Roman statue discovered in Ashkelon after storm damage

Haaretz.com: Roman statue discovered in Ashkelon after storm damage
The massive storm that swept through Israel over the weekend caused a great deal of damage to archaeological sites all along the Mediterranean coast, but also uncovered a an impressive statue of a woman between 1650 and 1800 years old in Ashkelon.

The statue, a 1.2-meter high figure of a woman with her head missing, has been dated to Roman times and is thought to have stood erect in a bath house.

The statue was discovered when a cliff crumbled into the water at a sea-side archaeological dig in Ashkelon. Among the chunks of earth that broke off from the cliff were parts of a large building that apparently were once a part of a Roman bath house.

Sections of a colorful mosaic floor were also ruined. Many shards were washed away by the water.

Archaeologist Dr. Yigal Israel of the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Ashkelon region explained, "It is a lovely white statue that is missing its head and part of a hand. It was apparently imported from Italy, Greece or Asia Minor, and may have represented the goddess Aphrodite."

"The woman depicted in the statue is wearing a toga and leaning on a square stone column," Israel continued. "Her clothing was chiseled meticulously – her toes are delicate, we see her sandals and her small emphasized bosom. Simply a stunningly beautiful statue."

The statue had fallen from a relatively high precipice measuring approximately ten meters high, but was surprisingly unharmed. Dr. Israel estimated that the statue's head and hand were missing even during Roman times.

"We rescued the statue from the sea waves lapping at it," Dr. Israel said. "It was spotted by a passerby, and with the generous help of Ashkelon city council, we raised it with a crane. We are transferring it to government warehouses in Beit Shemesh."

Israel antiquities chief: Caeserea storm damage a 'national disaster'

Haaretz.com: Israel antiquities chief: Caeserea storm damage a 'national disaster'
Authorities are working to clean up Caeserea National Park, which was hit hard during last weekend's strong winter storm.
Israel Antiquities Authority head Shuka Dorfman toured the Caesarea National Park on Wednesday, and called the damage caused to the park during last weekend's strong winter storm a "national disaster."

"The damage is tremendous and dramatic, and with the collapse of the wave breaker, the antique treasures in the Caesarea National Park are exposed to harm from the ocean," he said.

Dorfman called the situation a "national disaster" and added that the storm had damaged beaches all over Israel - from Ashkelon in the south to Acre in the north.

"If the situation isn't remedied quickly with wide preservation efforts, the cliff's erosion will continue until its collapse and with it many of Israel's antique cultural assets," he said.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority announced that the Caesarea National Park would be reopened to visitors once cleanup efforts were complete.

In addition to the damage the massive storm caused to Israel's beaches, it also uncovered a Roman-era statue in Ashkelon.

The statue, a 1.2-meter high figure of a woman with her head missing, is between 1650 and 1800 years old and is thought to have stood erect in a bath house.

Vintage weapons cache discovered in Caesarea following storm damage

Haarettz.com: Vintage weapons cache discovered in Caesarea following storm damage
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/vintage-weapons-cache-discovered-in-caesarea-following-storm-damage-1.333094
A cache of weapons from the time of the British Mandate was discovered during the weekend in Caesarea's underwater archaeological park, two weeks after a strong winter storm caused great damage to the site.

Two diving instructors discovered a cache containing about 20 hand-grenades and weapons which are apparently from the time of the British Mandate. The Israeli Navy was notified and will dispose of the weapons found in the cache.

According to the divers, other artifacts found included anchors from different periods, chiseled marble pillars and pottery shards.

The divers said that they found an area in Caesarea's ancient underwater harbor that had previously been covered by sand. "We knew things would be different after the storm, but the site was changed so much that we could hardly recognize it," one of the divers told Haaretz.

Israel Antiquities Authority said that the the Marine Archaeology Unit will examine the site on Monday.

Maritime Museum offers history presentations in January

Coast Weekend: Maritime Museum offers history presentations in January
Astoria, Oregon -- Do you have a passionate interest in maritime history? Are you looking for ways to share your enthusiasm about the subject with others? Take an eight-week class titled "Past to Present: Columbia River History," offered this winter at the Columbia River Maritime Museum, to learn more about the region. The Museum is recruiting new volunteers who are interested in sharing the rich maritime history of the area with visitors. These classes are designed specifically with new volunteers in mind, but they also invite community members to attend.

The course is scheduled to meet from 9:45 a.m. to noon Tuesdays in the Kern Room beginning Tuesday, Jan. 11. Utilizing the collections and exhibits of the Museum, the course will cover fascinating maritime history of the Pacific Northwest. Local knowledge experts will speak on a variety of topics regarding the rich maritime history of this region. Sir Francis Drake, archaeology, the Port of Astoria and Columbia River Pilots are just a few of the many topics that will be explored.

People interested in learning how to lead tours through the Museum will have the opportunity to sign up for additional training. New volunteers will become actively involved in each session, gaining knowledge in ways people learn, making information relevant to visitors, reading artifacts and creating themes. Trainees will continue their education through enrichment classes, field trips and research projects.

Enrolling in "Past to Present" is an excellent way for someone to become more familiar with the Museum as a historical resource and is recommended for anyone interested in volunteering at the Museum. These sessions are free of charge but registration is required. People interested in attending the classes should register with Jackie Welborn, Volunteer Coordinator, at (503) 325-2323 no later than Jan. 7.

The Columbia River Maritime Museum is located at 1792 Marine Drive. For more information, log on to www.crmm.org

Great plot for a book on the Civil War...

What if the message were something else entirely...and the initial decoder, a well-respected individual in the field, lies about it sohe can find treasure or something...the second decoder, an amateur, must stop the first one from making off with the treasure.

Civil War message opened, decoded: No help coming
by
STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press Steve Szkotak, Associated Press – Sat Dec 25, 11:13 am ET

RICHMOND, Va. – A glass vial stopped with a cork during the Civil War has been opened, revealing a coded message to the desperate Confederate commander in Vicksburg on the day the Mississippi city fell to Union forces 147 years ago.

The dispatch offered no hope to doomed Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton: Reinforcements are not on the way.

The encrypted, 6-line message was dated July 4, 1863, the date of Pemberton's surrender to Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant, ending the Siege of Vicksburg in what historians say was a turning point midway into the Civil War.

The message is from a Confederate commander on the west side of the Mississippi River across from Pemberton.

"He's saying, 'I can't help you. I have no troops, I have no supplies, I have no way to get over there,' " Museum of the Confederacy collections manager Catherine M. Wright said of the author of the dispiriting message. "It was just another punctuation mark to just how desperate and dire everything was."

The bottle, less than 2 inches in length, had sat undisturbed at the museum since 1896. It was a gift from Capt. William A. Smith, of King George County, who served during the Vicksburg siege.

It was Wright who decided to investigate the contents of the strange little bottle containing a tightly wrapped note, a .38-caliber bullet and a white thread.

"Just sort of a curiosity thing," said Wright. "This notion of, do we have any idea what his message says?"

The answer was no.

Wright asked a local art conservator, Scott Nolley, to examine the clear vial before she attempted to open it. He looked at the bottle under an electron microscope and discovered that salt had bonded the cork tightly to the bottle's mouth. He put the bottle on a hotplate to expand the glass, used a scalpel to loosen the cork, then gently plucked it out with tweezers.

The sewing thread was looped around the 6 1/2-by-2 1/2-inch paper, which was folded to fit into the bottle. The rolled message was removed and taken to a paper conservator, who successfully unfurled the message.

But the coded message, which appears to be a random collection of letters, did not reveal itself immediately.

Eager to learn the meaning of the code, Wright took the message home for the weekend to decipher. She had no success.

A retired CIA code breaker, David Gaddy, was contacted, and he cracked the code in several weeks.

A Navy cryptologist independently confirmed Gaddy's interpretation. Cmdr. John B. Hunter, an information warfare officer, said he deciphered the code over two weeks while on deployment aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. A computer could have unscrambled the words in a fraction of the time.

"To me, it was not that difficult," he said. "I had fun with this and it took me longer than I should have."

The code is called the "Vigenere cipher," a centuries-old encryption in which letters of the alphabet are shifted a set number of places so an "a" would become a "d" — essentially, creating words with different letter combinations.

The code was widely used by Southern forces during the Civil War, according to Civil War Times Illustrated.

The source of the message was likely Maj. Gen. John G. Walker, of the Texas Division, who had under his command William Smith, the donor of the bottle.

The full text of the message to Pemberton reads:

"Gen'l Pemberton:

You can expect no help from this side of the river. Let Gen'l Johnston know, if possible, when you can attack the same point on the enemy's lines. Inform me also and I will endeavor to make a diversion. I have sent some caps (explosive devices). I subjoin a despatch from General Johnston."

The last line, Wright said, seems to suggest a separate delivery to Pemberton would be the code to break the message.

"The date of this message clearly indicates that this person has no idea that the city is about to be surrendered," she said.

The Johnston mention in the dispatch is Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, whose 32,000 troops were encamped south of Vicksburg and prevented from assisting Pemberton by Grant's 35,000 Union troops. Pemberton had held out hope that Johnston would eventually come to his aid.

The message was dispatched during an especially terrible time in Vicksburg. Grant was unsuccessful in defeating Pemberton's troops on two occasions, so the Union commander instead decided to encircle the city and block the flow of supplies or support.

Many in the city resorted to eating cats, dogs and leather. Soup was made from wallpaper paste.

After a six-week siege, Pemberton relented. Vicksburg, so scarred by the experience, refused to celebrate July 4 for the next 80 years.

So what about the bullet in the bottom of the bottle?

