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By David W. Dunlap -  The New York Times

The 18th-century vessel unearthed two weeks ago in Lower Manhattan has begun to emerge from the mist of history.

She was most likely a brigantine; the two-masted workhorse of the coastal trade, ranging perhaps from New England (where she might have picked up lumber needed by an ever-growing New York City) as far south as Barbados (from which she would have carried sugar and molasses to feed a growing population).

“It’s one of the ships that helped build New York,” Warren Riess, an archaeologist specializing in marine history, told the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on Thursday.

Not that Dr. Riess would stoop to such an analogy, but it might be likened to an archaeologist of the future digging up an Econoline van rather than a rare Bugatti: nothing to fire the most romantic imaginings, but plenty to edify anyone who hoped to understand day-to-day life and commerce.

After the briefing, Dr. Riess hurried from the corporation office at 1 Liberty Plaza back to the excavation site at Washington and Liberty Streets. And Avi Schick, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said, “How fantastic it is that those who are building the New York of the 21st century were the ones who uncovered this artifact, that represents those who were building the New York of the 18th century.”

Dr. Riess based some of his preliminary conclusions — and he emphasized that any inferences were tentative — from the opportunity he and his colleagues have had to study the vessel as they disassembled it this week.

What prompted him to suppose the ship was a brigantine were its overall dimensions, he said. The front section of the ship, all that remains, is 32 feet long. Dr. Riess said further investigation might disclose that the vessel was a small three-masted ship or even a large schooner.

The disassembly should be finished Friday, Dr. Riess said. The forensic work will then shift to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.

What was a sodden mess two weeks ago looked more and more like a ship in recent days, with the exposure of the lowermost hull. This allowed Dr. Riess, of the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine and archaeologists from the AKRF firm to see how honeycombed and worm-eaten the wood was, bolstering speculation that the ship’s sorry final lot was to be used as landfill around the turn of the 19th century.

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By Alan Clayson - The Independant

One afternoon earlier this summer, in a Somerset meadow, David Crisp stumbled upon 52,000 Romano-British coins, the second-largest such hoard of its kind ever unearthed – and presently on exhibit in the British Museum.

Almost 800 of these were minted during the reign of Carausius, which lasted from around AD286 until AD293, the first ruler since the conquest in AD43 to govern Britain without the authority of Rome – and a much-overlooked historical figure.

As Roger Bland, the museum's head of portable antiquities, says, "This find presents us with the opportunity to put Carausius on the map. Schoolchildren across the country have been studying Roman Britain for decades, but have never been taught about Carausius – our lost emperor."

For nigh on 10 years prior to its recapture, Britain enjoyed the best of both worlds as a unified and isolationist nation-state that could still claim affinity with the greater dominion of Rome across the Straits of Dover.

Indeed, some of the coins that activated Crisp's metal detector are embossed with the motif "AUGGG" (the three 'g's denoting three augusti, or Roman emperors), stressing that Carausius was on equal terms with the other two emperors – one in Constantinople, one in Rome itself – of an increasingly more fragmented federation, riven with incessant warfare.

Regarded, nevertheless, as a glorified squatter, Carausius was recognised only under official sufferance – and, with his passing, his rule was shrugged off in contemporary records as a triviality, just one of around 50 similar territorial uprisings. As a result, an important episode in our island story remained shrouded in distortion and obscurity.

There's no mention of Carausius in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and what might be described as the sole major biography is P H Webb's The Reign and Coinage of Carausius, which is 88 pages in length and was published in 1908.

The raw facts are that Mausaeus Carausius was born of a humble family dwelling in what was to smoulder into modern Belgium. On the strength of the coins he minted, he was burly, multi-chinned and unshaven – with the intimation that beneath layers of fat, the muscle was rock-hard, and that, if slighted, he could inflict red-fisted reprisal.

He began his working life as a common sailor, serving eventually as a steersman aboard a merchant vessel. His career took off when Rome, attempting to bolster its supremacy by employing the skills of conquered people, sought parochial bruisers to assist in the crushing of revolt in north-eastern Gaul.

