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* STAY INFORMED ON THE MOST RECENT SPECTACULAR OR SIGNIFICANT NAUTICAL AND SHIPWRECK DISCOVERIES *
the 09/05/2008 at 05:08 :
Quest to solve treasure ship riddle begins
by Werner Menges
THE discovery of a treasure-laden shipwreck, estimated to be around 500 years old, in Namdeb's Mining Area 1 near Oranjemund early last month is only the first chapter in what could turn into a long slog of archaeological detective work to unravel the secrets of an ill-fated pioneer of sea travel off the Southern African coast.
The easy part of working on an archaeological site like this is the digging up of the site and recovering relevant material from it, archaeologist Dieter Noli, who played a leading part in the first examination of the wreck site in April, told The Namibian in a telephonic interview from Cape Town yesterday.
The hard work is analysing what was found at the site, he said.
That is expected to be painstaking labour that could take months before it is even known what the real significance of the discovery is, he said.
He is convinced, though, that he and his colleagues who will be helping to study the wreck and its contents will eventually be able to find out whose ship this was and what business it was on when it came to an end on that barren stretch of Namibian coastline, Noli indicated.
"We have to piece together the puzzle. It's a fascinating story," he said.
The discovery of the ship has been worldwide news, with Namdeb claiming in its announcement of the find last week that this may be the oldest sub-Saharan shipwreck ever discovered.
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the 09/05/2008 at 05:04 :
 Dive team to scour Danube for Queen Mary's lost belongings
by All Hungary News
The legend goes something like this: after the disastrous Battle of Mohács in 1526, the twenty-one-year-old Queen Mary of Hungary fled the encroaching Ottoman army on a caravan of ships headed to Vienna. But, on her way up the Danube a few ships sank along with their valuable cargo. It is said that to this day they remain hidden in the murky depths of the river. Soon, any truth to this story may soon be discovered, or disproved.
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the 09/05/2008 at 04:56 :
 Spain says treasure wreck was its warship
by Ben Harding
A shipwreck and its precious cargo, which is at the centre of a legal tussle between Spain and U.S. treasure hunters, was definitely a Spanish warship, Spanish officials said on Thursday.
Although experts have long suspected the wreck was a Spanish frigate, Spain said for the first time on Thursday it could prove it was the La Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, thus giving it sole ownership of the wreck and its contents, despite its lying in international waters west of Cadiz.
Florida treasure-hunting company Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc (OMEX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) recovered gold and silver coins a year ago and flew the haul, estimated by some to be worth $500 million, back to Tampa via the British colony of Gibraltar.
La Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes was carrying treasure back from Peru and was attacked by British warships off the Spanish coast in October 1804. Within minutes of the first shots fired, a huge explosion ripped the vessel apart and it sank, killing more than 200 sailors aboard.
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the 07/05/2008 at 08:37 :
Lost fleet's riches beckon hunters
by John A.Torres
More Indiana Jones-like mythology fills the state's high security vault than Spanish doubloons or pirate's booty.
Recent media reports, as well as a state legislator's attempt to sell off Florida's salvaged treasure to offset budget cuts, have fueled grandiose images of the public gold holdings.
They're not accurate, says Ryan Wheeler, Florida's chief archaeologist, as the warmer weather and calmer waters of May mark the unofficial start to the treasure hunting season.
"There is a myth that we have all this stuff that we don't show people," he said from his Tallahassee office. "Everyone bought into this notion that we have a secret treasure room."
Wheeler, head of the state's Bureau of Archaeological Research, said the state's estimated $17 million in salvaged gold is usually nowhere near the protected storage area.
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the 05/05/2008 at 05:36 :
 Shipwreck’s a gold mine for thrilled archaeologist
by Rowan Philp
Dieter Noli thought a small bag would be sufficient to hold priceless gold coins from the shipwreck.
Within an hour, he realised he needed to use his Stetson hat.
But by the end of the day, the archaeologist needed a bucket to hold the ship’s treasure, as 2500 coins, minted around 1500AD for Spain’s Queen Isabella, emerged from the Namibian sea bed.
Unearthed by a De Beers mining operation on the Namibian coast this month, the ship — thought to be a Columbus-era Portuguese explorer — has been hailed as the greatest maritime archaeological discovery in Southern Africa.
