Ocean One: June 1943

Jacques Cousteau's book, The Silent World, (first published in 1953) opens with this paragraph:

One morning in June, 1943, I went to the railway station at Bandol on the French Riviera and received a wooden case expressed from Paris. In it was a new and promising device, the result of years of struggle and dreams, an automatic compressed-air diving lung conceived by Emile Gagnan and myself.

I rushed it to Villa Barry where mu diving comrades, Philippe Tailliez and Frederic Dumas waited. No children ever opened a Christmas present with more excitement than ours when we unpacked the first "aqualung." If it worked, diving could be revoluionized.

First, some political histoyr. In June, 1943, what was the state of France?

Vichy France, Vichy Regime, Vichy Government, or simply Vichy are common terms used to describe the government of France which collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944, during the Second World War. It officially called itself the French State (État Français) and was headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, who proclaimed the government following the military defeat of France by Germany.

The Vichy regime maintained some legal authority in the northern zone of France (the Zone occupée), which was occupied by the German Wehrmacht, but was most powerful in the unoccupied southern "free zone", where its administrative centre of Vichy was located. In November 1942 the southern zone was also occupied and fully subjected to German rule.

Pétain collaborated with the German occupying forces in exchange for an agreement to not divide France between the Axis Powers. Vichy authorities aided in the rounding-up of Jews and other "undesirables", and at times, Vichy French military forces actively opposed the Allies. Much of the French public initially supported the new government despite its pro-Nazi policies, seeing it as necessary to maintain a degree of French autonomy and territorial integrity.

The legitimacy of Vichy France and Pétain's leadership was constantly challenged by the exiled General Charles de Gaulle, who claimed to represent the legitimacy and continuity of the French government. Public opinion turned against the Vichy regime and the occupying German forces over time, and resistance to them grew within France. Following the Allied invasion of France in June 1944, de Gaulle proclaimed the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF).

Most of the Vichy regime's leaders were later put on trial by the GPRF, and a number of them were executed. Pétain was sentenced to death for treason, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

The Free French, led by De Gaulle, were based in North Africa.

What about the French Riviera in 1943?

The Côte d'Azur (Azure (blue)Coast), often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from the Italian border in the east to Saint Tropez, Hyères or Cassis in the west.

The French Riviera coastline covers 560 miles and consists of both sand and shingle beaches.

[WIkipedia doesn't say anything specifically about how the average French person lived, on the French Riviera, during this time, but does mention:
The Second World War

When Germany invaded France in June 1940, the remaining British colony was evacuated to Gibraltar and eventually to Britain. American Jewish groups helped some of the Jewish artists living in the south of France, such as Marc Chagall, to escape to the United States. In August 1942, 600 Jews from Nice were rounded up by French police and sent to Drancy, and eventually to death camps. In all about 5,000 French Jews from Nice perished during the war.

On August 15, 1944, American parachute troops landed near Fréjus, and a fleet landed 60,000 troops of the American Seventh Army and French First Army between Cavalaire and Agay, east of Saint-Raphaël. German resistance crumbled in days.

Saint-Tropez was badly damaged by German mines at the time of the liberation. The novelist Colette organized an effort to assure the town was rebuilt in its original style.

When the war ended, artists Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso returned to live and work.

Cousteau, a Navy man, was out of work after the Armistice of 1940, and did not join the Free French. However, as evidenced in the Wikipedia article below, he did do work for his country against the Nazis:

After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in the Embiez islands (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, using a depth-pressure-proof camera case developed by mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).

In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks), in which they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. These prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company, following instructions from Cousteau and Émile Gagnan. When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.

Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a "pen anti-semite" who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere)

Begin a notebook for Ocean One, if you have not already done so. It should be a loose-leaf notebook, so that you can take out and insert pages as needed.

Write each name below on its own sheet of paper. Keep track of their activities in chronological fashion as we go through This Silent World.

* Jacques Cousteau
* Simone Cousteau
* Emile Gagnan
* Philippe Tailliez
* Frederic Dumas

UW's Tony Irving is the go-to man in the red-hot world of meteorites

From the Seattle Times: UW's Tony Irving is the go-to man in the red-hot world of meteorites
A chance meeting between a pair of treasure-hunting brothers and a geology professor affiliated with University of Washington has led to the discovery of some the most extraordinary and valuable meteorites in history.

Long before he met the wealthy brothers, before he traveled to Morocco and received extraterrestrial nuggets in FedEx packages, Tony Irving got to touch the moon.

