Explorer won't budge on shipwreck mystery

By Shawna Healey - Manchester Evening News
 

Two million pounds' worth of sunken treasure recovered from infamous shipwrecks is going under the hammer. The Shipwreck Treasure Museum in Cornwall is auctioning off more than 7,000 items - offering maritime buffs the unique opportunity to bag a piece of history.

The award-winning museum which is dedicated to shipwrecks and treasures hauled up from the bottom of the ocean went on the market back in August but sadly no one came forward to take it over. Now, the collection is being sold piece by piece.

Owned by Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project, the museum houses treasures gathered from the wrecks of the Mary Rose, Titanic, Lusitania and the Royal Charter, as well as from the Royal Yacht Britannia, Admiral Nelson and HMS Victory.

When the sale of the museum was announced, SBC Property in Truro said Smit Associates Ltd. was looking to consolidate its other businesses, especially the Lost Gardens of Heligan, as Cornwall Live reports. They said the aim was to find a buyer for the lot but confirmed that, as a plan B, the collection would be auctioned off separately if no buyer for the museum could be found.

Jeremy Beeching from the estate agent said: "Once the collection is removed then I am instructed to sell the vacant site inviting offers £1.5m. This would most likely be of interest to developers, investors and bar/restaurant operators."

Lay's Auctioneers in Penzance have been painstakingly putting the sale of the museum's collection together over the past few months.

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From Greta Cross - USA Today

Glass bottles over 300 years old have been retrieved from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Divers discovered two well-preserved onion glass bottles from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Indian River County in Florida in 2021 and 2022.

While the exact ship has yet to be identified, the vessel was a part of the 1715 Treasure Fleet, Mark Ard, Florida Department of State director of external affairs, told USA TODAY.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Spanish Plate Fleets traveled back and forth from Spain to the Americas, transporting treasures from the New World. The 1715 Treasure Fleet was one in particular that did not make the return home.

In July 1715, 11 Spanish fleet ships were destroyed in a hurricane off the Florida coast, according to the National Park Service. The ships were full of "silver, gold, gemstones, tobacco, exotic spices and indigo."

For about 200 years, the ships remained untouched in the Atlantic Ocean. Today, however, they are protected as part of the Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserves.

The recently-discovered onion glass bottles represent a rare collection of well-preserved artifacts from the fleet.

"These bottles are very fragile, and for them to survive the destruction of the shop and then being submerged under water for (more than) 300 years where they were subject to tidal forces is incredible," Ard said.

Though the bottles were empty upon recovery, Ard said they likely contained an alcoholic spirit. The thin-glass bottles were probably made in England, Ard added, as the Spanish did not make their own glass.

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By Natasha Geiling, updated by Meilan Solly - Smithsonianmag.com

The USS Indianapolis had delivered the crucial components of the first operational atomic bomb to a naval base in the Pacific, racing from San Francisco to Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands, in a record-breaking ten days.

In just under two weeks, the bomb would level the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

But for now, on July 28, 1945, the Indianapolis was sailing from Guam, without an escort, to meet the USS Idaho in the Philippines’ Leyte Gulf, where the two warships would prepare for the Allied invasion of Japan.

July 29 was quiet, with the Indianapolis traveling through swells in the seemingly endless Pacific Ocean at a speed of about 17 knots. As the sun set, the sailors played cards and read books; some spoke with the ship’s priest, Father Thomas Conway.

Shortly after midnight on July 30, a Japanese torpedo hit the Indianapolis, ripping off its starboard bow and igniting a tank containing 3,500 gallons of aviation fuel into a pillar of fire.

Then, another torpedo from the same submarine struck closer to midship, hitting fuel tanks and powder magazines and setting off a chain reaction of explosions that effectively ripped the Indianapolis in two. Still traveling at 17 knots, the ship began taking on massive amounts of water; it sank in just 12 minutes.

Of the 1,196 men aboard, about 900 made it into the water alive. Their ordeal was just beginning. As the sun rose on July 30, the survivors bobbed in the water. Life rafts were scarce.

The living searched for the dead and appropriated their life jackets for those who had none. Hoping to maintain some semblance of order, the sailors began forming groups—some small, some made up of several hundred men—in the open water. Soon enough, they would be staving off exposure, thirst and sharks.

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By Tom Metcalfe - Livescience.com

Shipwreck hunters have discovered the remains of a famous American submarine that sank with 79 crew on board while fighting a Japanese warship near the Philippines in 1944.

According to the New York-based Lost 52 Project, which made the discovery, the wreck of USS Harder now lies on its keel on the bottom of the South China Sea near the northern Philippine island of Luzon at a depth of around 3,750 feet (1,140 meters).

Naval reports of the sub's final mission say the Harder — a Gato-class sub named after a type of fish (the harder mullet) and nicknamed the "Hit 'Em Harder" — sank with all crew on Aug. 24, 1944 after it was heavily damaged by depth charges in a battle with a Japanese destroyer.

The Harder was one of the most famous American submarines of World War II. U.S. Navy records report that it torpedoed and sank five Japanese destroyers and several other enemy ships during six successful patrols in the Pacific war theater

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By Kerry Breen - CBS News

The wreck of a passenger steamship that sank in 1856 in the Atlantic Ocean has been discovered about 200 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, a New Jersey-based salvage group said.

Le Lyonnais was a trans-Atlantic steamship, built in England for a French company. The ship was meant to carry passengers and mail between England and America, and had both sails and a steam engine, according to Atlantic Wreck Salvage, the organization located the wreck.

Le Lyonnais was making its first trip from America to Europe, carrying 132 people when it collided with the Adriatic, an American sailing vessel, on Nov. 2, 1856.

The ship sank due to damage sustained in the collision, and 116 of the people aboard Le Lyonnais died in the disaster.

D/V Tenacious, a dive vessel that locates, dives and salvages shipwrecks, first determined potential resting places for Le Lyonnais in 2022 and 2023.

In August 2024, the vessel and a crew returned to dive the sites.\u00a0After multiple search expeditions, the shipwreck was finally found off the coast of Massachusetts.

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