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Duke of Edinburgh joins fight to save historic clipper
By Craig Brown - Scotsman
The Duke of Edinburgh said the plight of the 145-year-old City of Adelaide, currently resting on a slipway on the west coast of Scotland, is "hideous" and appealed for help to restore it to its former glory.
The Sunderland-built ship, which predates the Cutty Sark, took people and wool between Australia and Britain on 28 round trips.
Built from teak and iron in 1864, the clipper once completed the Britain to Australia route in a record 65 days, cutting 35 days off the normal journey.
Later known as the Carrick, it subsequently fulfilled many roles, including acting as a floating isolation hospital, a Royal Navy drill ship and finally, during the Second World War, as a floating clubhouse for the Royal Navy Reserve.
After its final decomission, it has been left to the elements at Irvine, North Ayrshire, and could still face being dismantled for display in a museum.
The Scottish Government is considering a number of options for the future of the ship, with campaigners hoping to refloat the vessel and take it to Australia or back to Sunderland.
In a rare interview, the duke lamented the difficulties in securing money to restore old ships like the Adelaide.
He said: "As long as I've been alive, there's never been a good moment to raise money.
"Mind you, the sums back then looked smaller, because no-one seems to know anything about inflation, least of all the Treasury.
"People had got it into their heads that we are looking after historic buildings, but it was a completely new concept that we should look after historic ships.
"The National Trust was there for old buildings, but there was no-one there for old ships.
"We've still got a hideous problem with the City of Adelaide, which belongs to the Scottish Maritime Museum but is caught in a trap. Because it was falling to bits, they pulled it out of the water and it's now become a listed building.
"But they can't raise the money to do anything about it. You can't seem to concentrate the interest. It's a great pity."
His comments came as Scottish culture minister Fiona Hyslop yesterday met campaigners who want to save the clipper.
Earlier this year, Ms Hyslop announced that Historic Scotland had commissioned real estate advisers DTZ to review options for the category A-listed ship.
Those under consideration include moving the ship to Sunderland, to Adelaide in South Australia, or moving it to a different location in Scotland.
7,000-square-foot Titanic exhibit coming to Indy later this year
By Amy Bartner - Indy Star
In the world of on-screen heartthrobs, seductive vampires have replaced third-class Titanic passengers like the one played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Yet in the 13 years since "Titanic" premiered -- and in the 98 years since that unsinkable ship sank -- the tragedy still captivates the world.
Now, artifacts from the most famous shipwreck in history will come to the Indiana State Museum on Sept. 25 as part of "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition," museum officials announced today.
"There are 240 artifacts, ranging from china, personal objects carried by passengers, up to actual parts of the ship that have been recovered from the seafloor," said Rex Garniewicz, vice president of programs at the museum.
"One of the great things about the exhibit is that it really tells the whole story.
"It really is a comprehensive exhibit."
Visitors will get the opportunity to feel what it was like to be a Titanic passenger.
"At the entrance of the exhibit, they'll receive a boarding pass with a passenger's name, and they'll go through this exhibit as that passenger," Garniewicz said. "Most of these passengers will be third-class passengers, not first-class."
As they walk through the 7,000-square-foot exhibit, they'll experience the Titanic from construction to everyday life among the different social classes on board, in re-created cabins and hallways.
When visitors reach the point of impact with the iceberg that sank the Titanic, they'll be able to touch a chunk of ice set at 28 degrees, the water temperature April 14, 1912, the night of the collision.
Arctic underwater vehicle tests OK'd
From CBC News
A Canadian archeological firm has been cleared to test robotic submersibles in Larsen Sound this summer, provided it does not disturb the possible resting place of Sir John Franklin's lost ships.
Nunavut regulators have approved a revised proposal from ProCom Marine Survey and Archeology's to test AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles) in the sound, located 195 kilometres northwest of Taloyoak in western Nunavut.
Earlier this year, the Nunavut Impact Review Board rejected ProCom's original proposal, partly over fears the company's work might disturb an area where the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror are believed to be located.
Archeologists have long been searching for the Erebus and Terror, which vanished — along with Franklin and his crew — during the British explorer's doomed expedition to the Northwest Passage in 1845.
When ProCom was invited to resubmit its application for the AUV project, the company was asked to address how it would avoid disturbing the shipwrecks should they be discovered during the tests.
"There was a commitment that should any such site be encountered that an appropriate buffer would be established immediately," review board official Ryan Barry told CBC News. "The location would be reported to the Government of Nunavut, and no further work would be done in that area."