Emerging as a natural rabble-rouser, Carausius distinguished himself during these expeditions on land, but, a mariner by instinct, he was better placed to rise through the ranks of the newly reconstituted Classis Britannica – the British fleet – being promoted to high admiral after visiting Rome for what amounted to a job interview.

Unaware of any hidden agenda, the Senate commissioned Carausius to patrol the waters of northern Europe for buccaneers, mostly from Baltic and Scandinavian regions. Based in Gesoriacum (Boulogne), Carausius seemed to undertake this task with ruthless competence – according to Eutropius's Epitome of Roman History, penned a century later – until bureaucratic diligence brought to the ears of Rome that not only was he apprehending these nascent Vikings, but was appropriating their stolen goods. It was hinted that he was actually in league with them.

By David W. Dunlap and Fred R. Conrad - The New York Times

Whatever the antique vessel was, and whenever in the 18th century it arrived on the Lower Manhattan waterfront, one thing can be said almost certainly: Its journey in was easier than its journey out.

The vessel was discovered by workers on July 13, about 20 to 30 feet below street level, during the excavation of a site bounded by West, Washington, Liberty and Cedar Streets.

This area — which had not been disturbed during the construction of the original World Trade Center — will one day house the vehicle ramps leading to the network of roadways, loading areas and parking spaces under the new World Trade Center.

The wood-hulled ship was an object of instant archaeological interest and popular speculation. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey worked around it as much as possible while keeping the excavation on track.

But the time for salvaging and removing the vessel finally arrived on Monday. Among those on site for the delicate operation were the archaeologists A. Michael Pappalardo, Diane Dallal and Molly McDonald of AKRF, the consulting firm working for the Port Authority; Warren Riess of the Darling Marine Center of the University of Maine, who worked on the last vessel unearthed in Lower Manhattan in 1982; and Nicole Doub, the head conservator of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Library in St. Leonard, to which the remnants of the ship are bound — piece by piece.

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By Don Martin - National Post

Dangling precariously over the side of a Zodiac while peering into the blue-green Arctic Ocean, the wreck of the ghost ship HMS Investigator suddenly looms large just eight metres below the surface.

The pointed bow, the flat stern splintered long ago by a passing iceberg, and a section of railing draped across the middle are easily visible to the naked eye despite the salt water. His hand cupped to block out the sun’s reflection, the usually restrained Environment Minister Jim Prentice excitedly tried to describe what he was seeing. All he could manage was a gushing stream of adjectives punctuated by a whole lot of “wows.”

Goosebumps are inevitable when seeing a well-preserved wreck that is considered to be one of the most significant in the history of a country that didn’t exist when the British exploration vessel sank in 1855 after two deadly winters in this Banks Island Bay.

Until this week, no Canadian had set eyes on this incredibly well-preserved 36-metre, three-masted ship, which sank a year or so after being abandoned by Robert McClure and his crew, who are credited with finding the missing east-west link in the Northwest Passage.

The Parks Canada discovery last weekend happened almost too quickly for dramatic effect, perhaps befitting an archeological dig that is experiencing such an incredible streak of good luck on the water, on land and with the weather, the team is pinching itself in disbelief.

When a trio of Parks Canada archeologists took to their five-metre Zodiac earlier this week, dragging a torpedo-shaped Sonar gun behind them, they were prepared to spend two weeks scouring the bottom of the 30-metre-long bay. Even then, the odds of finding the Investigator were rated 50/50.

Spotting only one clear route through chunks of ice floating a few hundred metres off shore, they aimed their inflatable boat through the passage, flipped the switch to activate the Sonar, and turned their attention to the computer monitor.

The monochrome image almost immediately picked out bits of debris amid the deep gouges on the seabed before Canada’s echo of the Titanic discovery moment: The starboard of the Investigator appeared on the viewing screen.

The archeologists were sure they had it, but almost couldn’t believe a 10-month planning quest had succeeded so rapidly.

They made a second pass, then a third, a fourth, a dozen sweeps, and then — just one hour after they started — the team declared the Investigator found 155 years after it sank.

