HOT NEWS !

By Randy Boswell - Vancouver Sun

It's a genuine treasure of American history, with a price tag to match: a rare, 195-year-old printing of the original sheet music for the Star-Spangled Banner is expected to sell for up to $300,000 at an auction next week in New York.

But as U.S. history buffs lined up for a look at the patriotic relic this week during Christie's pre-sale exhibition, Canadian archeologists were planning their next Arctic Ocean search for one of the very War of 1812 ships — the last in existence — responsible for the "rockets' red glare" and "bombs bursting in air" that helped inspire American poet Francis Scott Key to write his country's national anthem after witnessing the bombing of Baltimore in September 1814.

The surprising link between the Star-Spangled Banner and the lost Franklin Expedition vessel HMS Terror — believed to lie off the coast of King William Island in the Canadian Arctic — adds another layer to the rich history of the ship and helps explain Canada's three-year quest to find it, says the Parks Canada archeologist leading the hunt for the fabled shipwreck.

The resting places of the Terror and its consort vessel the HMS Erebus — both lost during British explorer John Franklin's ill-fated voyage of discovery to Northern Canada in the late 1840s — have already been declared a National Historic Site, even though their precise locations remain unknown.

In 2008, the Canadian government announced it was undertaking a three-summer search for the shipwrecks, seen to be instrumental in establishing British — and in turn Canadian — sovereignty in the Arctic by the end of the 19th century.

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From BBC News

Pens made of wood found on the wreck site of the Mary Rose are being sold to raise funds for a new museum to house the Tudor warship.

The 200 pens were created using oak, beech, elm, boxwood and timber, all found on the seabed of the Solent close to the wreck of Henry VIII's flagship.

The Mary Rose Trust hopes to raise £50,000 towards the £35m museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. The vessel sank on 19 July 1545 with the loss of more than 400 lives.

The wreck was discovered in the 1960s and in 1982 it was raised to the surface to be restored in dry dock in Portsmouth. 

Each pen is marked with a unique number beginning with "MR", to signify it was recovered from the Mary Rose wreck site, although the wood is not believed to have come from the ship or its artefacts.

The idea has been supported by broadcaster and author Alan Titchmarsh, who lives in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

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Photo Odyssey Marine Exploration

By David Benoit - The Wall Street Journal

Spanish doubloons meant to fund wars, solid gold bars bound for Europe's royalty and bronze cannons that protected it all now sit scattered across the ocean floor from shipwrecks.

But in a new investment plan by Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., those long-ago sunken treasures could soon be part of investor portfolios. The Tampa, Fla., company, whose work has been documented on the Discovery Channel and on the pages of National Geographic, plans to allow investors a chance to purchase a share of a treasure hunt and split the spoils.

Think of it as a romantic play on all-time highs in gold prices, by tracking Odyssey's ships online instead of tracking price ticks on charts. Or it is a chance to spice up a portfolio by putting down quarterly filings and looking at photos of wreckage.

Treasure hunting might become more intriguing if gold prices keep soaring. David Beahm, vice president of Blanchard & Co., a dealer of rare coins and gold, said rare coins trade higher than gold bullion. He doesn't recommend the investment, but did acknowledge, "As a child, you always want to find the buried treasure."

Gold on Friday closed at $1,362.20 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, and hit a record of $1,424.50 in early November.

To be sure, when the end game is a ship that has been swallowed by the sea for centuries, the risk of coming up empty-handed is high.

"If you are going to be taking the risk anyway, why not go to a business that's potentially going to have high return?" said Chief Executive Greg Stemm.

"I could make the case that we've become the best people in the world at finding hard-to-find things at the bottom of the ocean."

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Photo Lindsay Wiles Gramana

By Marcia Lane - St Augustine

For the about-to-open St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum on Castillo Drive, putting in a wheelchair ramp and a wall turned up artifacts that date to the city's British Period in the mid-1700s, and possibly earlier.

"This is everyday life in St. Augustine," said City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt of the discovery as he looked through artifacts uncovered by Step Back in Time, the contractors working on the museum scheduled to open Dec. 3.

A battered piece of bronze is the most significant item found so far, says John Powell of the Colonial Spanish Quarter Living History Museum.

"It's the hilt fragment of a 1751 model British hanger or short sword," Powell said.

Originally the piece was shaped with two matching ovals that connected in the middle.

For some reason, one side broke. He thinks further damage was done in later years, adding that it would take an enormous force to flatten the piece into its current shape.

The sword would have belonged to an enlisted man and was the type the British used from the time they took over St. Augustine in 1763 and into the Revolutionary War era. The British used the pieces for close fighting in Europe, but in the New World they more often functioned as machetes, Powell said.

Other pieces found include a gentleman's fancy knee buckle from the late 1700s, a flat metal civilian coat button from the British, Second Spanish or even American period, an iron horseshoe with the nails still in it probably dating from the 19th century and a badly corroded pair of dividers of iron and brass from the late 18th or early 19th century that was used to chart courses on maps or figure distances.

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By Cathy Carter Harley - Island Packet

Stephen Hopkins was a minister's clerk who survived a 1609 shipwreck, joined a mutiny then survived a death sentence before successfully sailing aboard the Mayflower in 1620. He's also one of the most colourful ancestors of Nicholas Maher of Lady's Island. 

Hopkins is one of three of Maher's ancestors -- including Thomas Rogers and William Brewster -- who were aboard the Mayflower when it left England Sept. 6, 1620, and arrived 66 days later in America.

