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CSS Alabama Cannon arrives at museum
From Fox10 TV
One of the guns of the Confederate raider, CSS ALABAMA has been delivered to The Museum of Mobile.
The cannon will be a welcome addition to recovered artifacts the Museum of Mobile already has on loan from the US Navy.
It will become the centerpiece in the 700 square foot exhibit gallery funded by the Mobile Museum Board that will open later this summer.
The gun is one of eight guns that were originally on the deck of the CSS ALABAMA.
The CSS ALABAMA sank in about 200 feet of water off Cherbourg, France, after an engagement with the Union's USS Kearsage on June 19, 1864.
The gun is approximately 10 feet long and weighs 5000 pounds (2 1/2 tons).
“Now that the gun is in place in our new gallery, we’re all looking forward to sharing it with our visitors.
I think anyone who’s interested in Confederate Naval history and Admiral Semmes will enjoy seeing this exhibit,” stated David Alsobrook, director.
“The Museum of Mobile is very pleased that one of the deck guns raised from the CSS ALABAMA will be included in our permanent exhibits gallery.
Since Admiral Raphael Semmes’s postwar residence and his gravesite are in Mobile, I think our Museum is a logical home for this artifact. Many people have helped bring this project to fruition.
I want to thank attorney Robert Edington for his extraordinary efforts in leading this acquisition project from the very beginning to its final stages. I think it’s safe to say that the Museum of Mobile wouldn’t have obtained this artifact without the gifted leadership of Mr. Edington.
We also deeply appreciate the technical expertise of Dr. Paul Mardikian and the Hunley conservators in Charleston, SC, and the collegial assistance of Dr. Robert Neyland of the US Navy’s Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, DC.
I also wish to point out that the Museum of Mobile’s Board, under the leadership of our chair, Tony Kendall, underwrote the cost for the renovation of our new exhibits gallery which will include the gun and for other expenses associated with the shipment of the gun, along with strong support from the Friends of the Museum of Mobile and CSS Alabama Association; under the leadership of president Phillip Nassar.
We are all looking forward to the gun being in place and the fabrication of this new exhibits gallery, which will occur in the coming weeks.
We have not established a date for the opening of the new exhibits gallery, and that announcement will be forthcoming.
Call for full excavation of HMS Victory shipwreck
From BBC News
An archaeologist has called for the wreck of the HMS Victory to be brought to the surface to avoid further damage.
Dr Sean Kingsley is an archaeological consultant for Odyssey Marine Exploration, who found the shipwreck in the English Channel in April 2008.
He said the site would continue to suffer damage from bottom fishing and could not be protected by exclusion zones as it is too far from land.
The site's future is the subject of a public consultation ending on 30 June.
The consultation, being held by the UK government's Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Ministry of Defence, puts forward three options; manage the site with no excavation, limited excavation and management of the site and full excavation with the artefacts being used to educate and celebrate Britain's heritage.
Dr Kingsley said: "Sometimes you can leave ships in shallow waters, you can protect them, you can create exclusion zones, people can dive on them and the money from that can contribute to local economies. When you're out of the sight of land, 100m down it's just not an option.
"It seems to us the most responsible and sustainable option it is take that ship out of harm's way, put it on shore for education and promoting heritage so that everyone can enjoy it."
More than 1,000 sailors drowned when the British flagship, the predecessor to Lord Nelson's Victory, sank in a storm in 1744.
Replicas of Nina, Pinta set to anchor in Peoria
By Patrick Oldendorf - Journal Star
A replica of Christopher Columbus' famous ship will be dropping anchor in Peoria next month.
The Nina has stopped in Chillicothe and Peoria several times in the last 15 years, but this year the wooden, sea-going vessel is back - this time with its sister ship, the Pinta.
The replica ships will dock from July 9 to July 12 at the RiverPlex landing adjacent to the Spirit of Peoria.
"Little children love scrambling around the ships, and school-aged children study Columbus and his ships," said A.J. Sanger, a spokesman for the Columbus Fund. "Older people can appreciate and admire the work that went into building (the ships) ... and think about how small (it was) for men to go to sea in."
The Nina was built completely by hand and without the use of power tools in Bahia, Brazil, in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' entry into the new world. Archaeology magazine dubbed it "The most historically correct Columbus replica ever built."
The boat is 93 1/2 feet long and about 52 feet tall and was featured in the film "1492."
By Olga Pshenitsyna - The Voice of Russia
“Polar Odyssey” brigantine, a replica of 18th century historic ships, has been launched in Karelia. Reconstructed from old drawings, the vessel will hoist its sails in the harbor town of Petrozavodsk on the western shore of Lake Onega, in northwestern Russia.
Together with a team of his associates, engineer Victor Dmitriev has been engaged in designing and building ships for 30 years already. He said it took them quite a long time to design and build “Polar Odyssey".
"Unlike building boats to order, which takes approximately a year, the brigantine has been under construction for a total of 10 years. Our hard work eventually resulted in a well-wrought vessel, mature like cognac in casks," says Dmitriev.
16 meters in length and 4.6 in width, “Polar Odyssey” is a replica of high-performance serviceable 18th century warships, used to conduct patrol and surveillance missions. Such vessels used to enjoy increased demand by sea pirates.
The brigantine has six cannons on board, which will serve a dual purpose, Victor Dmitriev says: "Above all, these are guns for saluting. Besides, we developed a tutorial program in the form of a role-playing game “Treasure Island” or “Pirates of Lake Onega”. This is a kind of sea paintball, with cannons firing paint-filled capsules."
