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June 28, 2007
Shipwreck Central Antiques Roadshow
Hello Shipwreck Central Folks,
I have often urged our forum members who have questions or need help with research to ask for assistance on line because I know we have a lot of well informed contributors every week.
Now I have a question. Recently my father set me a document that has been in our family for many years. My grandfather gave it to my dad back in the 1940’s, unfortunately my father does not know anything of its history prior to that date.
My family has lived in New England, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, for nearly 400 years and have had involvement with maritime trade and shipping over that timeframe. The document might relate to early family activity or it might be a document that came to my grandfather by some other means.
The document is a Presidential decree asking safe passage for the Ship “Marcia”, a merchant vessel of 314 tons, carrying no guns and navigated with a crew of 12 men, Master and Commander being a Captain Stinson.
The decree is signed by President John Quincy Adams and by Secretary of State Henry Clay and Dated December 03, 1828.
It was counter signed by J. M. Swenton (the spelling is hard to read) in Bath Maine. The ship “Marcia” was a Maine Vessel.
Clay and Adams go back a long way in US politics and to see their signatures together on the same document reminds me that they were both “War Hawks” prior to and during the War of 1812 and both of them were signatures to the Treaty of Ghent, which officially ended that war on December 24, 1814. Now 14 years later we have their signatures again, this time on a decree demanding safe passage for a vessel owned by a citizen of the United States. If anyone out there has any information on this type of decree, on Capt. Stinson or the vessel “Marcia” I would be glad to hear from you. You can review a PDF of the Document by clicking the link.
Thanks for your help
John Davis
Please post comments and information in the related post in the Forum under Research and Information.
To view the full PDF of the document click here>
Posted by victoria at 10:44 AM
June 26, 2007
'Pirates' promo snares Odyssey
Secret work on the movie tie-in escalated its dispute with Spain.
By SCOTT BARANIK
Published June 26, 2007
When Volvo decided to bury the grand prize for its online treasure hunt at sea, it asked Odyssey Marine Exploration for help.
Odyssey was up to the task. The publicly traded Tampa company makes its living searching the world's oceans for shipwrecked treasure. Like Volvo, it already had a promotional deal with Disney to promote the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which debuted in theaters last month.
Odyssey stuffed a treasure chest with $50,000 in gold coins, added the keys to a Volvo XC90 and then sank it somewhere in the western Mediterranean.
But plans for a triumphant return to the burial site last week never materialized. Thanks to a recent row with Spain over a shipwreck code-named "Black Swan, " Odyssey's ships could be seized if they leave Gibraltar's port. On Friday, Volvo said it would go ahead and cut the winner a $50,0000 check.
"Odyssey's been trying to find ways to get our treasure out of the bottom of the ocean," said Linda Gangeri, Volvo's U.S. advertising manager. "But they're at a stalemate right now."
Volvo's The Hunt contest drew roughly 50,000 contestants from around the world last month. The winner, a 23-year-old Russian woman, solved a series of 22 puzzles that appeared over several weeks. In addition to the $50,000 in "doubloons" -- South African Krugerrands, actually, according to the contest's fine print - she would receive up to $37,500 to compensate for taxes, a silver metallic Volvo worth $45,000 and a two-day trip on Odyssey's ship to retrieve the chest.
Under a nondisclosure agreement Odyssey signed, its role was to remain a secret until the very end of the contest. A shrewd contestant might track its ships' movements and figure out the treasure's location.
In an unrelated development, Odyssey announced in mid May that it had found 500,000 silver coins aboard a 17th-century merchant ship that wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean. An avalanche of global media attention boosted Odyssey's stock price by 80 percent in one day. It also made Volvo and Disney look very, very smart. But before long, the Black Swan's discovery would plague Volvo's contest, and vice-versa.
For months, Spanish authorities -- already suspicious of Odyssey due to battles over another shipwreck -- had been tracking Odyssey's ships near Gibraltar. When Odyssey announced its Black Swan find, Spanish officials believed it might have gotten the coins not from the Atlantic but a Spanish warship, the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, that sank near Gibraltar.
Odyssey officials wanted to tell the world that it was all a big misunderstanding -- that its unexplained activity near Gibraltar was part of the Volvo operation; Volvo told Spanish authorities as much in an affidavit.
But Odyssey's nondisclosure clause forced it to stay quiet. When Volvo finally disclosed the arrangement Friday, it said it hoped the information would help end Odyssey's battle with Spain.
"Without a real explanation of why we had deep-sea exploration equipment out there, it's easy to see how imaginations could run wild," Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm said in a statement. The damage to its stock price has been very real. Odyssey's stock fell 6 percent Monday to close at $5.75 per share and is down 31 percent since the day after it announced the Black Swan find.
Gangeri said Volvo hasn't given up on getting Odyssey to recover the treasure chest. The company wants to fulfill its pledge to the contest winner. Besides, such promotions help counter the carmaker's "stodgy" image.
"The reason we went with Odyssey was we wanted an authentic experience," she said. "And boy, we got it."
Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or 727 893-8751.
Posted by victoria at 09:36 AM
June 22, 2007
157 year old shipwreck found in Lake Erie
VERMILION, Ohio – The wreckage of a steamship that sank in 1850 after its boilers exploded has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Erie.
