HOT NEWS !

By Owen R Hughes - Caernarfon Denbigh Herald

A silver pocket watch that sank to the seabed in a 19th century shipwreck will be returned to the family of the ship’s captain – 128 years on.

Captain Richard Prichard, of Abersoch, died on board the Barbara Barque rice ship on its journey from Liverpool to Rangoon in Burma in May 1881. He was aged 38.

His engraved pocketwatch was due to be brought back to his family on its return but the ship never arrived back in Liverpool.

It foundered on rocks and sank off Freshwater Bay, Pembrokeshire, in November 1881.

The pocketwatch lay in the wreck for 119 years until divers Rich Hughes and Nick Hammond discovered it on a diving expedition in April 2000.

Using the inscription – ‘Richard Prichard 1866 Abersoch North Wales‘ – diver Mr Hughes tried for years to track surviving relatives of Capt Prichard.

His search had hit a brick wall until he contacted the organisers of website Rhiw.com who put amateur historian David Roberts on the case in March.

After an exhaustive search that saw him trawl through graveyards and historic records, Mr Roberts found a descendant of a cousin of Capt Prichard.

Read more...

By Judy Holmes - Eureka Alert

Mariners call the continental margin off the North Carolina coast the "graveyard of the Atlantic." Syracuse University's first Professor of Interdisciplinary Sciences, Cathryn R. Newton, sees the area as rich with fossils for paleontologists, marine archeologists and historians to study.

Newton was invited to deliver the plenary lecture at the 90th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Pacific Division, in San Francisco.

She will present "Shipwrecks as Fossils" during a special session on Monday, Aug. 17, at 7 p.m. at San Francisco State University. AAAS is the world's largest scientific organization and publisher of Science.

The lecture will provide the first view of a new, searchable database she has developed of some 2,038 ships that sank off the Southeastern coast of the United States, the earliest of which dates from 1526.

"This is the largest database on shipwrecks ever known for this area of the ocean—by a factor of two," says Newton, dean emerita of SU's College of Arts and Sciences. "It is a scientific tool that enables us to look at shipwrecks and what they can tell us in entirely new ways."

The database includes ship names; type and size of the vessels; dates of sinking; information about the cargoes, passengers, ship departure points and intended destinations; and other information.

"Shipwrecks can be imagined as large fossils that sink to the sea floor much as deceased whales sink to the ocean floor and become part of the fossil record," Newton says. "Like other marine fossils, shipwrecks provide clues to the part of our history that lies beyond the shoreline."

Newton created the database from some 5,000 hand-written data cards on shipwrecks compiled by her father, oceanographer John Newton of the Duke University Marine Laboratory, and his research partners—Dorothy Nicholson of National Geographic, Harold "Doc" Edgerton of MIT, Gordon Watts of the state of North Carolina and Robert Sheridan, now of Rutgers University—more than 30 years ago.

These scientists, two of whom are deceased, were part of the Duke University-National Geographic research team that discovered the legendary Civil War ironclad the U.S.S. Monitor a few miles off Cape Hatteras in 1973. Newton, then a 16-year-old sophomore at Duke University, was a member of that team.

By John Bachman - CBS 12 News

The calm seas we enjoy during these summer months means it's prime time treasure hunting season right off our local beaches. They don't call it the treasure cost for nothing.

The sandy sea bottom right off South Florida's coast holds untold riches.

And Captain Doug Pope of Amelia research and recovery is taking us out to his ship the Polly-L. Pope and his crew are getting close to finding what some would consider the holy grail of ship wrecks. The San Miguel Archangel, because of it's great historical significance.

"This shipwreck sank in 1569, the inlet is man made so we don't know whether it was dug up when the inlet was made, whether it's on the beach or whether it's in deep water," said archeologist.

That's Archeologist Scott Jensen has been looking for it for years. He let us follow him and his underwater metal detector. Around as he continues his quest for coins, ballast stones, and what ever's left of 17th century ship wreck. Under the watchful eyes of curious baracudas.

"Every time I jump in a hole it's like opening a birthday present because you don't know what you are going to find," said Jensen.

By Shawn Giilck Craigleith - The Enterprise Bulletin

The wreck of the Mary Ward is proving to be as elusive to discover as the Holy Grail.

The search for the wreck has led me on to the waters of Georgian Bay several times over the last three years.

While being on the water is always enjoyable, the lack of success finding the wreck has left me feeling more than a little like the Flying Dutchman on its eternal cruise... and sometimes a lot like Gilligan in the midst of his apocryphal three-hour tour.

The search is a pleasant way to combine a mania for kayaking with a passion for history.

There's nothing quite like ghosting over a shipwreck in a small craft, pondering the awesome power of Georgian Bay and the appalling speed of its changes from mirror-calm to murderous maelstrom.

Previously, I had kayaked over several wrecks, notably at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula in Fathom Five National Marine Park. On such occasions, it's not difficult for the imagination to run a little wild as you listen for the sighing voices of the dead.

The sad tale of the Mary Ward is likely one of the best-known and most interesting of the many shipwrecks on Georgian Bay.

