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$50,000 reward in theft of bars
By Numismatic News
A reward of $50,000 is being offered for information leading to the recovery of eight gold ingots stolen from an unidentified individual.
These gold ingots were part of the treasure recovered from the S.S. Central America, which sank in a hurricane in 1857 off the coast of North Carolina.
Though the FBI is reported to be investigating, details are sketchy because the owner does not wish to be identified. Instead, he is working through public relations professional Donn Pearlman.
The Professional Numismatists Guild also issued an alert to its members.
A list of eight ingots with the identifying serial numbers, assayer name, weight and value stamped into the ingots follows. The dollar values are what the metal was worth at the time the ingots were made. A ninth ingot apparently has already been melted.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of any or all of these ingots are asked to contact Donn Pearlman by phone at (702) 868-5777, or by e-mail at donnpr@aol.com.
The eight ingots are:
No. 636, Kellogg & Humbert, 66.59 oz, $1,223.74
No. 836,Kellogg & Humbert, 68.02 oz, $1,220.48
No. 896, Kellogg & Humbert, 68.37 oz, $1,232.42
No. 955, Kellogg & Humbert, 65.85 oz, $1,212.86
No., 3218, Henry Hentsch, 145.20 oz, $2,659.36
No. 4332, Justh & Hunter, 99.60 oz, $1,844.79
No. 5226, Blake & Co.. 17.78 oz $349.53
No. 6518, Harris, Marchand & Co., 129.30 oz, $2,362.81
Wreck gives up historic bounty
By Fallon Hudson - Daily Mercury
It has been almost a year since the remains of the shipwreck Brinawarr were discovered during construction of the Forgan Bridge replacement project.
At the time construction was stopped to investigate the wreckage that has lain under the waters of the Pioneer River since it sank on the northern side during the 1918 cyclone.
Like most shipwrecks the Brinawarr had its fair share of bounty.
In fact, a compass and ornate brass dragons were salvaged from the ship. At present the items, such as the dragons, a conglomerate of wood, and metal, including a letter W, are being restored at the Maritime Museum in Townsville.
A Main Roads spokesperson said there were no plans to relocate the wreck of the Brinawarr. Mackay Historical Society president Syd Norman said the Mackay Museum was looking forward to the relics being returned to Mackay once restored.
Mr Norman was at the site when marine archaeologists discovered parts of the ship and a number of personal items on the ship.
Spanish twists provoke research
By Annette Lambly - The Northern Advocate
An Oxford-educated researcher is investigating whether Spanish sailors visited New Zealand 116 years before Abel Tasman. Historians generally accept that Tasman, a Dutchman, first sighted the Southern Alps on December 13, 1642.
But Qatar-based researcher Winston Cowie, who spent part of his childhood in Dargaville, is investigating whether
the Spanish visited New Zealand as early as the start of the 16th century.
A sighting of a caravel wreck near Aranga on Northland's west coast by Dargaville's shipwreck explorer Noel Hilliam 25 years ago was the catalyst for Mr Cowie's project. Sketches suggested the caravel is the San Lesmes, which disappeared in the Pacific in 1526.
Mr Hilliam says 22 of the 53 crew listed on the 80-tonne caravel came from a Spanish town called Aranga - the same as the Northland area close to the wreck. Mr Hilliam said in June this year Mr Cowie had spent a month in the northwest Spanish town where the main street was called "Rua Tui" - a Maori name.
Mr Cowie found what he believes are two ancient pohutakawa trees at La Coruna, not far from Aranga.
Mr Hilliam says that in June next year, a Lincoln University scientist, Dr Jonathan Palmer, will take a core samples to determine the age of the Spanish trees.
Further speculation of the Spanish visitors arises from a number of local Maori surnames that also have Spanish derivatives.
Research on Hunley spurs new discoveries
By Tony Bartelme - The Post and Courier
Water is just water, right ?
Not at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, where researchers with Clemson University and conservators working on the H.L. Hunley use super-pressurized water in ways that could transform the preservation of metal artifacts, increase the durability of offshore windmills and even make paint cling better to ship hulls.
The secret of the water's transformation is tucked in a corner of the Lasch lab, in a room next to the Hunley and a pair of cannons from the Confederate raider Alabama.
