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August 31, 2007
Hurricane unearthed 18th-century cannons in Mexico
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Hurricane Dean's rampage over Mexico's Caribbean coast last week unearthed three rusted 18th century cannons that had lain buried under a sandy beach for decades.
The cannons, around 1.80 meter (5.9 feet) long, were spotted poking through the sand on a beach near the arty resort of Tulum after Dean hit on August 21, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said on Wednesday.
Believed to be from a shipwrecked European galleon, the badly corroded cannons will be put back in to the sea to protect them from faster corrosion onshore and for scuba divers to enjoy, it said.
"People started working to clear up the beach and they found three artifacts that were uncovered when sand was torn away by the strong winds that hit the region," INAH's director in the region, Adriana Velazquez, said in a statement.
She could not be reached directly because of damage to telephone lines from Hurricane Dean.
The cannons appeared just south of the clifftop Mayan ruins at Tulum, which INAH said were left intact by the Category 5 storm's 160 mph (256 kph) winds and lashing rains.
Lying on what is now a bar-lined tourist haven, the cannons were a flashback to the centuries following Spain's 1521 conquest of Mexico, when fleets of Spanish galleons loaded with gold, silver and other New World plunder crossed the Caribbean, often with English, French or Dutch pirates in pursuit.
The cannons are similar to others discovered in past years along Mexico's Caribbean coast and they appear to be more than 200 years old, Velazquez said.
Their bad state of corrosion suggests they were taken out of the sea many years ago and left out in the salty air, she said.
Posted by victoria at 09:42 AM
August 24, 2007
Blackbeard's ship to be excavated
By: Alex Henderson, Assistant State & National Editor
Posted: 8/23/07
State-sponsored divers kicked off an intensive underwater search for booty Wednesday, more than a decade after shipwreck researchers discovered the ruins of Blackbeard's flagship off the N.C. coast.
Mike Daniel, leader of the crew that found Queen Anne's Revenge, said the pace of the excavation is only now picking up despite his years of pressuring the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources to do what he called "serious expeditions."
"It's been 10 years since I've found it, and they've worked about a total of 50 days," he said. "For all the bruises I've taken for being their bad guy, it's finally taking off."
The divers hope to retrieve as much as 30 percent of the wreckage of the ship, said Jeffrey Crow, archives and history deputy secretary for the department of cultural resources.
Media Credit: Courtesy of N.C. Department of Cultural Resources
A researcher examines an anchor at the wreck of the presumed Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard's flagship, near Beaufort. The city's tourism witnessed an upward surge because of the discovery of the find.
"I don't think it would be possible to get the entire shipwreck up in one season," Crow said, referring to the period of optimal diving time between August and November.
"I know at the end of this month we're going to bring up a cannon."
The ship, which sunk in 1718, is one of the most significant historical finds in recent years, Crow said.
"It's the most important underwater archaeological site that we've found to date," he said. "It would be hard to find a more important one in N.C. waters."
The ship's discovery also highlighted several elements of Beaufort folklore, said Laura Windley, a third-year law student at UNC who grew up in Beaufort.
"The oldest house in Beaufort is the Hammock House, and it was Blackbeard's house," she said, adding that bloodstains remain on the stairs of the house from the time that Blackbeard - ne Edward Teach - killed a romantic rival during swordplay.
Tourism in Beaufort rose significantly due to the discovery, she said.
"I know that there was an influx of people, because my grandmother complained about the ditdots," she said. "My grandmother calls tourists ditdots."
Laura's grandmother, 81-year-old Alice Windley, said Blackbeard lore is intertwined in the history of the town.
"We have pictures all over everywhere with Blackbeard on them, with the long beard," she said.
"We really relate to Blackbeard."
Daniel suggested that his discovery - and Blackbeard's history in North Carolina, where he died after receiving 20 stab wounds and five gunshot wounds - could be a marketable state legacy.
"Blackbeard is one of the most famous men in the history of the world," he said. "Don't you think the state of North Carolina is missing the boat, here?"