Thomas Kowalczk, an amateur shipwreck prospector, used sonar on his boat to discover the General Anthony Wayne in 50 feet of water, about eight miles north of this northeast Ohio city, the Great Lakes Historical Society announced Wednesday.
The side-wheel steamship, named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne, sank in April 1850 while en route from the Toledo area to Buffalo, N.Y. Thirty-eight of the 93 passengers and crew on board died.
“I researched everything I could about it and knew the general area where the ship went down,” Kowalczk said. “I laid out a grid search pattern and starting hunting.”
Kowalczk saw an image of the wreckage on his sonar screen in September. He dived down in May and photographed the wreckage, which is in two sections.
Kowalczk and other members of the Cleveland Underwater Explorers plan to survey the wreck later this summer when underwater visibility improves.
The wreck belongs to the state and salvaging it is illegal, but divers can visit what is left of the ship after it is surveyed and the coordinates are disclosed, said Christopher Gillcrist, executive director of the historical society.
Posted by victoria at 02:59 PM
June 18, 2007
SAVING HISTORY FOR THE PUBLIC
James Delgado
In a June 8 New York Times Op-Ed piece, Robert Kurson, author of the popular book Shadow Divers, attacks archaeologists as pirates, calling us a “new breed of raiders.” By contrast, he praises treasure hunters: “Without them…many of these wrecks would stay lost forever. Without the lure of a big and romantic payoff, no one would even look.” Moreover, Kurson paints archaeologists as ivory-tower academics and the treasure hunters as larger-than-life men-of-action: “it’s a good bet that a grizzled, lifelong salvage diver has better real-life, tight-squeeze shipwreck experience than an archaeologist who writes up guidelines for this work from his office near the student union.” This is a response from a grizzled lifelong archaeologist who has plenty of real-life, tight-squeeze experiences, as do many of my colleagues.
The recent controversy over the discovery of the “Black Swan” treasure off the coast of England by the company Odyssey Marine has ignited more than just a debate between scholars and treasure hunters. The key question of who owns the treasure has involved diplomats and lawyers, led to legal action, and a stand off at Gibraltar that has stoked longstanding tensions between Spain and Great Britain. Lost in the rhetoric of these battles is the question of the relevance of the archaeologists’ arguments. Whether Odyssey Marine is doing careful work that meets archaeological standards remains unknown. Secrecy shrouds the site and their work. Under that cone of silence, a treasure was raised and brought to the United States.
The reaction from the government of Spain may prove far more serious for Odyssey than the concerns of archaeologists, but while diplomats caucus and op-ed writers throw mud, it is worth looking at those concerns. They are based on decades of experience with other treasure hunters, and hundreds of sites that have been torn apart, with the finds scattered. In nearly all of those cases, the stake has not been half a million coins or heaps of gold – such finds are very rare – but rather wrecks bearing fragile traces of the past.
Next year, a major new exhibition will open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. At the heart of the exhibition are treasures from the world’s oldest shipwreck, a vessel found off the coast of Uluburun, Turkey. That exhibition, on international trade and cultural exchange in the Bronze Age, will transport visitors back to a period that witnessed the Trojan War and the reign of Egypt’s fabled King Tut. These were times of strife, as kingdoms rose and fell and legends and history were made.
Dating from the 14th century B.C., the Uluburun wreck carried a royal cargo of tribute from one ancient ruler to another. Its treasures, spilled into the sea 3,300 years ago, included raw glass, ebony and ivory, gold, copper ingots, ceramics, amber, and resin. After 11,000 hours of diving and careful recovery, archaeologists from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology were able to map where everything lay and put the wreck back together. That mapping sorted out the difference between cargo and the crew’s personal effects. It also revealed the delicate remains of the last day in the life of that ship and the people on board. Had treasure hunters found the Uluburun wreck that history would have been completely lost.
Thanks to the archaeologists, scientists, curators, and historians, the world not only gained a first-hand look at the lost and forgotten treasure, but also a new appreciation of how ancient people had interacted and traded, even in times of conflict and suspicion. Trade goods from a dozen different cultures lay scattered on the seabed. The remains represented cargo from the Middle East, Cyprus, and the Baltic, among other places, that had been gathered and was on its way to a palace in what is today Turkey when the sea swallowed them. Some have suggested that the cargo was a gift from Egypt’s famed beauty, Queen Nefertiti, to buy support after her husband, the pharaoh Akhenaten had died and she was seeking a foreign prince as a husband to become the new pharaoh and to keep her on the throne. Instead, she disappeared from history, and the boy king, Tutankhamen, took the throne, only to die under suspicious circumstances at a young age.
This fantastic story was almost lost to history. When first discovered, the copper ingots scattered on the seabed were clues to what lay below. The Turkish sponge diver who found the wreck could have turned the site over to salvagers who would have stripped it of the ingots, melted them down for a few dollars, and history would have been the poorer. Instead, archaeologists from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology recovered the treasure, and for decades it has been the centerpiece of Turkey’s most popular archaeological museum in Bodrum, visited by millions. Now those treasures are coming to America, and to New York where they will be seen and appreciated by everyone who visits the temporary exhibition at the Met.