“Mercy Bay must feel like it got a bad wrap in the history books.

It changed its nature and decided to be more merciful to us,” quipped Ryan Harris, a Parks Canada senior marine archeologist.

University of Western Ontario archaeologist Ed Eastaugh is scouring the land with magnetic scanners to record evidence of Investigator sailors who roamed the barren fields and fished the nearby lakes duringvwmore than two years trapped in the bay by thick ice.

By Zoe Murphy - BBC News

Next month, archaeologists will begin work off the coast of Kenya to identify a wreck believed to have belonged to the man some historians believe inspired the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor.

Chinese archaeologists, who arrived in the African country this week, are hoping that the shipwreck could provide evidence of the first contact between China and east Africa.

Setting sail more than 600 years ago, Zheng's armada made seven epic voyages, reaching south-east Asia, the Middle East, and as far as Africa's east coast.

Some say he even made it to America - several decades before the celebrated European explorer Christopher Columbus - although this has been widely disputed by historians.

Zheng, known as the Three-Jewel Eunuch Admiral, carried gifts from the Chinese emperor aboard his "treasure ship", which groaned with valuable cargo including gold, porcelain and silks.

These were exchanged along the established Arab trade routes for ivory, myrrh and even China's first giraffe, promoting recognition of the new Ming dynasty.

But within years of his death, Zheng appeared to fade from public consciousness, and for centuries his legend was overlooked as China turned its back on the world and entered a long period of isolation.

Now Zheng is enjoying a resurgence - and there appears to be more than historical curiosity behind his revival.
Shipwreck

The sunken ship is believed to have been part of Zheng's armada, which reached the coastal town of Malindi in 1418.

The Chinese seem confident they will find the wreck near the Lamu archipelago, where pieces of Ming-era ceramics have already surfaced. Marine archaeologists are expected to arrive next month.

The Chinese government is investing £2m ($3m) in the three-year joint project, which Kenya says it hopes will throw up important findings about early relations between China and Africa.

Analysts say this ties in well with China's diplomatic overtures to African nations, as it goes about securing natural resources and political influence.

Zheng He - also known as Cheng Ho - is being hailed anew as a national hero; invoked by the Communist Party as a pioneer of China's "open-door" policies that have once again made China a world power.

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By Don Martin - National Post

The ship whose crew discovered Canada’s Northwest Passage has been found 155 years after it was abandoned and disappeared in this isolated Arctic bay, a historic find and one that may help bolster Canadian claims to Arctic sovereignty.

The wreck of HMS Investigator was detected in shallow water within days of Parks Canada archeologists launching an ambitious search for the 422-ton ship from a chilly tent encampment on the Beaufort Sea shoreline.

“It’s sitting upright in silt; the three masts have been removed, probably by ice,” said Ifan Thomas, Parks Canada’s superintendent of the western Arctic Field Unit. “It’s a largely intact ship in very cold water, so deterioration didn’t happen very quickly.”

Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who arrived at the camp on Tuesday, said that finding a relic linked to the discovery of the Northwest Passage represents a reasserted Canadian claim to Arctic sovereignty.

“It’s fundamental to Canadian sovereignty in the North,” he said in an interview.

“[A]nd the tragic tale of Investigator is one of the most amazing stories of Arctic history. It’s a tale of incredible determination and suffering,” Mr. Prentice said.

The three-masted, copper-bottomed Investigator was found this week after marine archeologists deployed side-scan sonars from inflatable Zodiac boats. Underwater cameras will be used this week to photograph the wreck and divers will be deployed next summer to probe the hull.

The clear Arctic water makes it possible to glimpse the outline of the ship’s outer deck, which is only eight metres below the surface.

Three graves were also found on Tuesday. They are undoubtedly the remains of a trio of British sailors who succumbed to disease in the final months of this ship’s three-year Arctic ordeal.

“In anthropological terms, this is the most important shipwreck in history,” said senior marine archeologist, Ryan Harris.

“This was the first contact with the Copper Inuit; it’s a bit like finding a Columbus ship in the Arctic.”

