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From Champion and Telegraph

An Ormskirk marine explorer stands to make millions of pounds after discovering the site of one of the most significant shipwrecks in British history.

Joe McCormack, 68, and his team of divers believe they have found what is left of a French vessel loaded with 426 tonnes of gold intended to help Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion in 1746. Their path to the discovery began 29 years ago when Joe was teaching his twin teenage sons to dive off the Anglesey coast.

His son Kevin found what they thought was a dress button but was later proved to be a priceless artefact, the ring seal of Mary Queen of Scots.

“It was an accidental find,” he said.

“We were just swimming and looking at different wreck sites. I was teaching my sons to dive and Kevin found the ring seal by a fluke.

“For six years it was left in a drawer because we just thought it was a dress button from a uniform.”

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By Cammy Clark - The Miami Herald

Key West should have a new tourist attraction this week when a mothballed military ship is sunk and becomes an artificial reef.

If all goes according to a meticulous plan Wednesday morning, 42 explosive charges will detonate, seawater will pour in, and the massive USAFS Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg will sink upright to the ocean bottom.

The final mission for the rusting, 66-year-old ship will be an admirable one: serving as an artificial reef.

''I can't think of a better final use of a ship that has had a long, hard career all around the world,'' said Malcolm ''Mac'' Monroe, who worked on the vessel when it was an Air Force missile tracker during the Cold War.

While Key West is now celebrating the scuttling that will occur 6 ½ miles offshore and provide an economic boost for years to come, the Vandenberg was a controversial project on the brink of failing several times.

It took 14 years, $8.6 million in mostly public funds, endless volunteer hours navigating 18 government agencies, and a winning auction bid by a local bank on courthouse steps that prevented the ship's purchase by metal scrappers.

"After all that, the sinking will take 2 ½, maybe three minutes," said Joe Weatherby, the Key West dive boat captain who began the project in 1996 by choosing the Vandenberg out of a booklet of 400 mothballed military ships. "But it all will be worth it," he said. "I believe it will be the finest product ever produced for scuba diving, snorkeling and fishing."

From BBC News

Divers say they have found the wreck of a vessel which may have been sent to relieve Bonnie Prince Charlie after his 1746 defeat at the battle of Culloden.

The team says artefacts recovered from the ship, found off the Anglesey coast, suggest it may have been bringing supplies from the King of France. The Prince - Charles Edward Stuart - was at the time in hiding after the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion.

Divers will fully excavate the wreck to determine its historical significance. Over the centuries, hundreds of ships have been wrecked off the rugged north Wales coast.

But divers who explored this 18th century vessel found items including a rare ring seal of Mary Queen of Scots.

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By Hannah Fletcher - Times Online

A highly respected British diver has died during the exploration of a shipwreck off the coast of Greece.

Carl Spencer, 37, had been leading a 17-man National Geographic Society expedition to film Britannic, sister ship of Titanic, off the island of Kea when he suffered severe decompression sickness (DCS), also known as the bends, during an emergency ascent to the surface.

The 53,000-ton Britannic, even larger than her famous sibling and deemed equally “unsinkable”, was lost in 57 minutes after hitting a mine in 1916, while serving as a hospital ship during the First World War.

The wreck was discovered in 1975 by the French undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, but, lying at about 300ft (90m), it pushes divers to the limits of endurance.


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By Joseph Stedul - Javno

In the Caska Bay on the Island of Pag, near Novalja, an ancient sewn ship over 2,000 years old was found.

This is the result of research done by the city of Novalja and the Zadar University, in cooperation with the French institute for scientific research (CNRS-CCJ University in Marseille) and numerous other foreign associates.

Archaeologists have found a ancient sewn ship more than 2000 years old in Pag’s Caska Bay, reports ezadar.hr.

The research, which was organized by the City of Novalja in cooperation with the Zadar University in cooperation with the French national institute for scientific research, was led by professor Zdenko Brusic from the Zadar University.

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From The Jerusalem Post

The bay of Atlit, about 10 kilometers south of Haifa, is a quiet, picturesque stretch of beach.

Sheltered by the promontory and the Crusader castle, the inlet looks as if it were scooped out with an ice-cream server.

Between the unpaved road leading to the bay and the beach, wildflowers were already blooming on the cold windy day Metro investigated the mystery under that sea.

Dr. Ehud Galili, a marine archeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, lives in Atlit and is passionate about this small town that is unfamiliar to most Israelis. Born in Haifa, Galili has been enraptured by the sea from childhood.

A fourth-generation sabra, his grandmother's parents came from a fishing family who lived at the Kinneret.

He actively campaigns against the encroachment of marinas and the high-rising construction that threatens the beauty of the ridges on this historic coastline.

Galili's findings over the past 25 years have made him even more determined to preserve the area as a heritage site.

Galili details the various historic eras of the artifacts and human remains along this stretch of coast.

At Kfar Samir and Kfar Galim, between Atlit and Haifa, the earliest-known evidence of olive oil was found - dating from the Late Neolithic era, some 7,500 years ago.

A Phoenician harbor and the battering ram from a Hellenistic Greek warship were discovered just north of the Crusader castle.

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By Julie Lane - Suffolk Times

Rare Spanish coins were stolen from the nautical museum inside Southold's historic Horton Point Lighthouse on Saturday during the East End Lighthouses' Long Island Challenge, police said.

Valued at about $1,800, the 20 silver coins and two copper bits were taken from an unlocked display case inside the 152-year-old lighthouse. The coins, which date back to between 1751 and 1782, were found in an unidentified shipwreck in 1994 off the coast, near the lighthouse.

Officials said 239 people came to Horton Point during the Saturday event, in which visitors are challenged to tour as many of the area's lighthouses as possible in two days.

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From WPTZ

Diver and captain Fred Fayette grew up exploring Lake Champlain and still makes the trip from Burlington to Juniper Island and his family's summer home.

Yet he continues to marvel at the discoveries he helped uncover beneath the water's surface. Fayette was a key member of the crew that over the last decade mapped the bottom of Champlain with precision and technology never brought to bear before.

Fayette's research boat, Neptune, is outfitted with sonar, remote underwater cameras, and computers that probed the lake floor each summer, back and forth across computer-guided grids.

It was often tedious work, he recalls, the equivalent of driving from New York to San Francisco at three miles per hour.

Until, that is, his sonar got a hit -- his crew was electrified by the image of an unknown or previously undiscovered object on the screen.

"It was very exciting," he said. "We've had dozens of shipwrecks over the years. We had airplanes appear, a small plane appear in the southern part of the lake in 200 feet of water."

Fayette recalled finding a few railroad cars on the lake bottom off Rouses Point, NY too.