The Australian-born geochemist affiliated with the University of Washington spent his early career working with lunar fragments from the Apollo missions. Then, life being what it is, he returned to studying earthly matters — rocks that rise from the planet's mantle during volcanic eruptions. But a chance meeting brought him full-circle.

In the late 1990s, two adventurous computer entrepreneurs with a passion for metal-detecting and gold-panning brought Irving a strange rock. They thought they'd stumbled upon material from space.

They hadn't, but Irving and brothers Adam and Greg Hupé, of Everett, hit it off. The trio grew into an unorthodox team, becoming central players in a thriving international subculture — an obscure band of treasure hunters who scour the planet collecting, buying, selling and studying meteorites.

In this Byzantine world, geology is king. The brothers travel and barter to obtain uber-valuable celestial rocks. They mail pieces of the cosmos to Irving, who is now a leading expert at distinguishing real meteorites from their mundane terrestrial cousins, what he calls "meteor-wrongs."

"None of us realized what a bonanza it would be," Irving said.

It's a marriage that has given Irving a rare glimpse of far-flung corners of the universe, especially Mars.

"He's probably looked at more Martian meteorites than anyone in the world," said Irving's colleague, UW astronomer Don Brownlee, lead investigator for NASA's recent $212 million mission to study comet dust.

Lately such skills have been in high demand.

The market for meteorites exploded in the past dozen years, leading to ever more amazing discoveries — and some shenanigans. In January, a meteorite trader returned a 4.6 billion-year-old asteroid fragment he purchased from a thief who'd stolen it from a New Mexico museum. A dealer in Colorado was recently arrested, accused of selling lunar fakes.

But the number of documented meteorites from Mars also has doubled in less than a decade. This year, Irving helped confirm a fireball that streaked across the North African sky last July was a Mars meteorite. He did so by analyzing pieces of the rock gathered and sold by nomads in Morocco.

The find is only the 61st documented meteorite from the red planet, the first witnessed Martian meteorite to fall in 50 years, and the fifth such fall ever recorded. "Tissint," named for a village near where it landed, enthralled geologists around the world.

"This is actually the most exciting meteorite that I've come across so far in my career," the curator of London's Museum of Natural History told the BBC after examining a fist-size chunk. "Possibly it will be the most exciting meteorite that I will ever come across."

But for Irving and the Hupés, Tissint is one of many extraordinary finds.

Bonding over treasures

In fact, the brothers and Irving meeting each other may be their top discovery.

Adam and Greg, now both in their late 40s, ran a company called Computer Performance, but had bonded over their love of treasure hunting. They'd received a metal detector as a gift from their father in 1976. Over time it got so easy to find lost jewelry that they started panning for gold instead.

After stumbling on their weird fragment while prospecting — it turned out to be chromite — they talked to Irving about meteorites.

"I was just fascinated," said Adam Hupé, who now lives in Nevada. "This was a form of treasure-hunting, but a lot more rewarding than just going after gold. We could hunt for something with scientific value."

Tens of thousands of meteorites have been found on Earth. Most are fragments of asteroids, but a few are the result of "ejection by impact" — when an asteroid hits a moon or a planet hard enough to blast rocky specimens into space. The atmospheric gases trapped in rocks from the moon or Mars are unique and can be compared with gas samples gathered by NASA.

By the late 1990s, rising wealth and the Internet made it easier for people around the world to buy and sell obscure merchandise, including meteorites. While governments in Antarctica scoured the white snow for celestial rocks, a booming private market developed for rocks discovered in North Africa, where gray-black fragments stood out against hot-orange sand.

After decades of working 14-hour days, the Hupés sold their business and used their proceeds to buy meteorites online. Eventually, they financially backed meteorite-hunting trips. Irving evaluated their finds.

"We've got many different objects in the solar system, and there are only two ways to find them," Irving said. "Either you go there, or they come here. Luckily, with meteorites, you've got a delivery service."

For Irving, who had worked decades earlier with moon rocks at the University of Chicago and NASA's Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, the brothers' enthusiasm was infectious. The brothers liked the hunt — the thrill of collecting something unique with scientific value. Irving liked applying forensic expertise to understanding exotic pieces.

"I'm not saying it's not cool to hold in your hand a piece of something that is from Mars — it is," Irving said. "But ... I don't collect things, I document them. But I can't document them without someone else collecting them."

The Hupés introduced Irving to more collectors, but it didn't hurt that the Hupés also were very good at collecting.

