HOT NEWS !

By Don Martin - National Post

The roving remote camera Little Bruce drifted drunkenly over the bow of Investigator on Thursday, recording high-definition video just centimetres from the wrecked ship’s anchor chains and upper-deck planking scratched into rubble by 155 years of passing ice.

The images were a bit shaky because of a faulty joystick but, hey, just a week ago no one figured they’d even find this historic ship, which sank in eight metres of frigid water in 1855 after three winters locked in ice.

Now a Parks Canada team of marine archaeologists has set out to video every centimetre of this incredibly well-preserved wreck and potentially have it ready for Internet downloading next week.

“Operating Little Bruce is like landing an airplane when the tail rudder’s been shot off,” sighed senior marine archaeologist Ryan Harris.

With Mercy Bay cleared of ice floes by a friendly southwest wind on Thursday under an unrelenting sun with temperatures in the teens, the team was prepared to work well past what would be nightfall in southern latitudes.

Up here, the sun never gets below five degrees at the horizon, a disorienting 24 hours of sunshine that allowed me to fish unsuccessfully until 2 a.m. last night and give me a final chance to end the drought late Friday before the field unit departs today.

But I digress. While the team had appeared glum at first by the mechanical setback, Little Bruce’s handiwork has far exceeded anyone’s expectations.

“It’s nice to have a preview viewing so they don’t see us when we get all excited,” grinned Mr. Harris, before he screened the video for Environment Minister Jim Prentice.

“OK, here comes the money shot.” Sure enough, as a colleague eased the camera behind the stern ripped open by ice, rudder attachments, copper plating and even grass marks on the hull appeared on the laptop monitor.

With the bulk of the hard work over, the scientific and cultural team members working this Banks Island Bay, 1,000 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, are relaxed and starting to enjoy themselves immensely.

It may have been suggested as a joke, but when Mr. Prentice was asked whether he wanted to go snorkeling in the freezing Arctic water to check out the Investigator for himself, he jumped at it.

Sporting a bloated black dry-suit but wearing a kid-in-a-candy-store smile, Prentice dropped into the freezing Arctic Ocean.

Read more...

By Erik Sanzenbach - St. Tammany News

What do you do with ingots of silver and copper that date back to 1622, and were discovered by treasure hunters at the bottom of the ocean 360 years later ?

If you are Jack Mangé, you get some of that treasure from the deep and start making beautiful jewelry.

That is what Mangé has been doing since 1989, when he approached famous treasure hunter Mel Fisher with the jewelry idea.

Ever since then the former marketing specialist turned jeweler has been doing, traveling around the country selling under his company’s name Treasure Sails Inc. the Ghost Galleon collection.
 
In 1622, the Spanish Galleon Atocha set sail from Cuba laden with a cargo of sliver and copper worth millions of dollars.

The Atocha disappeared at sea around Florida.

Almost 400 years later, treasure hunter Mel Fisher spent 19 years tracing down the Ghost Galleon and found it in 1985. After paying off his investors, Fisher decided to auction off some of the treasure in Las Vegas in 1988. Mangé was at the auction and saw the huge pile of silver and copper ingots and decided that jewelry would be a good way to use the treasure.

He approached Fisher, who told him to come to his home in Key West, Fla. When Mangé arrived, Fisher had forgotten about the conversation, so Mangé sent in a poem, via Fisher’s secretary, that he had written about the Atocha.

Fisher was impressed with the poetry, called in Mangé, who walked out of Fisher’s office that day with an ingot of silver. That was the start of Treasure Sails.

Since then, Mangé has bought five copper ingots and six silver ingots out of the 582 copper ingots and 1,000 silver ingots found by Fisher.

Mangé found out that the copper had 1/2 to 1 percent gold in them. He found a foundry that would melt the copper and then skim off the gold and impurities such as sand.

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Full story...

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.