Posted by victoria at 02:24 PM
Edmund Fitzgerald excitement sunk
BY JEFF KAROUB
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Edmund Fitzgerald, already the stuff of Great Lakes legend, has spawned another tale.
A vacationing family hunting for rocks along a remote patch of Lake Superior shoreline earlier this month believed they had found a life preserver from the famed ship that sank roughly 200 miles away 32 years ago. It reads "Edmund Fitzgerald" in faded but mostly legible white letters, and matched in many ways a ring recovered from the ship now on display at a shipwreck museum.
But the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum received a visitor recently who disputes the ring's authenticity.
Cynthia Edwards told a museum employee last week that her father bought the orange preserver at a garage sale many years ago, painted the name of the ore carrier on it and hung it at his cabin in Eagle River -- not far from where it was found in the Upper Peninsula's Keweenaw Peninsula. When they remodeled two years ago, they put the ring on a tree and it disappeared.
"With the information coming in now, it looks more and more like it's not from the Edmund Fitzgerald," said Tom Farnquist, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which owns the museum.
A message seeking comment from Edwards was not returned Monday.
Farnquist believed it could be the real deal but made no promises when Joe Rasch and his family brought the life preserver to the museum in Whitefish Point in early August. It matches in size and configuration to the ring on display, but has some key differences: The one Rasch found has no "S.S." before "Edmund Fitzgerald" and reads "Duluth" on the back.
Farnquist said the differences were puzzling but at least the latter came with a plausible explanation: The Milwaukee-based ship spent its winters in Duluth, Minn.
Rasch, an apple farmer from Conklin, near Grand Rapids, said he plans to hang it in his shed, but wouldn't be opposed to returning it if Edwards' family wants it back. He added he's disappointed by the news but accepts it.
"You can't change the facts," he said Monday. "What appears isn't always so."
That also could sum up many of the stories that swirl around the ship that sank in a vicious storm Nov. 10, 1975, killing 29 men, Farnquist said.
"It's still a mystery why the Edmund Fitzgerald went down," he said.
Posted by victoria at 01:10 PM
August 20, 2007
Titanic Explorer to Search for Shipwrecks in the Black Sea
By Dave Mosher, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 17 August 2007 12:12 pm ET
The explorer who discovered the Titanic shipwreck now plans a robotic expedition to look for sunken ships on the floor of the Black Sea as well as clues to its geologic history.
Robert Ballard, a University of Rhode Island oceanographer whose team located the long-lost RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1985, will lead the new effort that will rely on an autonomous underwater vehicle called DOERRI, short for Delaware Oceanographic and Environmental Research Remote Instrument. The vehicle will dive into the depths of the Black Sea as well as the Aegean Sea. In ancient times, both waterways were major trade routes.
"This is a truly exciting expedition that will shed light on important geological features in the Mediterranean while also uncovering vital information about ancient trade routes and the maritime history of the Black Sea," Ballard said.
Expedition member Art Trembanis, a marine scientist at the University of Delaware, said the team will use DOERRI to return to a Byzantine-era shipwreck in the Black Sea that Ballard and his team located last year and to search for other wrecks. "We hope DOERRI ... will allow us to discover very ancient shipwrecks, previously unknown, on the Black Sea floor," Trembanis said. "Along the way, DOERRI will also give us new insights into the dynamics ... that help to shape and mold the seafloor."
When the research expedition arrives on site, the team will deploy the 240-pound (109-kilogram) DOERRI submersible. The craft then will map the Black Sea's floor about 656 feet (200 meters) below the surface with sonar. DOERRI also will measure the local temperature, salt content and oxygen levels of the sea.
Scientists expect extremely well-preserved finds when the craft locates wreckage, thanks to large oxygen "dead zones" where few bacteria thrive.
"At depths beyond 150 meters, the Black Sea is not unlike a giant natural bell jar from which life-supporting oxygen has been entirely removed," Trembanis said.
Immersion Presents and on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are funding the expedition.
Posted by victoria at 03:59 PM
August 14, 2007
Shipwrecks of the Gulf of Finland
Beneath the waves
The findings of underwater archeologists reveal a wealth of sunken treasure among the shipwrecks of the Gulf of Finland.