The remains of the 36-metre ship were discovered at the approximate spot 150 metres off shore where it was last visited in 1854 by a passing British expedition.

From Paul Fraser Collectibles

In 1912, during a national coal strike, the Titanic's owners resorted to desperate measures. Sometimes it's the 'stories behind the stories' which provide the most interesting items of memorabilia.

Such is the case with the story of the RMS Titanic which, after striking an iceberg four days into its voyage on April 14, 1912, remains one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

Most people are familiar the story - famously retold in director James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster film starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

However, less people are perhaps aware of an amazing tale which precedes the Titanic's doomed maiden voyage from Southampton, England in 1912. Britain was then in the grip of a national coal strike, and the Titanic's owners White Star Liner feared that there wouldn't be enough fuel to power the mammoth ship.

To deal with the situation, George Frederick Bull, a bursar for the company, traveled with his colleague, R McPherson, to Wallasey in Merseyside. There, they stole coal from the striking miners at gun-point.

Today, almost a century later, the 104-year-old pistol which played such a crucial role in the launching the Titanic has appeared for sale on the collectors' markets.

The gun is being sold by Antiques Storehouse of Portsmouth, UK, priced £200,000.

It will be sold in an original flare box from the Titanic and has Bull's initials engraved on its handle.

By Steve Szkotak - Associated Press/Breitbart

A team of scientists will launch an expedition to the Titanic next month to assess the deteriorating condition of the world's most famous shipwreck and create a detailed three-dimensional map that will "virtually raise the Titanic" for the public.

The expedition to the site 2 1/2 miles beneath the North Atlantic is billed as the most advanced scientific mission to the Titanic wreck since its discovery 25 years ago.

The 20-day expedition is to leave St. John's, Newfoundland, on Aug. 18 under a partnership between RMS Titanic Inc., which has exclusive salvage rights to the wreck, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The expedition will not collect artifacts but will probe a 2-by-3-mile debris field where hundreds of thousands of artifacts remain scattered.

Some of the world's most frequent visitors to the site will be part of the expedition along with a who's who of underwater scientists and organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Organizers say the new scientific data and images will ultimately will be accessible to the public.

"For the first time, we're really going to treat it as an archaeological site with two things in mind," David Gallo, an expedition leader and Woods Hole scientist, told The Associated Press on Monday. "One is to preserve the legacy of the ship by enhancing the story of the Titanic itself. The second part is to really understand what the state of the ship is."

The Titanic struck ice and sank on its maiden voyage in international waters on April 15, 1912, leaving 1,522 people dead.

Since oceanographer Robert Ballard and an international team discovered the Titanic in 1985, most of the expeditions have either been to photograph the wreck or gather thousands of artifacts, like fine china, shoes and ship fittings. "Titanic" director James Cameron has also led teams to the wreck to record the bow and the stern, which separated during the sinking and now lie one-third of a mile apart.

RMS Titanic made the last expedition to site in 2004. The company, a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions Inc. of Atlanta, conducts traveling displays of the Titanic artifacts, which the company says have been viewed by tens of millions of people worldwide.

"We believe there's still a number of really exciting mysteries to be discovered at the wreck site," said Chris Davino, president of and CEO of Premier Exhibitions and RMS Titanic. "It's our contention that substantial portions of the wreck site have never really been properly studied."

RMS Titanic is bankrolling the expedition. Davino declined to state the cost of the exploration other than to say it will be millions of dollars.

The "dream team" of archaeologists, oceanographers and other scientists want to get the best assessment yet on the two main sections of the ship, which have been subjected to fierce deep-ocean currents, salt water and intense pressure.

Gallo said while the rate of Titanic's deterioration is not known, the expedition approaches the mission with a sense of urgency.

"We see places where it looks like the upper decks are getting thin, the walls are thin, the ceilings may be collapsing a bit," he said. "We hear all these anecdotal things about the ship is rusting away, it's collapsing on itself. No one really knows."

The expedition will use imaging technology and sonar devices that never have been used before on the Titanic wreck and to probe nearly a century of sediment in the debris field to seek a full inventory of the ship's artifacts.

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