Another wreck will not be the subject of an exhibition. The U.S. Navy’s brig of war Somers was the scene of the Navy’s only mutiny at sea, an 1842 event that spurred the hanging of three men, one of them the 19-year-old son of the Secretary of War. The “Somers affair” ultimately inspired Herman Melville to write Billy Budd. The wreck, when discovered in 1990 off the coast of Mexico, lay where it had sunk in 1847. The action of the sea had eaten much of the wood when we dived on it, but everything else lay exactly where it had come to rest a century and a half earlier. Our careful mapping started to reconstruct the ship, but on a return dive, we found that treasure hunters had stripped it to sell the artifacts of a famous ship on the black market. While not as ancient as the Uluburun wreck, the wreck of the Somers was a link to the past that a handful will now enjoy, rather than millions.
The discovery of the Uluburun shipwreck is not unique. There are hundreds of other examples from all over the world. Incredible discoveries are made constantly by grizzled and young archaeologists who scour the seven seas with magnetometers, stand long watches at sea, and dive down to carefully do their work and recover history. Archaeologists have been at sea searching for wrecks for nearly 50 years, using the same techniques and tools – in fact, most of the technologies and techniques for finding and excavating wrecks were developed for archaeological projects, including deep-water work. Last week, in relative media silence while Odyssey dominated the news, a team from Texas A&M University and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology conducted a deep-water examination and test excavation in the Gulf of Mexico on a 200-year-old wreck. Contrary to Robert Kurson’s New York Times piece, treasure hunters are not the only ones with the tools or the interest to work in the deep.
Rather than write policy documents by the student union, as Kurson claims, like my colleagues I have “swam the swim” to work on and under the water. I have taken off my air tanks to squeeze into a toppled tank off the beaches of Normandy, and wriggled into rusting wrecks in danger of collapse to come back with photographs of forgotten history. I have worked on the sea with “wreck detectives,” anglers, tipsters, amateur historians, and serious wreck divers who share the passion, including one of the divers who found the lost U-Boat evocatively written about by Kurson. Our fellow divers are not the problem. The issue is one where the flash of gold and silver obscure or overwhelm the type of careful work that yields treasures of a different sort, like that of the Uluburun shipwreck or the Somers.
We base our opposition to treasure hunting on the track record of those years of lost opportunities and lost history, and the challenge we issue to Odyssey is to show how they are different. We curators and archaeologists work long hours on the sea and beneath it as much as in the lab, and many of us do what we do without tax dollars, but with the support of public-minded philanthropists. Their support comes without the expectations of investors, many of whom we have found seek a “cost-effective” dismantling of a site and quick return, not the recovery and treatment and preservation of everything, which is what we do. We share what we find in a variety of ways, but in the end, for us the lure and romance – the “payoff” is the “oh and ah” when they read the magazine article or popular book, watch our work on television, or walk into an exhibition like that coming to the Met and see it all, its stories being told, instead of a single piece on an investor’s mantelpiece.
James Delgado is the executive director of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University. A contributing editor to Archaeology magazine, he is also host of National Geographic Television’s “The Sea Hunters” and the author of 30 books on shipwrecks, history and archaeology, including three books for children.
Posted by victoria at 09:32 AM
June 15, 2007
Curators Under the Sea
By ROBERT KURSON
Published: June 8, 2007
Chicago
LAST month, a Florida-based treasure-hunting company made perhaps the richest undersea score ever. It discovered, somewhere in the Atlantic, a Colonial-era shipwreck containing more than 500,000 silver coins and hundreds of gold coins. Total estimated value, according to one coin marketer: $500 million.
In days of yore, pirates would have swarmed to such a bounty, declaring the treasure their own. Today, it attracts a new breed of raiders who believe just as strongly that the treasure is rightfully theirs — and who get just as angry when things don’t go their way. They are the academics — professors, curators, historians and others who study, archive and preserve historical artifacts. Many of them despise the commercial treasure hunters for, as they see it, rampaging through shipwrecks with little regard for the delicate history at hand.
They claim that because the professional treasure hunter’s first priority is to sell what he finds, artifacts will be rushed from shipwreck to market without being carefully preserved or photographed and cataloged to record their historic value. They charge that even if the treasure hunter cared to preserve and catalog his discoveries, he couldn’t, because he is not properly trained to do such subtle and delicate work.
One professor recently summed up these arguments by saying, “If these guys went and planted a bunch of dynamite around the Sphinx, or tore up the floor of the Acropolis, they’d be in jail in a minute.”
The same case was made in 1991, when two recreational scuba divers discovered a World War II German U-boat — complete with its 56-man crew — that had sunk just off New Jersey. No military expert or historian had known of this wreck, its sailors or its story, and so it fell to these two ordinary men to embark on a six-year, fantastically dangerous quest to solve the mystery.
As it happened, there was no treasure aboard this U-boat, but academics made virtually the same accusation: the divers, they said, were going to trample history in their quest to put a name on the warship.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Not for the divers who undertook huge risks to preserve the U-boat. And not for treasure hunters, who have even greater incentives to be careful with their finds.
The treasure hunter’s livelihood depends on keeping his discoveries in pristine condition. He knows that coins and gold and pottery must be handled with exquisite care in order to bring the highest possible price. He must use a surgeon’s touch with every artifact, because even that last lonely vase has value if it is deftly handled. The roughest and toughest of these treasure hunters have some of the gentlest hands in the world.