Wright suspects the messenger was instructed to toss the bottle into the river if Union troops intercepted his passage. The weight of the bullet would have carried the corked bottle to the bottom, she said.

For Pemberton, the bottle is symbolic of his lost cause: the bad news never made it to him.

The Confederate messenger probably arrived to the river's edge and saw a U.S. flag flying over the city.

"He figured out what was going on and said, 'Well, this is pointless,' and turned back," Wright said.

Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd

Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd, by Barry Clifford with Paul Perry
William Morrow 2003
276 pages, photos, no index
Library: 910.9 CLI

Description
When history's most famous pirate, Captain Kidd, was hanged in 1701, he left behind a trail of treasure and treachery that stretched halfway around the world. For undersea explorer Barry Clifford, the biggest prize of all would be to find the Adventure Galley, Kidd's legendary pirate ship. In the world of pirate archeology, it was the Holy Grail.

With the help of the Discovery Channel, Clifford fields an expedition that includes some of America's top experts in shipwreck recovery. Their goal is to find, identify, and possibly excavate the remains of history's most famous pirate ship. The search takes them to the exotic nation of Madagascar and a tiny island off its rocky coast known to historians as the model for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

There, amid pirate graveyards, broken porcelain intended for a European royal family, and native rituals that include blood sacrifice, Clifford and his crew find far more than they bargained for. The island's murky harbor is is filled with sunken pirate ships, making it difficult to single out the Adventure Galley, and the shores are teeming with people who want the expedition stopped. The team races to find the ship before the dark forces expel them from the island--forcces motivated by the same resentment and greed that caused Kidd's dowbnfall.

Return to Treasure Island and the Searcg for Captain Kidd's Treasure weaves ogether two exciting stories: the saga of Captain William Kidd, one of nistories most baffling and mysterious figures, and Barry Clifford's obsessive quest to find perhaps the most notorious pirate ship of all time. The result is a tale of treasure and adventure that ends in death--both Kidd's and, three hundred years later, that of a rival archaeologist who attempts to stop Clifford's expedition.

Table of Contents
Part 1: The First Expedition
1. Being There
2. Theft By Commission
3. A Jumbled Graveyard
4. Privateer, Inc.
5. Treasures to Explore
6. The Rogue's Rogue
7. A Likely Suspect
8. Murder and Piracy
9. The First Bank of Kidd
10. Now I Am One
11. Zebu-Que
12. Brethren of the Sea

Part 2: The Second Expedition
13. Return to TReasure Island
14. "Wickedness So Great"
15. The Tech TEam
16. England's Most Wanted
17. The Tunnels of Pirate IOsland
18. False REdemption
19. Pirate Gold
20. "Never a Greater Liar"
21. The Fiery Dragon
22. As Good as Hanged

Part 3: The Third Expedition
23. Friday the 13th
24. "Moved and Seduced"
25. Battle of the Full Moon
26. "Not Designedly Done"
27. A Son of a Pirate
28. The Greatest and Worst of All
29. The TRick-or-Treat Show
30. Twice to the Gallows
31. "No One Should Die Alone"
32. The Unrequited Legacy
33. The Brotherhood of Pirates
Acknowledgements

Photos
"Air Mad" flying into Ile Sainte-Marie
Orchidees Bungalows
Pirate and native girl on Ile Saint-Marie
Causeway crossing Prirate Bay/Baie des Forbans
Archaeologist John de Bry and Technician Charlie Burnham
Island guide Andre Mabily and John de Bry
Satellite image of Ile Saint-Marie
17th century map of Pirate Bay, with Ilot Madame and Pirate Island
Barry Clifford with dive mask
woodcut, Captain Kidd shooting William Moore
Brandon and Barry Clifford
John de Bry, Barry Clifford and Ben Parry
Unidentified natives and a zebu
Barry Clifford drinking betsa betsa, and unidentified islanders
French guide Gilles Gautier
Todd Murphy and Jenny Clifford
Jenny's sketch of wreck site
Alan Witten and GEM
Alan Witten's sketch of tunnels on Pirate's Island
Doug Miller of Witten TEchnologies, John DeBry, and unidentified individuals
Brandon Clifford
Howard Pyle's illustration of pirate's burying treasure on Grdiner Island
Barry Clifford and John de Bry
Gregory the local security guard
Double eagle motif on poreclain from Fiery Dragon
Annick Ratsiraka and unidentified man
John de Bry
Wes Spiegel with sonar
Stephanie de Bry
Dick Swete
Margot Nicol-Hathaway
French guides Fabrice andDigiovanni and Gilles Gautier
Captain Kidd on his gibbet
Bob Paine, Catherine Harker, Chris Macort
Jeff Denholm
Various artifacts from the Adventure galley site
Barry Clifford sand two unidentified men (one is De Bry)

Hardcore fishing team makes quite a discovery

Hardcore fishing team makes quite a discovery
Bradenton, Florida-- Have you ever been curious as to what lies below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico?

When moving from spot to spot, how many secrets could possibly be passed below, resting at the bottom of the Gulf floor?

I wonder this every time I run west from Bean Point or Longboat Pass, with the GPS set on one of my go-to spots I’ve fished countless times. I know what those spots hold -- but there is a seemingly infinite amount of secrets that have yet to be discovered.


CLICK FOR MORE PHOTOS
Now, most of the time I find myself fishing inside 30 miles. There are few secrets, and nearly every wreck, reef and large piece of structure will have boats on it when the weather allows. Finding a new fishing spot that no one knows about seems harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

So what happens when you go, say, 120 miles or more into the Gulf of Mexico, where fishing boats rarely venture. For anglers Justin Hey, Danny Pool, Brian Beukema and Jay Travis, who comprise the hardcore fishing team Seaveeche, a needle in a haystack was found resting in 412 feet of water -- but the anglers were unaware of the extent of their discovery.

“We found a spot while trolling a few years ago,” Hey said. “We had two numbers in the general area that we fished. On one trip we were trolling when our depth finder alarmed us of something very large on the bottom. We knew it was a wreck of some type. We had fished it three or four times, catching amberjack to 90 pounds, Warsaw and gag grouper, and large red snapper.”

Keeping such a discovery a secret is hard to do, especially with undiscovered shipwrecks still haunting the Gulf of Mexico. So, when curiosity built within the anglers about the possibilities of their discovery, they made contact with Michael C. Barnette, an accomplished diver, author and photographer. Barnette has helped in identifying more than 30 unknown shipwrecks in the past 20 years.

“I was contacted by these hardcore anglers, curious about deepwater shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico off Southwest Florida,” Barnette said. “Brian gave me a rough position of their site to see if I had any shipwreck coordinates in the area in the off-chance the site might already be identified. ... Eventually, it was clear to me that their site was different and undocumented.”

With their curiosity climaxing, the anglers planned a trip with Barnette, dive partner Joe Citelli and support diver Michael Muscato to make the extreme plunge 400 feet down into the Gulf of Mexico. With every safety precaution taken, they left on a Friday night in September to calm seas. The crew arrived after running all night to see the mystery below light up their Furuno 585 depth finder on Saturday morning.

The divers made their way along the anchor line, passing huge schools of amberjack that the anglers knew would be present.

At 400 feet, there was no room for error. The divers had about 20 minutes of bottom time to take it all in, while also trying to comprehend what they had discovered. Equipped with a scooter and camera, Barnette worked his way around the wreck, documenting as much as he could. After a lengthy decompression, the divers surfaced and the journey was reset back for home.

“We discussed the wreck but ultimately could not answer the one inevitable question: What was the identity of the shipwreck?” Barnette recalled. “That would have to wait until I could get home to compare my notes and photographs from the dive with information archived in my shipwreck files.”

The discovery was compared with numerous reports, before Barnette pieced it all together.

“That mystery wreck is the 346-foot, 42-foot wide Whaleback steamer The City of Everette, built in 1894. This wreck is loaded with significant historical value. Originally built in Everett, Wash., by Pacific Steel, this was the first and last vessel built by them, as well as the only West Coast Whaleback vessel ever built.

“It was the first U.S. Steamship to pass through the Suez Canal, as well as the first to circumnavigate the globe. The ship was sunk during a storm on Oct. 12, 1923, while on a trip from Cuba to New Orleans. All 26 crewmen were lost after the radio operator relayed an S.O.S. and report the ship was going down stern first.”

So, the mystery has been solved for the curious anglers and divers, but they aren’t quite done with it yet.

“We are going to go back and see if we can recover any additional items on the wreck. On the first visit many pieces of antique china and portholes could be seen laying in the sand,” Hey said.

And in case you’re wondering, its location is still a secret known only to these select few.

If you’re interested in reading more in depth about Barnette’s dive on The City of Everette and the history of the wreck, check out the most recent Wreck Diving Magazine, available on most major newsstands with the cover story titled “A Whale of a Tale.”

Capt. Jon Chapman, who writes about Outdoors for the Herald, can be reached through his website at www.captainchappy.com.

20 Dec 2010: Scientists drill beneath Dead Sea in search of priceless data

Scientists drill beneath Dead Sea in search of priceless data
Rock samples underwater for eons are likely to be better preserved, researchers say. Expectations are high that the lowest place on Earth can answer questions on climate change and other key matters.

Reporting from Dead Sea — If you thought you couldn't get any lower than the Dead Sea, think again. You can go under it.

Scientists here are drilling 1,640 feet beneath the bottom of the Dead Sea, to a depth of more than 2,600 feet below sea level.

Rock samples that have been underwater for millions of years are likely to be better preserved, they say, than samples taken from under an exposed surface, which can be damaged by aridity and erosion.

As a result, the Dead Sea bore hole is expected to contain priceless information about the planet's past and to offer insight on its future. Expectations are high that the lowest place on Earth can answer questions on climate change, earthquake risk and untapped natural resources.

