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Investigating the HMS Investigator
By Heather Travis - Western News
Edward Eastaugh is taking what looks like a sophisticated metal detector to the Arctic in the hopes of uncovering buried archeological treasure left behind from the first explorers to discover the western entrance to the Northwest Passage.
Eastaugh, lab manager in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Western Ontario, is joining Parks Canada on an expedition to find remains of the 19th century British Royal Navy ship, the HMS Investigator. The team is leaving on July 19 and will be returning on Aug. 9.
As part of the group heading to Banks Island, Northwest Territories, Eastaugh will be on hand to help find remnants of the ship’s cache, items removed from the vessel and piled on the island when it became stranded by pack ice.
“The opportunity to go up there is like once in a lifetime,” says Eastaugh.
Wielding a magnetometer – which detects small differences in the Earth’s magnetic field – Eastaugh will cover hundreds of meters on foot collecting data about what lies beneath the surface of Banks Island.
The magnetometer will build a picture of where items removed from the HMS Investigator are located, which can be compared with accounts written by the captain and surgeon, as well as the ship’s log book, to find out how many original items remain at the site.
There are only a few magnetometers designed specifically for archeology in Canada – one of which is at The University of Western Ontario - and they have had limited use in Canadian archeological surveys. However, one of the advantages of using the instrument is its ability to locate buried archeological features such as hearths, rubbish pits, graves, metal objects and buried house foundations, without excavating the surface.
Crews to prepare recovery site for WWII plane
By Ed Zieralski - Union/Tribune
City of San Diego ranger-divers on Tuesday will begin preparing the recovery site to lift a vintage World War II fighter plane that has been at the bottom of Lower Otay Lake since it crashed there in 1945.
Capt. Bob Rasmussen, director of the Florida-based National Naval Aviation Museum, said he should have an exact date for the recovery operation by the end of the week.
“We’re going to give it a shot, and we’re looking at the middle of August right now,” Rasmussen said.
That news set off a chain reaction in San Diego, where the city, which owns the reservoir and water, will prepare a triangular boom that will be used to collect any fuel, oil or other toxins that may leak from the plane when it’s being recovered.
A&T Recovery, based in Chicago, will conduct the complex operation of cleaning debris from inside and around the plane. Divers and engineers will then work off a plan drawn up by Taras Lyssenko and his engineers from A&T Recovery.
“The first thing we have to do is pull all the mud back and from inside the plane and around it,” Lyssenko said. “We have to see what the structure and integrity of the plane is like before we attempt to lift it. We have to see if there is any fuel or toxins there.”
A treasure trove in the Baltic Sea
By Frank Thadeusz - Spiegel
In the early 1940s, engineers of the third reich conducted a series of tests that involving firing Henschel HS 293 glider bombs into the Baltic Sea. They were disheartened when the tests failed, because the steering systems of the massive projectile didn't work properly.
Now, almost 70 years later, one of the bombs -- weighing in at about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lbs) -- has been found in the path of the 1,220-kilometer (763-mile) pipeline that will link Germany to Russia's natural gas network.
Early last week, specialists used a crane to hoist the obstacle out of the Baltic Sea near Lubmin, a coastal town in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Officials at Nord Stream, the company that will operate the pipeline, seemed relieved when the Nazi bomb had been removed.
In recent weeks and months they had learned about the unpredictable side of the Baltic, as pipeline construction crews stumbled across debris from centuries gone by.
The remains of a thousand years of maritime trade, as well as the products of dozens of wars, are crumbling in the mud and silt at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
In addition to items with great cultural and historical value, the depths conceal the rusting remains of poison gas grenades, high explosive shells and aircraft bombs, all of which represent obstacles to pipeline construction. "It was not an easy situation," says Nord Stream spokesman Steffen Ebert. "We were under considerable time pressure."
For experts, salvaging war material at sea is a delicate operation, and one that is far more difficult than recovering similar objects on land. Divers use handheld probes to pinpoint suspicious objects in the water, which they then carefully expose. Only then do they face the anxious question of whether the objects are dangerous.
That question isn't always easy to answer, because the lumps have often been corroded into a hard-to-identify mass. "It looks like a placenta," says one of the divers.