On Nov. 24 in 1872, in a raging early-winter gale, the ship foundered on one of the many limestone reefs infesting the Craigleith-Collingwood area after mistaking the lights of a boarding house offshore of Craigleith for Nottawasaga Island and Collingwood.

Eight people on board a lifeboat desperately trying to reach shore drowned in the shrieking black night, while only a heroic rescue effort by local fishermen led by Frank Moberly and Capt. George Collins saved the remaining survivors.

Most people, however, don't know the exact location where the wreck occurred. Like myself, most people think the ship went down and was pounded to rubble just west of Nottawasaga Island. The reality, though, is rather different.

Milligan's Reef, or the Nottawasaga Reef, as its also known, is actually straight offshore from Craigleith Provincial Park, Richard Bowering told me last week as I eyeballed making my latest attempt at finding its resting spot.

That was very helpful, as I was intent on making my way out onto the bay from Northwinds Beach at Craigleith on what passed for a decent summer's day this year.

Bowering operates Eagle Adventure Experiences, an outdoors outfitting company that rents kayaks at Northwinds. One of his "feature experiences" is a trip out to the Mary Ward.

By Kevin Mullaney - Wicked Local Provincetown

The case of the mystery ship in the waters off Provincetown has been solved and, although it wasn’t much of a secret, the large vessel that piqued a host of interest among Cape tip residents is on a most curious mission.

There are actually two ships, the 220-foot Sea Hunter and the Son Worshipper. They are “research and salvage ships” — treasure hunters, supposedly on the brink of recovering an estimated $3 to $5 billion in platinum, diamonds and possibly gold from the wreck of a British merchant steamer, sunk off the coast of Cape Cod by a German U-boat in June of 1942.

The expedition is the brainchild of Greg Brooks, owner of the Portland, Maine-based firm Subresearch LLC. A new company, Sea Hunters LLC, was formed to pursue the wreck.

“Aboard the two ships are captain and owner [Greg Brooks], 16 crew, two staffers from the Discovery Channel, security and Nine, the young cat who is mascot and the symbol of good luck to the team,” wrote Viki Wills, head of public relations and marketing for the expedition, responding to the “Mystery Ship” article in the Banner two weeks ago.

“It is no secret that the ships are there to potentially recover treasure that is locked deep inside the Port Nicholson,” Wills wrote. “A German U-boat fired two torpedoes into the ship, sinking it where it remains today.

Its cargo was listed as 1,600 tons of automobile parts and 4,000 tons of military stores.”

Read more...

From ABC News

A Defence inquiry has found HMAS Sydney was sunk by a German raider in 1941 because of an error by its captain.

All 645 crew members on the Sydney perished when it was hit by heavy fire from the Kormoran, which was disguised as a merchant ship, off the Western Australian coast in November 1941.

Commissioner Terence Cole, who conducted the inquiry, says Captain Joseph Burnett assumed the Kormoran was a merchant ship, even though he had information there were no friendly ships in the area.

He says that meant the Sydney got within point black range of the raider without going to action stations.

"Sydney closed to a vulnerable position having lost all tactical advantages of speed and gunnery at distance," he said.

"By that time it was too late, Sydney thereafter was subjected to the intense barrage I have described - thus was Sydney and her crew lost."

Read more...

By Gareth McGrath - Star News Online

It was a time when the greatest war the world had ever seen literally washed up on North Carolina’s doorstep.

“I remember as a boy walking on Wrightsville Beach and avoiding the debris that had washed up on shore,” said local military historian Wilbur Jones. “It didn’t happen all the time. But it was there.”

But today the wrecks and other remnants from the Battle of the Atlantic that took place just off the state’s coast, like the memories of those who experienced World War II firsthand, are slowly being lost.

To help protect and preserve that maritime history, an expedition headed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will seek to find, examine and document previously undiscovered wartime wrecks off the Outer Banks.

“The information collected during this expedition will help us better understand and document this often lost chapter of America’s maritime history and its significance to the nation,” said David Alberg, expedition leader and superintendent of the USS Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, in a release announcing the three-week survey mission.

By Randy Boswell - Canwest News Service

Nearly a century after the Empress of Ireland sank in the St. Lawrence River and took the lives of more than 1,000 passengers and crew, the wreck of the elegant luxury liner that represents Canada's worst maritime disaster has finally been declared a national historic site.

The mammoth, Titanic-era cruise ship — once lamented as "the orphan of Canadian heritage" because its wreck site near Rimouski, Que., was plundered by divers for decades — is also famous for its role in transporting tens of thousands of immigrants to Canada during a pivotal period in the country's growth.

Today, about one million Canadians are descendants of immigrants who arrived in this country aboard the 174-metre Empress of Ireland, which crossed the Atlantic Ocean regularly for about a decade before colliding with a Norwegian coal freighter in dense fog on May 29, 1914, and sinking in 30 metres of water.

"This sea tragedy marked the memory of an entire generation, and we have to make sure that it is not forgotten," Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who oversees Parks Canada and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board, said in announcing the designation. "It is important to allow every Canadian to know about this page of history and to honour those who lost their lives."

More to read...