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By Chris McNamara


Our Titanic trip wasn't as grand as the one 2,228 passengers and crew embarked on in April 1912, leaving from Southampton, England, en route to New York City aboard a floating modern marvel.

But then, in this economy, a quick trip to the recently opened "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition" at the Milwaukee Public Museum made more sense than the modern equivalent of $86,000 that first-class passengers paid on Titanic. 

And our voyage ended much more pleasantly than theirs. 

Before we entered the exhibit, we realized that there were a lot of bikers in the museum. Meaning no insult, but one biker is a lot for most museums I've toured, and here there were plenty of leather-clad guys and their old ladies, just as there were throughout Milwaukee, home of Harley-Davidson.

A Harley convention ? Nope. They had likely come to town to tour another museum—the Harley-Davidson Museum.

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From Swissinfo


Les souvenirs de la dernière survivante du naufrage du Titanic ont été vendu aux enchères samedi pour 31 150 livres (plus de 60 000 francs). Millvina Dean avait été forcée de les vendre pour payer les frais de sa maison de retraite.

Au total, la vente, qui s'est déroulée à Devizes, dans le sud-ouest de l'Angleterre, lui a rapporté une somme dix fois plus grande que ce qu'elle espérait gagner. Mme Dean a notamment cédé notamment une valise vieille d'un siècle, remplie de vêtements donnés à sa famille par des habitants de New York à son arrivée sur la terre ferme après le naufrage.

La Britannique avait deux mois seulement quand le Titanic a heurté un iceberg et coulé en 1912. Aujourd'hui âgée de 96 ans, ayant du mal à joindre les deux bouts, elle espérait engranger 3000 livres.

"Je vends (cette valise) maintenant parce que je dois payer ces frais de maison de retraite et je mets en vente tout ce qui peut avoir de la valeur", avait expliqué au quotidien régional Daily Echo la vieille dame installée en maison de retraite depuis deux ans.

Quelque 1500 passagers sont morts dans le naufrage du paquebot de luxe qui effectuait son voyage inaugural à travers l'Atlantique. Mais plus de 700 personnes ont survécu à ce qui est resté comme l'une des pires catastrophes maritimes de l'Histoire

La famille de Mme Dean avait pris le paquebot pour émigrer au Kansas. Elle a été le plus jeune passager à survivre à la catastrophe, avec son frère lui aussi encore bébé et sa mère Eva. Elle a perdu son père dans le naufrage.

Mme Dean est la dernière survivante du Titanic depuis la disparition de sa compatriote Barbara Joyce Dainton l'an dernier.

From Telegraph


Jack Watkins finds a ship graveyard on the banks of the Severn going to ruin in a legislative no-man's land

They call them the Purton Hulks, a mile-and-a-half-long stretch of ghostly boat wrecks that once formed the oddest of makeshift tidal erosion barriers on the River Severn.  

They include nothing of Mary Rose antiquity, but local marine historian Paul Barnett thinks they are precious just the same.

"What we have here is the largest boat graveyard in maritime Britain, but they have no protection whatsoever. I cannot understand that," he says.

Between 1909 and 1963, at least 80 vessels were beached at Purton, originating from a stormy night 100 years ago when there was a massive landslip in a bank between the river and the parallel Sharpness to Gloucester Canal.

A plea went out to commercial boat owners for old vessels to be run aground to plug the breach.


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From BBC News


Simon Worrall explains why a recent discovery on the seabed of the Indian Ocean will revolutionise our understanding of two ancient civilisations.

"The local fishermen believe that there are underwater spirits guarding the wrecks," says Tilman Walterfang, as our boatman picks his way through a maze of coral reefs and submerged rocks. 

"Sometimes, they perform prayers on the boats, sacrificing a goat, spreading the blood everywhere, to keep the vessel safe." 

I am on a fishing boat in the Gaspar Strait, near Belitung Island, off the south-east coast of Sumatra. Since time immemorial, this funnel-shaped passage linking the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean has been one of the two main shipping routes.

The Malacca Straits is the other, from China to the West. 

