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  • Historic Henry V shipwreck found in Hamble River

    Technical drawing reconstructing the ‘Holigost


    By Laura Hodgetts - Pratical Boat Owner


    Historic England is taking steps to protect and investigate a shipwreck in Hampshire that is believed to be the second of four ‘great ships’ built for Henry V’s royal fleet.

    Experts from Historic England believe the wreck that lies buried in mud in the River Hamble near Southampton, is the Holigost (Holy Ghost).

    The Holigost was a major part of Henry V’s war machine, playing a key role in the two battles that broke French naval power and enabled Henry to conquer France in the early 15th century.

    The Holigost joined the royal fleet on 17 November 1415 and took part in operations between 1416 and 1420, including two of the most significant naval battles of the Hundred Years War. It served as the flagship of the Duke of Bedford at the battle of Harfleur in 1416, suffering serious damage, and was in the thick of the fighting off the Chef de Caux in 1417.

    It was rebuilt from a large Spanish ship called the Santa Clara that was captured in late 1413 or early 1414, then acquired by the English Crown.

    The name of the ship is derived from Henry V’s personal devotion to the Holy Trinity.


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  • Unlocking the key to the Franklin mystery

    HMS Erebus


    From Chris Sorensen - Macleans


    After collectively spending more than 100 hours in the water this summer, dive teams exploring the wreck of HMS Erebus in Canada’s High Arctic have hatched a plan to explore the gloomy, partially collapsed interior of the nearly 170-year-old shipwreck.

    Marc-André Bernier, the head of Parks Canada’s underwater archaeology unit, says the team took advantage of several weeks of unusually good weather to map out the site, cut away seaweed and determine the best way to enter the ship, which was first discovered last year in the eastern Queen Maud Gulf.

    They plan to return next season to begin the laborious process of working their way down to the lower decks.

    “That’s where everyone believes the key to the Franklin mystery lies—mainly inside the officers’ cabins,” Bernier says.

    It won’t be easy. While the bow of the ship is almost intact—Bernier says it will be a “swim in”—other sections have been badly damaged by ice and will need to be reinforced before divers can venture inside.

    Bernier says the archaeological exploration of the ship could take as long as five years to complete, but is hopeful it will shed new light on the Arctic’s greatest maritime mystery.


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  • More details confirm identity of century-old shipwreck

    Chinese cruiser Zhiyuan


    From Xinhua


    Archaeologists have discovered details which could confirm a shipwreck found in the Yellow Sea to be the cruiser Zhiyuan, sunk by the Japanese navy 121 years ago during the Sino-Japanese War.

    After more than two months of underwater exploration and salvage, archaeologists believe they have identified a wreck found off the port of Dandong in northeast China as one of the Beiyang Fleet, defeated in 1894 by the Japanese navy in the Battle of Yellow Sea.

    The 50-meter wreck is about 10 nautical miles southwest of Dandong Port, at depth of around 20 meters.

    Severely damaged in the battle, the ship is not well preserved, said team leader Zhou Chunshui. No cabins have been found intact and the engine room is still buried in the sand During the past two months, divers have brought up over 120 items from the seabed, including some 60 copper coins, armaments and personal belongings.

    "We found a piece of a leather belt, insoles, and comb," Zhou said."They are too badly damaged to infer anything about their owners."

    The archaeological investigation remains exclusively submarine and it has not yet been decided whether or when the ship will be salvaged, he added. Team member Cui Yong said three porcelain plates had been retrieved from the wreck, clearly showing the characters "Zhi" and "Yuan", strong evidence of the identity of the ship.

    Three shells found have been confirmed as belonging to the Zhiyuan.


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  • B-17 Flying Fortress bomber found on seabed off Sicily

    A B-17F plane similar to the one found on the seabed off Sicily


    By Nick Squires - The Telegraph


    The wreck of a Flying Fortress bomber shot down by Messerschmitt fighters during the Second World War has been found lying on the seabed off the coast of Sicily.

    The B-17, nicknamed Devils from Hell by its nine-man crew, was discovered by divers at a depth of 245ft (75 metres), around four miles from the port of Palermo in southern Italy.

    The discovery was the result of months of detective work, with historians and amateur divers matching official wartime records with the accounts of elderly Sicilians who still remember the raid.

    The aircraft was located by a group of amateur divers who are part of a project called “Shadows of the Deep”, which aims to locate the wrecks of planes and boats off Sicily.

