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Confederate sub has clues to last mission
From the Augusta Chronicle
A decade after the raising of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley off the South Carolina coast, the cause of the sinking of the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship remains a mystery. But scientists are edging closer.
On Friday, scientists announced one of the final steps that should help explain what happened after the hand-cranked sub and its eight-man crew rammed a spar with a powder charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston in February 1864.
Early next year the 23-ton sub will be delicately rotated to an upright position, exposing sections of hull not examined in almost 150 years.
When the Hunley sank, it was buried in sand listing 45 degrees to starboard. It was kept that way as slings were put beneath it and it was raised and brought to a conservation lab in North Charleston a decade ago.
Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the raising of the Hunley, discovered five years earlier by shipwreck hunter Clive Cussler.
As thousands watched from boats and the shoreline, the Hunley was brought from the depths and back to the lab by barge. Thousands turned out again in April 2004 when the crew was buried in what has been called the last Confederate funeral.
Shipwreck removal to become documentary
From Barents Observer
The unique operation on removal of the wreck of the Russian cruiser Murmansk in Sørøya, Northern Norway, will be made into a documentary. A webcam has been put up by the wreck, giving people the opportunity to follow the operation on-line.
Since this is a unique project on world basis the contractor Norwegian company AF Gruppen Norge AS and the Norwegian Coastal Administration want to document the operation through a documentary, NRK reports. The two parties have concluded an agreement with a film production company.
The web camera that has been put up near the shipwreck will provide possibilities for time-laps sequences in the film. This is the first time the new camera system Roundshot livecam is being used in Norway, which on three seconds can take 360° freeze-frames. The on-line pictures will have a 24 hour delay, the Norwegian Coastal Administration’s web site reads.
Removal of the wreck of the Russian cruiser “Murmansk” started last summer, as BarentsObserver reported. The vessel ended its days in Sørøya in the rocks outside Sørvær on the coast of Finnmark in December 1994. The cruiser was being tugged southwards for scrapping when it tore away during a storm and has since been to a lot of nuisance to the local population.
The plan is to drain the sea bottom around the wreck by using jetties and then cut the vessel in pieces on the dry bottom. The operation should be completed in 2011.
Watch the removal operation on-line here !!
Shipwreck could yield the USS Scorpion from the War of 1812
By Annys Shin - Washington Post
A neoprene-clad diver slipped into the murky water of the Patuxent River near Upper Marlboro Wednesday to examine the wreck of a 19th-century ship that archaeologists and state officials hope to make a star attraction in Maryland's commemoration of the bicentennial of the War of 1812.
The sailing ship could be the USS Scorpion, part of a fleet known as the Chesapeake Flotilla that was designed to navigate the shallow waters of the Patuxent and harass the British, whose Royal Navy at the time was terrorizing towns from Havre de Grace to Norfolk.
The excavation is part of Maryland's effort to create a tourism cash cow from the bicentennial of a war whose biggest claim to fame is inspiring "The Star-Spangled Banner." Based in part on Virginia's experience with revenue generated by Civil War sites, bicentennial boosters estimate the 32 months of events planned to commemorate the War of 1812 could generate $1 billion in tourism spending.
"It's very much about economic development and cultural heritage tourism," said Bill Pencek, executive director of the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.
The site of the wreck that could be the Scorpion lies a couple of miles upstream from Pig Point, also known as Bristol Landing, just past where Route 4 crosses the river.
Since late July, underwater archaeologists from the U.S. Navy, the Maryland State Highway Administration and the Maryland Historical Trust have been working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, from a cluster of barges crammed with an excavator, a Port-o-Potty, a shipping container-cum-office and two large bins that filter water and sediment.
Seven divers spend an hour or two at a time underwater with about a foot of visibility, carefully working through several yards of mud, silt and clay to what they believe is the hull of the vessel.
First glimpse of 19th-century ship trapped in Arctic
From CTV News
The government has released ghostly images of a British navy vessel trapped under the Arctic ice for more than 150 years.
HMS Investigator was abandoned in 1853 -- but not before sailing the last leg of the elusive Northwest Passage.
Archaeologists working with Parks Canada first discovered the ship on July 25, after ice had cleared from Mercy Bay, a remote site in Aulavik National Park on Banks Island.