The unusually large store of gold also represents one of its greatest mysteries since the vessel, which was “armed to the teeth”, was already on its way home, fully laden with an equally mysterious cargo.
Noli, 52, said it was “the most gold ever found at an archaeological site in Africa since the huge find at the Valley of the Kings in Egypt”.
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the 01/05/2008 at 09:18 :
 HMAS Sydney find raises funding questions
by Dani Cooper
Some of Australia's most important watery war graves could be located for about one-tenth of the cost of finding the HMAS Sydney, the nation's most high-profile naval shipwreck, a researcher says.
Associate Professor Mark Staniforth, a maritime archaeologist from Adelaide's Flinders University, says last month's discovery of the HMAS Sydney, sunk off the coast of Western Australia, is enormously significant for Australia.
But he says the A$4.5 million (US$4 million) the federal government invested for the search is dead money because no infrastructure remains in public hands to do further searches.
Staniforth says if the government spends A$500,000, this could buy a base suite of equipment, including multi-beam echo sounder, sonar sounder and magnetometer.
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the 01/05/2008 at 09:09 :
Treasure trove found in 500-year-old shipwreck off Africa
by Donna Bryson
The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins — and cannons to fend off pirates. But it had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable African coast, and it sank 500 years ago. Now it has been found, stumbled upon by De Beers geologists prospecting for diamonds off Namibia.
"If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli said in an interview Thursday.
Namdeb Diamond Corp., a joint venture of the government of Namibia and De Beers, first reported the April 1 find in a statement Wednesday, and planned a news conference in the Namibian capital next week.
The company had cleared and drained a stretch of seabed, building an earthen wall to keep the water out so geologists could work. Noli said one of the geologists saw a few ingots, but had no idea what they were. Then the team found what looked like cannon barrels.
The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since the mid-1980s and has advised De Beers since 1996 on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia.
The find "was what I'd been waiting for, for 20 years," Noli said. "Understandably, I was pretty excited. I still am."
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the 30/04/2008 at 11:50 :
Diving into history: The Great Girona Gold Hunt
from Belfast Telegraph
Forty years ago a Belgian diver discovered the wreck of Spanish Armada treasure ship, the Girona, off the north Antrim coast. A BBC NI documentary tonight charts his amazing story, as producer Roger Ford-Hutchinson reveals
In 1967, Belgian diver and treasure hunter Robert St£nuit discovered a Spanish Armada warship that sank on Antrim's north coast nearly 400 years before. In secret, the Belgian began to excavate the wreck and carefully recover what would become a fortune in Spanish gold.
When the Press was alerted to what was going on, the story instantly captured the public's imagination.
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the 30/04/2008 at 11:37 :
 Push on to preserve secret treasure ship
by Randy Boswell
She was, at the dawn of the 20th century, a stately ship of dreams for thousands of British emigrants bound for a new life in Canada.
She became a ship of war, transporting wave after wave of Canadian troops overseas to help liberate Europe from the Kaiser's thrall.
Finally, she was the British government's secret treasure ship, packed with 39 tonnes of gold intended for Halifax to pay Canadian and U.S. munitions suppliers at the height of the First World War.
But that was the mission that doomed the SS Laurentic -- along with 354 of her British and Canadian crew -- when the ocean liner dressed in cannons struck a German mine off the Irish coast in 1917, sinking in the North Atlantic with her cargo of 3,211 ingots.
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the 24/04/2008 at 09:26 :
Court orders US federal jurisdiction over possible 'Griffin' shipwreck
from International Herald Tribune
An appeals court has ruled that the U.S. government should have authority for now over a Lake Michigan shipwreck that could be The Griffin, a 17th century vessel built by the French explorer La Salle.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati reversed a ruling by District Judge Robert Holmes Bell in a dispute between the state of Michigan and the private underwater exploration company that found the wreckage seven years ago.
Great Lakes Exploration Group LLC wants the federal government to have jurisdiction but to appoint the company as custodian until the courts determine who has ownership and salvage rights. The company says the French government may want to submit a claim.
The state is seeking title, saying federal law gives it ownership of all abandoned vessels "embedded in the state's submerged lands."
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