Since the region was mentioned in biblical contexts that include Sodom and Gomorrah, the ruins of which some scholars believe are submerged under the Dead Sea, the $2.5-million project might also crack an ancient mystery or two.

It's a massive undertaking. A unique rig was constructed and then towed more than 4 miles into the salty sea, where drilling will go on for 40 days and nights, perhaps appropriate for the region.

Forty scientists from six countries are taking part in the deep-drilling program, sponsored by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German-based International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, which conducts deep sea and lake drilling worldwide.

The samples are expected to provide a sort of tree-ring-style annual log, stretching over a half-million-year period, that will enable experts to say, for example, that "368,153 was a very rainy year," says Zvi Ben-Avraham, head of the Minerva Dead Sea Research Center at Tel-Aviv University.

At a nearby laboratory, the rings are clearly visible through Plexiglas tubes containing the first samples. A pair of layers, brown and white, represent a normal year with a wet season and a dry one. Variations bear witness to drought, flood and trauma. "These are the pages of our history," says Amotz Agnon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Dead Sea — a lake, really — is what has remained for the last few million years of a series of ancient bodies of water in the Jordan Valley, although its current version is only 11,000 years old. It fills one of Earth's deepest holes, located in a depression on the border between two tectonic plates forming part of the long Syro-African fault line. The plates are still moving. Small tremors are not infrequent, but Ben-Avraham says the region is relatively calm. The last big quake occurred in 1927.

Experts say the Dead Sea should provide invaluable historical data because the region served as a corridor through which humankind migrated from Africa.

Filled tubes are kept in a freezer outside an unassuming lab in Kibbutz Ein Gedi, in the hills above the water. Early batches have been passed through a scanner that buzzes and beeps while sending data to a computer.

More tubes lie on the floor of the lab, soon to be put through the machine. In one, a 4-inch stretch of mud reflects a century-long wet period around 400 years ago, in what is known as the Little Ice Age. Deeper samples should corroborate other documented events such as the volcanic eruption of Santorini about 3,500 years ago.

Data contained in these "archives," as Moti Stein of the Geological Survey of Israel puts it, are of global importance. The data of past relations between two climate belts, the Mediterranean and the desert, will help prepare climate models in times of global warming and desertification, Stein says.

The Dead Sea itself is as unusual as the drilling project.

Fresh water flowing into the sea is trapped; with no outflow, the only way out is up. High evaporation rates in this hot, arid zone result in extreme hyper-salinity.

The buoyancy draws tourists who come for a float. Others are attracted by the purported cosmetic and healing properties of the minerals, fabled since antiquity, or simply for the striking landscape.

But the Dead Sea is in trouble. Receding about 3 feet a year, the water, pessimists warn, could soon vanish. Stein says the lake has naturally recovered from catastrophic aridity before.

But humans are playing a role. "We're not helping," says Michael Lazar, the marine geophysicist from the University of Haifa who manages the project.

Tectonic plates aren't the only things grating against each other. There's regional politics too. The Dead Sea fills an area shared by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians. The site's nomination for the Seven Wonders of the World competition was almost undone by conflicting political claims.

Though no Jordanian or Palestinian scientists were to be seen during a recent media tour of the site, organizers said the multinational project includes both. A project official said Arab scientists were keeping a low profile because of political sensitivities.

"The Dead Sea doesn't belong to Israel, Jordan or the Palestinians," Lazar said. "They're in, and we're happy to have them."

14 Dec, 2010, ISNA: Iran builds unmanned radio-controlled submarine

And for a plot device
From the Iranian Student's News Agency: Iran builds unmanned radio-controlled submarine

TEHRAN (ISNA)-An Iranian scientist has built unmanned radio-controlled submarine with the ability of information exchange five meters under water.

“The submarine is in the initial phase of construction and it will be turned into a smart one in the second phase,” said the project director, Reza Mohammadi.

A camera can be installed in front of the submarine, transferring images. The camera can send pictures out from water if connected online.

The submarine can also go down under water by five meters with the speed of two meter per second.

The project manager continued that the submarine is armed with a “balance tank” which prevents additional movements underwater.

The submarine is equipped with a system warning low battery, he said adding, “the newly-built device was tested in sweet water, but it can move in any kind of water.”

14 Aug, 2010, China Daily: More than 30 shipwrecks off country's coast

China: More than 30 shipwrecks off country's coast
More than 30 archaeological shipwreck sites have been discovered off the country's shoreline, the national oceanic body has reportedly said.

The shipwrecks were discovered during a research project called 908, China News Service on Sunday quoted an unidentified official with the State Oceanic Administration's department of science and technology as saying.

The findings were released during a seminar on the project in Xiamen, Fujian province.

The research conducted by the administration between 2004 and 2009 covered 676,000 square kilometers of inland water and territorial sea.

Ancient merchants shipped vast stores of goods, including ceramics and bronze-wares, along the Maritime Silk Road.

"So there are plenty of underwater archaeological sites near southeast China's coast and around neighboring countries, such as Vietnam," Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage researcher Sun Jian said.

The Maritime Silk Road is a sea route dating back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220), linking Quanzhou in modern Fujian province to India and the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

"One ancient shipwreck usually abounds with tens of thousands of relics from the same dynasty," Sun said.

"The huge profits have enticed a growing number of fishermen to dive for these riches."

State Administration of Cultural Heritage official Chai Xiaoming said looting had undermined cultural relics' preservation.

Fujian police have launched crackdowns.

They uncovered 45 smuggling cases and seized 7,144 artifacts from shipwrecks in 2006.

They dealt with 25 cases and retrieved 2,700 relics in 2005, the Beijing-based China Culture Daily reported.

Sun, the researcher, said nearly all of the country's underwater archaeological sites are looted before excavation.

"In the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) period, we should protect underwater relics by strengthening the judicial system and developing stronger teams with cutting-edge technology," Tianjin Daily quoted Chai as saying on Saturday.

Currently, China does not have detailed laws protecting underwater cultural relics. The country has fewer than 100 certified archaeologists capable of underwater operations.

By Cheng Yingqi, China Daily

12 Dec 2010, The Record: Finding shipwrecks uplifting experience

Finding shipwrecks uplifting experience
KITCHENER — While the Titanic is probably the world’s most famous shipwreck, our own backyard — more specifically the Great Lakes — holds some incredible sunken stories.

Scuba diver and shipwreck enthusiast Jim Kennard was at The Museum on Saturday speaking as part of the Titanic speaker series.

Using side-scanning sonar — a sophisticated form of underwater radar — Kennard has shone a light into the cold darkness of the shipping graves at the bottom of the massive lakes.

One light shined a bit brighter than the rest when Kennard, and his partner Dan Scoville, discovered a wreck in May 2008 off the southern shore.

In 1780 the HMS Ontario, a 22-gun British warship carrying 122 people including about 30 Canadian crew members, sank in Lake Ontario during the American Revolution.

Kennard remembered how his “heart was in is throat” when a final pass of the torpedo-like sonar passed within six metres of the ship’s 228-year-old main masts.

It was the oldest shipwreck discovered on the Great Lakes, and a TV production company is now working with Kennard and Scoville to tell the story.

Kennard has found over 200 wrecks using side-scanning technology in and around the Great Lakes, but he said this discovery was different.

“We knew it was a war grave,” Kennard said.

He said there was “silent reverence” instead of high-fives when the ship was discovered.

Kennard shared a lot of high-fives over 35 years of shipwreck hunting, beginning in the early ’70s when he built the first non-commercial side-scanning sonar technology available within 800 kilometres of his home in Rochester, New York.

The sonar is towed by a boat or submarine, and shoots pulses perpendicular to the ground instead of down toward the ground like traditional sonar. This creates an image of the sea floor that is remarkably clear, but it’s not a perfect technology.

“I chased a school of fish around for two hours once,” Kennard said.

“The darned thing kept moving on me.”

A retired electrical engineer, Kennard still calls shipwreck hunting a hobby, but it’s a hobby that has seen his name printed in the New York Times connected with “Holy Grail” find like the HMS Ontario.

Kennard said part of the thrill of searching for the wrecks is “like being the first person on a mountain.”

“What can you do these days where you can say ‘you were the first — you’re the discoverer’?” Kennard asked.

“All the mountains have been climbed, but not all the ships have been found.”

Using video and artist renditions Kennard says it’s important to “write the final chapter” for the history of the ships and the lives of the people that were lost.

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibit continues until January 23rd at The Museum, featuring more than 150 artifacts raised from the famous 1912 wreck.

The Museum chief executive David Marskell said the exhibit has so far been a big draw for a variety of groups – especially on the weekends – and the group sales expected revenue has already been reached with six weeks to go.

As the holiday season approaches he suggests purchasing tickets online and specifying a time to visit to avoid lineups.

Upcoming Titanic related events include a video conference with a museum in Virginia on Dec. 18, Rick Archbold, the author of The Discovery of the Titanic, will speak on Jan. 9 and Wilfrid Laurier professor Paul Heyer, author of Titanic Legacy: Disaster as Media Event and Myth will speak Jan 15.

Searching for sunken 16th century ship

The Almanac: Searching for sunken 16th century ship
By Dave Boyce
Almanac Staff Writer

Inductive reasoning. It's what detectives use to work backwards from evidence at a crime scene to develop a chronology of events that, with luck and diligence, will lead to a suspect.

It's also the modus operandi for Portola Valley resident and geophysicist Sheldon Breiner and a team of archaeologists and a historian who meet periodically along the Mexican coast of Baja California. They're investigating the disappearance of a Spanish galleon believed to be the San Felipe.

