HOT NEWS !

By Janis Blower - The Jarrow & Hebburn Gazette

Its fort is such a powerful image associated with the Romans in Shields that you tend to forget that they must have had a life outside its walls.

In fact you can wonder what their points of reference were for things like romantic assignations, healthful walks – I don’t know, even the Roman equivalent of smoking behind the bike sheds.

Because in reality, their comings and goings spilled over to embrace a wide area.

This included the sea front, and it can’t have been just my antenna that was piqued when it was mentioned the other day that work on the new sea wall at Littlehaven beach will be preceded by archaeological marking of a known shipwreck there. Really ? What ship ?

Roman bits and pieces have been turning up on the little North Beach for years.

It’s a subject of special interest to Paul Bidwell, Tyne and Wear Museums’ Head of Archeology.

It seems that the shipwreck is probably one on the Herd Sand.

Paul, who drew together all the finds that have been made since the 1860s and published them in the Arbeia Journal in 2001, told me: “The conclusion was that this was a wreck from the AD 180s which seems to have been carrying reinforcements from the Continent to deal with a war in northern Britain.

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By Molly Murray - USA Today

One day two years ago, Art Trembanis, an associate professor of geological sciences at the University of Delaware, sent his students on a field trip to the waters off Cape Henlopen.

Their goal: to learn to use the high-tech equipment, such as side scan sonar, that coastal geologists use to survey the ocean bottom.

He told them to tow the device around Breakwater Harbor and along the waters of the Cape Henlopen shoreline. When they came back to Newark, they told him that it went well. And "Oh, by the way, we saw a shipwreck."

Trembanis was intrigued. He went on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database of shipwrecks. Nothing was listed for the spot where the students had seen a very clear image of a massive ship hull.

"It was a bit of a head-scratcher," Trembanis said.

Now, two years later, with the help of oceanography graduate student Carter DuVal and state archaeologist Craig Lukezic, the team believes it has identified the ship, along with when and how it sank.

Tracking down a shipwreck might seem like an easy task, but since European settlement, hundreds of ships have run aground, foundered and sunk along the Delaware Coast and entrance to the Delaware Bay and River.

Two of Delaware's most famous shipwrecks -- the H.M.S. deBraak and the Roosevelt Inlet shipwreck -- both went down within sight of land. The mystery wreck the students found appeared to have done the same thing.

While the deBraak and the Roosevelt Inlet wreck date from the 18th century, this latest discovery comes from the 19th century and the Golden Age of Sail.

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From Rajat Pandit - Times of India

If an Indian submarine gets "disabled'' deep underwater, the sailors are sunk since the country has only rudimentary submarine rescue facilities.

Now, in a unique and complex endeavour, Indian and US Navies have come together to practice the rescue of "trapped'' submariners from deep under the sea.

The Indo-US submarine rescue exercise 'INDIAEX-2012' will kick off this week with the US Navy's Undersea Rescue Command flying down a submarine rescue system - a deep-submergence rescue vessel (DSRV) or a submarine rescue chamber (SRC).

The DSRV or SRC will then be shipped to the exercise area off Mumbai, where it will dive deep underwater to "mate'' with "disabled'' submarines to rescue sailors in intricate manoeuvres rarely practiced by Indian sailors.

A DSRV or "mini submarine'', equipped with pressurised chambers, sonars and cameras, can rescue 24 sailors at a time from a depth up to 610 metres after "mating'' with a stricken vessel's hatch.

At present, Indian sailors bank upon "submarine escape pressurized suits'', or the help of diving support ships like INS Nireekshak, but they can be used only for relatively shallow depths.

Navy's endeavour to procure two DSRVs of its own, for about Rs 1,000 crore, has been stuck for well over a decade.

As an "interim measure'' in 1997, India had inked a contract with US Navy for its "global submarine rescue fly-away kit'' service, paying an initial $734,443 for it.

But the agreement got derailed due to the post-Pokhran-II sanctions in 1998. It was later revived in 2004 but there has been a huge delay in setting up the requisite infrastructure needed for it.

This also included fitting of 'Padeyes' - holding devices welded into submarine escape hatches to secure the DSRV - on Indian submarines.

The US rescue system, as per the agreement, will be transported to India within 72 hours of an emergency.

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By Dave McNamara - Fox8 Live

Deepwater shipwrecks in our region are usually found by accident, part of the survey work that has to be done for offshore energy pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico.

"And it was initially found as just a little amorphous blob on the seafloor that no one really could identify," says Dr. Jack Irion with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

But a remote-operated vehicle gave investigators a snapshot of history: the remains of a 200-year-old sailing ship.

Irion says, "It's in very deep water so the visibility is very good and the sedimentation rate is very low. So most of what we could see was actually just laying on the surface of the seafloor."

There are the ship's cannon, a stove, a large case of muskets and swords, and bottles and pieces of china -- all are surprisingly intact.

Irion says, "It's the kind of thing that as an archaeologist…that's what you go to school for is to have those kinds of moments."

They call it the Mardi Gras shipwreck because it's located next to the Mardi Gras pipeline.  Irion says, "The wreck itself lies in 4000 feet of water in roughly this general location."

In a delicate operation using an undersea robot, researchers carefully lifted more than 1,000 artifacts. 

They recovered a large supply of ammunition, cannon balls, musket balls and flints, navigational instruments and the captain's telescope, a couple of sets of ceramic dishes, wine and beer bottles, even small glass sand clocks, similar to an hourglass. 