Do they know how to handle the rarities they find? The academics scoff at the idea. But many of the finest conservation labs, the most up-to-date equipment and the best-trained archaeologists can be found on just the kind of treasure hunting quest that discovered the recent Colonial-era wreck.
Odyssey Marine Exploration, the company that recovered the treasure, had two archaeologists supervise the effort, and it tested various processes for preserving the coins before choosing the one that was most effective. This preservation work continues. But even on smaller operations, it’s a good bet that a grizzled, lifelong salvage diver has better real-life, tight-squeeze shipwreck experience than an archaeologist who writes up guidelines for this work from his office near the student union.
It is true that not all treasure hunters photograph and document every square inch of the shipwrecks they discover. Most of them cannot fathom a reason to do so. Waves and storms have been throwing shipwrecks around for centuries, constantly shifting their contents. “I could take some pictures and make some notes,” they’ll tell you, “but that’ll only show what it looked like this afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon it will be different.” Some treasure hunters think the academics’ desire to catalog the location of every bent tin of beans is a bit excessive, though that’s not always the word they use.
The real bottom line is this: if treasure hunters didn’t do this kind of work, no one would. Without them and the people they work with — the divers, fishermen, tipsters and amateur historians — many of these wrecks would stay lost forever. Without the lure of a big and romantic payoff, no one would even look.
Academics don’t drag magnetometers and side-scan sonar equipment across the seas. They don’t risk their lives, as the U-boat divers did, by removing their air tanks and corkscrewing through a labyrinth. They are not infected by the need to search, not bound to feed their families by keeping history beautiful. The treasure hunter needs to look, and that is always the way things lost forever get found.
Robert Kurson is the author of “Shadow Divers” and, most recently, "Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure and the Man Who Dared to See."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/opinion/08kurson.html#
Posted by victoria at 01:14 PM
Chinese shipwreck gives up treasure
Associated Press
BEIJING - Archaeologists have discovered a sunken ship laden with Ming Dynasty porcelain after being tipped off by local police who learned that fishing boats were carrying out illegal salvage operations off the south China coast, state media reported.
The ship, dubbed the South China Sea II, was probably built during the Ming Dynasty, which lasted from 1368 to 1644, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday, citing the Guangdong Archaeology Institute.
Archaeologists used GPS earlier this month to locate the approximately 59-foot ship, which is 66 feet below the surface of the South China Sea.
Police in Nanao County of Guangdong province have confiscated more than 130 pieces of the porcelain from three fishing boats, Xinhua said. One boat owner said divers he had hired for deep-sea fishing found the pieces by accident.
Authorities stepped up monitoring and told residents not to loot the ship. On June 1, two residents turned over 124 porcelain items to police, Xinhua said.
A preliminary study showed the ship may have sunk about 400 years ago after striking a reef, Xinhua quoted Wei Jun of the Guangdong Archaeology Institute as saying.
Posted by victoria at 10:28 AM
June 14, 2007
Ship gets heritage protection
Ben Doherty
June 14, 2007
THE SS Alert, the ill-fated cargo ship that met its demise more than 100 years ago off the Victorian coast, will be preserved and protected for evermore in its watery grave.
Yesterday, The Age revealed that after nearly two years of painstaking work combing the ocean floor, a group of volunteer marine archaeologists had found the Alert, sitting beneath 80 metres of water in Bass Strait off Cape Schanck.
Now, the Victorian Government has moved to preserve the Alert permanently, affording it the highest level of heritage protection.
Disturbing, damaging or removing items from historic shipwrecks, such as the Alert, can attract a prison sentence or fines of up to $10,000 for a person, and $50,000 for a company.
Planning Minister Justin Madden said the Alert was an important part of Victoria's extensive sea history.
"I would like to congratulate the Southern Ocean Exploration team, a committed group of volunteers, for this marvellous discovery, which is yet another wonderful contribution to our maritime heritage," he said.
The SS Alert sank the night of December 28, 1893, after being caught in a ferocious storm. The ship was ill-equipped for the open water (it had been built for placid Scottish lochs) and sank without a trace.
Fifteen people went down with the ship, and only the Alert's cook, Robert Ponting, survived, by clinging to a piece of cabin door for more than 16 hours.
Until this month, the exact location of the SS Alert was not known, until Southern Ocean Exploration, led by Mark Ryan, discovered it, still largely intact.
The exact location of the wreck has been passed on to Heritage Victoria, but it will not be released publicly. At 80 metres below the surface, it is too deep for most divers to reach anyway.
The Alert is officially in Commonwealth waters. Planning Minister Justin Madden said Heritage Victoria would write to the Federal Government to recommend it be made off limits to anyone without a heritage permit.
Posted by victoria at 10:26 AM
June 11, 2007
Divers Explore USS Narcissus' Watery Grave
By STEVE KORNACKI The Tampa Tribune
Published: Jun 10, 2007
EGMONT KEY - There is little sign of the horror U.S. Navy crewmembers experienced offshore of this island on Jan. 3, 1866, when the Union Civil War tugboat the USS Narcissus ran into a shoal during a storm and exploded.
All 29 perished and were never found. However, the remains of the 115-ton tug are nestled above and beneath the ever-churning sands northwest of Egmont Key.
The vessel's shattered steam engine boiler - which burst like a bomb when the cold Gulf waters hit it - is about three miles from shore, along with its A-frame engine, drive shaft, huge propeller, double walls and other parts now covered by barnacles, sponges, algae and worms.