"Planetary pieces"

"As a team, I'd say we've put together more planetary pieces than anybody else on Earth," Adam Hupé said.

Greg, the more adventurous of the two, splits his time between meteorites, diving in Florida rivers for fossils or hunting gold doubloons from Spanish shipwrecks. The brothers, especially Greg, began making dozens of trips to Morocco, primarily to buy meteorites from nomads and villagers. Some of the fragments were worth thousands of dollars a gram.

"I'd receive samples from Moroccan partners and make a judgment call," Greg Hupé said from Florida, where he now lives. "That graduated, in time, to sending the samples directly to the UW and paying for them to analyze them for us. Over the years we got to know exactly what to look for."

In late 2000, an expedition they helped finance purchased a large lunar chunk, known as NWA 482. Irving believes the rock is at least 4.4 billion years old.

"It was one of the crown jewels," Greg Hupé said. "It was just like, 'Wow.' "

A few years later, the brothers tracked down a Mars meteorite and, in 2007, pulled out their ultimate treasure — NWA 5000, a 26-pound lunar piece so precious Adam Hupé constantly moves it around to keep it safe.

"It appraised at $14.5 million," Adam Hupé said, adding that he's not in it for the money. He'd like to keep the rock intact and someday sell it to a museum.

"Hundreds of years from now, I don't want to be remembered as the jerk who cut the thing up into a million pieces for money," he said.

Figuring out what to do with that piece has put Adam's adventures on hold, but just last week Greg announced the discovery of another new meteorite type.

Meanwhile, Irving this week is scheduled to give a talk in Houston about Tissint. But he's also hoping to confirm soon that existence of two more meteorites from Mars.

Relic hunter Ric Savage finds his Navy Pier souvenir

From Chicago Sun-Time: Relic hunter Ric Savage finds his Navy Pier souvenir

Ric Savage is strolling by the Navy Pier Ferris wheel on a historically warm spring day.

The modern-day relic hunter is dressed in black with beige alligator-skin boots. He does not look like a Ferris wheel type. Savage is 6-foot-5 and 410 pounds.

He carries the sophisticated White’s MXT Pro Metal Detector, a four-foot device that looks as if it came off an airport walk-through.

Savage stops at a patch of brown grass not far from the 150-feet tall Ferris wheel. He puts on a pair of headphones. Savage begins moving around the detector. He hears a sound that resembles a dentist’s drill.

“I’ve got a hit right here!” he shouts. Passersby stare at him. Savage swings the detector in a circular motion over a clump of dirt. Tucked inside the dirt is a penny.

In a perfect world it would be a
1916 penny, from the year Navy Pier was built.

Savage holds the dusty penny up against a clear blue sky and says, “It’s from 2010.”

No matter.

It is the thrill of the chase for the host of Spike TV’s “American Digger,” which premieres at 9 p.m. Wednesday. The 13-episode series travels to a different city each week searching for high-value relics in Detroit, Brooklyn and Chicago (where a gangster-era segment will be aired later in the season).

“The ground never stops collecting,” Savage says. “I might find something from 1820, 1920 and 2012 all in the same spot.”

The 42-year-old Savage has redefined the art of American digging. It is no longer just some old dude in black socks and sandals wandering Miami Beach with a metal detector.

Savage brings mettle into this field.

He is best known as pro wrestler “Heavy Metal” Ric Savage, who worked the World Championship Wrestling circuit, among others. After retiring in 1997, Savage began his career as a relic hunter.

He zeroed in on the Civil War, a passion he had since the age of 9 when he read The Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee. He discovered he had six ancestors who fought in the Civil War. His great-great-great grandfather John Parker fought in the North Carolina unit for the Confederacy and was captured. He is buried at Camp Douglas in Chicago.

Savage’s first major find was a hunk of shrapnel he unearthed at the site of the Battle of Cold Harbor, Va. He later established American Savage, now the top artifact recovery company in the country. It digs as much as a half a million dollars’ worth of historical artifacts out of American soil yearly. The company is based in Mechanicsville, Va., where Savage lives.

“I started this as a hobby, as a way I could get onto properties I wouldn’t get on being your normal guy with a metal detector,” Savage says. “It morphed into this. With the TV show, I’m getting to dig in places I never would have dreamed of before. Like Tombstone, Ariz. I love Wyatt Earp. We found pistols, rifles, handcuffs from the 1880s.”

Relic hunter sounds like a noble way of saying beach scavenger.