The San Felipe left China in 1576 headed for Acapulco by way of Manila with a cargo that included silk, beeswax and tons of Ming Dynasty porcelain. Records show the details of the cargo but not the San Felipe's arrival at its destination, and the Spanish were meticulous with their records, Mr. Breiner says in an interview.

Mr. Breiner spoke about this exploratory adventure at Portola Valley's Historic Schoolhouse on Nov. 16. The town's Nature & Science Committee sponsored the free event and about 20 people showed up.

Shipments of porcelain left China for Spain twice a year for some 250 years starting in 1565, Mr. Breiner says. There is debris indicating that the 100-foot, 400-ton San Felipe may have run aground off the desert coast of Baja.

Lying on and under the shifting sands of this corner of Mexico's Sonoran Desert are about 1,000 artifacts. While the researchers haven't yet found any silk, which would have been encased in wax, they have found beeswax, some lead sheeting used on the hulls of 16th century ships to discourage underwater pests, and a great many pieces of porcelain scattered along a two-mile-long line in the sand, Mr. Breiner says.

Why might the ship have grounded? Strong prevailing winds, scurvy among the crew of 200, a need for food or water, or a new mast or spar -- the reasons are not known. Had the ship reached Acapulco, its cargo would have been offloaded and hauled overland to the Gulf of Mexico and then shipped to Spain, a two-year to three-year trip altogether, Mr. Breiner says.

With hundreds of thousands of years of predictable winds, waves and depositions of sand as reference points, the line of debris is readable. The team has worked backward from the locations of these artifacts to place the likely remains of the sunken hull. After scanning the area with an ultra sensitive magnetometer, the team now has tracking data showing magnetic anomalies consistent with a buried hull. In short, they have a strong suspicion as to where it is.

If this anomaly is a sunken galleon, it may never be known for certain whether it is the San Felipe. Ship owners back then did not paint names on hulls, Mr. Breiner says. The porcelain can be dated by experts skilled at matching a design with the year in which that design was current.

Mr. Breiner says he plans to return to the site in February to survey the wreckage in detail and create a grid-based map of the debris field. The magnetometer can detect ballast stones, cannon barrels, and iron spikes used to hold the ship's ribs to its keel. Other items with a smaller footprint but still detectable include weapons, tools, boxes, furniture parts and personal effects of the crew. The lack of oxygen under the sediment inhibits corrosion.

Team members, when they do speak about this project, hold back its exact location. Search and recovery work is undertaken only with the explicit permission of the Mexican government and in the presence of archaeologists from the INAH, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mr. Breiner says.

Once Mexican specialists isolate and recover the hull and debris, the pieces will be restored to the extent possible -- perhaps a five-year enterprise -- and displayed in a museum in Ensenada, the capital of Baja California, Mr. Breiner says.

The joy of a journey like this one, Mr. Breiner says, is that it takes on a breadth of field of its own. Geology, oceanography and map-making are as critical as magnetism in solving this puzzle.

The questions Mr. Breiner poses in a paper on the subject are many. Why is the line of debris so straight? Why are there more objects at the southern end? How do the answers to these questions help reconstruct the events of the shipwreck? Where are the ship's anchors and why are they where they are? What has happened to the hull over four centuries? How did the porcelain stay in relatively good condition for hundreds of years in such a sandy and abrasive environment?

"There's a lot of information that can come from a well understood search and study of an ancient ship," Mr. Breiner says.


Finding buried objects

One piece of equipment Mr. Breiner has not used and that wouldn't do much good in this exploration is a metal detector. That device transmits an electrical signal; if something metal is within range, the transmitted signal creates within the metal an electrical current detectable by the device.

The magnetometer, by contrast, is passive. It senses the Earth's magnetic field, which is present everywhere all the time. The device notes anomalies in that field caused by materials that have or do not have magnetic properties.

Airport and courtroom devices that screen for metal objects on a person are magnetometers that can sense a belt buckle's disturbance to the planet's magnetic field. The device in use by Mr. Breiner in Baja is thousands of times more sensitive.

At the shipwreck, grains of magnetic minerals in the sand will provide a uniform background noise, Mr. Breiner says. Any interruption in that noise, such as would be made by a buried nonmagnetic pile of wood and ceramics, will indicate its presence by the absence of that background noise.

An eco-warrior's romance at sea

UK Yahoo News: An eco-warrior's romance at sea
The sun was rising as the captain of one of the world's most famous ships changed course, drawn magnetically to a mysterious orange glow in the west. Skip related content
Related photos / videosMike Fincken Enlarge photo A member of the crew of Greenpeace's environmental campaigning ship Rainbow Warrior, …More Enlarge photo Mike Fincken, captain of Greenpeace's ship Rainbow Warrior, stands in the control room Enlarge photo VIDEO: An eco-warrior's romance at sea. Enlarge photo Mike Fincken Enlarge photo Mike Fincken, captain of Greenpeace's renowned environmental campaigning ship Rainbow …More Enlarge photo Mike Fincken realised the glow was not a reflection of the sunrise, but lava from an erupting volcano, and if careful he and his crew could sail close and watch nature put on a spectacular show.

"We went right up to it and it was popping, you could hear it," Fincken said as he recalled one of his favourite moments sailing around the world as captain of environment group Greenpeace's campaigning ship the Rainbow Warrior.

"You could smell it, because of the sulphur... and there were these huge red flowing boulders bouncing and then thundering into the sea. And there were hisses and splashes. And that was an island in the process of creation."

In an interview with AFP aboard the Rainbow Warrior during a recent stopover in Manila Bay, Fincken recounted a series of other exhilarating experiences but emphasised every day on the ocean conjured something wondrous.

"Seldom will a day go by where something remarkable hasn't happened. I don't know whether it is the magic of the Rainbow Warrior that shapes the world around us, but we do seem to have exceptional moments every day," he said.

Life for Fincken, 43, has not always been filled with an awe of nature.

He grew up in a small village in apartheid-era South Africa as the son of a bacon factory manager, the squeals of pigs being slaughtered echoed throughout his childhood as he earned pocket money working for his father.

Fincken confessed to being an ordinary student with no major career ambitions, and who began his career as a sailor with a South African merchant cargo shipping company as an 18-year-old just to avoid military conscription.

His drive to protect nature also lay dormant in his first few years at sea, although he loved the ocean and the team spirit with his fellow crew members.

"I did coal trips, lumber trips. I've carried uranium and chloride," Fincken said, describing some of the "nasty" cargo he helped to transport around the world as a merchant seaman.

Fincken's transformation into an environmentalist occurred when, in his mid 20s, his wife arranged for him to do an organic gardening course during a holiday back home in South Africa.

"I was taught at night school that chemicals and pesticides killed the earthworms," said the wispy-thin Fincken, who speaks in soft, peaceful tones.

"And it made so much sense I became an overnight avid environmentalist."

Fincken returned to sea set on a new personal course, and at each port would visit any local environment group he could find to pick up brochures and meet like-minded people.

Eventually Fincken came across Greenpeace and began his new career as a volunteer second mate with one of the organisation's smaller vessels.

"It was just such a lot of freedom and it was so exciting," Fincken said as he recalled his initiation with Greenpeace helping to carry out a protest to protect forests in Canada in the mid-1990s.

"I remember it was just so empowering to stand up and actually, sadly, have to break a law in order to prevent a greater crime."

It is a philosophy that Fincken has held firm throughout his years with Greenpeace, the last four of which have been as one of the Rainbow Warrior's captains as it has traversed the globe to protest for environmental causes.

"Everyone should involve themselves in direct actions. It's scary at first. You are breaking all sorts of moulds. You are conditioned to toeing the line and just thinking the world is contained by laws," he said.

"And then you realise, no actually, it's not. Those laws are man made. They are false. And a lot of them are there to protect dirty industry."

Greenpeace's determination to challenge authorities over perceived environmental crimes has long frustrated and angered those in power.

The most striking example occurred 25 years ago when French agents bombed and sank the original version of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand, killing one Greenpeace campaigner on board.

The French government carried out the attack to stop the Rainbow Warrior from protesting against France's nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean.

The episode turned into a public relations disaster for the French, while ensuring the new Rainbow Warrior -- the one now skippered by Fincken -- became a powerful symbol of resistance for the global environmental movement.

While no-one has employed such extreme tactics as the French since, Fincken said governments and industry leaders continued to work extremely hard to stop the Rainbow Warrior and Greenpeace's other vessels from campaigning.

"It is getting more and more difficult to take the ship into peaceful protest because what we are facing now are tremendous legal battles afterwards that are just draining the lifeblood of the organisation with costs," he said.

"Industry is realising that the way to sink the Rainbow Warrior is to just fight (Greenpeace) in court because those costs are tremendous."

Fincken has himself been detained on a number of occasions and convicted by the Dutch government for a sailing infringement, while a prosecution effort by British authorities over a protest near a coal-fired power station is ongoing.

In another example of authorities wanting to mute Greenpeace, the Rainbow Warrior was barred from entering Indonesia on its just-ended tour of Southeast Asia.

Fincken once wavered in his commitment to Greenpeace, but not because of the battles against authorities.

His first wife, Christine, died of cancer in 1998, just a couple of years after he joined Greenpeace.

Fincken left Greenpeace and lived in the Rocky Mountains after she passed away, stepping out of normal life, working as a tanner of animal skins and trying to understand why he was on this planet.

"I was on a journey from the moment I heard my wife had cancer. My whole life changed. Everything changes," he said.

"What are we? Who are we? All these questions that I needed to answer and I went in search of the answers."

Throughout his time on the land, Fincken kept with him a remarkable memento from his wife in the form of a short message.

Part of it read: "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces towards change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable".