    Described by one Italian newspaper as the “Indiana Jones’s of the sea”, they were helped by a sonar scan carried out by a diving unit of the Italian fire brigade.

    “The wreck was found a few months ago thanks to the help of the fire service. Our job was to dive down and try to identify it,” said Riccardo Cingillo, one of the divers.

    It took several attempts – when they first dived down to the wreck, visibility was poor. Eventually they were able to find and photograph serial numbers on the engines and in the cockpit which enabled a positive identification.


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  • Greek Antikythera shipwreck

    The 2015 expedition marked the first time archaeologists were able to join specialist divers in descending to the 55-meter (180 feet) deep site


    From Phys Org


    Archaeologists excavating the famous ancient Greek shipwreck that yielded the Antikythera mechanism have recovered more than 50 items including a bronze armrest (possibly part of a throne), remains of a bone flute, fine glassware, luxury ceramics, a pawn from an ancient board game, and several elements of the ship itself.

    "This shipwreck is far from exhausted," reports project co-Director Dr. Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

    "Every single dive on it delivers fabulous finds, and reveals how the '1 percent' lived in the time of Caesar."

    The shipwreck dates to circa 65 B.C., and was discovered by Greek sponge fishermen in 1900 off the southwestern Aegean island of Antikythera.

    They salvaged 36 marble statues of mythological heroes and gods; a life-sized bronze statue of an athlete; pieces of several more bronze sculptures; scores of luxury items; and skeletal remains of crew and passengers.

    The wreck also relinquished fragments of the world's first computer: the Antikythera Mechanism, a geared mechanical device that encoded the movements of the planets and stars and predicted eclipses.


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  • Japan’s Atlantis? The unsolved underwater mystery

    The Yonaguna monumen
    Photo: Robert Schoch

    By Kate Schneider - News.Com.Au


    When scuba diving instructor Kihachiro Aratake plunged into the water off the coast of the Japanese island of Yonaguni in 1986, he discovered an incredible sight.

    Six metres below the surface lay a series of monoliths that he described as appearing to be “terraced into the side of a mountain”. The huge rectangular formations had strikingly perfect 90 degree angles, including straight walls, steps and columns.

    Over the following years experts descended upon the site in a bid to determine whether the structure was natural or man-made.

    Yet to this day, it remains a great unsolved mystery. Initially it was proposed that the Yonaguni Monument was built when the area was above sea level some 10,000 years ago.

    So could ‘Japan’s Atlantis’ be a remnant of a preglacial civilisation that was eventually inundated ? Or could it be the result of an earthquake, putting it at 2000-3000 years old ? Experts disagree.

    As the structure was mapped out over the following years, more details came to light. Divers found what appeared to be a huge arch, as well as temples, carvings, paved streets and a large pyramid-like structure measuring 76 metres long at its base.


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  • Hayle heritage centre to receive a bell

    By Kirste Smith - The Cornishman


    A heritage centre will be taking over the ownership of a ship's bell from the 1800s next month.

    Hayle Heritage Centre will be taking over the ownership of the bell from the SS Carnsew, which was a coastal steamer built by Harvey's Foundry in 1888.

    The ship was used to ferry coal, tin and copper ore between ports in Cornwall and South Wales via Bristol.
    It sunk in a collision with another cargo ship, the SS Everest, off Bull Point on the North Devon coast on October 17 1903 but the captain and crew survived.

    The bell, which was discovered by North Devon Diving Club, has been donated in memory of Phil Durbin, a keen diver with the club.

     

     

     

  • First sub to sink enemy warship revealed

    The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley

    By Bruce Smith
     

    The hull of the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship has been cleaned and revealed for the first time in 150 years.

    After a year of painstaking work, scientists using small chisels and hand tools have removed encrusted sand, sediment and rust from the outside of the hand-cranked Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley.

    Now, the outside appears much as it did when the Hunley and its eight-man crew rammed a spar with a powder charge into the USS Housatonic and sank the Union blockade ship off South Carolina in 1864.

    But scientists said Thursday that cleaning the hull didn't solve the mystery of why the Hunley itself sank with its crew before returning from its mission.

    Cleaning the hull showed some dents on both sides of the submarine.

    But scientists say it's not clear when the dents occurred. The Hunley sank twice before it went on its 1864 mission, though it also could have been dented at the time of the Housatonic attack or later when the sub sat for decades on the ocean floor off Charleston.

    "If there was a smoking gun, we would have seen it a long time ago," said Johanna Rivera-Diaz, a conservator with the Hunley project.
     

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