“Anywhere anything ever happened, there is going to be something in the ground,” Savage explains. “Relic hunting depends on the hunter and what they are interested in and looking for. I look for historical artifacts. Modern coins, jewelry — that’s more scavenging. I like touching history.”

But critics don’t like Savage touching history. The Society of American Archaeology has criticized relic hunters for promoting illegal looting.

“The archeologists don’t like us because they don’t like anybody else digging,” he admits. “They feel like we loot history. The metal detectorists hate us because we put a spotlight on the hobby, and they’re afraid if they go to a property, [the owner] will want to get paid before they go digging. We’re the stepchild all the way around. But I’m not trying to please archeologists or other metal detectorists, I’m trying to take somebody who may not have any interest in history whatsover and make them find a way to get into it.”

During his wrestling career, Savage did promotional spots with Blackfoot guitarist Rickey Medlocke, now with Lynyrd Skynyrd. Does he know any musical relic hunters?

“Hank Williams Jr.,” he answers. “He is a huge metal detectorist. A friend of mine took Hank out to dig on Faith Hill and Tim McGraw’s property in Tennesse.”

There’s a country song underneath all that.

Around his neck, Savage wears a copper medallion that denotes a week’s pay for an employee of an East India company ship that sank in 1809.

He is excited to be carting his metal detector around Navy Pier. “I bet there was old stuff around here,” Savage says. “I was told there were World War I and World War II training camps here. There were a lot of artifacts, but they’ve all been covered over or moved out. If you could lift up the stones, you could probably find personal items from soldiers; buttons, buckles, pocket knives, coins.

Wrestling requires an eye for nuance. Does that come into play in Savage’s new magnetic field? “When I’m digging a battlefield I look at the layout of the land from the way the soldier would have looked at it,” he answers. “The Civil War soldiers looked for higher ground. When you’re detecting and see hills, that’s a good spot to go because you know they would have camped there. During a battle the hills got a lot of artillery shots, so you can find cannonballs that were dodged and shot in the ground. The last thing I like to do is swing a metal detector in a briar patch or brush.” Of course.

No mountain is high enough on the landscape of American digging.

Treasure Hunter Arthur McKee, Jr. pt 1

The book, Sunken Treasures, Six Who Found Fortunes, is fun reading. Unfortunately the author does not share too many dates, so I'm not sure when Art McKee Jr. first began diving - using a hard hat to do so.

Here's how the installment on McKee opens.

Staring through the faceplate of his 72-pound Miller-Dunn diving helmet, Art McKee saw the Bahamian seascape around him suddenly dissolve in a white haze. But the loss of visibility never even slowed his shuffling gate across the soft sand bottom. He would have been where he was, doing what he was doing, if he had to do it all by feel alone. Instinctively, Art knew how to solve his poor visibility instantly. Since the water came up chin high in his hardhat, all he did was take a mouthful and spit it on the misted faceplate. Instant visibility.

Art is walking along a dead coral reef - near Gorda Cay in the Bahamas. There were lobsters there - fishermen poured bleach down the holes in the reef to chase out the lobsters. Of course it also killed the reef.

In 1996, Disney purchased the island of Gorda Cay from the Bahamian government, and turned it into a theme park.
Castaway Cay - from Wikipedia
'Castaway Cay' is a private island in the Bahamas which serves as an exclusive port for the Disney Cruise Line ships Disney Wonder, Disney Magic, Disney Dream, and Disney Fantasy. It is located near Great Abaco Island, and was formerly known as Gorda Cay. It is owned in full by The Walt Disney Company, giving them substantial control over the experience of visitors to the island. A post office on the island has special Bahamian postage specific to Disney Cruise Line, and a "Castaway Cay" postmark.

History and Development
Gorda Cay was once used as a stop for drug runners. There is an airstrip on the island, but it is no longer in regular use nor maintained. Gorda Cay has also been used for filming; the beach where Tom Hanks first encounters Daryl Hannah in Splash is on the island.

Disney is said to have spent US$25 million to develop and outfit the island. Construction took 18 months and included dredging 50,000 truckloads of sand from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The pier and its approaches were constructed to allow the Disney ships to dock alongside, thus removing the need for tenders to get the passengers ashore. To create the mooring site for the ships, workers dredged sand and used explosives to blast coral, and form a 1,700-foot (520 m) channel about 35 feet (11 m) deep and ranging from 200 to 400 feet (120 m) wide. The island is still largely undeveloped: only 55 of the 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) are being used.