By Ali Nassor For The St. Petersburg Times
It is estimated that there are more than 10,000 shipwrecks in the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga.
St. Petersburg archeologists have discovered last month what they say is Russia’s oldest shipwreck in the Gulf of Finland.
But the state of the wreck of the 40-meter tall ship, similar to the Vasa, the famous giant mid-16th century battleship that sank in Stockholm harbor, has puzzled the researchers, preventing them from giving an accurate account of the discovery three weeks following the endeavor.
“The spoiled wreckage is randomly scattered all over a 300 square-meter area of the seabed in differing depths of between 17 and 35 meters,” said Andrei Lukoshkov, who led a twelve-man team of scholars and divers in a two-week archeological odyssey in the Gulf of Finland as part of a long-term, Gazprom-sponsored program to explore Russia’s seas and fresh waters.
“It’s too early to give an accurate account, pending study of the wreck’s remnants which are currently being examined in our laboratories,” Lukoshov told journalists last week.
However, he said preliminary examinations have indicated that the ship was more than 30 years older than the Vasa and belonged to the same Swedish fleet. It is believed to have sunk between 1580 and 1610 during the reign of Tsar Boris Gudunov (Boris I) who ruled over ancient Russia while the Swedes had conquered the north western part of the territory.
The latest discovery has put into question last year’s findings by the same team that established that the 25-meter tall Russian ship, the Novgorod, which sank in the River Volkhov between 1550 and 1560, is the oldest known wreck in Russian waterways. But unlike the Swedish ship, the Russian vessel was found “almost intact enough to serve as an underwater museum,” Lukoshkov said.
“The location of the latest discovery reminds us of a dump for sunken ships,” said Ilya Kochorov, a film producer with the team who noted that seven shipwrecks belonging to various historical epochs had been earlier located in a 1.5 square-kilometer section of the Gulf of Finland. The latest mission involved the study of three shipwrecks among the seven.
They include the Swedish frigate the Archangel Raphael, which sank in 1724, the Swedish yacht Aurora, which was wrecked in 1790 and a Finno-Swedish battleship that sank in the same year.
Another vessel that was found lying 37 meters under the Gulf of Finland is a two-mast cargo ship whose consignments were traced to the mid-19th century. Historical records indicate the sinking of a British ship, named the Fruit, in that area in October 1863.
About 300 meters away, at a depth of 42 meters, is a better preserved ship the construction of which is typical of the late-17th century Dutch Smack- and Hooker-class merchant ships. It was probably one among a Dutch fleet of ten ships that sank in a fierce storm on September 9, 1717, according to archeological experts. An “invaluable consignment” was found in the ship, they say.
Meanwhile, the explorers are working out the initial stages toward establishing a permanent museum in St. Petersburg to display findings from the program, which began in 2004. A rotating team of a dozen men has explored hundreds of underwater objects including crashed aircraft, tanks, ammunition, torpedoes, mines, battleships and oil tankers and even remnants of ancient monuments and cemeteries. But the initial phase of the planned museum will be limited to the provision of “virtual services,” pending further developments, Kochorov said.
Rough estimates suggest that there are more than 10,000 ships lying on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland and in Lake Ladoga, say the explorers, who have announced a mission to Lake Ladoga in 2008.
Posted by victoria at 10:25 AM
August 08, 2007
Legal clash escalates between Fla. treasure hunters and Spain
PHIL DAVIS Associated Press Writer
Aug 7, 10:15 AM EDT
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Florida deep-sea explorers have gone on the offensive in a legal dispute with the Spanish government over a treasure-laden shipwreck, asking a federal judge to protect the secret locations of possible wreck sites and demanding damages for the nation's "appalling" interference with its operations.
Odyssey Marine Exploration wants protective orders to maintain the confidentiality of three shipwreck sites it has located and compensation for Spain's "illegal" seizure and interference with its ships working out of the British port of Gibraltar, according to documents filed late Monday in federal court in Tampa.
The continued secrecy surrounding the recovery of roughly $500 million in silver coins from an undisclosed shipwreck code-named "Black Swan" has contributed to increasing tension between the Tampa company and Spain, which believes it has a claim on the treasure.
