HOT NEWS !

From Reuters

Argentine builders stumbled across the wreck of an 18th century Spanish galleon while digging the foundations for a riverside high-rise building in Buenos Aires, archeologists said on Tuesday.

Experts combing the remains of the ship said they did not expect it to contain treasure, but so far they have discovered several canons and well-preserved earthenware jars that were probably used to store olive oil.

The remains of the galleon were found on a building site close to the shores of the River Plate and archeologists from Buenos Aires city government think the boat was probably shipwrecked some 300 years ago.

"You can see it's very old and we think it dates from the 1700s, although it's also possible that it's from the 1600s," said archeologist Marcelo Waissel.

Read more...

From Goldcoast

More than 130,000 inflatable breasts have been lost at sea en route to Australia. Men's magazine Ralph was planning to include the boobs as a free gift with its January issue. 

The cargo is worth about $200,000, which is another blow for publisher ACP's parent company PBL, which is already in $4.3 billion of debt.

A spokeswoman for Ralph said the container left docks in Beijing two weeks ago but turned up empty in Sydney this week.

The magazine has put out an alert to shipping authorities to see if they have the container, but if they don't turn up in the next 48 hours it will be too late for the next issue, she said.

Ralph editor Santi Pintado urged anyone who has any information to contact the magazine.

"Unless Somali pirates have stolen them its difficult to explain where they are," Pintado told AAP.

"If anyone finds any washed up on a beach, please let us know."

From Liverpool Echo

Undoubtedly the most famous ship in history – may have been built in Belfast and made her ill-fated maiden voyage from Southampton, but it is with Liverpool that she has her strongest and most lasting emotional ties.

The liner was registered here, and bore the inscription ‘Liverpool’: a graphic image captured in the subsequent great movies of the disaster, after the ‘unsinkable’ liner collided with an iceberg in the Atlantic in April 1912, with the loss of 1,500 lives.

As Titanic finally tilted towards her watery grave, and then slid beneath the glassy ocean, it was the word Liverpool, in huge lettering on her stern, which provided the final glimpse of the liner for 73 years, until her wreck was discovered in 1985.

But the local links don’t end there.

Around 100 of the ship’s crew, as well as 17 passengers, came from Merseyside; her captain, Edward John Smith, lived at Waterloo, and Bruce Ismay, chairman of owners White Star Line, had two houses here.
 

Full story...

From Merine

Scuba diver of Orissa, Sabir Bux, is going to explore the hidden details of the 133-year-old sunken French ship that was sunk in the Bay of Bengal near Hukitola. The French ship ‘Veleda’ is older than ‘Titanic’ but few people know about it.

The international acclaimed scuba diver of Orissa, Sabir Bux, who had recorded a five-minute music album filmed by him under water in Mahanadi in Orissa to wish luck to the Indian cricket team for World Cup-2007, besides filming underwater video album celebrating India’s Independence Day in Saudi Arabia aired in the India Festival-2005, is going to explore the hidden facts of the 133-years-old sunken French ship, which was sunk in the Bay of Bengal near Hukitola, by diving into the sea.

To explore and study the mysterious details of the sunken ship, Sabir Bux is scheduled to visit Kendrapara on December 30. He holds a rescue diver card issued by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) of the UK, besides the professional license, certificate for open water, advance open water, underwater photography and videography, search and recovery and Medic First Aid.

The then collector of Cuttack, John Beames, who served as collector and district magistrate in Balesore from 1869 to 1873 and in Cuttack from 1875 to 1878, in his autobiography, ‘Memories of a Bengal Civilian’ has described about the sunken ship, which is of about 250-feet-long whereas its width is about 50 feet.

Read more...

By Andrew Bushe

A hi-tech sonar ship will undertake a seabed survey next year for a World War Two bomber that sank after ditching in the Atlantic Ocean north-west of Donegal.

The four-engined Halifax - number LW170 - was forced to ditch in August 1945 after it sprang a fuel leak while on patrol from a base in Scotland. 

The aircraft remained afloat for seven hours before eventually sinking an estimated 1.6km to the bottom of the ocean. The crew took to a life raft and were rescued by a passing freighter.

The Canadian sonar ship will search the seabed for the plane as part of efforts to recover the iconic aircraft.

"This is the big break and opportunity we were looking for these past three years," said Karl Kjarsgaard, an Ottawa-based airline pilot who is manager of the 'Halifax 57 Rescue' project.

Read more...

From Record Eagle

The state of Michigan says it has seen no additional evidence to support a claim that a famous 17th century ship is buried in northern Lake Michigan.

Divers at the site in October found nothing besides a timber protruding from the lake bottom, a piece of wood that was photographed in 2003 or 2004, Assistant Attorney General Louis Reinwasser said.

The disclosure was made in documents filed this week in federal court in Grand Rapids.

A group called Great Lakes Exploration discovered the timber in 2001 and believes it may be the wreck of the Griffin, a vessel built by French explorer La Salle. It sank in 1679.

La Salle's other ship, La Belle, was discovered in the mid-1990s off the Texas coast. With approval from France, state archaeologists there recovered nearly 1 million artifacts, from human bones to muskets, and publicly displayed many of them.

Read more...

By Ted Hayes

Divers discover the wreck of the long-lost bark Trajan, sunk outside Newport Harbor in 1867.

To the untrained eye, the scene that greeted John Stanford and Mark Munro 30 feet beneath Newport Harbor Saturday, Dec. 6, wouldn’t have looked like much: A massive pile of concretion and timbers covered in algae, seaweed, barnacles and anemones that rose up eight feet off the bottom and faded off into the murky distance. 

But for the two hardcore wreck divers and maritime historians, the modest scene was paydirt: They’d found the long-lost Trajan, a 125-foot bark loaded with lime that sank August 17, 1867.

The Trajan, one of thousands of ships that have gone down in Rhode Island waters since the days of the colonists, had been all but forgotten in the 141 years since she was lost.

The men’s discovery that chilly December morning was the culmination of years of research, hard work and more than a bit of luck.

By Phil Hammond

For more than 200 years, ships have been integral to Australia's history. And the record of those ships, in a collection of 300 models, is housed adjacent to Brisbane's Goodwill Bridge at the Queensland Maritime Museum.

Warships from the 19th-century British Navy, like HMS Victory, and James Cook's converted 18th-century coal transporter, HMS Endeavour, are large, detailed scale models on permanent display in the museum's main hall.

On two upper levels, until February 6, the museum has dusted off 100 lesser-known items in its collection for the fascinating Great Model Ship Expo.

As preparations continue for southern Queensland's next government-funded maritime treasure hunt – locating the remains of the Centaur hospital ship torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off North Stradbroke Island during World War II, a model of the vessel is a poignant reminder of the tragedy.