"The first tantalizing glimpses eventually gave way to a complete picture of the ship wreck for its entire length: 120 feet overall," lead archaeologist Ryan Harris of Parks Canada told CTV News.
"As the ice cleared away, we were able to see HMS Investigator in its glory."
HMS Investigator, under the command of Capt. Robert John Le Mesurier McClure, had been dispatched from Britain in January 1850 on a mission to rescue an earlier expedition to the Arctic led by Sir John Franklin, which had gone missing a few years earlier.
Shipwreck hunters take on project to find plane wreckage
By Simona Sikimic - Daily Star Lebanon
Unbeknown to the swarms of bathers who migrate to the nation’s beaches to tan and swim each year, the seemingly calm, clear shores of Lebanon’s 225-kilometer coastline are home to countless shipwrecks that hide valuable clues about thousands of years of human history.
Beneath the waves also lie the remains of a C-46 Lebanese International Airways (LIA), passenger airliner that crashed mysteriously in 1957, depositing a “considerable amount” of gold onto the ocean floor and killing all 31 passengers on board the Kuwait-bound plane.
All previous salvage operations to unearth the wreckage have come to nothing, but a high-tech treasure-hunting ship, due to embark from the Port of Beirut shortly, may now finally assemble the missing pieces of the puzzle.
“The Odyssey” is the world’s preeminent deep-ocean shipwreck exploration vessel and comprises a 40-strong crew made up of archeologists, mechanical experts and scientists. It is equipped with military-made, state-of-the-art sensor and radar technology as well as a Remotely Operated Vehicle, “ZEUS,” a kind of unmanned submarine, which is capable of reaching depths of 2,500 meters and is used for documentation and retrieval.
“Odyssey has proven its ability as one of the world leaders in underwater search and recovery, and we are very confident that we can succeed where others have failed,” said Aladar Nasser, Odyssey international relations director. “Through our investigations we are able to solve mysteries and piece together the circumstances of the final missions of the crafts.”
“This project provides an opportunity to explore an aviation mystery which was relatively recent, so we have had an opportunity to cooperate with people that were either witnesses or have been able to provide us with detailed information about the loss – that’s been particularly exciting for us.”
The fatal incident occurred some 11 minutes after takeoff after a fire reportedly broke out on board, causing the pilot to lose control of the plane. The incident was attributed either to electrical failure or human negligence but the true cause and final location of the crash have never been determined.
The task of finding the wreckage will not be an easy one and the operation is likely to take several months.
Contemporary news reports place the plane some 32-kilometers southwest of Rafik Hariri International Airport, but the nature of the crash implies that plane now rests scattered in pieces over a large area, marked with dramatic underwater topography.
The mission, which will be conducted in cooperation with the Public Works and Transportation Ministry, has been on Odyssey’s radar for nearly 15 years when it was first brought to the company’s attention by friends of the pilot.
But difficulties in getting the appropriate permission, combined with prior commitments, have prevented the launch until now.
Founded by deep-ocean shipwreck pioneers and businessmen, John Morris and Greg Stem, Odyssey was born out of a belief that combining good business and sound archeology, termed “commercial marine archeology,” was the only sustainable way of funding long-term exploration.
The underwater engineering feat of the 19th century
By Charles Cooper - CBS News
In 1839, a couple of inventors, William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone unveiled to the world their telegraph and It wasn't long before the idea of constructing an underwater telegraph cable that would stretch across the Atlantic began to take hold.
To some, it may have seemed as out-of-this-world as would the idea of sending humans to the moon a century later. But 19th century entrepreneurs soon proved the concept could work, albeit on a smaller scale.
By the early 1850s, France and England were connected by underwater cable and other communications networks soon followed that would hook up the United Kingdom with Ireland and the Netherlands. And there was no shortage of motivation: prior to the building of a trans-Atlantic cable, the fastest ships of the day took a week to cross the ocean.
Attempting a project on such a grand scale brought with it a set unique technical and logistical challenges - not the least being the approximately 2,500 miles of ocean which separated the continents.
It's estimated that the amount of wire which got laid on the ocean floor was equivalent to thirteen circumnavigations of the earth.
Despite a series of setbacks, the cable was successfully connected after a third attempt in the summer of 1858.