The tugboat graveyard, home to feeding saltwater fish for the past 141 years, now has frequent visitors wearing dive tanks, masks and wet suits. Divers from The Florida Aquarium have been studying it since last summer when the downtown Tampa aquarium received grant money from the state's Bureau of Historic Preservation.
Mike Terrell, the aquarium's dive training coordinator, is supervising the project along with contracted St. Augustine archaeologist John W. "Billy" Morris. Terrell says The Florida Aquarium plans to replicate the wreckage for display in its 93,000-gallon Shark Bay exhibit. They also hope to have it declared an underwater archaeological preserve by the state.
"There is so little Civil War history in this state," Terrell said, "and now everyone will be able to see some of it without getting wet."
For now, the privilege of perusing the boat is only for the aquarium's staff and volunteer divers. On Wednesday, a group of six ventured out to check its wreckage and another sunken vessel within a mile of it.
As the 25-foot Miss Bee Gee research boat motored past Egmont Key, Morris squinted into the rushing wind and raised his voice, saying, "Egmont looked just like that when the Narcissus went down, only the waters were much rougher. The lighthouse was there, but the light was turned out."
Confederates had turned off the lighthouse's beacon to prevent its use by Union blockade purposes. Had the light provided better guidance into Tampa Bay, would the Narcissus have missed the shoal? We'll never know.
'Damn The Torpedoes!'
The 82-foot tug, named the Mary Cook until commissioned by the Navy, took part in the Battle of Mobile Bay, where Union Adm. David Farragut exclaimed, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
The Narcissus survived that naval operation and a blockade of New Orleans, but was sunk by a Confederate torpedo - the term then for exploding mines - in Mobile Bay on Dec. 7, 1864. It went down in 15 minutes but no lives were lost. The Narcissus was raised and taken to Pensacola for repairs. It finished out the war there before departing to New York on New Year's Day 1866 for decommissioning.
Two days later, the tug exploded in one of the worst U.S. Navy disasters up to that point. Morris, who specializes in underwater ship archaeology, said he was part of a Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research crew that discovered the Narcissus in 1992. When he returned last August, Morris was surprised to find how much more of the remains had become exposed.
"The hurricanes from a couple years ago had something to do with it," Morris said, "but it was left more exposed mostly by the recent dredgings in the area. That all moved away 10 feet of sand.
"I'm fascinated by how intact the engine is. The details of it are spectacular. It was an inverted single-cylinder engine, and it fell over the port side upon the explosion. When we found this much of it preserved, I suggested we replicate it."
Photographs and precise measurements have been taken to assure the fiberglass version of the Narcissus is just like the actual wreckage.
An Accurate Depiction
The undisturbed pieces of the tug were mapped by staff divers and 10 trained volunteers who averaged 11 dives each. Morris said the remains belong to the Navy, and no excavating is allowed.
"When you are down there, you are focused on the task at hand," Morris said. "But on the way back in the boat, it hits you what you've just seen and touched."
Morris has been to the wreckage more than 50 times. He became hooked on underwater archaeology as a teenager in Wilmington, N.C., when the USS Monitor, the storied Civil War ironclad, was discovered in 1973.
"I fell in love with it and have done lots of Civil War naval archaeology," he said.
"Billy knows so much about ship construction that it's crazy," Terrell said.
Each of the dozens of dives to the Narcissus led by Morris followed the same procedures and disciplines.
After ship captain and aquarium staff diver supervisor Jason Minnear dropped anchor at the global positioning system coordinates for the Narcissus, Morris did a back roll off the research boat and dived to locate it before calling for the rest.
Other divers, each with a predetermined role in that day's plotting, took to the water with tape measures, level lines, plumb bobs, compasses, pencils and a slate covered with a special plastic paper to record details.
"These are field trips that people pay to go out on with National Geographic," said Dan Rosenthal of Tampa, a trained aquarium diving volunteer. "This is the kind of thing you read about in magazines."
Their efforts eventually will bring the Narcissus to the public with the aquarium exhibit, which Terrell says should be realized by late 2008 or in 2009. He also hopes that the site becomes the 14th shipwreck site recognized by the state as an underwater archaeological preserve.
Terrell said, "It's not skeletons hanging on the ship's wheel, the vision of shipwrecks for most people. But you go down there or see photos of the ship, and you can be told a very dramatic, very engaging story."
Posted by victoria at 11:07 AM
June 07, 2007
NOAA Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary Shipwreck Paul Palmer Listed on National Register of Historic Places
June 5, 2007 — NOAA announced that the wreck of the coal schooner Paul Palmer, which rests on the seafloor within Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the nation’s official list of cultural resources worthy of preservation. (Click NOAA image for larger view of the coal schooner Paul Palmer is pictured in this early 20th century postcard as it unloads coal. Please credit “NOAA.”)
Paul Palmer’s historical, architectural and archaeological significance contributed to its listing. In compliance with President Bush's Preserve America Executive Order, NOAA is increasing efforts to inventory, preserve and protect historic resources in the agency's care, from shipwrecks to historic buildings.
“The schooner’s involvement in the coal trade connected it to Americans throughout the East Coast,” said Stellwagen Bank sanctuary superintendent Craig MacDonald. “Coal carried in schooners like the Paul Palmer powered the industrialization of the northeastern states, one of the greatest economic and social forces in American history.”
