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By Emily Beament - Mirror

A 17th-century shipwreck has been rediscovered by divers in a Cornish bay where TV series Poldark filmed a dramatic wreck scene.

The protected wreck site of the Schiedam was first spotted in 1971 but has been buried under the shifting sands of shallow waters off Gunwalloe Church Cove on Cornwall's south coast, where it stranded during a gale in 1684.

But divers have found the wreck again after a storm, providing a rare opportunity to monitor the historic site, viewing and recording cannons, musket barrels and an iron hand-grenade which were part of the vessel's cargo.

The Schiedam was originally a cargo vessel in the Dutch East India company fleet, but was captured by Barbary pirates off the Spanish coast and its crew enslaved.

It was soon captured again by a Royal Navy ship and taken to Cadiz where the cargo was sold.

The vessel served in the English Fleet and sank while carrying a company of army miners and horses, stores, machinery and captured guns back from Tangier.

The wreck is close to the shore in around three or four metres of water at low tide, but as a protected wreck site it can only be visited with a licence issued by Historic England. It lies in the spot where a major shipwreck scene was filmed in 2014 for the BBC's Poldark.

Archaeologist and novelist David Gibbins, one of the two divers to find the site again, said they had searched the cove many times for the Schiedam but failed to find it until a breakthrough after a storm.

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From Archaeology News Network

Historians examining wreckage in a harbour in the war-torn Crimea region believe they may have found a missing British ship that sunk carrying "30 barrels of gold".

The wreckage is believed to be that of the Black Sea Prince, which was one of a number of ships from a British flotilla that sunk in the Black Sea during the siege of Sebastopol.

The ship had been carrying money to pay the wages of soldiers fighting in the Crimean War and also to help fund the British battle in the region.

But unable to dock in the harbour, it is believed that in total 34 British ships sank and now experts say that they have found five sunken ships while working on reconstruction of the waterfront in the city of Yevpatoria in the eastern part of the Crimean Peninsula.

The city is located in the Crimean region disputed by Ukraine and Russia and annexed in March 2014, and was badly damaged in 1854 by British, French and Turkish troops as part of the Crimean War.

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By Avi Selk - The Washington Post

Tommy G. Thompson was once one of the greatest treasure hunters of his time: A dark-bearded diver who hauled a trove of gold from the Atlantic Ocean in 1988 — dubbed the richest find in U.S. history.

Years later, accused of cheating his investors out of the fortune, Thompson led federal agents on a great manhunt — pursued from a Florida mansion to a mid-rent hotel room booked under a fake name.

Now Thompson’s beard has grayed, and he lives in an Ohio jail cell, held there until he gives up the location of the gold.

But for nearly two years, despite threats and fines and the best exertions of a federal judge, no one has managed to make Thompson reveal what he did with the treasure.

The wreck of the S.S. Central America waited 130 years for Thompson to come along.

The steamer went down in a hurricane in 1857, taking 425 souls and at least three tons of California gold to the sea floor off South Carolina. Many tried to find it, but none succeeded until a young, shipwreck-obsessed engineer from Columbus, Ohio, built an underwater robot called “Nemo” to pinpoint the Central America, then dive 8,000 feet under the sea and surface the loot.

“A man as personable as he was brilliant, Thompson recruited more than 160 investors to fund his expedition,” Columbus Monthly noted in a profile.

He “spent years studying the ship’s fateful voyage … and developing the technology to plunge deeper in the ocean than anyone had before to retrieve its treasure.”

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By Leila Macor - Times Live

The big question is if the shipwreck is that of "La Trinite," the 32-gun flagship of a fleet led by Jean Ribault, a French navigator who tried to establish a Protestant colony in the southeast US under orders from King Charles IX.

They probably are, say authorities in Florida, the French government and independent archeologists.

And if they in fact are, this is an unparalleled find, said John de Bry, director of the Center for Historical Archeology, a not-for-profit organization. "If it turns out to be 'La Trinite,' it is the most important, historically and archaeologically, the most important shipwreck ever found in North America," he told AFP.

All indications are that the shipwreck found is the real thing. The artefacts found at the site off Cape Canaveral include three bronze cannons with markings from the reign of King Henri II, who ruled right before Charles IX; and a stone monument with the French coat of arms that was to be used to claim the new territory.

The remains are "consistent with material associated with the lost French Fleet of 1565," said Meredith Beatrice, director of communications with the Florida Department of State.

In 1565, Ribault set sail from Fort Caroline, today Jacksonville, to attack his arch-enemy, the Spaniard Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who had been sent to Florida by King Philip of Spain to thwart French plans to set up a colony.

But Ribault got caught in a hurricane, which destroyed "La Trinite" and three other galleons and ended French dreams of claiming Florida. Ribault and hundreds of other French Huguenots were massacred by Menendez de Aviles.

"If the French had not been driven south and ships sunk by the hurricane, we would have a totally different story," said de Bry. "Florida could have been speaking French for a number of years."

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By Matt Soergel - The Florida Times

France has filed a legal claim to an ancient shipwreck discovered off Cape Canaveral, saying it was part of the French fleet that in 1565 went to the aid of that country’s doomed colony at Fort Caroline in Jacksonville.

That follows a claim by the private treasure salvage company that found the wreck, and seems likely to lead to a dispute in U.S. District Court in Orlando over ownership of the artifacts.

It would be a high-stakes battle: A state archaeology report says the wreck, if it is indeed connected to the French fleet, “would be of immense archaeological significance.”