"Stephen Hopkins was a bit of a rogue," Maher said. "He helped co-found Jamestown, Va., in 1607, which would have been the oldest English colony in America, but it failed after eight years.

He was in Bermuda where he participated in a mutiny and was sentenced to hang, just prior to joining the Mayflower."

Maher is a member of the Mayflower Society, which is composed of descendants of the more than 100 Pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and established Plymouth Colony, in what was then called the northern part of Virginia.

Maher began serving as the South Carolina historian for the society two years ago, and 125 new members have since registered with the group. There are about 900 members statewide.

Historical records show Hopkins was fined for letting visitors drink beer at his residence on a Sunday, for allowing excessive drinking of beer in his home and for selling it without a license.

Maher joked that Hopkins actually did make a mark on history besides being fined for illegal ale.

He said Hopkins was also known for communicating with the American Indians and as having served as the governor's assistant. Maher's other well-known ancestor, Brewster, was the religious leader of the group that helped form the Mayflower Compact.

Maher said some of his family's oral histories passed down through the generations included references to having an ancestor on the Mayflower.

It wasn't until he started researching the family tree in 2006 that he confirmed his connections to the three men.

As Maher documented his ancestors aboard the Mayflower using birth and death certificates, he found many of those old family stories to be true.

Now Maher, 73, helps other society applicants document their family histories.

"It's a journey, and it is really fun to learn about your family. Joining the Mayflower Society is not about snob appeal, it is just fascinating to research your family and to find things you never knew.

"When you get past your great-grandparents it gets extremely difficult to find unless there are a lot of written records."

The society will accept secondary copies of documents such as gravestones, deeds, wills and family Bible records.

The society has genealogical records for the first five generations of those on the Mayflower.

It is the sixth through eight generations that can be tough to find, Maher said.

From AFP

The wreck of a ship apparently dating from before 1700 has been discovered in central Stockholm, the Maritime Museum in the Swedish capital said Thursday. The discovery was made by labourers close to the royal place and in front of Stockholm's Grand Hotel during renovation works to a quay.

"The discovery of the wreck is extremely interesting given the place where it was made," said the museum's director Hans-Lennarth Ohlsson.

"There was a naval shipyard on this spot until the start of the 17th century," he said in a statement.

The wreck was not necessarily linked to the yard, however, and archaeologists have been unable to say how long before 1700 it might have sunk.

Samples would be sent to Denmark's Copenhagen National Museum in order to be dated as precisely as possible with the results expected by January 2011. The boat is believed to have come from the east of the Baltic, possibly from Russia.

In 1961, the Vasa, a Swedish warship, was salvaged from just outside Stockholm harbour. The ship, which foundered on her maiden voyage in 1628, was largely intact and has since become one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions.

By Dan Scanlan - Jacksonville

Ahoy mates, there's some buried booty outside St. Augustine's new Pirate and Treasure Museum.

But no one needed a map to find the hidden treasure, and it isn't gold doubloons.

Workers digging Monday to install a handicapped-accessible ramp found historic artifacts from the nation's oldest city. Once it's cataloged and researched, museum spokeswoman Kari Cobham said a new exhibit will be added, aptly called "Buried Beneath Your Feet" for the new discovery.

"We couldn't have planned it better ourselves," Cobham admitted. "I am looking at a box of them and it is stunning. I see a bottle, a rusty compass, a tooth - it's a pretty big tooth - and some glassware as well."

St. Augustine city archaeologist Carl Halbirt said the artifacts range from commonplace to unusual. That includes the hilt and guard of a British soldier's dress uniform sword dating back to the 1750s, with hanger intact, as well as a 1780s-1820s button and a man's knee buckle used to close the seams of his breeches.

It may have come from a British garrison camp site that once occupied the greens between the walls of the Castillo and the British-occupied city.

Cristina Rabaza - Alligator

When a drought in Alachua County drained Newnans Lake down to a moist bed of mud, local high school students stumbled upon canoes that hadn’t seen the light of day in several millennia.

Ten years later, the world’s largest ancient watercraft discovery is now on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

“We dug around with our fingers in the sand for these wet chunks of wood, and we kept finding more and more canoes,” said Eastside High School teacher Steve Everett, who led his students to the site that morning in 2000. “It was pure happenstance that we found them. I’d never seen anything like this.”

Eight miles east of Gainesville, archaeologists excavated 101 dugout canoes from the lake, ranging from 500 to 5,000 years old. The canoes varied in size, some as long as 31.2 feet and some a bit shorter.

After several years developing the exhibit, the museum is the first to feature archaeologists’ findings before the exhibit travels across the nation.

“We decided to broaden the story of the canoes at Newnans Lake into this exhibit because we wanted it to travel nationally,” said Darcie MacMahon, head of exhibits at the museum. “It’s an internationally significant and internationally unique find that our very own scientists worked on, and people in the community were really excited and proud about that.”

The exhibit also explores the history of canoe construction, its modern uses and the particularly complex process scientists used to study their findings.

Florida Archaeology Collection Manager Donna Ruhl said the largest canoe discovery before then had only consisted of 12 canoes. She said this time researchers could not move the fragile wood and resorted to carving small shavings from the canoes.

“We only had a short amount of time until the waters returned after the drought,” Ruhl said, “so we needed to work quickly and get as much information as we possibly could.”