HOT NEWS !

By Alan Boyle - MSNBC

Researchers have returned to the site of the Titanic shipwreck, after a break that was forced by Hurricane Danielle. Now they're turning their attention from the well-known hulk's bow to its stern, to take a look at areas of the debris field that haven't been studied since the Titanic was rediscovered in 1986.

The research vessel Jean Charcot began its high-definition, 3-D survey of the underwater site last month, with the aim of documenting the historic wreck in unprecedented detail before it disintegrates.

NBC News' Kerry Sanders was in on the adventure when the first pictures were beamed up from robot vehicles operating two and a half miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. (In comparison, the remotely operated vehicles involved in the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were a mere mile down.)

Unfortunately, Hurricane Danielle's storm track came a little too close for comfort, and the Jean Charcot had to head back to port in Newfoundland at the end of August. This week, the team sailed back to resume their survey.

Expedition Titanic's two autonomous underwater vehicles (nicknamed Ginger and Mary Ann, after the "Gilligan's Island" women) and its camera-laden remotely operated vehicle have been back in the water already, although the seas were too choppy for remote operations today.

Among the shots that have shown up on the expedition's Facebook page are eerie pictures of the officers' cabins and the first-class promenade deck.

In a video clip, research specialist Bill Lange (who was involved in the 1986 rediscovery expedition) discusses the shift in operations from the ship's bow to its stern. The plan laid out by Lange calls for spiraling out from the stern section and checking a list of high-interest targets.

"We hit this one, we're covering new ground, because no one's looked at this since '86," Lange said.

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By Shanta Barley - News Scientist

In 130 BC, a ship fashioned from the wood of walnut trees and bulging with medicines and Syrian glassware sank off the coast of Tuscany, Italy.

Archaeologists found its precious load 20 years ago and now, for the first time, archaeobotanists have been able to examine and analyse pills that were prepared by the physicians of ancient Greece.

DNA analyses show that each millennia-old tablet is a mixture of more than 10 different plant extracts, from hibiscus to celery.

"For the first time, we have physical evidence of what we have in writing from the ancient Greek physicians Dioscorides and Galen," says Alain Touwaide of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.

The box of pills was discovered on the wreck in 1989, with much of the medicine still completely dry, according to Robert Fleischer of the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park, also in Washington DC.

Fleischer analysed DNA fragments in two of the pills and compared the sequences to the GenBank genetic database maintained by the US National Institutes of Health. He was able to identify carrot, radish, celery, wild onion, oak, cabbage, alfalfa and yarrow. He also found hibiscus extract, probably imported from east Asia or the lands of present-day India or Ethiopia.

"Most of these plants are known to have been used by the ancients to treat sick people," says Fleischer.

Yarrow staunched the flow of blood from wounds, and Pedanius Dioscorides, a physician and pharmacologist in Rome in the first century AD, described the carrot as a panacea for a number of problems.

"They say that reptiles do not harm people who have taken it in advance; it also aids conception," he wrote around 60 AD.

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By Earl Kelly - Home Town Annapolis

Four Naval Academy midshipmen and a professor, along with Navy scientists, are getting the chance of a lifetime as they head to the North Sea on Wednesday to search for the remains of Capt. John Paul Jones' ship, Bonhomme Richard. 

This search for one of the most famous ships of the American Revolution will combine oceanography, historical analysis and naval engineering, and will employ cutting-edge technology. A multibeam sonar, for example, will give researchers three-dimensional pictures of objects on the ocean floor, and a gradiometer, a mine-sweeping tool, can detect objects buried under sediment.

Midshipman 1st Class Jesse Marder, an aerospace engineering major from Silver Spring, said he is excited to be going on the mission because of Jones' historical significance. The chance to work with the technology is another draw.

"I'm not sure exactly what (duties) we'll be doing, but we are going to train in how to read the (sonar) screens, how to identify underwater objects, how to steer (unmanned) underwater vehicles without running them aground," said Marder, who hopes to be a submarine officer when he is commissioned.