James A. Goold, an attorney who filed a claim in U.S. federal court on behalf of Spain, said Tuesday he was still reviewing the latest court filings, but that it appears Odyssey "wants to talk about anything but" the nation's demand for more details about the treasure find.
Odyssey's 240-foot Ocean Alert was seized by Spanish authorities after it left Gibraltar July 12. The vessel was eventually released, but Odyssey claims in its complaint that Spanish authorities illegally copied privileged information from a lawyer's laptop computer and forced Ocean Alert's crew to "sit in the scalding sun for approximately seven hours without food or water or use of the restroom." The company said another ship, Ocean Explorer, "remains blockaded in Gibraltar" because of Spain's threat to seize it, court records show.
Spanish government officials did not immediately respond to phone calls.
Odyssey said in a statement Tuesday it is prepared to release details about the three shipwreck sites to a federal judge to decide who, if anyone, should see the information.
"We continue to hope that Spain will recognize that we are acting in good faith and that we remain ready to cooperate with the Spanish government on any sites that we discover that may involve Spanish heritage," Odyssey co-founder Gregg Stemm said in a statement.
At the heart of the dispute is Spain's claim that it has a right to share in the "Black Swan" treasure if it was recovered in territorial waters or is connected to the nation's heritage in any way.
Citing security and other concerns, Odyssey will not disclose the location of the shipwreck. The company says it is not yet sure of the identity of the sunken ship, which yielded 17 tons of coins that were flown to the United States in May.
Spain has filed a claim in federal court in Tampa and has tried to force the company to disclose more details.
Even if another country or party is able to prove a claim to the shipwreck and its cargo, Odyssey said it would apply for a salvage award in U.S. federal court, which has jurisdiction over admiralty cases. In similar cases, salvage companies are usually awarded a large percentage of the recovery.
Some experts think Odyssey found the wreck of the Merchant Royal, a British ship loaded with tons of Spanish coins that sank off the southwestern tip of England in 1641. The company received exclusive salvage rights to a wreck site in the area where the Merchant Royal is believed to have gone down.
But Spanish officials say circumstantial evidence indicates otherwise. In March, before the "Black Swan" story broke, Spanish officials gave Odyssey permission to resume its search for the wreck of a British vessel, the HMS Sussex, in the western Mediterranean Sea.
Despite Odyssey's emphatic statements to the contrary, some in Spain believe the "Black Swan" treasure came from the Sussex, which was leading a British fleet into the Mediterranean for a war against France in 1694 when it sank in a storm off Gibraltar.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Posted by victoria at 08:23 AM
August 07, 2007
Salvaging the Titanic
Monday, August 6, 2007
Emory law professor helps local company become sole owner of items taken from the wreck site
By Andy Peters, Staff Reporter
WITH SPECIAL THANKS to Emory University law professor David J. Bederman, an Atlanta company can now make, with a high degree of certainty, this claim: Artifacts recovered from the Titanic wreck site are theirs, all theirs.
Last month, the company, Premier Exhibitions Inc., finalized an agreement with a British insurer to acquire ownership of Titanic artifacts in Premier’s possession. While Premier had recovered the artifacts in seven separate expeditions to the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic, it had done so only under the legal status of salvor-in-possession. That left some legal question as to whether Premier actually owned the artifacts its stores and presents in traveling exhibits.
Not anymore, Bederman said.
“Normally, as salvor-in-possession, you’re rescuing someone else’s property,” Bederman said. “We’ll be recovering our own property now” and also own the artifacts already recovered.
Bederman is an authority in the arcane area of maritime law, also known as Admiralty law, or Law of the Sea. Bederman said he’s been hired as a legal adviser by most major players in the world of shipwreck salvaging, including Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. and Treasure Salvors, the company founded by legendary shipwreck hunter Mel Fisher.
He’s given advice to these companies on their legal rights on exploring and recovering objects from shipwrecks and their legal rights to ownership of these artifacts. In addition to the Titanic wreck, Bederman has offered legal counsel on the exploration of the RMS Republic and the Brother Jonathan sites, as well as dozens of others.