Lake Michigan shipwreck of 1856 almost claims 2 more lives
By Meg Jones - The Journal Sentinel
When the wooden steamship Niagara sank in Lake Michigan in 1856, scores of people died, their bodies washing ashore near what is now Harrington Beach Park.
The wreck of the ship that carried to Wisconsin thousands of immigrants, mostly Germans and Scandinavians seeking new lives, has gotten a second life as a popular destination for scuba divers.
The Niagara almost claimed two more lives on Sunday.
Two Wisconsin divers who ventured out to the Niagara on the Fourth of July were recuperating in a hospital Monday from hypothermia after strong currents swept them away from the shipwreck and their boat that was moored to the wreck.
Jamie Smallish, 28, and David Rittmann, 29, were reported missing around 7 p.m. Sunday when they failed to return from their diving excursion.
They both were found on shore at about 11:30 p.m. near Amsterdam Beach several miles north of Harrington Beach. The wreck of the Niagara lies in 52 feet of water about one mile off the shore of Harrington Beach.
"There were strong currents under the water pulling in different directions from the bottom current," said Marcus Evans, officer in charge of the U.S. Coast Guard station in Sheboygan on Monday. "When they surfaced, their boat was too far away and the winds were out of the southeast, so they were unable to swim back to the vessel."
Smallish and Rittmann ditched their scuba tanks and weight belts - common in emergencies - and managed to swim to shore. Evans said the divers' scuba tanks washed ashore on Monday.
Winds Sunday afternoon were blowing at 18 knots and waves were 2 feet, according to the marine weather report.
While most scuba divers practice a buddy system and dive with a partner, for safety reasons it's best to have another person in the dive boat keeping an eye on divers in case of emergencies. If divers are blown off course, the boat can simply pick them up.
"Leaving someone on the boat is the best practice and having someone watching your (air) bubbles to see where you're going," Evans said.
Rittmann and Smallish were expected back around 3:30 or 4 p.m., and authorities were alerted around 7 p.m. The Ozaukee County Sheriff's Department sent a dive team to search the wreck but couldn't find the men.
Their boat was empty and still moored to the wreck.
The Coast Guard sent a boat and helicopter, arriving around 9 p.m.
SS Great Britain: From seabed to national treasure
By Andrew Bomford - BBC News
After 37 years sitting on the seabed in the Falklands, the SS Great Britain was brought back home to Bristol in 1970. Exactly 40 years since its return, it has been restored to its former glory with a little help from the Duke of Edinburgh.
For the 100,000 people who lined the banks of the River Avon in Bristol on 5 July 1970, it must have been a strange sight.
There to welcome home one of the jewels of Britain's maritime history, the dark rusting hulk which slowly came into view must have seemed like a disappointment. On that boat was the Duke of Edinburgh.
"There were a lot of people there, I think they were intrigued," he said.
"The story was fascinating. The dock they built her in was still there, untouched, after all that time. It was extraordinary. There was a real sense of occasion."
Like a mortally wounded warrior from the battlefield, the SS Great Britain limped home to her birthplace, a shadow of her former glory.
This was the culmination of a salvage operation which at times seemed futile. The ship has now become a museum, with over 150,000 people visiting it each year.
The SS Great Britain was the world's first iron-hulled screw-driven ocean liner, propelled by a combination of steam and sail power and launched from Bristol in 1843.
She criss-crossed the Atlantic, made 32 runs to Australia with emigrants, served as a troop ship in the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny, and later became a cargo ship.
The ship was eventually scuttled in the Falkland Islands in 1937 after 50 years as a storage hulk. It had been a sad end for a great ship. Then came the daring rescue mission.
"She was a ship-shaped lump of iron, rust, and scrap," said Ivor Boyce, one of the tugboat skippers who gently towed her home.
He remembered telling his friends: "What are they going to do with her? No way can they make that into a viable ship anymore."
Many others though were swept away by the romance of the story. The daring rescue 8,000 miles from home, the near impossible task of raising Isambard Kingdom Brunel's great iron steam ship from the sea bed, the perilous journey across the Atlantic - all this stirred the hearts of Bristolians.
Sinking oil threatens historic wrecks
From Stuff.co.nz
Not just flora and fauna are getting caked in oil. So is the Gulf of Mexico's barnacled history of pirates, sea battles and World War II shipwrecks.
The Gulf is lined with wooden shipwrecks, American-Indian shell midden mounds, World War II casualties, pirate colonies, historic hotels and old fishing villages.