Christine wrote those words on a piece of paper that the pair had recycled together using nearly 10 years of love letters they had written to each other when he was at sea.

"It's more than just a saying. It's how its come and who its come from. It wasn't long after (she wrote the message) that she died," he said quietly, revealing it was the first time he had spoken publicly about his wife's gift.

The message now forms his life's "mission statement", which he posts on his personal blogsite.

Fincken emerged from his period of disillusionment in Canada with another philosophy that he also still seeks to live by: "It is not what a person wants, but what a person can give, that shapes their destiny".

With his reason for living distilled into that one sentence, Fincken returned to Greenpeace and his life of activism more certain than ever that he should use his skills as a sailor to help protect the environment.

That certainty builds each time he watches a volcano erupt across a small island in Southeast Asia, a blue whale swim off the coast of northern Iceland or pristine ice blocks float through Antarctic waters.

"The earth shows off to me for some reason," he said with a smile.

"I think those remarkable moments are put out there for us just to show how incredibly lucky we are to be on this planet. It gives us the motivation for the campaign work we do."

Fincken records his journeys aboard the Rainbow Warrior on his blogsite: http://mikemate.wordpress.com/

Researchers: 'Rusticle' Reveals New Microscopic Life Aboard The RMS Titanic

Underwater Times: Researchers: 'Rusticle' Reveals New Microscopic Life Aboard The RMS Titanic
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- A brand-new bacterial species has been found aboard the RMS Titanic, which is contributing to its deterioration. The discovery reveals a potential new microbial threat to the exterior of ships and underwater metal structures such as oil rigs.

The researchers, who report their findings in the latest issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology published on 8 December, isolated the micro-organisms from a 'rusticle', collected from the RMS Titanic, 3.8 km below the ocean surface.

The novel bacterium has been named Halomonas titanicae by the scientists from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada and the University of Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain. The team also tested the rusting ability of the bacterium - and found that it was able to adhere to steel surfaces, creating knob-like mounds of corrosion products, which they will be reporting in an upcoming paper.

A similar bacterial corrosive process is thought to be responsible for the formation of the rusticles – which resemble rusty icicles – that adorn the hull of the RMS Titanic. While these appear to be solid structures, rusticles are highly porous and support a complex variety of bacteria, suggesting that H. titanicae may work in conjunction with other organisms to speed up the corrosion of the metal.

The RMS Titanic was made up of 50,000 tons of iron and has been progressively deteriorating for the past 98 years. Lead researchers Dr Bhavleen Kaur and Dr Henrietta Mann, from Dalhousie University explained that the role of microbes in this process is now starting to be understood. "We believe H. titanicae plays a part in the recycling of iron structures at certain depths. This could be useful in the disposal of old naval and merchant ships and oil rigs that have been cleaned of toxins and oil-based products and then sunk in the deep ocean."

Dr Kaur and Dr Mann believe that the findings have opened up further areas of research that could have applications for industry. "We don't know yet whether this species arrived aboard the RMS Titanic before or after it sank. We also don't know if these bacteria cause similar damage to offshore oil and gas pipelines," they said. "Finding answers to these questions will not only better our understanding of our oceans, but may also equip us to devise coatings that can prevent similar deterioration to other metal structures."

Archeologist: Persian Gulf sites hint at prehistoric people

Science Fair: Archeologist: Persian Gulf sites hint at prehistoric people
Emerging archeological evidence points to early human habitation 120,000 years ago in a Persian "Gulf Oasis" now underwater, suggests one archeologist.

In the upcoming Current Anthropology journal study, Jeffrey Rose of the United Kingdom's University of Birmingham, points to stone tools from 40 archeological sites throughout the Middle East to suggest that modern humans left Africa earlier than many model suggest (typically around 60,000 years ago), and populated Arabian coastal areas now underwater.

"The emerging picture of prehistoric Arabia suggests that early modern humans were able to survive periodic hyperarid oscillations by contracting into environmental refugia around the coastal margins of the peninsula," begins the study. The end of an Ice Age flooded today's Persian Gulf around 8,000 years ago, Rose notes, as sea levels rose. "There is a noticeable spike in settlement activity around the shoreline of the Gulf between 8,500 and 6,000 years ago," Rose says.

Archeologist Geoffrey Bailey of the United Kingdom's University of York, says the study's suggestion that Arabian continental shelves served as good environments for human during Ice Ages, "and served as a source of population expansion in the early Holocene (last 10,000 years), is an attractive one."

However, Robert Carter of the UK's Oxford Brookes University, questions the links that Rose sees between ancient stone age tools and the later Sumerian civilization, in a commentary accompanying the report.

"Unless one completely dismisses the notion that lithic technology is passed down the generations, there are problems with assigning both the populations of southern Mesopotamia and eastern Arabia to the same demographic origin in the Gulf basin. The leptolithic (blade-based) industry of early southern Mesopotamia has little in common with the Arabian bifacial tradition(s) that prevailed in the Arabian Peninsula between 8 and 6 (thousand years ago)," Carter writes.

Rose alludes to suggestions that the Biblical "Garden of Eden" and Noah's Ark stories may have a basis in the pre-flood Persian Gulf, to conclude his study. "Albeit epiphenomenal, it is interesting to note that the oldest known version of the ubiquitous Near Eastern flood myth, the "Eridu genesis", was written by the inhabitants of this region. The link between flood mythology and marine incursion into the Arabo-Persian Gulf basin has already been thoroughly explored by a number of authors and does not require any further elucidation"

By Dan Vergano

USS Olympia Given Another Six Months to Live

USS Olympia Given Another Six Months to Live

115-year old Museum Ship given a last minute reprieve from the scrapyard or sunk as artificial reef.

The USS Olympia museum was set to close to the public on November 22, 2010; however, this date has been extended. According to the Philadelphia-based Independence Seaport Museum’s (ISM) press release of November 18th, tours will not fully cease as previously planned. She is set to remain open to the public daily until the end of 2010 and continue on a reduced weekend-only schedule until at least April 1, 2011.

According to Captain John J. Gazzola, the Museum’s President. "The Museum, its board and our partners are working together in exploring options for the Olympia." A summit between the National Park Service, the US Navy (who operated the ship for 62-years), ISM, the Friends of the Cruiser Olympia and the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission is to be held in early 2011 to address possible solutions for the ship.

Danger Ahead for the Proud Olympia
Even though the one of a kind ship is on the list of National Historic Landmarks in Pennsylvania, the National Register of Historic Places, is the oldest steel-hulled American warship afloat, the very triple-expansion engines inside her hulls are the are Historic Engineering Landmarks, she is a National Historic Maritime Landmark and is in “Official Project” status of Save America’s Treasures program, she is far from out of danger.

It had been discussed that without continued significant repairs and overhaul the vessel would eventually sink at her moorings on the Delaware River within a matter of a few years. Barring the funds becoming available for such an overhaul the proud ship, formerly Admiral Dewey’s flagship in the Battle of Manila Bay, could be sunk as an artificial reef off of the New Jersey coast. To add insult to injury this sentinel of history could be cut up and scrapped with her more interesting pieces showing up on eBay. Such a recent fate beheld the former HMS Intrepid which was one of the key vessels of the Royal Navy in the Falkland Islands War.

How to Help
The organization Friends of the Cruiser Olympia (email Info@CruiserOlympia.org) is trying to raise money for preservation of the ship. The group got its nonprofit status this month and has begun receiving pledges and interest from individuals and corporations. The organization need is to raise $2.5 million by January 2011 simply to take custody of the ship and begin initial work. They have to, or the deep dark sea waits.

Sources
USS Olympia seeks a new caretaker | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/26/2010
Historic warship's future may be sunk | Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/23/2010
Iconic warship faces uncertain future, Charlotte Gazette, May 27, 2010
Date set for closing of USS Olympia, | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/12/2010
USS Olympia, a naval veteran of two wars, battles for survival, AP Joann Loviglio 9/6/2010
Spanish-American warship spared, at least for now | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/18/2010
Gardiner, Robert; Chesneau, Roger; Kolesnik, Eugene M Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press
Independence Seaport Museum, Update on the Status of the Cruiser OLYMPIA, Press Release 11/18/2010
Manteuffel Chris and Rachel The USS Olympia, rusting symbol of America's age of empire, Washington Post 11/28/2010

Treasure Hunters Pursue U.S. Investors Seeking Golden Adventures

[As an aside, I bought a few shares of Odyssey Marine a couple of years ago, when shares were $5 each. Now they're down to a dollar!]

Treasure Hunters Pursue U.S. Investors Seeking Golden Adventures
Spanish doubloons meant to fund wars, solid gold bars bound for Europe's royalty and bronze cannons that protected it all now sit scattered across the ocean floor from shipwrecks.

But in a new investment plan by Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., those long-ago sunken treasures could soon be part of investor portfolios. The Tampa, Fla., company, whose work has been documented on the Discovery Channel and on the pages of National Geographic, plans to allow investors a chance to purchase a share of a treasure hunt and split the spoils.

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Odyssey Marine Exploration

Odyssey prides itself on finding shipwrecks. Above, the company pulled a canon in 2008 from HMS Victory's watery grave in the English Channel.
Think of it as a romantic play on all-time highs in gold prices, by tracking Odyssey's ships online instead of tracking price ticks on charts. Or it is a chance to spice up a portfolio by putting down quarterly filings and looking at photos of wreckage.

Treasure hunting might become more intriguing if gold prices keep soaring. David Beahm, vice president of Blanchard & Co., a dealer of rare coins and gold, said rare coins trade higher than gold bullion. He doesn't recommend the investment, but did acknowledge, "As a child, you always want to find the buried treasure."