Unfortunately, glitches continued and it would take another eight years before the new and old worlds could count upon a reliable underwater cable connection between North America and Europe.
On July 27 1866, chroniclers would note that cable was pulled ashore at Heart's Content, a small fishing village in Newfoundland.
Treasure hunters won in court to harvest Spanish wealth
By Cammy Clark - The Miami Herald
In 1985 aboard the Dauntless salvage boat, Jimmy Buffett sang atop a stack of silver bars while treasure hunter Mel Fisher and his crew swilled champagne to celebrate their jaw-dropping discovery.
After 16 years that included a U.S. Supreme Court victory and the death of his son, Fisher's dream had come true.
In waters 55 feet below them, divers Andy Matroci and Greg Wareham had found a virtual reef made of chests full of silver coins, silver plates, silver bars, copper ingots, stone ballast and artifacts.
It was the $450 million mother lode of the 1622 shipwreck, Nuestra Senora de Atocha.
At sea, the crews of the J.B. Magruder and Dare salvage boats continue to search along the 10-mile trail of the Atocha wreck for the rest of the Spanish galleon's buried booty - and a chance to complete the odyssey of the master salvage man, who died in 1998.
"We're looking for the stern castle, where there's another 400 silver bars and over 130,000 silver coins," said Sean Fisher, Mel's grandson, who was 7 when the treasure was found.
Fisher, who inherited some of his grandfather's charisma and enthusiasm, added: "The stern castle is also where the church kept its gold and its taxes, and we don't know how much that was because the church was more powerful than the state. The church didn't have to say what they were bringing on the ship."
Also left off the manifest and missing: about 60 pounds of emeralds from the Muzo mines of Colombia.
Fisher said the gems, believed to have been smuggled on board in a 70-pound keg, are among the unknown amount of contraband sneaked aboard the Atocha to avoid the Spanish king's 20 percent tax.
The Atocha was the flagship of a 28-ship fleet traveling from Havana to Spain in early September 1622. Less than 48 hours into the six- to eight-week journey, a hurricane blew the Atocha and its sister ship, the Santa Margarita, into the reefs.
The heavy treasure of the Atocha remained where it sank, but subsequent storms scattered parts of the Atocha along a 10-mile long, 300-yard wide trail that split into two branches at about the halfway point.
The J.B. Magruder was anchored at a site nicknamed Emerald City, where nearly 7 pounds of the precious gems have been found. It is close to where the mother lode was found, in the Marquesa Keys, about 35 miles southeast of Key West.
The Dare was a few miles away, in the middle of the trail at a site dubbed the Bank of Spain, where thousands of silver coins have been discovered.
The two sites have been worked over. Still, the crews revisit them three weeks a year, when many of the 150 current investors are in town, because there's still a good chance of finding emeralds and silver coins, Fisher said.
The investors help foot the treasure hunting operating costs of about $3 million a year.
Most of the time, however, the crews are searching for the stern castle - the back of the Atocha, where the wealthy noblemen, the clergy and the captain kept their valuables.
The crews include another Fisher grandson, Josh Fisher, 28. Jose "Papo" Garcia, who used to treasure-hunt in his native Cuba, captains the Dare, and Matroci, one of the two divers who found the treasure , helms the J.B. Magruder.
From The Shetlands News
A fully restored bronze cannon, salvaged from a Spanish Armada ship, is to go on show for the first time in the Shetland Museum and Archives as of Monday.
The cannon was discovered off Fair Isle and salvaged by a team of marine archaeologists, led by Dr Colin Martin of St Andrews University in 1970.
It belonged to the El Gran Grifón which ran aground at Stromshellier in Fair Isle in 1588 after the Spaniards lost the mighty sea battle against the English fleet and the remains of the Armada was scattered across the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean.
Curator Dr Ian Tait said that Dr Martin’s advice and input over the last two years has led to the museum being able to restore the gun and commission the recreation of an authentic gun carriage.
The wooden gun carriage has been constructed by the Royal Armouries in Leeds. The iron fittings have been hand crafted using authentic methods by isles blacksmith Bruce Wilcock from Hillswick.
The wrought iron was salvaged from an anchor dredged from the sea bed off Shetland’s coast. The iron rings, hooks, bolts and cladding have all been accurately recreated.