The salvage teams are most fearful of gas grenades from World War II. A filled grenade shell, its structural integrity compromised by rust, can be a deadly hazard for a diver. In these cases, Eckhard Zschiesche and his team from the ordnance disposal service of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania use special containers to retrieve the hazardous waste.
The team usually detonates unexploded high-explosive shells and depth charges underwater. Other munitions remains are disassembled on the island of Usedom.
To rule out all hazards, Ebert says reassuringly, his team has employed far more complex procedures than usual. To avoid complications, the pipeline consortium has collected everything that could be found in the sediments, including rusty anchor chains.
While environmentalists are sharply opposed to the construction of the new Baltic Sea pipeline, archaeologists are delighted. The massive Nord Stream project to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany has uncovered dozens of shipwrecks and other historic artifacts.
Reef may be slave ship cemetery
By Timothy O'Hara - Keys News
Buried in the thickets of turtle grass and staghorn and elkhorn coral on the Carysfort Reef is what a group of underwater archaeologists suspect is an African cemetery.
There never has been an official dedication or a plaque installed to mark its existence, but that could change soon thanks to the work of a joint archaeological project.
Countless people unknowingly have boated over what is believed to be the Guerrero and the watery grave of 41 slaves who were chained in her hold when she went down. Diving the area with an untrained eye still reveals very little of the relic.
A closer look reveals a smattering of ballast stones, the most notable remains of a shipwreck. An even closer look reveals much more. Archaeologists recently uncovered a bronze pin, a chard of a ceramic plate, what they think is an inkwell for a pen, and what could be the last remaining piece of the ship itself -- a 12-inch piece of wood.
A federation of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and some Upper Keys volunteers have spent the past week diving, mapping and doing other archaeological work to confirm their suspicions about the site.
The Spanish piratical slave ship wrecked on the reef off north Key Largo on Dec. 19, 1827, according to Mel Fisher archaeology director Corey Malcom.
The British schooner Nimble was chasing the Guerrero, which was carrying its human cargo to Cuba. A gun battle ensued, with dire consequences for the slaves. They either drowned or were crushed by the mast that broke off in the grounding.
The Nimble followed the Guerrero onto the reef, and could only watch as Good Samaritans rescued many of the pirates -- and nearly 400 of the Africans. Faring better than the Guerrero, the Nimble was towed to Key West for repairs, with 121 of the rescued slaves aboard.
After a long period of living as virtual slaves, those who survived were taken to Liberia to begin life anew, Malcom said.
The tragic and dramatic loss was newsworthy in its day, and was relatively well documented in newspaper accounts. Because the Guerrero was a pirate vessel operating outside of official systems, however, its origins and mode of operations were not well documented.
Malcom has been able to trace the birth of the ship, which was then called the James Monroe, to the War of 1812. The ship, used by a crew of privateers, captured 12 British ships in that war, Malcom said.
Treasure hunters will skirt new law
From CBC News
The Nova Scotia government's crackdown on treasure hunters won't do anything to protect the province's cultural artifacts, a salvage diver said Wednesday.
Duane Dauphinee, who has worked all over the world both as an underwater archaeologist and treasure salvager, said that when the government claims everything found, it encourages cheating.
"You're not going to stop inquisitive sport divers," he said. "And if they find things, now that they know that the government will take it if they mention it, nothing will be mentioned — it'll go underground. "
The Treasure Trove Act will be radically changed by the end of the year, making all historic artifacts government property.
The current law divides the spoils 90 per cent to the treasure hunter, and 10 per cent to the province. That means only some of the treasure recovered from Nova Scotia ship wrecks wind up on display in local museums.
But Dauphinee said that putting an end to treasure hunting will result in a greater cultural loss in the long-term because the province can't afford the multi-million dollar cost of under-sea recovery work.
Without the marriage between archaeology and treasure hunting, Dauphinee said that treasure and history alike will stay forgotten on the ocean floor.
Jeff MacKinnon said the decision could spell the end of his treasure salvage company — Sovereign Marine Explorations Associates International.
"I think it was careless on the part of the minister of natural resources," he said. "I don't think he looked at the economic impact. I don't think that he took the time to sit down and discuss it with us."
But, the province believes it's important to keep all historic items, including treasure, inside Nova Scotia.
"People can still do underwater heritage research," Mike MacDonald, executive director of the mineral resources branch of the Natural Resources Department, said.
