HOT NEWS !

By Harry Mount - Mail Online

Take a stroll along the bank of the Thames by the City of London at low tide and, chances are, you'll see a man prodding around in the mud with an old garden fork and a spade.

Occasionally, you'll see him scoop out a gunge-covered scrap and gently lay it in his bucket. Harmless eccentric, you might think, but you'd be wrong. Sometimes, the Thames reveals some extraordinary oddities.

Most recently, it was a 17th century prisoner's ball and chain, discovered by one of the river's treasure hunters - or mudlarks.

There was no sign of the prisoner who once must have worn it, but it caused a flurry of excitement among those who specialise in uncovering the river's long-lost treasures.

Anthony Pilson knows better than most that there's more to the muddy Thames than meets the eye. Over the past 30 years, Anthony, 76, has plucked thousands of treasures, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, from the river's silt and clay.

And now, in an unprecedented act of generosity, this humble man - home is a bedsit in Hampstead, North London - has handed his collection, delivered in a suitcase, holdall and plastic bag, to the Museum of London.

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By Donna Goodison - Boston Herald.com

Underwater explorer Barry Clifford, discoverer of the Whydah pirate ship that sank off Cape Cod in 1717, has his sights on another shipwreck.

The Provincetown treasure hunter is petitioning state and federal authorities to lay claim to the Semiramis - an estimated 120-foot, three-masted ship armed with 14 cannons that sank between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in 1804.

Built in the mid-1790s, the Semiramis is important from a historical standpoint because she was one of the first China traders, according to Clifford.

The ship was headed to Newport, R.I., after a three-year voyage to China with a cargo - estimated to be worth $500,000 at the time - of silk, porcelain, tea and an undetermined amount of hard currency in the form of silver and possibly gold, according to research by Clifford’s historian, Ken Kinkor.

“I have no idea what that would be worth today,” said Clifford, who’s putting together an expedition to survey the shipwreck with Falmouth-based Teledyne Benthos.

“There was only supposed to be minor salvage done to the shipwreck at the time. I would suspect that much of the ship is buried under the sand and would be in very good condition.”

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By Tanya Katterns - The Dominion Post

For more than a century, the wreck of the barquentine Addenda has lain in its sandy grave, a reminder of the treacherous seas off Cape Palliser.

But now vandals have tampered with the wreck, taking pieces of timber and exposing fragile pieces to the air.

Conservation Department Wairarapa area manager Chris Lester said holes had been dug around the wreck on the rugged south Wairarapa coast and pieces of it removed.

Mr Lester said the vandalism may have been an act of curiosity but could have far-reaching consequences for what was left of the ship.

"Even just exposing the timbers to air means they will start to deteriorate faster."

The remains of the Addenda, in three sections, are buried near the eastern end of Onoke Spit and just iron hull fasteners can be seen jutting above the sand.

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By Cindy Chan - Epoch Times

Parks Canada underwater archaeologists have confirmed that a plane they discovered in the deep waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is the wreckage of an American World War II aircraft accidentally downed in 1942.

The plane, a U.S. Army Air Force PBY-5A, was lost in rough weather 67 years ago near the village of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan in Quebec.

Only four of the nine crew members managed to escape the sinking craft and were rescued by local villagers.

The dives, which focused on visual inspection from outside the airplane, found the fuselage in one piece and the plane in good condition.

There is a possibility that human remains may be recovered, and the findings have been shared with U.S. officials.

“We will continue working with the United States to determine the following steps to hopefully be able to repatriate the lost soldiers.

In the meantime, we will work closely with all the relevant authorities to ensure the site is protected,” said Jim Prentice, federal Environment Minister and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, in a news release.

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By Ted Hayes - East Bay RI

Among the City By The Sea’s greatest assets are its colonial and maritime heritage. Now, one of the world’s most notable shipwreck hunters hopes to move his Cape Cod museum to Newport, saying the city could be an ideal fit for a museum, research and conservation center.

Provincetown resident Barry Clifford, who found the wreck of Black Sam Bellamy’s pirate ship Whydah under 20 feet of sand off Wellfleet, Mass. 25 years ago, is considering moving his Provincetown museum and a preservation lab he runs in Brewster, Mass. to Newport.