Built in Waldoboro, Maine, the five-masted, 276-foot schooner Paul Palmer was part of William F. Palmer’s “Great White Fleet,” which at its peak consisted of 15 schooners that carried bulk cargos throughout the East Coast, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. During its 12-year career, the schooner Paul Palmer transported 280,000 tons of coal, as well as phosphate, railroad ties, ice, and sugar.
After unloading coal in Bangor, Paul Palmer departed Rockport, Maine, for Virginia on Friday, June 13, 1913. Sailing south, the schooner caught fire off Cape Cod. Several vessels responded to the stricken schooner, but were unable to extinguish the fire. The schooner’s crew abandoned ship and was picked up by a waiting fishing boat. The Paul Palmer burned to its waterline and then sank. The Paul Palmer was the only five-masted East Coast schooner to be lost to fire. (Click NOAA image for larger view of divers examining the Paul Palmer’s windlass, a mechanical device used to raise and lower the schooner’s anchors, which lies at the shipwreck’s bow. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”)
The Paul Palmer was no stranger to fire. In 1907, the schooner sustained light damage when it was nearly caught in a conflagration that consumed Baltimore’s coal docks. The following year, a fire swept across East Boston’s docks, catching the schooner’s top rigging on fire. Tugs pulled Paul Palmer away from its dock and put out the fire before flames engulfed the schooner. The fire destroyed a quarter-mile stretch of the waterfront and caused $1.6 million in property damage.
Since NOAA’s discovery of the then-unknown shipwreck in 2000, the sanctuary has investigated the site with divers, remotely operated vehicles, and autonomous underwater vehicles capturing detailed video and still imagery to document the vessel’s construction and artifacts. This research led to the schooner’s identification in 2002. The Paul Palmer’s partially buried remains lie on the flat, sandy seafloor atop Stellwagen Bank.
The schooner’s location within Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provides protection unavailable in other federal waters off Massachusetts. Sanctuary regulations prohibit moving, removing, or injuring, or any attempt to move, remove, or injure any sanctuary historical resource, including artifacts and pieces from shipwrecks. Anyone violating this regulation is subject to civil penalties.
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary encompasses 842 square miles of ocean, stretching between Cape Ann and Cape Cod offshore of Massachusetts. Renowned for its scenic beauty and remarkable productivity, the sanctuary is renowned as a whale watching destination and supports a rich assortment of marine life, including marine mammals, seabirds, fishes and marine invertebrates. The sanctuary’s position astride the historic shipping routes and fishing grounds for Massachusetts’ oldest ports also make it a repository for shipwrecks representing several hundred years of maritime transportation.
NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program seeks to increase the public awareness of America's marine resources and maritime heritage by conducting scientific research, monitoring, exploration and educational programs. Today, the sanctuary program manages 13 national marine sanctuaries and one marine national monument that together encompass more than 150,000 square miles of America's ocean and Great Lakes natural and cultural resources.
NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is celebrating 200 years of science and service to the nation. From the establishment of the Survey of the Coast in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson to the formation of the Weather Bureau and the Commission of Fish and Fisheries in the 1870s, much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA.
NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with our federal partners and 60 countries to develop a global Earth observation network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.
Posted by victoria at 03:43 PM
June 06, 2007
D-Day Facts
1.1 million Canadians served in WWII, including 106,000 in the Royal Canadian Navy and 200,000 in the Royal Canadian Air Force
14,000 Canadians landed on D-Day
450 jumped by parachute or landed by glider
10,000 sailors of the RCN were involved
During the first six days of the Normandy campaign, 1,017 Canadians died.
By the end of the Normandy campaign, about 5,020 Canadians had been killed. About 5,400 Canadians are buried in Normandy.
In the two and a half months of the Normandy campaign, Allied casualities (killed, wounded and captured) totalled 210,000.
Canadian casualties totalled more than 18,000, including more than 5,000 dead. German casualties were 450,000.
Posted by victoria at 03:57 PM
D-Day June 6. 1944
Launch Video Player - Juno Beach >>
D-Day: Canada's role
Robin Rowland, CBC News Online | June 5, 2003
The sun was just coming up over the Normandy coast at about 5 a.m. on June 6, 1944 – D-Day.
The Allied navies – Canadian, British, American – had brought a huge invasion fleet from England to France in total darkness. For men on the ships, first light showed the black shapes of other nearby vessels. For the Germans on shore, the dawn revealed a vast armada poised to invade occupied France.
The military planners had given Canada a major role on D-Day: to take one of the five designated beaches where Allied forces were to land to begin the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany. The Americans had Utah and Omaha beaches in the west, then came the British at Gold, then the Canadians at Juno Beach and finally the British at Sword on the east.
The greatest seaborne invasion in history was aimed at 80 kilometres of mostly flat, sandy beach along the Normandy coast, west of the Seine River, east of the jutting Cotentin Peninsula. Canada's objective was right in the middle.
There were about 155,000 soldiers, 5,000 ships and landing craft, 50,000 vehicles and 11,000 planes set for the coming battle. For Canada, 14,000 soldiers were to land on the beaches; another 450 were to drop behind enemy lines by parachute or glider. The Royal Canadian Navy supplied ships and about 10,000 sailors. Lancaster bombers and Spitfire fighters from the Royal Canadian Air Force supported the invasion.
