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From Hurriyet Daily News

A new exhibition in Mersin is displaying artifacts from the Ottoman frigate Ertuğrul, which sank while returning from an official visit to Japan but ultimately led to longstanding and friendly Japanese-Turkish relations.

One of the striking remains in the exhibition is a small perfume bottle which is believed to have been sent by the captain’s wife

Artifacts from a famous Ottoman ship that sunk off the coast of Japan more than a hundred years ago have now been put on a display in the southern province of Mersin, the first exhibition of its kind anywhere in the world.

The findings included pieces like a perfume bottle sent by the wife of the captain and believed to hold tears, a food boiler and other personal belongings from the sailors, said Bodrum and Karya Culture and Art Promotion Foundation, or BOSAV, Chairman Tufan Turan, the leader of an multinational expedition that has been working on the Ertuğrul shipwreck for the past three years.

The Ertuğrul was sent by Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamit II to Japan in 1889 but sank as it was returning. The accident, which killed 533 sailors, led to profound Japanese sympathy for the Turks and laid the foundations for continuing warm relations between Japan and Turkey.

Turan said they started working on the Ertuğrul shipwreck in 2007 and added that Turkish, Japanese, Spanish and U.S. researchers study the ship at Oshima Island, near Kobe, every January and February.

The research teams work underwater two hours a day, Turan said, adding that more than 6,000 pieces have been removed from the shipwreck since 2007.

The exhibition will visit other Turkish cities in 2011 before traveling to Japan for display.

Turan said some literary documents about the Ertuğrul indicate that the wife of Capt. Ali Bey, Ayşe, wrote a letter to her husband for his journey.

“In the letter, which is mentioned in the novel ‘Vuslata 5 Kala Gidip de Dönmeyenler: Ertuğrul’ [Those who did not return right before the reunion: Ertuğrul], there are statements like: ‘I sent a bottle for you, my tears are in it. I cried a lot when I was apart from you and gathered my tears in this bottle. Now I give this bottle to you, this is the biggest memory from me. Keep it until the end of your life. This is the symbol of my dedication and love to you,’” said Turan.

“Of course this is a novel but the writer examined documents about the frigate in detail. He even read these letters. When we found a small bottle in the frigate, we remembered these lines. The bottle drew great interest from the Japanese media,” he said.

“I prefer to look at the bottle through a romantic view, rather than technical. But we don’t know if this bottle is the one mentioned in the letter. It is not possible to make this clear but we are telling people our theories in the exhibition,” he said.

Among the pieces in the exhibition was also a whistle made of bone, Turan said. “We believe that it was purchased from one of the ports that the frigate visited or that it was given to one of the crew. But we also think that it may have been carved on the frigate.”

The exhibition can be seen at the Mersin Metropolitan Municipality Congress and Exhibition Hall.

By Randy Boswell - Postmedia News

The legal battle over a recently discovered Lake Erie shipwreck — believed to be the storied, Canadian-built brig Caledonia from the War of 1812 — took another twist last week in a New York court as the U.S. salvage company that found the sunken vessel rejected accusations by state lawyers it has “plundered” the wreck site and disturbed human remains.

The struggle over the fate of the well-preserved wreck — purported to be a 203-year-old troop transport involved in the first British-Canadian victory of the War of 1812 — comes with the clock ticking toward the war’s bicentennial and amid controversial plans to raise the ship for display on Lake Erie’s southern shore near Buffalo, N.Y.

Thursday’s court hearing before U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara followed a state magistrate’s ruling in May that the wreck should be left preserved on the lake bottom — the position held by state legal and archeological officials.

But Northeast Research Ltd., the U.S. dive company that found the wreck in 60 metres water about 30 kilometres offshore of Dunkirk, N.Y., appealed the May ruling and asked Arcara to grant a full trial to determine the wreck’s future.

Northeast co-owner Pat Clyne, condemning the state’s policy of “in situ preservation” as equivalent to leaving wrecks “on the bottom to rot,” told Postmedia News if Arcara grants a trial his company could win the right to raise the wreck and create a major international War of 1812 tourist attraction.

“We were pleased with the judge’s questions as well as our attorney’s ability to explain why we believe that this historic ship should be raised, conserved and put on display for all to see — and not just for a handful of privileged few,” Clyne said.

“If the judge’s decision goes our way, we then get our chance to confront the State of New York in court with all of our evidence and extensive research to prove our case.”

Northeast’s lawyer defended the company’s dives to the wreck as respectful toward the historic artifacts and human remains known to be at the site.

While several relics were raised and preserved to help identify the ship, and a few bone fragments were inadvertently moved during a dive, Northeast contends its handling of the wreck has been thoroughly professional.

If the ship on the Erie lake bed is the Caledonia — a 26-metre, two-masted schooner with a richly documented history — it would be discovery of international importance.

Built in 1807 at a Royal Navy shipyard near present-day Windsor, Ont., the Caledonia was originally owned by the North West Company and used for hauling furs from trading posts around the Great Lakes.

It was pressed into military service when war broke out between Britain and the U.S. along the Canadian frontier in June 1812.

Just a month later, the ship carried some 400 troops — British and Canadian soldiers, conscripted fur traders and allied Indian fighters — to U.S.-controlled Michilimackinac Island at the western end of Lake Huron, a strategic prize close to the eastern entrance of Lake Michigan.

Without a shot being fired, the Americans surrendered the fort — an important event that dashed U.S. expectations of an easy triumph in the war, and largely solidified aboriginal support behind the British.

But the Caledonia fell into American hands just three months later.

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...