Gold on Friday closed at $1,362.20 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, and hit a record of $1,424.50 in early November.

To be sure, when the end game is a ship that has been swallowed by the sea for centuries, the risk of coming up empty-handed is high.

"If you are going to be taking the risk anyway, why not go to a business that's potentially going to have high return?" said Chief Executive Greg Stemm. "I could make the case that we've become the best people in the world at finding hard-to-find things at the bottom of the ocean."

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Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc.

Chief Executive Greg Stemm, right
Odyssey made its name finding sunken treasure, and now believes it can allow investors to get involved differently. It won't be for every hunt, but for a few each year, Odyssey would raise the special funding to look for what it estimates are 100 wrecks worth at least $50 million. Odyssey says the time at sea costs about $3.6 million, plus other costs, so a target, if found, could bear a big return.

The opportunity won't be available to just anyone. Odyssey is unable to give specifics, but the firm anticipates the vehicles being open to "accredited investors." The Securities and Exchange Commission defines that as someone with a net worth over $1 million or who makes over $200,000 a year.

Odyssey has already tested a similar plan in the U.K., where about 100 clients of London-based investment consultancy Robert Fraser & Partners have put in $11.7 million to fund four treasure hunts. The process works like this: Robert Fraser buys the right to the shipwreck, the research file and the data behind it, and then contracts Odyssey to find it, bring it up and sell it.

Odyssey might have found at least one target for Robert Fraser Marine, the firm's division for treasure hunting. However, it is too soon to fully identify the find and the firm is reluctant to announce the names of ships until it is 100% certain.

Robert Fraser Chairman Colin Emson said treasure hunting isn't for everyone and his firm hunts only when the anticipated profit is 10 times costs. "It is the most fascinating subject in the world," he said.

Now, American investors will get a crack at some 6,000 shipwrecks that Odyssey's researchers have identified while scouring old shipping records and newspapers. The process for selection is strict and tailored to Odyssey's expertise.

Research must produce a specific 300-square-mile spot in deep water, where few others can look. There also must be proof that Odyssey wouldn't face a legal battle over ownership, a scenario currently holding up the windfall from one of the richest sunken treasure finds in history.

In 2007, Odyssey recovered more than 17 tons of silver coins from a Colonial-era site code-named Black Swan. But the riches, estimated around $500 million, remain in a vault as Odyssey fights in court with Spain over ownership.

Using a fleet of vessels loaded with deep-diving robots and specialty cameras, Odyssey has the Black Swan and several other trophies it can point to as evidence it can find treasures.

Last year it found the HMS Victory, which sunk in 1744 and had been one of England's great maritime mysteries. In 2003, Odyssey discovered the SS Republic, a Civil War-era steamship that sank off of Georgia loaded with gold and silver worth around $75 million today.

The first expedition for Robert Fraser investors was code-named "Enigma." Odyssey was paid $3.5 million for the search and the research file. From any recovery, Odyssey would get 80% of the first portion of sales until it had $20 million. Proceeds from the rest of the booty would be split equally with investors.

Contracts, tailored to risk and the target, would vary for each hunt.

Mark Gordon, Odyssey's chief operating officer, said opening up hunts to U.S. investors could allow Odyssey to hunt 10 times a year instead of six. They search about 90 to 120 days, for about $30,000 or more a day in costs.

Still, the investment carries high risk. Robert Fraser's website warns potential investors of "often total loss" while touting the high return.

Odyssey also will have to consider taxes, a somewhat murky issue that could carry implications for the final payouts to investors. But, despite the potential complications and risks, there are other perks.

"You have an investment you can talk to your buddies at the bar about," Mr. Gordon said.

Volcano Seven - a manifesto

It's been a while since I've published the manifesto for this blog here, so thought I'd do it now.

Posts here will focus on treasure hunters - people who seek (and have sought) not only for sunken gold and jewels, but the treasure that is historic shipwrecks around the world.

In addition, I share news which I think might be of interest to the "armchair Clive Cussler" - authors who are looking for interesting or off-beat facts with which to expand their novel or short story, add a bit of verisimiltude, or just provide the launching ground for a new plot. (And if you're not an author, the idea is to tweak your interest and have you say, "If I were a writer, this'd make a great plot for a book."

Volcano Seven has several other blogs as well, by the way:
Seaborn (oceanography)
Star Trek Report (space exploration)
Recreational Nuclear Physics
Recreational Volcanology
Computers Without Tears
Word Game Workbook
(Just nip over to Amazon, go to the Kindle section of the search list, and input those titles).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shipwreck Hunter On Prowl

University of South Florida News: Shipwreck Hunter On Prowl
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (Nov. 12, 2010) – David Mearns did not set out to be one of the world’s great shipwreck hunters, but when his first expedition to find a vessel that sunk under suspicious circumstances ended is a high-profile murder trial and life sentences for the saboteurs, the rest became maritime history.

Mearns turned his 1986 degree from the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science in physical oceanography into a high profile career of finding lost ships – from a 16th Century caravel that was part of Vasco de Gama’s fleet to some of the great maritime tragedies of World War II.

His finds have brought closure to war widows who never stopped grieving, sent guilty men to prison for life and helped the British government set new standards for ship construction, saving thousands of lives in the future.

With a career now as storied as some of the shipwrecks he seeks, Mearns returned to the College of Marine Science recently for a visit with faculty and students and lecture for the public at the Mahaffey Theater. He brought with him spellbinding tales of search across the world for lost ships and souls, and the astounding “Eureka!” moments when they become found.

“There are these terrific moments when you are successful,” said Mearns, president of Bluewater Recoveries, Ltd., “You spend years working on something and it often comes down to your judgment; whether you are looking in the right place.”

Mearns has found more than 20 shipwrecks and most recently led the expedition that found the wreckage of the AHS Centaur, an Australian hospital ship which was sunk by a Japanese submarine in May 1943 off the coast of Queensland. Of the 332 doctors, nurses and wounded soldiers and sailors aboard, 268 perished. The 2009 discovery ended a 66-year quest by families of those who were lost and Australian government officials.

Earlier this year, more than 300 people attended an at-sea memorial service at the site of the shipwreck to honor the doctors, nurses and service personnel killed in the attack. The group, which included one of just two remaining survivors of the attack, dropped floral wreaths and messages into the ocean waves, the closest they had been to their lost loved ones since the sinking.

The Centaur, though, is just the latest find to bring Mearns worldwide acclaim.

In 2001, Mearns lead teams to discover the wreckage of the HMS Hood, the British warship lost in the epic battle with the Nazi ship Bismarck . Mearns and his team – using extensive research, documents, eyewitness accounts and the most advanced technology available to pinpoint the ships’ locations - overcame the challenges of locating the shipwreck in 3,000 feet of water in the Denmark Strait. His efforts to locate the ship is the basis for the PBS documentary “Hunt for the Hood” and the subject of the 2002 book, “Hood and Bismarck.”

Yet Mearns considers the 2008 discovery of the HMAS Sydney II shipwreck his greatest discovery. It took six years and an international effort to locate the warship, which had been the pride of Australia when it sank in 1941 after an encounter with a German vessel disguised as a merchant ship. The attack left a stunned nation grieving the 654 men lost and with unanswered questions which persisted for decades.

Mearns’ documented the expedition in his second book, The Search for the Sydney, which immediately became a top seller in Australia.

His other finds include the Lucona, a cargo ship at the centre of a sensational European murder trial; the Derbyshire, which was lost with all hands and led to new rules covering survivability and structural requirements for bulk carriers; and the Esmeralda, a Portuguese Nau in the fleet of Vasco da Gama that is the oldest colonial wreck ever found.

Mearns said there was no direct pathway from the College of Marine Science to shipwreck hunting, but rather a happy accident of fate when he sought out what to do with his new master’s degree in geological oceanography.

“I didn’t want to work in oil and gas, and I didn’t have what it takes to be an academic,” Mearns explained. “So I did what a lot of geological oceanographers do, I went to work in the offshore industry.”

Mearns started with a company in Maryland that had contracts with the U.S. government to do search and recovery missions for lost U.S. Navy property in the deep seas – lost aircraft, vessels and cruise missiles were among the items they recovered. The company was hired by the Austrian government investigating the suspicious sinking of a ship, the Lucona.

Mearns had at his disposal advanced sensors and imaging systems, and a penchant for meticulously studying every document collected in wrecks to search for clues in accounts of debris fields, records of where survivors and bodies were found and any small notation that might provide a hint of a ship’s location that would augment his knowledge of the ocean floor.

“You have to be able to tell the difference between what is man-made and what is natural,” he said. “To be a geologist is to know what the sea bed is supposed to look like, it helps to interpret the images of these features.”

The Lucona had gone down in the Pacific Ocean in 1977, supposedly while carrying expensive uranium mining equipment. Authorities suspected fraud, but until Mearns found the wreck in 1991 they had no proof. It turned out the ship’s owner, a wealthy businessman, and his partner had loaded the ship with scrap metal and a time bomb as part of his scheme. Six crew members perished in the sabotage; the evidence Mearns helped gathered sent the men to prison for life.

He followed that success with the hunt for the Derbyshire, a bulk oil carrier that disappeared during a typhoon south of Japan in 1980, and shocked the British public because the large vessel left no trace in its sinking. Mears said in his investigation, he came to learn that carriers like it sailing under the flags of developing nations had also sunk – costing thousands of lives – without much public outcry.

After the Derbyshire was found, images and information Mearns collected along with work done by other scientists led to the British government rewriting regulations on the design and building of bulk carriers.

“There’s no question it has saved lives,” Mearns said. “That has to be one of my most satisfying ones.”