The wreckage includes at least one particularly spectacular artifact — a granite monument adorned with a symbol of France’s coat of arms, the fleur-de-lis. It’s similar to the one, never discovered, that French Capt. Jean Ribault left at the mouth of the St. Johns River in 1562 to stake a claim to Florida.

“That’s your crown jewel there, that’s your holy grail,” said Chuck Meide, a marine archaeologist who led a 2014 expedition that searched for, but did not find, the lost fleet. “I never would have dreamed this.” That marker’s not likely to be the one left at Jacksonville, however, said Meide.

Evidence though shows Ribault’s 1565 fleet carried several other stone markers to be used in its exploration of the New World, he said. Meide, director of the maritime archaeological program at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum, is among those who believe the wreck is that of the Trinité, Ribault’s flagship, which played a fateful role in the early history of the New World.

Ribault’s fleet of four ships left France to support the small, struggling French Protestant colony at Fort Caroline.

The Spanish came at about the same time, with orders to wipe out the French outpost in land that Spain claimed for itself. Ribault sailed to attack the new Spanish settlement in St. Augustine, but his ships were driven south in a hurricane, leaving Fort Caroline virtually undefended.

During the storm, the Spanish marched north and took over the French colony, seizing firm control of Florida for the next couple centuries.
 

By Henry Holloway - Daily Star

Hitler's bullion stash has been the subject of myth and legend for nearly nearly a century as treasure hunters try to track down the fortune.

Now, a British diver claims the lost gold is not in a bunker or aboard a buried train, but it is instead lying beneath the waves of the icy Baltic Sea off Poland's coast.

Nazi officers tired to smuggle three tonnes of stolen gold bars out of Germany in the dying days of WWII on board refugee ship the MV Wilhelm Gustloff. At today's gold prices, the bars will be worth £100m.

Third Reich officers were notorious for plundering any treasure, and stored valuable gems, metals and artworks in vaults and banks across their empire.

But the ill-fated Wilhelm Gustloff never reached its destination as it was sunk by the Soviets – with 9,500 passengers onboard all perishing – in a shipwreck disaster six times worst than the Titanic.

Former professional diver Phil Sayers exclusively spoke to Daily Star Online about the gold believed to be hidden beneath the Baltic at 450m down on the seabed.

The 61-year-old made the claims after meeting a survivor of the sunken vessel who revealed the tragic ship's incredible secret.

Rudi Lange was the ship's radio operator at the time of the sinking, and witnessed crates of what is thought to be the Nazi gold being loaded on the Wilhelm Gustloff at port in Poland.

The then 17-year-old was the one who sent the SOS after the liner was torpedoed by Soviet submarine S-13. Mr Sayers used Lange's incredible story as the basis of his historical novel Baltic Gold.

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By  Oliver Holmes and Luke Harding - The Guardian

Three British ships and a US submarine that sank in the Java Sea during the second world war have been destroyed by illegal scrap metal scavengers, the Guardian can reveal.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence said it condemned the “unauthorised disturbance of any wreck containing human remains” and requested Indonesian authorities investigate and take “appropriate action”.

The commercial salvaging of war wrecks has caused significant upset among veterans, historians and governments who want to preserve the final resting place of sailors who went down with their ships.

A preliminary report from an expedition to document sunken ships, seen by the Guardian, shows that the wrecks of HMS Exeter, a 175m heavy cruiser, and destroyer HMS Encounter have been almost totally removed. Using equipment that creates a 3D map of the sea floor, the report showed that where the wreck “was once located there is a large ‘hole’ in the seabed”.

A 100m destroyer, HMS Electra, had also been scavenged, the report found, although a “sizeable section” of the wreck remained.

The 91m US submarine Perch, whose entire crew were captured by the Japanese, had been totally removed, the report said.

All four sank during operations in the Java Sea in 1942, when Japanese forces overpowered Dutch, British, American and Australian sailors. The battle was one of the costliest sea skirmishes for the allies during the war and led to the Japanese occupation of the entire Dutch East Indies.

The Ministry of Defence said in a statement that the British government had contacted Indonesian authorities to express “serious concern” and request they investigate and take “appropriate action to protect the sites from any further disturbance.

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By Caroline Torie - WSBT

On this Veterans Day, we remember an important part of World War II history that took place on the waters of Lake Michigan.

The U.S. Navy used the lake to train thousands of pilots heading to fight in the Pacific. Pilots learned how to take off and land on makeshift aircraft carriers. When Pearl Harbor was attacked - the U.S. Navy was not prepared to wage a large-scale war.

The U.S. had to ramp up airplane production and train pilots to fly them. Lake Michigan proved to be a great spot for this naval aircraft training. It was protected from enemy fire because it's insulated by U.S. and Canadian territory.

17,000 pilots became certified naval aviators over the lake. About 130 aircraft were lost to the depths of the lake, and 10 pilots lost their lives there between March 1942 and September 1945.

Close to 50 of those have since been recovered. Many of those efforts are thanks to A & T Recovery, a company that works to rescue these forgotten aircraft. "It was a dangerous operation – especially having to do it all year long. And they had to, because the war didn't stop.," says Taras Lyssenko, A&T Recovery General Manager.

Decades after the last plane dove into the lake, A & T Recovery seeks to bring them back out to see the light of day. They use a side-scan sonar to find the aircraft underwater. It's similar to an ultrasound. Lyssenko says, "It uses a sound wave, and it listens for an echo return, and draws an image of it."

The process of recovering and restoring the planes is a long process. Three of recovered planes are currently at the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo. One is fully restored, while two are undergoing restoration.

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