HOT NEWS !

By Robbyn Mitchell - Tampa Bay

Burned and sunk, the steamship Scottish Chief lay at the bottom of the Hillsborough River for 146 years, a legend for its ability to keep Tampa afloat amidst the city's isolation during the Civil War.

Underwater archaeologist John William Morris, with the Florida Aquarium, said Tuesday a research team has found the ship, a vessel not seen since the night in 1863 when Union troops raided the shipyard.

Morris' team first spotted the suggestion of a ship Aug. 29 with new sonar technology, but it took until Tuesday to confirm that the shadowy trace in the sand was that of the lost blockade runner.

The relic has been lodged underwater near the Interstate 275 exit to the Hillsborough Bridge, across from Blake High School, said aquarium spokesman Tom Wagner.

The find comes one year after the discovery of the Kate Dale in the river, which had been reduced to wooden ship's ribs, he said.

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From CBC News

A private group that had planned to search the Northwest Passage for Sir John Franklin's long-lost ships is now facing the threat of criminal charges from the Nunavut government.

The group, which includes marine archaeologist Rob Rondeau from ProCom Diving Services in Alberta, has been preparing to search this month for the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which disappeared in the High Arctic more than 160 years ago.

Rondeau's team was to launch from the Nunavut hamlet of Taloyoak, using remote-controlled vehicles and other technology to look for the missing ships.

But Julie Ross, an archaeologist with the Nunavut government, told CBC News she's upset that Rondeau's team tried to start searching last week, even though it had been denied a territorial archaeological permit.

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 From the Holland Sentinel

There is a saying in northwest Michigan’s dune country. The sand gives, and the sand takes away.

Over the years, the golden sands along the towering Sleeping Bear Dunes have buried farms, forests and settlements. Just as unpredictably, though, they can retreat and bring to light what they have buried — as happened, for instance, in the case of the Three Brothers.

A 160-foot wooden steamer, the Brothers ran aground in 1911 on a sandbar off the coast of South Manitou Island and vanished without a trace.

For nearly a century, boaters and beachcombers fished and swam right over the wreck without knowing it was there, until the current shifted the sand away in 1996 and uncovered the vessel — completely intact — in a mere 12 feet of water.

Since then it has become a magnet for scuba divers and snorkelers from all around the country.

Although the waters around Traverse City lack the coral reefs and Technicolor fish of the tropics, they are a popular diving destination because they are so rich in shipwrecks.

Most date back to the middle of the 19th century, when the region teemed with schooners, tugs, fishing smacks and steamships of all shapes and sizes, but some are as recent as the 1990s.

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From the New Zealand Herald

Police are investigating whether historical coins stolen almost a decade ago from a former Northland museum are being sold on the Internet.

Police have confirmed a Bay of Islands man contacted them and reported seeing coins, which he thought were part of the haul taken from Kelly Tarlton's Tui Shipwreck Museum at Waitangi nearly a decade ago, for sale on Trade Me.

Up to $500,000 of gold jewelery, coins and other relics recovered from the ocean floor by the late Mr Tarlton were stolen from a glass-covered vault on April 8, 2000.

Kitchenhand Keith McEwen spent more than seven years in jail for the robbery, but has never revealed what happened to the booty.

A $10,000 reward was offered by an insurance company for the return of the historical treasures, but not even that was enough to prompt a result.

The stolen haul included gold sovereigns that Mr Tarlton, a diver, had salvaged from the ship Elingamite, wrecked at Three Kings Islands north of Cape Reinga in 1902, and part of the Rothschild collection he recovered from the ship Tasmania, which sank near Gisborne in 1897.

 From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Maritime archaeologists tracking the victims of nazi U-boats during World War II have explored a Navy patrol boat that has been untouched since it sank off the Outer Banks in 1942.

The converted trawler YP-389 was found about 18 miles off Hatteras Inlet last month by an expedition led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration studying shipwrecks left from the WWII battle for control of East Coast shipping lanes, maritime archaeologist Joe Hoyt said.

Finding a World War II-era vessel is rare, researcher Richard Lawrence said.

Of the 137 Allied, German and merchant vessels lost off North Carolina during World War II, about 40 have been located, said Lawrence, head of the state Department of Cultural Resources’ North Carolina Archaeology Branch.

By Steve Vogel - Washington Post

Aboard a pontoon boat chugging past the marshland of Maryland's upper Patuxent River on a recent Saturday, Ralph Eshelman pointed to the spot where the muddy brown water hides a shipwreck nearly two centuries old, part of the American flotilla that defended the Chesapeake Bay when the British burned Washington during the War of 1812.

Nearly 30 years ago, Eshelman helped direct a team of marine researchers who discovered the wreck, one of the war's most significant artifacts.

After a limited, month-long excavation of the site east of Upper Marlboro in 1980, the wreck was reburied under four feet of mud and sediment to protect it from decay.

The hope was that archaeologists with more funding could one day return to excavate the 75-foot vessel, tentatively identified as the Scorpion, flagship of Commodore Joshua Barney's Chesapeake Flotilla.

Now, supporters are hoping the time is ripe.

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By Brian Hicks - The Charleston Post and Courier

Last spring, a DNR research vessel trawling the waters off Georgetown snagged a most unusual catch — an 8-foot, early 19th century ship’s anchor.

Although it was an interesting find, the anchor also presented a big problem. Preserving the 1,400-pound hunk of metal — of undetermined historical significance — would cost thousands of dollars that the state just doesn’t have.

Luckily, the big coral-encrusted hunk of iron won’t have to go to the anchor graveyard. It’ll be put out to pasture, so to speak. Next month, it will become part of the state’s Anchor Farm, part of the Cooper River Heritage Trail.

The trail — a collection of underwater historical sites marked by buoys, guidelines and underwater plaques — is quickly amassing a respectable collection of artifacts, and the anchors are a big part of that.

While there are other underwater trails in the Caribbean and Florida, there is no other place to see such a collection of centuries-old anchors.

“The Anchor Farm is unique,” said Chris Amer, the state’s underwater archaeologist. “The maritime heritage trail is part of our education component. The Cooper River has some of the richest history along the Eastern Seaboard.”

Amer, who is with the University of South Carolina’s Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, said the farm wasn’t really planned. It just sort of happened.

From Typically Spanish

A documentary is being filmed of a German U-boat sunk off Calpe in 1943 which could contain a treasure of gold bars

The Spanish film-maker, Fernando Navarrete, is currently shooting a documentary on the fate of the German U-77 Type VIIC submarine which was sunk 9 miles off the coast of Calpe by British aircraft based in Gibraltar on 28th March 1943.

36 of the crew died, two were never found and another 9 were rescued by local fishermen.

It lies at a depth of more than 80 metres, with rumours that it may contain gold bars belonging to Field Marshall Rommell or Adolf Hitler.

There is even some doubt, El País reports, over how it met its fate, and whether the commandant, whose body was never found, could have been involved in the sinking.