If Marder and his colleagues on this two-week expedition find the remains of Jones' ship - which sank while taking the fight to Great Britain's shores 231 years ago - they will have solved one of history's great mysteries.

Jones, now commonly called the father of the U.S. Navy, was a master at sailing in directions no one expected, which saved him time and again from the British Navy. But his nautical skills have made it difficult for historians to determine where he went after the battle and where his wooden ship sank.

In the battle of Sept. 23, 1779, fought off the northeastern coast of England, Bonhomme Richard and the more heavily armed HMS Serapis pounded each other with cannons at point-blank range for about four hours.

This is the battle where Jones answered the British demand to surrender along the lines of, "I have not yet begun to fight!"

"Both ships looked like Swiss cheese," said Dr. Peter Guth, the Naval Academy oceanography professor leading the midshipmen on the expedition.

After the battle, the Bonhomme Richard, which had been a gift to the Continental Navy from France, limped along for 36 hours before it sank. By then, Jones was aboard the Serapis, which had surrendered to him.

"There is three-quarters of a day (following the 1779 battle) we don't know which direction they were sailing … or how fast they were going," Guth said.

The other mids joining Guth and Marder are Midshipmen 1st Class Mollee Strutt, 21, of Lake Arrowhead, Calif., Patrick McMann, 22, of New Albany, Ind., and Alexander Buck, of Lisle, Ill. Only Marder was available to be interviewed.

This will be the Navy's fifth attempt at finding Bonhomme Richard.

Guth said the ship is believed to be in an area of about 900 nautical square miles where the water is less than 200 feet deep.

Because the water is not terribly deep, he said, fishing nets likely have snagged parts of the hull and rigging during the past two centuries, scattering the pieces across the ocean floor.

The expedition, Guth said, "is the sum of all the things I teach."

From CBC News

An Inuit family says a box that was hidden for over 80 years in the Arctic contains documents linked to the doomed Franklin Expedition.

Over the weekend, the Porter family in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, dug up the small box with the help of an archeologist.

"We knew we were looking for a wooden box, not a particularly large box. We worked our way down and sure enough, about two feet down, we got to the top of some wood," said Doug Stenton, director of culture and heritage for Nunavut.

The exact contents of the unopened, sand-filled box will not be known until the Canadian Conservation Institute carefully examines it, which should take about three weeks.

"When I get it back to Ottawa, I will be photographing it, X-raying it to see what's in the box before we start to dig the sand out," said Tara Grant of the Canadian Conservation Institute.

The box was buried years ago by George Washington Porter Jr. below a large stone cairn. Inside, he carefully placed some documents believed to be connected to the British Franklin Expedition — Sir John Franklin's attempt to navigate the Northwest Passage in the 1840s.

"The day my dad told me, I knew it was very important," said Chester Porter, the son of George Washington Porter Jr.

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By Elena Kovachich - The English Ruvr

Baikal, the deep-diving manned vehicle Mir-2 has discovered a strange metal thing resembling a bar of gold. Unfortunately, the mini-submarine failed to reach it.

Using only video recordings, experts will now try to determine whether it can really be the legendary gold of the Russian Empire.

Since the first stage of the international research expedition at Lake Baikal which started in 2008, its participants have hoped to find the treasure.

In the autumn of 1919, during the Civil War in Russia, Tsarist Admiral Alexander Kolchak of the White Army was entrusted to transport 500 tons of gold away from Russia. Guarded by the Czech legion, the gold was loaded aboard a train that went along the Trans Siberian Railroad.

But Kolchak was removed from his post, captured by the Bolsheviks and executed. The fate of the Russian gold remains unknown to this day. Someone believes it was conveyed abroad under the control of the Czech legion. According to another version, the railway was blown up and the gold plunged into Lake Baikal.

Indeed, the expedition of 2008 discovered carriages dating back to the Civil War period, although they had no gold inside.

On August 30th the same year, manned bathyscaphes submerged into the lake’s southern part, near the village of Listvyanka to search for any archaeological artifacts related to the so-called Kolchak’s gold, according to deputy director of the Foundation for maintaining Lake Baikal Inna Krylova.