Attorneys with knowledge of maritime law are few. The number of lawyers who specialize in the legal questions surrounding shipwrecks is even smaller, said Edwin D. Robb Jr., a partner with Bouhan, Williams & Levy in Savannah.
“I’ve been at this for more than 37 years, and I think I’ve only had one salvage case,” said Robb, a member of the Maritime Law Association of the United States.
Premier Exhibitions hired Bederman for that knowledge in the company’s pursuit of stronger legal claims to ownership of the artifacts it has recovered from Titanic—and which it has exhibited around the world, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
Also known for its “Bodies” exhibits of plasticized corpses, Premier has toured its Titanic collection in two separate exhibits, “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” and “Titanic Science,” around the world. The collection includes more than 6,000 pieces, ranging from coins to china, jewelry to diaries, cufflinks to paper money.
“Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” ended its stop at the Atlanta Civic Center in May. It’s now on display in Denver, Toronto and other cities.
All of the artifacts from the touring exhibits are classified as personal possessions, meaning they belonged to the passengers on board the doomed ship. Virtually all of Titanic’s passengers, from all classes, bought insurance policies on their property before the ship departed from England and France.
The policies were acquired from one insurance company—the Liverpool & London Steamship Protection & Indemnity Association Ltd. After the Titanic crashed into an iceberg and sank in April 1912—killing more than 1,500 people—victims’ families made claims on their policies. Liverpool & London paid those claims and through those payments, became owner of the personal property recovered from the wreck site, as well as remaining personal belongings ensconced in the Titanic’s ocean grave.
When the original Titanic salvage case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in 1993, Liverpool & London was the only claimant that showed up at the courthouse. The court granted ownership of the personal possessions to Liverpool & London.
A predecessor company of Premier Exhibitions, in separate legal proceedings in 1994, was named salvor-in-possession of the Titanic wreckage by U.S. District Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. Marex Titanic Inc. v. Titanic, No. 92-cv-00618 (Eastern District of Va., filed Aug. 7, 1992). That gave the company the exclusive right to recover artifacts from the ship.
Leveraging its legal status as salvor-in-possession, Premier later paid an undisclosed settlement amount to Liverpool & London, which resulted in the dismissal of Liverpool & London as a claimant to the Titanic wreckage.
Last month’s agreement between Premier and Liverpool & London simply firmed up that settlement, Bederman said.
“We did it out of an abundance of caution,” Bederman said. “We were interested in clarifying to everyone in the world our status—which is that we have title to the artifacts.”
Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed, but Premier paid Liverpool & London a “sizable exchange” of money, Bederman said.
Armed with its salvor-in-possession rights, as well as the subrogation rights to the personal belongings still on the ship, Premier is planning its eighth expedition to the Titanic wreckage to recover more property, as well as to photograph the wreckage site and to film its work recovering the property for the purpose of making documentary films.
Time is running out on Premier’s opportunity to visit the Titanic wreckage, Bederman said. Located about two-and-a-half miles below the ocean’s surface, about 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland, the Titanic is rapidly disintegrating. Some metallurgists have estimated the site has between 10 years and 50 years before the ship’s two sections collapse. (Titanic broke in half when it sank.)
Artifacts, even those made of fragile materials like paper or wood, can be preserved, however, despite having been submerged for more than 90 years in the salty water. Premier has contracts with two French laboratories for restoring the artifacts to museum-quality appearance.
The Titanic wreckage was discovered in 1985 by Robert Ballard, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Jean-Louis Michel, of the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea. Ballard and Michel made no legal claim to the wreck site.
Hastening the decline of the wreck site is an onslaught of “adventure tourism” groups that land submersible vehicles on the shipwreck. Premier believes those types of visits are illegal and violate the company’s status as salvor-in-possession.
Although Premier can’t have a boat hovering on the ocean’s surface above the Titanic wreck site at all times, there are other ways the company can monitor illegal visits, Bederman said. There are only a small number of submersible vehicles in the world that can plunge to the depths where Titanic rests.