Facilities
Disney Magic docked next to the Castaway Cay Family Beach

The island is developed in the theme of a castaway community, with buildings made to look as if they had been improvised after a shipwreck. The facilities are maintained like any other Disney theme park, and the shops accept guests' stateroom keys for payment. The food service is operated as an extension of the cruise package. A variety of activities are available to guests including bicycle hire, personal watercraft rental, snorkeling, and parasailing. There are three beaches for guests: one for families, one for teens, and another exclusively for adults, called Serenity Bay.

Two submarine-ride vehicles from the now-closed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage ride at Walt Disney World lie underwater in the snorkeling area. The Flying Dutchman pirate ship, from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, was on display in the lagoon. As of the final week in November 2010, the Flying Dutchman had been removed and taken to another location on the island where it was being dismantled as pictures show below.

The seven-night cruises visit Castaway Cay on Fridays, four-night cruises visit on Tuesdays, and three-night cruises visit on Saturdays.

Castaway Cay has facilities for the exclusive use of the ships' crews, including beaches and recreational areas. A staff of 70 custodians, boat captains, drivers, landscapers, and maintenance personnel live on the island, and are supplemented by crew from the ship when one is in port. Food and other supplies are brought in by the ships themselves. Sea water is desalinated for drinking with reverse osmosis water processors.

_________________
Bibliography:
Sunken Treasure: Six Who Found Fortunes
Robert F. Burgess, Dodd, mead & Co, 1988

Gadhafi’s Son Built a Ship With Deadly Shark Tank Inside

From Wired.com: Gadhafi’s Son Built a Ship With Deadly Shark Tank Inside
Hannibal Gadhafi—son of the assassinated Libyan dictator—built a ship with a 120-ton sea water aquarium inside. Why? To put six sharks inside, including two bull sharks and two whites, the most dangerous in the world.

Like a Bond villain’s mobile headquarters, Gadhafi son’s ship was going to be the epitome of bad taste. Called the Phoenician, the ship is able to hold 3,500 passengers. Full of golden everything, giant statues and marble columns, the ship’s center piece is a 120-ton sea water tank that was going to hold the sharks, which also included to black tip sharks. Along with tiger sharks and hammerheads, the bulls and the whites are extremely dangerous for humans.

The ship has now been bought by MSC Cruises. Pier Francesco Vago—the cruise company’s CEO—says that he doesn’t know why he wanted the sharks, but the sea water tank is ready for use. Gadhafi’s son had already contracted a group of marine biologists who were going to take care of the sharks while they roamed in their glass house.

I like to imagine that there was a hidden trap on top of the tank, to drop misbehaving passengers in it.

The 39-year-old Hannibal Gadhafi is a violent thug, known for beating his model wife and paying Beyonce an estimated $2 million for a private performance in 2010. He’s now living exiled in Argelia. I wonder if the crazy nutter mumbles things like You vont scape this trapp, Mr Biond! when he’s at home.

Musqueam band thwarts Vancouver ground-breaking

Not a story of discovery - but a story of potential prevention of discovery - if the condos go up, who knows what history will be lost?

From Vancouver Sun: Musqueam band thwarts Vancouver ground-breaking
Protesters from the Musqueam Indian Band stopped construction workers from starting excavation of land they say is home to their ancient burial ground.

Workers and property owner Gary Hackett were turned away when they showed up at 1338 Southwest Marine Dr. at 7:30 a.m. Monday. The land between the Metro Theatre and The Motel nightclub is being developed for a large condominium project.

While high winds blew out the power to stores and traffic lights in south Vancouver, about 40 protesters held up signs and beat drums, while many drivers honked their horns in support. Musqueam spokesperson Aaron Wilson said the protest was necessary after talks with the developer broke down. Protesters vowed to stay until the development plan by Magnum Projects for “HQ concrete homes” is stopped.

To help find a solution to the dispute, the B.C. government has scheduled meetings this week with the band, the city and the developer.

“Our chief has been working directly with Mayor Gregor Robertson and city manager Penny Ballem,” Musqueam band manager Ken McGregor told the Courier. “They have been very sympathetic, but getting agreement with three levels of government is complex and doesn’t move as quickly as some developers might like. Everybody is in a bit of a legal box.”

In 2006, Hackett received a heritage permit to start the B.C. government’s archaeological impact assessment on the property to prepare for development of six lots. In December 2008 the province sent the draft management plan to the Musqueam Band for comment but did not receive any response from the Musqueam until the current permit application was referred to it, said Brennan Clarke, spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

Then in December 2011, the province issued two permits to Lan-Pro Holdings (the developer) and Stantec (the archaeology consultant) to allow for development of the lots. “The Archaeology Branch is satisfied that the proposed site management plan balances the condition of the site (heavily disturbed) with the interests of the private land owner,” Clarke wrote in a ministry email to media.