To Mr. Clifford, who is still excavating the 1717 wreck of the Whydah and is also searching for wrecks from Madagascar to Haiti, Newport could be perfect.

“From everything I’ve heard, Newport is a great fit,” he said. “The colonial history is there, the maritime history is there. We’re very excited about it.”

So far, Mr. Clifford has had discussions with Newport County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Keith Stokes and other Newport officials and property owners. Nothing — location among them — is set in stone, he said, and discussions over the possible move have just begun.

But for Mr. Stokes, the fascinating story of the Whydah, a former slave ship captured by Bellamy that sunk with a loss of 144 lives, resonates and is worth developing.

“On a personal level, I think it’s a great opportunity,” Mr. Stokes said Monday. “My sense is that heritage and cultural tourism is a major opportunity for Newport.

The main thing about Newport is that we have authentic historical sites, materials and stories. Being able to present the history of piracy, the colonial slave trade, through this is a major opportunity. I’m excited about it.”

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By Paul Rincon - BBC News

A Norwegian team is set to embark on an expedition to find the submerged wreck of a plane which carried Norway's great polar explorer Roald Amundsen.

Amundsen was aboard a Latham 47 flying boat when the aircraft disappeared over the sea on its way to the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in 1928.

Two ships will set sail from the Norwegian city of Tromso on Monday to begin the two-week expedition.

Underwater robotic vehicles will be used to scan for the plane using sonar.

Between 1910 and 1912, Amundsen led the first expedition to reach the South Pole, reaching the target some five weeks before his British rival Robert Scott.

On 18 June 1928, Amundsen joined a rescue operation to save another competitor, Umberto Nobile.

The Italian aviator had crashed his airship Italia on a return voyage from the North Pole. Nobile and his surviving crew members found themselves drifting helplessly on pack ice.

Amundsen boarded a Latham 47 flying boat along with a team of French Air Force pilots to try to reach them.

According to experts involved in the 2009 expedition, the Latham 47 should have been about 19 nautical miles south of Bear Island when the plane's last radio message was picked up at 1845 on 18 June.

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By Amanda Seef -The Post-Standard

Cathryn R. Newton's infatuation with shipwrecks set sail during her teen years -- as a member of her father's research team that in 1973 discovered the wreckage of the USS Monitor, a Civil War icon, off the coast of North Carolina.

Thirty-six years later, Newton has completed a database of more than 2,000 shipwrecks along the Southeastern coast of the United States. Newton, a dean emerita from Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, unveiled the database this month in a lecture at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

"It has potential for a radical re-envisioning of what can be done with nautical archaeology," Newton said of the searchable database that details 2,038 wrecks dating from 1526. "It shifts what we know about shipwrecks and how we know it."

The database includes ship names, types, sizes and locations of the vessels, sinking dates, cargo information, passengers, departure dates and intended destinations.

It is a collaboration of scientific and cultural information about the ill-fated vessels. The information was entered and re-checked by research assistants at Syracuse University, where Newton still teaches.

By Catherine Kozak - Pilot Online

From compact research boats bobbing in the ocean, a team of divers is working to find the unseen story of the Battle of the Atlantic.

For 67 years, the British trawler Bedfordshire has sat on the sea floor under about 100 feet of water about 25 miles southeast of Beaufort, its broken hull and intact boiler viewed only by divers.

Now the vessel is the first of the Allied wrecks to be surveyed and analyzed by a research team led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.

Photographs, videos, maps and corrosion analyses are being done to determine the boat's condition and the available options to preserve it.

"The torpedo tore it up pretty good," Joe Hoyt, a NOAA maritime archaeologist and the mission's principal investigator, said from the deck of the research vessel Sam Gray this week. "There's a lot of damage to the site."

No part of the wreck, regarded as a war grave, will be disturbed by the work. NOAA began the three-week expedition on Aug. 4.

The first phase used side-scan and multibeam sonar systems to try to locate previously undiscovered World War II shipwrecks.

The second phase, the examination of the Bedfordshire, began on Aug. 10 but has been plagued by mechanical problems that have forced delays or cancellations.