His attention soon turned to vessels lost in World War II, and he returned to Great Britain where he could be closer to maritime records in the British Archives. After his successful hunt for the Hood and an accompanying documentary, he was contracted by the Australian government to bring closure to its wartime tragedies.

“We had virtually all of Australia watching every move when we searched for Centaur and Sydney,” he said.

Mearns still has one quest at the top of his list: to find legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackelton’s lost ship, the Endurance.

The vessel sank in 1915 after it became trapped in ice. Mearns said he has worked for years researching the expedition, applying his knowledge of currents and ocean features and getting permission from Shackelton’s family to explore the iconic wreck. Now it has come down to securing financing for the venture; shipwreck hunts can easily cost in the millions of dollars and this venture will be even more challenging given the formidable nature of the Antarctic, he said.

“To me, it’s the challenge of doing it, but the history is fantastic,” he said. “Shackelton is one of the top figures of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. People find his example in leadership enduring.”

Six skippers plead guilty to involvement in £37m 'black fish'

Six skippers plead guilty to involvement in £37m 'black fish'
By JOHN ROBERTSON
The value of undeclared landings in the biggest scam in the history of Scotland's fishing industry was revealed yesterday to have been at least £37 million.
The figure was disclosed as six skippers pleaded guilty to being involved in the "black fish" scandal.

They had lied about their catches on all but one of 236 landings between 2002 and 2005 at the country's largest processing company on Shetland.ADVERTISEMENTThe herring and mackerel which remained under the radar was worth £15m.

Previously, eight other masters appeared in court in relation to £22m of fish.

One of those in the dock at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, Laurence Irvine, 64, admitted the largest single amount of undeclared fish, which was worth £5.6m.

The charge admitted by the 14 men does not carry a prison sentence, but exposes each of them to an unlimited fine.

However, the authorities will attempt to strip the men of any illegal profits before they are sentenced.

The six skippers are: Irvine, (master of the fishing vessel Antares), Gary Williamson, 51, (the Research W), William Williamson, 63, (the Research W), and Colin Leask, 37, (the Antarctic ll), all of Symbister, Whalsay, Shetland, George Henry, 59, (the Adenia), of Clousta, Bixter, Shetland, and John Stewart, 55, (the Antarctic), of, Lerwick, Shetland.

China to beef up protection of underwater cultural heritage

China to beef up protection of underwater cultural heritage
BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The two Chinese central government agencies chiefly responsible for safeguarding underwater cultural heritage on Monday signed an agreement pledging closer cooperation.

Under their agreement, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) and the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) will work more closely together in various fields including underwater archaeology and management of underwater relics.

The two agencies will also strengthen cooperation in regular surveys of underwater relics and in preventing damage to the relics, according to the agreement.

SACH director Shan Jixiang said at the signing ceremony that the agreement was a state-level move to ensure the safety of China's underwater cultural heritage amid a worldwide boom in ocean development in recent years.

Sun Zhihui, director of the SOA, said the SOA would actively provide support and assistance in the protection of underwater relics by enhancing cooperation with the SACH in fields such as enforcement of maritime laws and marine disaster forecasting.

The two agencies will also seek to establish a long-term cooperation mechanism by conducting pilot cooperation programs.

Goldfish join security team for G20 summit as water testers

Metro.co.uk: Goldfish join security team for G20 summit as water testers
Managers at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Seoul, South Korea, have enlisted the help of the aquatic security guards to check the water purity in the venue's bathrooms, and hope they will be able to alert staff to any fishy goings on.


Something fishy is going on at the G20 venue in Seoul, South Korea
Oh Su-Young, PR manager at the centre, told AFP that the goldfish are simply being used as part of the inspection process ahead of the impending arrival of the G20 leaders, adding: 'The fish also symbolise an eco-friendly water policy, which recycles used water for the restrooms.'

British prime minister David Cameron will be among those benefitting from the unique safety measures when the summit takes place on November 11th and 12th.

But this isn't the first time this year that organisers of a major event have enlisted members of the animal kingdom to boost security.
During the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, police drafted in trained monkeys to patrol the athletes' village and major venues where events were held.

The slender long-tailed Langurs were intended to protect both athletes and spectators from the Common Indian Bonnet monkey, which is known to attack humans.

What will they think of next?

Replica 600 BC Ship Returns Triumphant After 20,000 Mile Circumnavigation of Africa

Afloat (Ireland's Sailing and Boating Magazine): Replica 600 BC Ship Returns Triumphant After 20,000 Mile Circumnavigation of Africa
Phoenicia, the replica 600BC wooden ship, has arrived triumphantly back in Syria having completed a 20,000 mile circumnavigation of Africa. The journey was intended to recreate the first circumnavigation of Africa, thought to have been achieved by Phoenician mariners around 600BC. The expedition took over two years to complete, and was approved by the Royal Geographical Society and supported by Raymarine as an equipment sponsor.
Phoenicia was built using traditional Phoenician construction methods and materials, and designed using evidence from shipwrecks and archaeological finds. Advice from scholars ensured she was completely authentic, but on the inside she was equipped with the latest high tech electronic navigational equipment from Raymarine.

The journey was completed in two stages. The first saw Phoenicia depart from Syria in Summer 2008 and sail East as far as Yemen. After a short break, she completed her circumnavigation past Oman and Mozambique, around the Cape of Good Hope, out to the Azores, and through the Straits of Gibraltar via Tunisia, Malta and Lebanon to her final port of Arwad, where she arrived to a crowd of over 2,000 well wishers on 23rd October. The homecoming was celebrated with a gala dinner held at Tartous.

Phoenicia was fitted out with a Raymarine C80 multifunction display, GPS antenna, Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver,, ST60+ tridata, wind system and repeater, DSM300 fish finder and Raymarine LifeTag wireless man overboard system. The systems worked flawlessly, despite facing severe conditions during the expedition including seven-metre waves and gale force winds. Having accurate navigational data also ensured Phoenicia could make the necessary detours to avoid dangerous areas prone to pirate attacks.

The Phoenicia expedition (www.phoenicia.org.uk) was conceived by Philip Beale, a former British Royal Naval Officer and entrepreneur. It is being featured in a national television documentary 'Ancient Worlds' to be shown on BBC2 in the autumn.

'Drowned voice' of pristine phonograph found at Yukon site of sunken ship

The Province: 'Drowned voice' of pristine phonograph found at Yukon site of sunken ship


Divers equipped with digital scanners have created a set of ground-breaking, 3-D images of the legendary Klondike-era sternwheeler A.J. Goddard, which sank in a Yukon lake in 1901 and was discovered in 2008 by a team of Canadian archeologists.Photograph by: Handout, HandoutDivers equipped with digital scanners have created a set of groundbreaking, 3-D images of the legendary Klondike-era sternwheeler A.J. Goddard, which sank in a Yukon lake in 1901 and was only discovered two years ago by a team of Canadian archeologists.

The imaging system, similar to one used recently to document the wreck of the Titanic off Newfoundland's east coast, was employed during an expedition this summer to the sunken-but-perfectly-preserved Goddard — a dive that also produced a stunning new artifact: the vintage phonograph used to entertain fortune-seekers on their long, northward steamboat voyage to the Klondike gold fields.

"They're not only stunning and amazing images, they're also an accurate measuring tool," Canadian marine archeologist James Delgado, one of the experts involved in the Goddard project, told Postmedia News.

The precise 3-D model of the wreck was generated with scanning equipment supplied by the U.S. firms Oceangate and BlueView Technologies.

While documenting the boat's pristine condition, the researchers also spotted and collected several relics that were missed during earlier dives to the Goddard, which was declared an official historic site by the Yukon government earlier this year.

Corked bottles with their liquids still intact, leather footwear and other items were added to previous discoveries of tools and clothing.

"There was a bottle with vanilla extract still in it," said Delgado, former head of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and now director of marine archeology with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Talk about the proverbial miner's cabin that you stumble across," he said. "Here's one under water — the Goddard really does represent a time capsule."

But the most remarkable find was the music player and three vinyl discs — one in almost perfect condition.

Experts from the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa are now studying the phonograph and the discs to determine what music was played on the Goddard before it went down in a storm on Yukon's fabled Lake Laberge in October 1901.

Delgado says the phonograph had previously been hidden by a "light dusting of silt." But he says if conservation experts are able to restore the phonograph or its discs, "a drowned voice from 1901 may sing again."

In November 2009, Delgado, John Pollack from the Texas-based Institute of Nautical Archaeology and Yukon museum curator Doug Davidge announced they'd located the "perfectly preserved" Goddard in Lake Laberge, a widening of the Yukon River that served as a key transportation route for gold-seekers in the 1890s.

"The A.J. Goddard is not only a testament to the ingenuity, sense of adventure and determination of those men and women who took part in the Klondike Gold Rush, but also to the key role that the river and sternwheelers played in the economic development of Yukon,'' Elaine Taylor, the territory's tourism and culture minister, said in June in announcing the wreck's historical designation.

The sternwheeler is known to have gone down with three men in the 1901 storm that swept across the lake, a setting made famous by the Robert Service poem The Cremation of Sam McGee. The boat was named for an intrepid U.S. shipping merchant who pioneered Yukon River transport during the wild race for Canadian gold in the 1890s.

In Service's ghoulish 1907 rhyme, a Tennessee gold miner's frozen corpse finds blissful relief from the fatal Yukon cold in the fiery boiler of a sternwheeler stranded in ice on Lake Laberge.

Most of the Klondike miners trudged from Skagway, Alaska — which could be reached by Pacific steamers — across dangerous mountain passes to the Yukon River headwaters in northern British Columbia, where they hitched rides north on sternwheelers and other boats bound for the goldfields.