The Musqueam dispute the province’s claim. “Work was stopped in the area near where the intact remains were discovered,” Clarke added in the email. “The remains have not been removed. The site where the remains were found will not be disturbed until an archaeologist has completed intensive testing the vicinity to determine if there are additional remains in the area.”

McGregor said the city told the band that once the provincial archeology permit is issued, the city doesn’t have the legal right to stand in the way of development. “Everybody seems to want to do the right thing but they say no one has the legal authority to do anything.”

Unlike the land under the Fraser Arms Hotel, the Musqueam band does not officially own the land at 1338 Southwest Marine Dr., but still claims title to it. McGregor added that the protest is not being organized from the band office, although it endorses its members’ efforts. “Most people wouldn’t want their gravesites desecrated outside their churches. This site is older than the Egyptian pyramids,” he said.

The developers and city staff could not be reached for comment by deadline.

Weapons Of The ‘Warwick’ Wreck

Pop quiz - where is Bermuda?

From BerNews: Weapons Of The ‘Warwick’ Wreck

On October 20, 1619, en route to Jamestown, Virginia, the magazine ship “Warwick” belonging to Earl of Warwick Robert Rich [1587–1658] — reportedly used to fight off the Spanish Armada in 1588 — made a scheduled stop in Bermuda.

After completing the first stretch of the voyage it had to re-provision, discharge some of the cargo and passengers, and load valuable products bound for England. “Warwick’s” arrival here was as an important event for the island. On that voyage, the ship was charged with delivering Captain Nathaniel Butler, the new Governor of the permanent Bermuda colony founded in 1612.

“Apart from delivering Butler, ‘Warwick’ was to carry supplies and settlers to the struggling colony at Jamestown and collect colonial products, mostly tobacco, from Bermuda and Virginia for return to England,” said marine archaeologists Piotr Bojakowski and Katie Custer.

“At the end of November, as ‘Warwick’ was preparing to depart for America, where the Jamestown settlers were no doubt eagerly awaiting the arrival of the ship and the supplies it carried, a hurricane struck. Although the crew had prepared the ‘Warwick’ as the storm approached, all the moorings suddenly gave way and the ferocious wind drove the ship right into the rocky cliffs of Castle Harbour.

“Due to a combination of a powerful north-westerly, shallow reefs, and the sharp limestone rocks surrounding Castle Harbour nothing could be done to save it. ‘Warwick’s’ hull, although sturdy, was no match against the elements; thus, its fate was sealed.”

Since 2008 archaeologists from Bermuda, the National Museum of Bermuda, Texas A&M University, the University of Southampton, and the Vasa Museum have dedicated their time, resources and expertise to excavating “Warwick’s” wreck.

And now Doug Inglis, assistant director of the “Warwick” Shipwreck Excavation, has concluded Robert Rich may have had more than merchant work in mind when he dispatched the ship to the New World.

Based on the team’s discovery of an impressive arsenal of weapons aboard the wreck, Mr. Inglis has concluded “the little vessel may have been armed for more than self defense.”

Writing on his blog Diving Archeology recently, Mr. Inglis said:” Sir Robert, the Earl of Warwick, was a major shareholder in the Bermuda Company. Although his stake in the joint-stock company was intended to be an important source of income, Sir Robert involved himself in privateering — legal piracy — on the side.

” … excavation of the shipwreck is revealing a number of exciting clues about the nature of the vessel. I have been part of an international team that has be working on the wreck since 2008.

“One thing that impressed us about the 2011 field season was the variety of ordinance we found aboard the ship. In addition to cannon balls, we found spiked shot, as well as bar shot and expanding bar shot — both designed to de-mast and disable other vessels. Was this offensive armament standard for merchantmen at the time, or was ‘Warwick’ prepared for more than just evasion?”

Before venturing into underwater archaeology, Mr. Inglis specialised in high-altitude archaeology — working in Rocky Mountain National Park and alpine regions of Colorado and Wyoming.

Aside from his work on the “Warwick” project, Mr. Inglis is an archaeological illustrator at Texas A&M’s New World lab. He is completing a Master’s thesis in Nautical Archaeology.

At the end of May he will be returning to Bermuda to join other archaeologists from the island and around the world to take part in the final season of the “Warwick” excavation.