope is to not only work with Maryland and Virginia, but to have them take the lead, while we support the states in doing it," said Paul Ticco, who coordinates NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary program for the East Coast and Great Lakes. "This is not a top-down approach."

Ticco said that the preservation of historic and cultural marine sites is underfunded in the Bay region and NOAA resources can help protect them for future generations.

Preserving such sites could also promote public involvement with the Bay restoration. For example, the NOAA model for National Marine Sanctuaries, one of several classifications within the National Marine Protected Areas program, features an outreach program that weds history, science and stewardship into one package.

"A site in the Bay would have a multiplier effect," Ticco said. "Visitors might come to learn about a shipwreck, but they can also learn about the conservation of Bay resources, pollution and what individuals can do to help."

No specific amount of federal funding is linked to the effort, but Ticco anticipates supporting a future site with NOAA resources for both outreach and science.

NOAA already works with a long list of federal, state and nonprofit partners to manage the 14 marine sites designated as National Marine Sanctuaries. The sanctuaries are a mix, given federal protection for both ecological and cultural reasons and ranging in size from a tiny tropical reef in American Samoa to 135,000 square miles of the waters surrounding the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The closest sanctuary to the Chesapeake Bay is the wreck of the USS Monitor, an ironclad gunboat that sank off the coast of North Carolina in 1863.

Sanctuaries, however, are only a part of NOAA's program for National Marine Protected Areas. Included under that umbrella is a network of protected areas that has been set up by federal, state, tribal or local governments with definitions and guidelines that suit local needs.

Last spring, Maryland took a first step in joining that network when it nominated the wreck of a German submarine, U-1105, sunk in the Potomac River. Known as the "Black Panther," the submarine was given to the U.S. Navy as a war prize at the close of World War II.

The Navy used the vessel for study and experimentation before sinking it off Piney Point. In 1994 the boat was named a Maryland Historic Shipwreck Preserve. Last spring, the state nominated it to become one of the first marine protected areas in NOAA's network.

The designation of any protected site in the Chesapeake, as well as its management, will depend on broad public input and agency partnerships. Portions of the protected area could remain open for boating, diving or fishing, including commercial harvest.

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From The Guardian

Friday, 07 September 2007, 10:49
UNCLAS MADRID 001722 - SIPDIS - SENSITIVE - SIPDIS - STATE FOR EUR/WE, L, AND OES - EO 12958 N/A 
TAGS PREL, EWWT, PBTS, PHSA, SCUL, SP">SP"="">SP">SP">SP"="">SP">SP">SP, CA
SUBJECT: ODYSSEY UPDATE: DHS DELIVERS CUSTOMS INFORMATION
REF: MADRID 1670 AND PREVIOUS

1. (SBU) On September 6, DHS-ICE Attache delivered the Odyssey Customs import documents to Director of Aduanas Nicolas Bonilla, as requested by GOS via the Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement (CMAA) on July 24. The DHS-ICE Attache advised Bonilla that the information was confidential and to be used only for law enforcement purposes. Bonilla expressed appreciation for the information, and assured the DHS-ICE Attache that it would be used only for official purposes. He added that Aduanas would make a formal request through DHS channels before sharing the documents with any other GOS agency. Post advised MFA representatives of this exchange the afternoon of September 6.

2. (SBU) Separately, the MFA sent Post a diplomatic note September 4 in response to the Ambassador's August 29 meeting with Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos (ref). MFA officials advised us verbally that they will seek the Odyssey information through their Aduanas, acknowledging that Aduanas would first have to seek the necessary permission from DHS. Jorge Domecq, MFA's Deputy Director for Gibraltar Issues, noted that MFA was interested in obtaining the Odyssey customs information to provide to lawyers representing the GOS in the Tampa Admiralty Court.

3. (SBU) Meanwhile, the Odyssey Explorer remains docked in Gibraltar and has not yet unloaded its cargo. According to British Embassy representatives, Odyssey representatives have stated that the vessel will begin unloading its cargo the week of September 10.

4. (SBU) Below is an informal translation of Foreign Ministry diplomatic note 277/31 dated August 31, which was provided to the Embassy on September 4.

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