Goddard took the same arduous route with the materials he used to build his sternwheeler, assembled on the shores of British Columbia's Lake Bennett.

In June 1898, it became the first steamboat to reach Dawson, which at the time was only a tent city filled with fortune hunters.

Goddard's historic arrival at Dawson in his self-named boat — to the thunderous cheers of miners — has become part of Klondike lore, recounted by author Pierre Berton and other Gold Rush chroniclers.

The archeologists had led several searches for Klondike-era wrecks before discovering the Goddard site in 2008 and positively identifying the 15-metre vessel last year.

Noted photographer's death will remain a mystery, medical examiner says

Palm Beach Post News: Noted photographer's death will remain a mystery, medical examiner says

Authorities will not be able to determine how world-renowned nature photographer Wes Skiles died this summer off the Boynton Inlet.

After weeks of investigation and toxicology tests, "there was nothing to indicate natural causes or outside forces," Harold Ruslander, chief investigator for the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner said this morning. "All we're going to be able to say is that it was an accidental drowning."

The 53-year-old North Florida-based freelance photographer, a regular and award-winning contributor to National Geographic magazine, was shooting video of researchers working around a reef about 3 miles east of the Boynton Inlet when he signaled to his colleagues that he was going to head to the surface to get more supplies, sheriff's spokeswoman Teri Barbera said at the time.

Skiles surfaced alone, and a short time later, the other divers found him unconscious on the ocean floor.

They pulled him onto their boat and tried to revive him, but he died later at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach.

Skiles is survived by his wife, Terri, and children Nathan and Tessa.

A spokeswoman for National Geographic declined to comment.

Calls to Skiles' production company, based in High Springs, near Gainesville, were not immediately returned.

Skiles, a Florida native, was known for his work photographing and videotaping in caves and the deep ocean.

A spokeswoman for National Geographic magazine, whose August issue featured a cover photo by Skiles of Bahamas caves, said at the time that the local assignment he'd been shooting before his death focused on the behavior of high-speed fish off Florida's coast.

Skiles had come originally to shoot the researchers for a "National Geographic Television" documentary, but stayed on his own to continue shooting and observing.

According to this story, Skiles left his companions to surface alone. Had he been accompanied by a buddy, he may still have died, but at least they'd know what happened. Heart attack, perhaps?

Mom-daughter dive team find golden bird worth $885,000

WOAI.com: Mom-daughter dive team find golden bird worth $885,000
FT. PIERCE, Florida (NBC News Channel) -- Bonnie Schubert and her 87-year old mother have hunted treasure along Florida's coast for decades.

Most days they wind up digging dozens of holes, diving in the murky water, and coming up with a fishing lure or a beer can.

"I spent a whole season and only came up with a musket ball," says Bonnie.

But one day this August, the Schuberts were diving near Frederick Douglass Beach when they made the find of their lives.

"The first thing that came into focus was the head of the bird and the wing...and it was something I never imagined...just didn't expect at all.." recalls Bonnie.

They discovered a 22-carat solid gold bird, a relic which they believe dates back to the lost Spanish Fleet of 1715. The fleet of Spanish galleons wrecked near Ft. Pierce, littering the ocean floor with what divers believe to be millions of dollars in gold and jewels.

"It's truly been amazing. It's not something we could have ever predicted," said Brent Brisbane, a principal with 1715 Fleet-Queen's Jewels, LLC, the corporation that holds the rights to treasure hunting in the region.

Brisbane asked a local historian to study the relic and learned it is a "Pelican in her Piety," a symbol of Christ.

"It's a symbol of the sacrifice of Christ that the mother pelican would beat her breast and draw blood when times are bad," said Bonnie Schubert.

The golden bird is missing a wing and no one knows what it once held in its center, which is now a small square opening. Brisbane had the item appraised by Dubose and Sons Jewelers in Vero Beach.

"They came back with an appraisal of $885,000," said Brisbane.

Brisbane's teams have had a bountiful summer, uncovering dozens of gold and silver coins and a bronze canon from the wreck sites, but he says Bonnie and Jo's golden bird is clearly the biggest prize of all.

"Bonnie and Jo are amazing. This is a male-dominated industry and to have these two ladies come up with what is truly one of the top 5 artifacts ever found from the 1715 fleet is just incredible," he said.

Dividing the spoils could be the tricky part. As contractors, Bonnie and Jo typically get half of what they find. Brisbane, who holds the rights to treasure hunting in region, gives 20% to the state of Florida.

If the state decides it wants the golden bird, then Brisbane says there may be some "treasure trading" to make it all come out right.

Group Granted Right To Recover Shipwrecks From The Dominican Republic

Group Granted Right To Recover Shipwrecks From The Dominican Republic SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- Anchor Research & Salvage, S.R.L. (ARS) has entered into an agreement with the Dominican Republic Oficina Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural Subacuático. The contract gives ARS the exclusive rights to explore and archaeologically recover historic shipwrecks along an undisclosed stretch of the Caribbean Sea on the island nation's South coast.

According to government officials, this is the first time that such a contract has been granted for the area.

Robert Pritchett, president of ARS, says his company will be working under the direction of the Oficina Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural Subacuático. And professonal Marine Archaeologist Dr.Lubos Kordac and Dr E. Lee Spence both have written books on the islands shipwrecks

ARS will be using state-of-the-art remote sensing equipment to survey the contract area, and a specially designed Geographical Information System (GIS) will be used to map discoveries. All of ARS' survey, archaeological, and GIS data will be shared with the government.

Under a preliminary agreement, ARS has already located a number of shipwrecks threw research & exploration of the lease area,

For Robert and the management of ARS this is a lifestyle, not a job. The members of ARS have dedicated their lives to archaeologically sensitive exploration rescue and preservation of historical shipwrecks.

ARS' discoveries and other developments will be posted on the company's website at www.arsdr.com.

Robert has been personally funding this project, but now expects to raise additional working capital.

Goa's first steam engine shipwreck found

The Times of India: Goa's first steam engine shipwreck found
PANAJI: In a find that may prove important for research into the state's maritime trade, marine archaeologists of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) have found a steel-hulled steam engine shipwreck off the Mormugao coast. The wreck could be of a British merchant vessel, the marine archaeologists have told TOI.

"This is the first discovery of a steam engine shipwreck in Goan waters," A S Gaur, marine archaeologist, NIO, said. "As far as the time frame and technology is concerned, this is a specimen of a steam engine ship and could be of British origin of 1880s vintage," he added.

Scattered over a wide area in a shallow region called Amee Shoals, the four-decade research and more recent explorations of NIO's marine archaeologists bore fruit as they found the heavily salvaged vessel after two years of continuous research.

Elsewhere in the country, preliminary explorations of only two such shipwrecks were carried out in and around Minicoy in Lakshadweep islands, sources said.

"The stamps on the flanges and the name on the firebricks found on the site (off Mormugao) suggest British origin," Gaur said.

As naval vessels used water-tube boilers from 1880s onwards, the archaeologists aver that three Scotch boilers, almost 100 metres long, in this vessel make it evident that it was a large merchant ship. Later, the oil-fired boilers were replaced by diesel engines.

The NIO archaeologists found three boilers made of wrought iron lying in a north-south direction, with the rear side pointing south. The triple-expansion type engine is still in fairly good condition, but the hull frames are severely corroded.

Was the vessel used by the British during the late 1880s for transporting steel? As an indication, the Portuguese had entrusted the task of laying the railway line from Mormugao to Castle Rock in 1887 to the British.

"No datable finds are on hand at the site to say when and how the wreck occurred though," Sila Tripathi, another NIO marine archaeologist who worked on the site off Goan waters said.

The preliminary report of the find was compiled by NIO's Gaur, Tripathi and Sundaresh. It was recently published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, released twice a year from UK and USA.

Though studies by Lisbon-based Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Nautica e Subaquatica (CNANS) and by Boxer (1959) and Mathew (1988) have drawn up a list of Portuguese shipwrecks in Indian waters between 1497 and 1612, details of not a single site have been specified. The studies merely said that the vessels had wrecked in shallow waters due to storms, sand bars and other hidden obstacles.

NIO kept collecting information over the years from historical records and local divers. More recently, its marine archaeologists carried out diving expeditions and explored two sites at Sunchi Reef off Raj Bhavan coast and another near St George Island in Mormugao. "They were both wrecks of wooden sail boats" Gaur said.

NIO's archaeologists first explored the early 17th-century Portuguese shipwreck off Sunchi Reef about six years ago. "We found iron guns, the barrel of a handgun, an iron anchor, well-dressed granite blocks, a door-knocker, shards of stoneware, ivory, hippopotamus teeth and bases of glass bottles," Tripathi said.

In the 19th century wreck off St George's Reef, they found vestiges of an unreported shipwreck in a depth of 15 metres. This find included terracotta artefacts such as Corinthian column-capitals, hollow column-drums, earthenware, drainage-pipes, vases, ridge, roof and floor tiles and chimney bricks, intended for house construction.

"It is the first wreck of the Basel Mission Company to be located," Tripathi said. "The ship appeared to be carrying household materials," Gaur added.

Recalling their underwater explorations, Gaur said, "We had to dive down during better visibility conditions in fair weather between November 2008 and February 2009."

Discharge of river sediment, which settles on the sea bed and gets disturbed with the movement of current especially on windy days, affected underwater visibility. "In some places, hand-fanning was carried out to expose buried artefacts," Gaur said.

Meanwhile, though the latest find off the Mormugao coast has not been identified yet, more exploratory work may reveal more clues, NIO's experts feel.

"The region between Amee Shoals and Aguada Bay has many potential sites for shipwreck exploration because of the presence of submerged reefs and shoals," Sundaresh said.