Found on the collapsed slope of the Circum-Baikal Railway, the artifacts were out of reach due to the area’s moving ground.

The Mir-2 vehicle therefore failed to approach the discoveries sufficiently close and its manipulator arm couldn’t reach the crevice, where the alleged gold bars were noticed.

From RPM Nautical Foundation

By Clara Moskowitz - Live Science

Three recently discovered shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea could give archaeologists new insights into the transition between medieval and modern shipbuilding.

The remains of the three craft — all dating from between 1450 and 1600 — were found in the straits between Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes.

One ship appears to be a large English merchant ship, while the other two are smaller — perhaps a patrol craft from Rhodes and a small trading boat that could have been Turkish, Italian or Greek.

Though the three shipwrecks were discovered near each other, they are not thought to be related, or to have foundered in the same event.

"The real import of those vessels were they just happen to be from that period when you're moving from those oared vessels that had guns on them to sailed vessels that had guns on them," said archaeologist Jeffrey G. Royal of the RPM Nautical Foundation in Key West, Fla. "We were fortunate to find several vessels that spoke to that era."

To discover the shipwrecks the researchers used a combination of advanced technology, and persistence.

"We map the seafloor with a really intense sonar system that makes very accurate detailed maps of the seafloor," Royal told LiveScience. "Once we examine those maps we can tell anomalies that may be cultural remains versus geology."

When sign of possible shipwrecks appeared, the researchers sent down automated robots with lamps and cameras and robotic arms, which confirmed there were remains.

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Wally and Andrew Porter in Gjoa Haven. Photo: Daniel Scott

By Lucy Hyslop and Daniel Scott - Telegraph

Not only has the Canadian government sent a Parks Canada icebreaker into a three-week expedition into the waters near Gjoa Haven, but local Inuit in the remote Arctic hamlet are also touting the possible excavation of some alleged lost journals.

Organisers today hope to unearth these ancient journals - believed to have been buried in an ancient cairn by Inuits some time over the past century - which may offer clues to the whereabouts of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which set sail from England in 1845 under Franklin’s command.

Before becoming trapped in the ice, the state-of-the-art ships were part of a mission to discover the elusive Northwest Passage between Europe and Asia via the Arctic archipelago, now part of Nunavut in Canada.

The official dig for the alleged artifacts on King William Island is near to where the Franklin ships are believed to have been abandoned; it is hoped that the journals will shed light on the vessels’ location.

Although Franklin’s 129-man crew left two messages in the Arctic at a cairn for any rescue mission, according to naval protocol, the details of their last position was either never recorded or has yet to be found.

Inuit brothers Andrew and Wally Porter from Gjoa Haven - a hamlet with a population of just a few hundred people - claim that their grandfather, George Washington Porter, buried the papers 60 years ago for prosperity.

“He had been given them by a priest, who in turn had received them from a nomadic Inuit,” said Andrew, who runs a local café. “Following the discovery of the Investigator, and the renewed interest in Franklin and his lost ships,” added Wally, “we felt the time was right to reveal our family’s historical treasure.”

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From Filey Mercury

The US and French navies are to join the latest expedition to search for the remains of one of America's first and most famous warships, sunk off Filey Bay in 1779.

The American-based Ocean Technology Foundation believe it could be their best chance yet to find the Bonhomme Richard as the two navies provide state-of-the-art sonar systems, an oceanographic survey ship, a mine hunter, underwater vehicles and divers.

"This year's survey is a fantastic international partnership on the high seas," said the expedition's project manager Melissa Ryan.

"The Bonhomme Richard is like the proverbial needle in a haystack. But the good news is that the haystack is considerably smaller than it was five years ago when our surveying began."

Previous expeditions have eliminated a 400-square-mile area where the ship was thought to be, while additional historic data and information about how it may have drifted before it sank have refined the search area.

Foundation president Captain Jack Ringelberg said: "This year's mission will be an outstanding effort by one of the most experienced, knowledgeable teams we've ever had."

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