A British sea captain, shipwrecked here in 1817, called it "the most dangerous area between China and London"


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From The Standard

In full sail the Falls of Halladale provided a grand spectacle as it slowly sank off the Peterborough coast. On a foggy morning almost 100 years ago, the cargo ship struck a reef about 150 meters out to sea.

Townsfolk watched in awe from the cliff tops as the cargo ship gradually made its way to its watery grave. Next month, the sailing ship will be the talk of the town again when a group of history and shipwreck buffs commemorate the sinking's centenary.

Community activities, including a market, plaque unveiling and a special dinner are planned for the occasion. Although the south-west coast is riddled with notorious shipwrecks - Loch Ard, Schomberg and La Bella to name a few - centenary organizer Rex Mathieson said the Falls of Halladale was unique, describing it as one of the last "great" sailing shipwrecks.

"But what makes the Falls of Halladale more unique is that it had steel masts and wire rigging," Mr Mathieson said.

"Most of the sailing ships of the time had wooden masts and hemp for rigging. The steel tubing on the Falls of Halladale would have made it handle heavy seas a lot easier without causing much damage."

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From The Portugal News Online


Namibian Foreign Minister Marco Hausiku will visit Portugal in the near future to discuss bilateral relations, including the future of the spoils of a 16th century Portuguese vessel recently found along the southern African country’s coast, a senior Portuguese official said late last week.

State Secretary for Culture Paula Fernandes dos Santos told the Lusa News Agency the archaeological work on the 500-year-old ‘nau’ ended on Friday in Namibia and that Lisbon must determine how to continue cooperation with Windhoek’s (the capital city) authorities.

Fernandes noted that Namibia was not yet a signatory of the UN Convention on Protection of Submarine Cultural Heritage, meaning all of the vessel’s spoils belong to Windhoek.

“This means that, along with Namibia’s authorities, we’ll have to launch a bilateral process to find under what conditions we can continue to collaborate with them”, she said.

The archaeological team, including Portuguese experts, has recovered gold and silver objects, copper and ivory, navigational instruments, cannons and cannon balls from the 16th century vessel, whose wreck was discovered last April during coastal diamond mining operations.

By Matthew M. Burke


Eric Takakjian was overcome with excitement as he scraped sea anemones from an unknown shipwreck's wheel this past weekend.

There at the sunken ship's helm, Takakjian and the dive's videographer Patrick Rooney were able to make out the engraving, "NEWCASTLE CITY LIVERPOOLE," through their diving masks.

The discovery ended months of speculation about the name of the wreck that was discovered by Takakjian's team in August after several years of historical research and the inspection of "interesting" sonar targets south of Nantucket.

The ship had finally been definitively identified as the British steamship SS Newcastle City, a vessel that was carrying cargo when it was lost on Dec. 23, 1887, after striking an uncharted shoal in the wee hours en route to New York from South Shields, England.

The Newcastle City's 26-man crew and sole passenger rowed for six hours in two boats to the Nantucket Lightship, where they were rescued.

"We were just completely thrilled," Takakjian said Thursday in a telephone interview. "We were both screaming underwater like maniacs. We were just psyched beyond belief."


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By Sarah Freeman


Anyone looking for an antidote to the onslaught of bad news is unlikely to find it in the latest report from the Marine Conservation Society.

While recent weeks have seen the world preoccupied by the global banking disaster and desperately unpredictable share prices, British seas are facing an equally precarious time as we pay the price for years of over-fishing and unregulated pollution.

After 25 years of quiet campaigning and gentle persuasion, the MCS last night launched its Silent Seas report in the hope the shocking statistics will finally jolt the powers-that-be into action and force the inclusion of a Marine Bill in the next Queen's Speech.

"Put simply, too many fish are taken from the sea, too much rubbish is thrown into the sea and too little is done to protect previous marine life and habits," says Dr Simon Brockington, the organisation's head of conservation.

"In the next few years, we're going to start seeing the effects of climate change; the first effects are already there, such as migration of fish and plankton types. Unless we build a healthy ecosystem, the impacts of climate change will be far worse. Inaction is not an option."