The Canadians who landed on Juno Beach were part of Britain's Second Army, under the command of British Lt. General Miles Dempsey, who had served in North Africa and Italy with the overall British commander, Bernard Montgomery. The Canadian assault forces were the Third Canadian Infantry Division, commanded by Major General R. F. Keller and the Second Canadian Armoured Brigade, with Brigadier R.A. Wyman in charge.
The units were from across the country; from east to west, from the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, to the Canadian Scottish from Victoria.
The bombardment of the beaches began at 6 a.m. Within an hour the lead landing craft were away from the ships.
Two hours later, the German defences at Juno Beach had been shattered and Canada had established the beachhead.
Posted by victoria at 03:51 PM
June 05, 2007
A PIRATE WITH A PH.D.
We don't know what's more delightful, that a shipwrecked 19th century Maine clipper is making one of its periodic reappearances from the sand in which it's been interred along the San Francisco coast for more than a century, or that the incident has allowed a maritime archaeologist who's studying the wreck to engage in the most wonderful flights of 19th century-sounding language.
"She could have sunk deep or she could have been burned," said James Delgado, executive director of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, sounding either like a good scholar, or folk singer Gordon Lightfoot. "But because ... she buried herself, we have an exciting and tangible reminder of ships long past and the days of wooden sail."
Do people really talk this way? If they spend their days romancing the 19th century, we guess.
Continues Delgado: "We have a well-preserved example of naval architecture at a time when Maine led the nation in shipbuilding and ships like this waved the American flag all over the seven seas."
Well, avast, me hearties!
We'll wave that flag all over the seven seas, too, if we get a job as a nautical archaeologist!
We could get paid -- in doubloons and rum, we're sure -- to spend our time on www.talklikeapirate.com, where we'd meet up with fellow wenches, scallywags, rogues and rascals and also, should we be a wee bit interested, learn to talk like a pirate in Swedish!
When you get a Ph.D. in nautical archaeology, life sounds like it's full of weighing anchor and shots of grog and sending the bilge rats down to the bunghole to get some hardtack. Arrrrr!
And in the meantime, while we're engaging in our own flights of piratical fancy, the timbers of the sad and sorry ship, the King Philip, continue to emerge from their sandy grave. Once high-born when launched out of Alna, but fallen on hard times and carrying bird manure when it foundered off San Francisco's Ocean Beach, the ship is now a waterlogged ghost. She reminds us of a more colorful time when pines were felled in Maine to serve as masts on ships that sailed across the oceans, when holds carried fortunes, sailors mutinied and vessels were scuttled. And if the King Philip's timbers, now exposed to the cold Pacific wind, are shivering -- well then, so are ours.
Kennebec Journal www.mainetoday.com
Posted by victoria at 10:28 AM
June 04, 2007
Research continues at supposed Blackbeard shipwreck
The Associated Press
June 4, 2007 8:01 am
Ten years and $2 million have yet to result in a "smoking blunderbuss" that proves a shipwreck off the coast of Beaufort belonged to the notorious pirate Blackbeard.
But researchers say they haven't found anything among the cannons, coins, anchors, and other artifacts that rules it out.
"Ten years of archaeological and historical research all say it's the Queen Anne's Revenge," said Lindley Butler, of Wentworth, the historian on the shipwreck project.
Some state officials stop short of confirming the oldest shipwreck ever found in North Carolina waters belonged to Blackbeard. They say it's best to remain cautious because the state's reputation is on the line.
"I ... won't let them," said Jeffrey Crow, a deputy secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. "There's a slim possibility that it could be another shipwreck."
But even if it turns out not to be the French slave ship many believe Blackbeard captured in 1717 and renamed Queen Anne's Revenge before it ran aground off Atlantic Beach a year later, the decade of research and examination have been worth the effort, said Jerry Cashion, chairman of the N.C. Historical Commission.
"This is the most important maritime wreck in North Carolina regardless of what it is," Cashion said. " ... It's a treasure trove."
The French frigate measured about 100 feet long with three masts and a crew of 150 to 200. The shipwreck, discovered in late 1996, is within sight of Fort Macon State Park in 23 feet of water.
"What you see is the ballast stone pile, large anchors and stacks of cannons," Butler said of the 3-foot-high pile of artifacts that covers an area about 20 feet by 25 feet. "I have never seen anything like that."
Scientists believe the wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge has laid buried under the shifting sands of Beaufort Inlet.
Florida-based Intersal, a private research firm, received a state permit in 1989 to search for the QAR, the Adventure – one of Blackbeard's smaller ships, and El Salvador, a Spanish treasure ship that sank in the area in 1750.
What's believed to be the QAR was discovered by an Intersal crew on Nov. 21, 1996.
The following March, state officials announced the find and said it "may be" Blackbeard's flagship.
Archaeologists thought it would take five to six years to recover all the artifacts when they began the process in 1997. But they say a lack of money has slowed the effort. The state has spent about $1.2 million on the project with another $600,000-plus coming from grants and other private sources. Further excavation and conservation will likely cost another $1.4 million.
"As high-profile as it is, it has been indifferently funded," said Charlie Ewen, an anthropology professor at East Carolina University.