Plus, Bederman said, there is a window of only four months when weather permits a safe trip to the area.
“These are some pretty rough seas,” Bederman said, who has not been to the site. A trip to the site takes about one month. Plunging down to the Titanic in a tiny submersible alone takes eight hours, then another eight hours to return to the surface, he said. Titanic is probably the deepest shipwreck that has ever been explored and had artifacts recovered, he said.
At some point, Premier will be granted a salvage award by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. While many shipwreck-salvaging companies receive a salvage award after each exploration, Premier has chosen to wait to receive the award until after it has completed its final expedition, Bederman said.
The amount of the salvage award has not yet been determined.
Bederman’s occasional gigs as maritime counsel to shipwreck-exploration companies don’t supplant his regular day job at the Emory law school. He said his assignments for these companies enrich the classroom experience for his students, he said.
“International admiralty law can appear to be very abstract,” Bederman said. “But this helps students learn of real life stories, rather than just reading them in a book.”
Andy Peters can be reached at apeters@alm.com
Posted by victoria at 10:41 AM
August 01, 2007
Deep sea expedition goes into uncharted waters
ALISON AULD
Canadian Press
July 29, 2007 at 5:17 PM EDT
HALIFAX — Scientists got a glimpse of a mysterious corner of the undersea world off Canada's East Coast, discovering new species and peering for the first time into little-known ecosystems that are home to rare corals and fish.
A team of about 20 Canadian researchers probed the waters off Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in a bid to find out what's far beneath the water's surface and better understand how the ecosystem works.
The group, which was to release its findings Monday, used a remotely operated submersible to capture images of four areas along the continental slope off Nova Scotia. They were able to instantly beam back pictures of bright white and pink corals, a new variety of starfish and a silvery octopus named Dumbo, among other rare finds.
“It was amazing,” Ellen Kenchington, a research scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, said in an interview.
“You're looking at something down there, there's no light, it's so deep and you know no human eyes have ever seen these things before, and it's almost like you feel like you're the first man on the moon.”
The submersible hovered over the craggy bottom of a protected area near Sable Island known as the Gully, the largest submarine canyon in eastern North America.
Previous studies have been done on the area but provided information on life forms down to only 500 metres, far less than the 2.5 kilometres that Dr. Kenchington and her team reached with the underwater vehicle.
One of the most important discoveries was a type of xenophyophore, a single-cell animal the size of a grapefruit that had previously been found only in the deepest part of mid-Atlantic.
“It's a really unusual thing to find and is a new record for the area and, as far as I know, for Canada,” she said as she returned from the three-week expedition aboard the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Hudson.
The scientists, from the federal Fisheries Department and various universities, collected more than 3,000 digital images, hundreds of hours of video and dozens of live samples.
Much of it will be used to create a record of what's in the area, which can be used to measure the effects of climate change, fishing or oil and gas activity.
“It's really important that we document where they live, how much damage is done and what kinds of recovery times are involved,” she said.
They know, for example, that northern bottlenose whales congregate there, but it's not clear what they feed on.
“So what I'm looking at is not just what species are there, but how do they function, what is their role in the ecosystem,” she said.
“We want to see how they link together so we can anticipate the kinds of effects changes in water temperature would affect the whole system.”
The researchers also discovered a colony of lophelia, a stony white coral that forms large reef frameworks providing a home for many other animals. The coral had been sighted in other areas off Cape Breton, but hadn't been seen before in the Gully.
Dr. Kenchington said the team also recorded another new species of bubblegum coral, a spindly pink species that is the largest sea-floor invertebrate in the world.
The survey, which cost the department about $500,000, also provided images of a rugged landscape of 200-metre cliffs that shot up from the ocean floor at 90-degree angles, creating little pyramids for large fish to weave around.
In areas around the Grand Banks, they saw extensive evidence of the effects of bottom trawling. The floor was swept clean and large rocks were overturned by the big nets that drag across the bottom scooping up fish and virtually everything else in their path.
Dr. Kenchington said that will be part of the information they take to fisheries managers to determine what marine areas should be closed off and protected.
Posted by victoria at 10:26 AM