These pieces indicate the ship sank during the early 1800's.  For the first time, a large collection of these artifacts is on display at the West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen.

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From China Daily

China plans to build its first vessel capable of retrieving archaeological findings from the sea by the end of 2013, a major step to strengthening the underwater search abilities of Chinese archaeologists who currently rely on rented shipping boats.

The 4.8-metre wide and 56-metre long boat, to be powered by an integrated full electric propulsion system, will "basically" meet China's underwater archaeological needs, according to a statement released by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) on Wednesday.

With a displacement of 860 tonnes, the vessel will be used in China's coastal areas and could sail as far as waters off the Xisha Islands, or the Paracel Islands, in the South China Sea, if sea conditions are good, it said.

Archaeologists will be able to use the ship to detect, locate, map, videotape and excavate underwater archaeological findings, according to the SACH.

The vessel is being designed by the 701 research institute of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and built by the Changhang Dongfeng shipbuilding corporation in Chongqing.

The news will be a boon for Chinese archeologists who have long struggled with the inconvenience of having to ride fishing boats along China's 18,000 km-long coastline in order to uncover the country's massive quantities of underwater relics.

Many speculators and fishermen have joined this hunt for treasures in the South China sea, a busy sea lane which is said to have at least 122 wrecked ships on its bottom.

Many of the wrecked ships date back to the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1276) dynasties, when China's trade with foreign countries was thriving.

Many speculators and local fishermen surveying the area have used crude means to retrieve underwater relics, prompting authorities to take action.

The protection of China's underwater relics faces "severe challenges" from rampant looting of underwater relics, the SACH said in the statement, adding that the country needs to improve its talent tool of archaeologists and related facilities.

By Doug Fraser - Cape Cod Online

Treasure hunters looking to find billions of dollars in platinum they say was loaded on a World War II cargo ship are getting ready to wrap things up without any sign yet that they have retrieved anything.

Sub Sea Research owner Greg Brooks, based in Portland, Maine, wants to retrieve at least one of the platinum bars he claims was onboard the 431-foot-long Port Nicholson when it was sunk by a German sub on June 16, 1942, approximately 50 miles northeast of Provincetown.

The ship lies in about 700 feet of water. As many as 30 boxes, possibly containing platinum bars, lie scattered around the ship, part of a haul worth as much as $5 billion, Brooks said.

Brooks wrote in a recent email response to the Times that he had "an exclusive proprietary agreement with another media source" and would not grant any interviews that could violate that pact.

Brooks gave numerous interviews earlier in the year before the Sea Hunter embarked from Boston in the summer to the wreck site.

At that time, the group was raising funds from investors to continue a search it said has been under way for the past three years.

The group already has spent $6 million on the project, and this past winter it put on a media blitz hoping to raise another $800,000 from investors.

Brooks' senior researcher, Edward Michaud, said in an earlier interview the group wants to get a bar on deck to convince skeptics and investors there is treasure on the freighter.

However, the remote-operated vehicle the group was using was not built to lift boxes weighing hundreds of pounds.

The crew took delivery last month of a beefier Super Mohawk ROV from the marine equipment rental firm Deep Down Inc., according to photographs on the Sub Sea website.

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From NOAA

Seventy years after it was scuttled off Los Angeles, Calif., government archaeologists have found the wrecked remains of a rare Pacific Coast schooner that was employed in the lumber trade during the early 1900s.

Today, Robert Schwemmer, maritime archaeologist for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, presented a scientific paper on the George E. Billings history and its discovery in February 2011 at the eighth California Islands Symposium in Ventura, Calif.

The Billings, a five-masted schooner built in 1903 by Halls Bros. of Port Blakeley, Wash., hauled lumber from the Northwest to Hawaii, Mexico, South America, Australia and southern California.

After decades servicing the lumber trade it was converted into a sport-fishing barge. In 1941, the owner decided to scuttle the aging vessel off the coast of Santa Barbara Island.

Since the early 1990s, archaeologists and historians with Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary and Channel Islands National Park have searched for the Billings.

The wreck was located using research provided by tech-diver Steve Lawson, researcher Gary Fabian, and Patrick Smith with Coastal Maritime Archaeology Resources.

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From National Parks Traveler
 

Deep in south Florida lies a collection of islands so unique and exotic, one might compare them to precious stones on a lady's necklace.

Set among this string of jewels known as the Florida Keys lies a particularly appealing gem: an underwater national park.

Biscayne National Park lies 95 percent underwater, and contains stunningly intricate coral reefs, an array of fascinating sealife, and 55 shipwreck sites.

Alongside these sites are 33 additional submerged archaeological sites that range from sunken cargoes and artifacts to even colonial anchors moored in the seabed absent their ships.

But this alluring national park does not always attract pleasant visitors. Plagued by looters, the park constantly must spend extra time and money to keep criminals away from plundering the shipwrecks.

The shipwreck “English China,” nicknamed for its abundant English ceramic artifacts, sank in the late 1760s.

The first groups of people to visit this sunken beauty were called ‘wreckers.’ These were men who would brave the troubled seas, particularly around the Florida Keys. Not only would they come to the rescue of crews on foundered ships, but afterwards they would return to salvage what they could of the wreck’s remains.

Such ‘wreckers’ probably obtained much of the ship’s valuable cargo in the 1760s, leaving only the scraps and pieces -- but this does not deter modern-day looters from trying their luck. Charles Lawson, Biscayne’s staff archaeologist and cultural resource manager, says these latter-day pirates are most likely unsuccessful in their scavenging.

But they nevertheless do damage to the site.

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