Only about 15 percent of artifacts have been recovered to date, including jewelry, dishes and thousands of other items that are being preserved and studied at a lab at East Carolina University.
Blackbeard, whose real name was widely believed to be Edward Teach or Thatch, settled in Bath and received a governor's pardon. Some experts believe he grew bored with land life and returned to piracy.
Five months after the ship thought to be Queen Anne's Revenge sank in June 1718, Blackbeard was killed by volunteers from the Royal Navy.
Divers plan to return to the site – weather permitting – later this week to recover more artifacts and, they hope, eventually remove any doubt the ship belonged to the most fearsome and famous among pirates.
"We haven't found ... the smoking blunderbuss," Crow said. "It's like a crime-scene investigation, just like 'CSI,' just like 'Law & Order.' "
But they might find that indisputable link.
"We are not going to find a license plate on it that says Blackbeard," said Steve Claggett, the state archaeologist. "These guys didn't keep diaries."
Posted by victoria at 09:44 AM
June 02, 2007
Shipwreck Treasure Swimming In Controversy
Spain Files Claim In U.S. Federal Courts
POSTED: 9:07 am EDT June 1, 2007
TAMPA, Fla. -- The Spanish government has filed claims in U.S. federal court over a shipwreck that a Florida firm found laden with Colonial-era treasure, an attorney said Thursday.
If the vessel was Spanish or was removed from that country's waters, any treasure would belong to Spain, said James Goold, an attorney representing the government.
"It's a very well established principle under Spanish, U.S. and international law that a government such as the kingdom of Spain has not abandoned its sunken ships or sunken property, and that a company like Odyssey Marine Exploration may not conduct recovery operations without authorization by the government," he said.
"The kingdom of Spain has not authorized any such operations by Odyssey, and by these legal actions it will see the return of any Spanish property Odyssey has recovered," Goold said of the claims filed Wednesday.
Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. CEO John Morris said in a statement Thursday that "such a move was anticipated by Odyssey and is considered normal in Admiralty cases."
The company has previously said Odyssey would notify all claimants once it conclusively determined the ship's identity. Odyssey said it was not found in Spanish territorial waters.
"If there is anything Spanish involved, they want to work with the Spanish government and be certain the Spanish government is completely satisfied with the result," said Allen Von Spiegelfeld, Odyssey's attorney in Tampa. "I don't think the rights of the Spanish government would have been threatened."
The company announced two weeks ago that it had discovered a shipwreck containing 500,000 gold and silver coins somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Tampa-based company said the site was outside any country's territorial waters but would not give the exact location or name of the ship.
Odyssey has said that the ship was not in Spanish territorial waters and was not the HMS Sussex, a shipwreck that Odyssey recently got permission from the Spanish government to search for in the Strait of Gibraltar.
But Spain has called the new discovery suspicious and said the booty may have come from a wrecked Spanish galleon.
In Britain, the find generated press reports that Odyssey had salvaged the wreck of the long-sought British vessel Merchant Royal, which sank in bad weather off England in 1641. Odyssey has not confirmed or denied these reports.
Spain is using the U.S. law firm Covington & Burling, which has represented Spain over shipwreck cases before, including the recovery of material from two ships, Juno and La Galga, in a 2000 court case. The Spanish government won the case at that time.
Odyssey shares closed down 20 cents, about 3 percent, to $6.60 in volatile trading Thursday. They have traded in a 52-week range of $1.52 to $9.45.
Posted by victoria at 09:45 AM
June 01, 2007
Was it the first shipwreck in Kings County, Nova Scotia?
It’s late in 1760 and several shiploads of settlers out of New England have reached Kings County to take up Acadian land and are busy settling in. In December of that year, a brigantine arrives. Sailing up the Canard River for about two miles, the brigantine docks and unloads troops and provisions for the settlers of Horton and Cornwallis.
Once offloading is completed, the brig retraces its course back down the Canard River. Unfortunately, it’s low tide. The brig strikes a sandbar, topples over, is stranded, and eventually is demolished by the high tide.
James Martell records this event in his 1933 paper on early settlements around Minas Basin, citing government records as his source of information. While this may only have been a minor catastrophe, this could qualify as the first recorded shipwreck in Kings County waters. Unfortunately, Martell doesn’t give the name of the brigantine, but maybe one of you history buffs can come up with it.
You could call it a shipwreck record of sorts and it’s mentioned by David Fairbank White in his book Bitter Ocean, the Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945. White writes that a Canadian steamer built in Pictou was the final merchant ship to die in the last battle of the Atlantic. This was the Avondale Park. She almost made it to harbor, White says, going down on the last day of the war.
Here’s another shipwreck, one also in Kings County, involving a ship with an unusual name. Under the heading “A Marine Mishap,” the late Leon Barron found this record in the April 26, 1889, issue of the Wolfville Acadian:
“The schnr. Sparkling Billow, Capt. L. R. Morris, left this port (Wolfville) on Tuesday evening in ballast for Cornwallis and missed her course (and) ran upon the flats on the north side of the Cornwallis River.”
As a result, the 25-ton Sparkling Billow “tipped over and split in two from stem to stern, and now lies a wreck just north of this village.” The news story concludes by informing readers that the ship “has been stripped of her sails and rigging and abandoned.”
Posted by victoria at 09:47 AM
