HOT NEWS !

From 24 Hour Museum


The remarkable find was made by a Dutch amateur archaeologist, Jan Meulmeester, who sifted through gravel unearthed from a licensed marine aggregate dredging area 13km off Great Yarmouth and delivered to a wharf in southern Holland.

Reckoned to be the finest hand-axes that experts are certain come from English waters, the rare finds show that deep in the Ice Age, mammoth hunters roamed across land that is now submerged beneath the sea.

“These finds are massively important,” said Ice Age expert Phil Harding of Wessex Archaeology and Channel 4’s Time Team.

“In the Ice Age the cold conditions meant that water was locked up in the ice caps. The sea level was lower then, so in some places what is now the seabed was dry land.”

Bones and teeth, some of which may be from mammoths, and fragments of deer antler were also recovered along with the axes, which archaeologists believe would have been used by hunters in butchering the carcasses of the animals.

Read more...

From Eitb 24

The 180 tons ship was used to commercialize with the Americas.

It might have belonged to Saint Medel and Celedon, sank in 1544. According to the Spanish 20minutos web edition, Spanish Civil Guard in Huelva (Spain) sealed off a few meters of El Portil beach in order to protect a discovery.

If the information is confirmed, it could be one of the last few years’ most important discoveries.

The remains might have belonged to a galleon of the beginning of XVI century.

The expert underwater archaeologist Claudio Lozano Guerrero-Librero, has been studying them for a few days.

Claudio Lozano considers that the ship could have belonged to Saint Medel and Celedon, two very popular saints in the Basque Country, an habitual carrack construction place.

He also thinks that it could have sunk in 1544. According to his documents, the 180 tons ship was constructed at the beginning of XVI century, and it was used to commercialize in the Americas.

The shipmaster was Juanes de Lubelza and left New Spain and set a course for the Peninsula but a storm did not allow him to reach the coast. Around 20 men shipwrecked.

The remains of the carrack/galleon found correspond to the ship’s bottom and are made from oak wood. It was the owner of a beach bar in the area of Matagrana who found out the remains after a storm.

By Paul Easton


A maritime entrepreneur - and 50 friends - is steaming for the Auckland Islands for a fourth attempt to find gold from a ship that sank 142 years ago.

The General Grant foundered on the remote sub-Antarctic islands on May 14 1866, along with its cargo of gold.

The group left Bluff on Friday, led by Bill Day, of Wellington, who has tried to find the wreck of the General Grant three times.

Over 20 other salvage attempts have been made since 1866.

Mr Day said the trip was as much about showing friends and family the beauty of the islands and sub-Antarctic region as finding gold. "It's such a majestic place.

Having said that, there are definitely a couple of sites I want to check out."

The General Grant had 2576 ounces (73kg) of gold on its manifest, worth around $2.4 million today.

From DNI


The 18th century sailing ship Frau Maria (Vrouw Maria) that was carrying the Hermitage treasures onboard when it sank in the Baltic Sea near the shore of Finland is going to be lifted.

The salvage works will be jointly carried out by the Russian and Finnish parties.

This schooner was transporting treasures ordered by Catherine II the Great for the Hermitage says Anatoli Vilkov, Head of Rossvyazokhrankultura, the Russian media and culture supervision agency.

According to him, jewelry and China collections might have remained intact on board the ship. Previously divers discovered that the cargo had not been damaged during the shipwreck, yet they managed to lift only six items.

The precious cargo intended for the Russian imperial court never reached the shore of the Northern capital. The schooner started off from the seaport in October 1771 yet was caught in a heavy storm and wrecked nearby Aland Islands.

By Jasper Copping

The final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed "Hitler's lost fleet", has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea.

The submarines had been carried 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping during the Second World War, but were scuttled as the war neared its end.

Now, more than 60 years on, explorers have located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of Turkey.

The vessels, including one once commanded by Germany's most successful U-boat ace, formed part of the 30th Flotilla of six submarines, taken by road and river across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Germany's Baltic port at Kiel to Constanta, the Romanian Black Sea port.

In two years, the fleet sank dozens of ships and lost three of their number to enemy action.

But in August 1944, Romania switched sides and declared war on Germany, leaving the three remaining vessels stranded. With no base and unable to sail home - the Bosporus and Dardanelles were closed to them because of Turkish neutrality - their captains were ordered to scuttle the boats before rowing ashore and trying to make their way back to Germany.

However, all three crews were caught and interned by the Turks.

Read more...

From PR-Inside

Marine archaeologists will begin work in June to uncover the sand-buried hull of a 2,300 year-old cargo ship thought to have been ferrying wine from the Aegean island of Chios before it sank off Cyprus' southern coast, researchers said Thursday.

The vessel, dating from the late Classical period (mid-fourth century B.C.) is one of only a few such ships to have been found so well-preserved, said University of Cyprus visiting marine archaeologist Stella Demesticha.

«The shipwreck looks very promising about shedding light on the nautical and economic history of the period in the east Mediterranean» The wreck rests on the seabed at a depth of 44 meters (144 feet) some 2½ kilometers (1½ miles) off the island's southern coast.

Demesticha said the wreck was also unique because it lies at a depth that divers can easily reach, unlike similar discoveries found in deeper waters.

Unreleased underwater photographs that researchers took of the vessel on initial surveying dives in November show a jumble of dozens of amphorae - clay urns used in antiquity to carry liquids and solid foodstuffs - lying on the seabed in the shape of the ship.

Read more...

By Murphy Givens

Four ships were making ready to sail from San Juan de Ulúa, the port of Veracruz, on April 9, 1554.

They were homeward bound for Seville, with a stop to meet the rest of the armada at Havana.

As the ships were taking on cargo and passengers, a Dominican priest, Juan Ferrer, had forebodings of disaster.

"Woe be those who are going to Spain," Ferrer told fellow passengers.

"Neither we nor the fleet will ever arrive.

Most of us will perish." Four great-bellied galleons -- the Santa Maria de Yciar, San Estebán, Espíritu Santo, and San Andrés -- were loaded with gold, cochineal, but mostly silver from the vast silver mines at Zacatecas.

It was a treasure fleet -- Plata Flota, the silver fleet.

The priest's forebodings of disaster were forgotten. The ships had smooth sailing across the Gulf.

They landed at Havana to join other ships in the armada, a precaution against the dangers of piracy.

Read more...

By Robert Fairburn


A German U-boat sunk off the Scottish coast more than 90 years ago has finally been discovered by two divers after a five-year search.

Jim MacLeod and Martin Sinclair found the wreckage of the U12, the first ever submarine to have an aeroplane carried on its deck, 25 miles from the Berwickshire port of Eyemouth at the weekend.

The exact location of the 60-metre boat had become a mystery to the two divers after a number of searches of the seabed where it was recorded to have been lying proved fruitless.

The pair worked with a researcher and shipwreck enthusiast Kevin Heath, of Orkney, who tracked down the logbooks of British destroyers HMS Ariel, Acheron and Attack, all of which were involved in the sinking of the U12.

The precise location of the vessel was then pinpointed, 15 miles from where it was originally thought to be.

Mr MacLeod, 45, a computer systems analyst from Bo'ness, and Mr Sinclair, 47, a mechanical engineer from Falkirk, then enlisted the help of specialist Eyemouth firm Marine Quest Dive Charters to visit the location where they found the submarine lying 150 feet down on the seabed.

It was the first time the wreck had been visited since it was sunk in 1915.