Jacques Cousteau centennial: 'We must go and see'
By Cathy Hunter, Renee Braden and Krista Mantsch - Natgeo News Watch
"Il faut aller voir." ("We must go and see.") - Jacques Cousteau
Jacques-Yves Cousteau began his lifelong odyssey with the sea seeking a little adventure; by the end, he had inspired people around the globe to look more closely at the oceans that make up most of our planet.
For 15 years, it was an odyssey that Cousteau and National Geographic undertook together.
He came to us in 1950, a 42-year-old French naval officer and co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung who also claimed to be an underwater filmmaker.
We hesitated. Yet there was something about this Frenchman, so impossibly slim, with that smile so huge, those eyes so large and mesmerizing. So in 1952 we embarked together on what might have seemed an uncertain adventure. Yet he never doubted the outcome.
"Personally," Cousteau declared, "I have the greatest confidence that our work, helped by your Society, will be particularly fruitful."
National Geographic magazine articles showcased Cousteau's underwater photography, and in 1955 we funded the now-legendary voyage Calypso made to the gorgeous, unspoiled reefs of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
The film he made there and released in 1956 as "The Silent World" is arguably the most influential underwater documentary ever made, winner of both an Academy Award and the Prix d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
By 1960 Cousteau was a household name in the United States in an era as excited about exploring the sea as it was about venturing toward the stars.
Over the years, the Society's Committee for Research and Exploration sponsored and supported many of Cousteau's advanced underwater projects, from construction of the famous diving saucer to establishment of one of the world's first undersea habitats.
With Cousteau, the exceptional became the norm.
There was the singular luncheon, for example, served at Society headquarters on 2,000-year-old plates, plucked from a stock of unbroken crockery the captain had recovered from an ancient Roman shipwreck.
Gold Rush shipwreck named historic site
From CBC News
The Yukon government has designated the A.J. Goddard, a Gold Rush-era steamboat found on the bottom of a lake last year, a historic site.
This means the shipwrecked stern wheeler, which remains almost intact at the bottom of Lake Laberge, will be protected from damage or harm by people, according to Yukon government officials.
"We're delighted to see the designation because it shows that not only are shipwrecks important pieces of the past, but that they're also important resources," James Delgado, the Texas-based president of the Institute of Nautical Archeology, told CBC News.
Launched during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898 to carry miners and supplies, the A.J. Goddard vanished in Lake Laberge, north of Whitehorse, in a storm Oct. 22, 1901. Three crew members drowned and two survived.
An archeological team, which included Delgado and Doug Davidge of the Yukon Transportation Museum, found the steamboat with its hull intact and many of the crew's belongings preserved.
Delgado said he remembers seeing the ship's boiler door propped open, and clothes and shoes were still sitting on the deck of the sternwheeler.
"In this case, this little mini-museum helps bring that Gold Rush to life," he said.
Exhibit sheds new light on Cleopatra
From Otago Daily Times
Was Cleopatra a conniving temptress who seduced her way to the top, or the target of recorded history's most effective negative political campaign ?
A splashy exhibit making its world premiere at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia makes a case for the latter, using recently discovered artifacts to illustrate two archaeologists' search for the truth - and the tomb - of one of antiquity's most maligned figures.
Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt, features many never-before-seen artifacts from a pair of ongoing Egyptian archaeological expeditions. It remains in Philadelphia until January, when it begins a tour of five not-yet-announced American cities.
The show employs theatrical lighting and sound, 17 video screens documenting archaeologists uncovering some of the 150 artifacts on display, and a four-minute video providing an overview of Cleopatra's life and loves in a style that looks and sounds like a trailer for a slick action movie.
"We're using ancient objects to tell a modern-day story about the search for Cleopatra," said John Norman of Arts and Exhibitions International, the company that organised the show.
The first of the exhibit's two sections showcases the discoveries of French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, whose 20-year Egyptian expedition so far has uncovered Cleopatra's palace, two ancient cities near the coast of the ancient city of Alexandria, and 20,000 artifacts and counting.
Florida hulk predates St. Augustine voyage
By Melissa Nelson
When Matthew Kuehne dives to the sandy bottom of Pensacola Bay, he reaches back 450 years to Spaniard Don Tristan de Luna's hurricane-doomed effort to form the first colony in the present-day United States.
Archeologists say the buried hull of a ship from de Luna's fleet of 11 ships holds crucial clues to the 1559 expedition that sailed from Mexico to Florida's Panhandle.
That was six years before another Spanish explorer, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, founded St. Augustine, Fla., the oldest city in the United States.
The ship's discovery was announced in October after lead sheeting and pottery from the wreck site were matched to the de Luna expedition. Another ship in the fleet was found nearby in 1992.
Mr. Kuehne, a University of West Florida archeology student, has been diving from a barge anchored in the Gulf of Mexico to retrieve artifacts from the submerged ship.
He can only imagine what de Luna and his men would think of his modern-day exploration.
“I don't know if they would be honoured that we are out here digging up their stuff or if they would be embarrassed that their technology, their efforts at colonization, failed,” he said.
The two shipwrecks off Pensacola are the second-oldest discovered in U.S. waters. The oldest are a fleet of 1554 merchant ships that sank off Padre Island, Tex.
The West Florida archeology team has brought more than 800 artifacts from the new de Luna site to the surface, including pieces of olive jars used to transport food and wine, chunks of the ship's wood frame, cow bones, Spanish bricks and even tiny balls of mercury, used to extract gold from ore.
Of the 11 ships that departed from Veracruz, Mexico, on de Luna's expedition, seven ran aground in the water, one was blown ashore and three survived the storm, said John Bratten, a West Florida professor of maritime archeology.