"But any of the material that's found would be considered to be artifacts, and would be the property of the Crown."
Michael Noonan, with the provincial Department of Tourism, Cultural and Heritage Department, said it's important to protect the province's marine heritage.
Team of treasure hunters strike gold off Florida coast
By Lamaur Stancil - TCPalm
A team of treasure hunters struck gold once again Sunday off the coast of Indian River County.
A boat crew working with Queen’s Jewels of Jupiter Island and Sebastian found 22 gold Spanish coins and a small cannon dating back some 300 years that had sunk into the sand in low-tide water between Wabasso and Vero Beach. The coins could be worth more than $176,000, said Brent Brisben, co-founder of Queen’s Jewels.
“It’s called the Treasure Coast for a reason,” Brisben said. “It was a sight to see these guys so excited. It’s one of the best days you can have.”
Queen’s Jewels has teamed with Capt. Greg Bounds of Fellsmere to explore the wreckage area of an 18th century Spanish fleet. Sunday, the crew used a magnetometer in the low-tide area of a beach to determine a large metal object was buried there, Brisben said.
They used water pressure to burrow into the sand to find the coins and a swivel gun, which is a small cannon often mounted at the rear of the boats, Brisben said.
Brisben’s company acquired the salvage rights to the sunken ships from the heirs of world-famous treasure hunter Mel Fisher. They have been named federal custodians to the 300-mile wreckage area, he said.
Bounds, whose boat “Gold Hound” made another discovery last month off the coast of Indian River Shores, is one of about 15 subcontractors who have worked with Fisher’s Treasure Museum in Sebastian.
The crew used rope to help them pull the 300-pound swivel gun to their boat, Brisben said. After retrieving the swivel gun Sunday, Bounds’ crew took it to the museum, where it is being held in a water tank for preservation. The swivel gun might be donated to the state, Brisben said.
18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site
By David W. Dunlap - The New York Times
In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.
On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)
“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.
By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.
The area under excavation, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, had not been dug out for the original trade center. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years.
News of the find spread quickly. Archaeologists and officials hurried to the site, not only because of the magnitude of the discovery but because construction work could not be interrupted and because the timber, no longer safe in its cocoon of ooze, began deteriorating as soon as it was exposed to air.
For that reason, Doug Mackey, the chief regional archaeologist for the New York State Historic Preservation Office, was grateful for the rainfall. “If the sun had been out,” he said, “the wood would already have started to fall apart.”
As other archaeologists scrambled with tape measures over what appeared to be the floor planks of the ship’s lowermost deck, Mr. Mackey said, “We’re trying to record it as quickly as possible and do the analysis later.” All around the skeletal hull, excavation for the security center proceeded, changing the muddy terrain every few minutes.
Romantics may conjure the picture of an elegant schooner passing in sight of the spire of Trinity Church. Professional archaeologists are much more reserved.
Historical gold in a shipwreck off St. Augustine ?
By Dan Scanlan - Jacksonville
It sure didn’t look like the proverbial pot at the end of a rainbow as it emerged from an estimated 250-plus years of slumber 30 feet under the waves off St. Augustine.
Encrustations of century’s-old mud marred the cauldron’s shape as it was hauled onto the dive boat Wednesday by the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program team.
But there could be historical gold in the pot removed from a shipwreck within sight of the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Chuck Meide, Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program director, found what could be a spoon stuck inside.
Meide is hoping the cauldron is the key to unlocking a time capsule to a rare ship from St. Augustine’s bustling 1800s colonial period. He said only one colonial shipwreck has ever been found off Northeast Florida.
“This particular shipwreck was even harder to find because it was completely buried under the sand,” Meide said. “It makes it harder to find, but it also makes it a really great find because no one has ever dived it before and we don’t think anyone knows about it.”
Placed in an electrolysis tank to leach salt from its iron to preserve it, the cauldron could soon be on public display at the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum as it undergoes up to two years of cleanup.
More artifacts should be pulled up soon by the team and its high school interns in what lighthouse museum Executive Director Kathy Fleming said is another step in bringing the region’s maritime history to the community.
“It would be nice if it were a Spanish wreck. We don’t know. It might be British,” Fleming said. “We will find out more about the colonial period, engage more students and we will probably do more in the community.”