"This is the big one," said Michael Drews, director of the Clemson Conservation Center at the Lasch lab, pointing to a panel of levers and pumps next to a waist-high metal cylinder.
Called a "subcritical reactor," the contraption is a sophisticated cousin of the pressure cooker and has nothing to do with radioactivity.
Instead, it creates pressures 50 times higher than what might be found in the open air, and this intense pressure causes materials to react differently. The boiling point for water, for instance, shoots from 212 degrees Fahrenheit to 392 degrees.
Civil War history surfaces with help of Austin archaeology group
By Mark Lisheron - Statesman
The Battle of Galveston came alive for Bob Gearhart with a dive into 46 feet of visually impenetrable Texas City Channel water.
Surveying, site mapping and dredge scheduling gave way to the acrid smoke of cannon and rifle fire of a surprise attack on Jan. 1, 1863, which for a time, returned the city of Galveston to Confederate control.
In the chaos of the following morning, the USS Westfield, flagship of the Union blockade there, ran aground in 7 feet of water near Pelican Spit in Galveston Bay.
As Cmdr. William B. Renshaw prepared to destroy the Westfield rather than allow her to be captured, the side-wheel ferryboat exploded, killing Renshaw and a boat crew assisting him. What hadn't been carried off by the crew before the explosion remained deep in the Texas City Channel.
The passage is deep, but not deep enough for satisfactory international ship navigation. In 2004, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced a
$71 million partnership with the oil and refinery businesses that depend upon a navigable Texas City Channel to deepen it.
To ensure the integrity of archaeological preservation, the corps hired a nautical archaeology group from Austin headed by Gearhart, who works with PBS&J , a national engineering, environmental and construction planning company.
Divers seeking Atlantis in Bahamas
By Susan Cocking - Miami Herald
Agroup of Florida-based technical divers is poised to try to solve a New Age/ancient mystery near the island of Bimini, Bahamas, 50 miles off the South Florida coast.
Gainesville-based Global Underwater Explorers -- best known for mapping massive underground springs in North Florida -- has been hired by a Virginia Beach-based non-profit group to try to uncover evidence of the Lost Continent of Atlantis.
The Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) is devoted to the teachings of the late Edgar Cayce -- one of America's best-known psychics.
Dubbed the "Sleeping Prophet", Cayce died more than 60 years ago after making predictions both accurate and otherwise about thousands of topics and events.
Threshold to Cleopatra's mausoleum discovered off Alexandria coast
By Helena Smith - Guardian
They were one of the world's most famous couples, who lived lives of power and glory – but who spent their last hours in despair and confusion.
Now, more than 2,000 years since Antony and Cleopatra walked the earth, historians believe they may finally have solved the riddle of their last hours together.
A team of Greek marine archaeologists who have spent years conducting underwater excavations off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt have unearthed a giant granite threshold to a door that they believe was once the entrance to a magnificent mausoleum that Cleopatra VII, queen of the Egyptians, had built for herself shortly before her death.
They believe the 15-tonne antiquity would have held a seven metre-high door so heavy that it would have prevented the queen from consoling her Roman lover before he died, reputedly in 30BC.
"As soon as I saw it, I thought we are in the presence of a very special piece of a very special door," Harry Tzalas, the historian who heads the Greek mission, said.
"There was no way that such a heavy piece, with fittings for double hinges and double doors, could have moved with the waves so there was no doubt in my mind that it belonged to the mausoleum.
Like Macedonian tomb doors, when it closed, it closed for good."
History buffs ply river seeking old cannons
By Jaegun Lee - Waterton Daily Time
There might be more sunken cannons in the depths of the St. Lawrence River near Carleton Island's Fort Haldim, according to a group of archaeologists and scuba divers.
The initial survey of a small area off the island this summer conducted by the group showed no evidence of large iron objects. However, the group hopes to expand the search once it gathers more historical evidence that there are, in fact, more cannons disposed of by the British in the early 1800s.
Dennis R. McCarthy, co-founder of the St. Lawrence Historical Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Cape Vincent that conducted the survey, said the search began after two scuba divers claimed in 2008 that they saw a sunken cannon off of Carleton Island several years ago.
"Our aim was to go out there, do a survey, locate the cannon and measure it," said Mr. McCarthy, a certified scuba diver and resident of Cape Vincent.