Researchers now fear this treasure seeker's dream is threatened by BP PLC's deepwater well blowout.
Within 30 km. of the well, there are several significant shipwrecks - ironically, discovered by oil companies' underwater robots working the depths - and oil is most likely beginning to cascade on them.
"People think of them as being lost, but with the deepsea diving innovations we have today, these shipwrecks are easily accessible," said Steven Anthony, president of the Maritime Archaeological and Historical Society.
"If this oil congeals on the bottom, it will be dangerous for scuba divers to go down there and explore," Anthony said. "The spill will stop investigations; it will put a chill, a halt on (underwater) operations."
The wrecks include two 19th Century wooden ships known as the Mica Wreck and the Mardi Gras Wreck. The German submarine U-166 and ships sunk by other German submarines during World War II are within the spill's footprint.
Diving bell that aided gold miners being restored
By Carolyn Crist - The Times, Gainesville
A piece of history left Gainesville 135 years ago, but now it's back.
A diving bell - the only one of its kind still left from the Civil War - was unearthed from the Chestatee River decades ago and is finally being restored before it is displayed in downtown Dahlonega.
Usually found in port towns such as New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston, S.C., the diving bell was used in Dahlonega in 1875 to mine gold at the bottom of the river.
The object, which measures 8 feet high, 15 feet long and almost 6 feet wide, allowed divers a place to breathe under water while skimming river bottoms.
Historians have compared the design to turning a glass upside down in water, which creates a pocket of air at the top.
"It's a very rare piece of Civil War-era technology and the only one surviving of its kind," said Chip Wright, project manager and preservation planner for the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission. "This diving bell should never have been here. It's a good thing because that's why it has survived."
During the metal drives of World War I and World War II, bells of this type were melted down and used by the military, he said.
"This was lying on the bottom of the river and forgotten for all these years," he said. "You can read about these in books and see drawings, but this one is even more unique because it was customized to serve in a gold mining operation."
Philologus Loud, a Dahlonega inventor and entrepreneur, was doing business in New Orleans when he came up with the idea to use the bell to search for gold. The Benjamin Mallifert bell model, which includes two hatches and a pressurized air-lock system to create a pocket of air under water, was part of the salvaging ship named The Glide that scanned the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers.
Loud bought the bell when the ship was converted to a package steamer. The bell was loaded onto a rail car and reached the end of its rail trip in Gainesville, where it was loaded onto a Southern Express wagon and toted to Dahlonega.
In 1983, local gold miners decided to pull out the object that fishers had noticed.
"The gold miners knew what it was right way," said Anne Amerson, a Dahlonega historian who has studied the bell for years. "I didn't see it until 1990, and we still haven't figured out everything about it."
Discovery of U-boat wrecks rewrites the history books
By David Keys - The Independent
The final resting places of six German U-boats sunk in the final months of the Second World War's greatest naval conflict have finally been identified.
After years of research, maritime experts say their discoveries will force historians to re-evaluate the battle for control of the Atlantic.
Evidence from the wrecks suggests many U-boats were sunk by mines rather than attacks by Allied air and naval forces, as had previously been believed.
The findings show coastal minefields were around three times more effective than British naval intelligence gave them credit for.
Experts believe their view was distorted, unintentionally, by reports from over-enthusiastic airmen and escort ship commanders who sometimes claimed they had sunk U-boats with depth charges or anti-submarine mortars.
One submarine, the U-400, previously believed sunk by Royal Navy depth charges south of Cork in Ireland, has now been identified off the coast of north Cornwall. The German sub was on its very first patrol in December 1944 when it hit a mine, underwater photography suggests.
Another, the U-1021, also identified off the north Cornish coast, was on its first patrol in March 1945 when sunk by mines. Previously, it was thought the Royal Navy had sunk it with depth charges hundreds of miles away, off the west coast of Scotland. The U-326, also on its first patrol when it was destroyed by a US aerial depth charge attack in April 1945, has been identified 100 miles off the coast of Brittany.
The U-325, sunk on its second patrol in May 1945, was thought to have been destroyed by Royal Navy depth charges in the Irish Sea. Now marine archaeology and underwater photography have identified it on the seabed 230 miles away – off Lizard Point, south Cornwall.
Other U-boats, sunk far from British coastal minefields, have also been identified. The U-1208, on its first patrol, was identified off the Scilly Isles after being sunk by Royal Navy depth charges in February 1945. The U-650, recently identified through underwater photography near Land's End, was sunk by a direct hit from a hedgehog anti-submarine missile in January 1945.