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By Anna Ellis - Euro Weekly News

Alexandre Monteiro, an underwater archaeologist and researcher at Nova University in Lisbon, has identified 8,620 shipwrecks scattered along the coasts of mainland Portugal, the Azores, and Madeira. His findings are based on a detailed database of shipwrecks dating back to the 1500s, compiled from historical records.

Monteiro’s research documents around 7,500 wrecks along the mainland coast, 1,000 near the Azores, and 120 in the waters around Madeira. Among these, he estimates that about 250 may hold significant treasures.

One example is the Nossa Senhora do Rosário, a Spanish shipwreck from 1589 located off the coast of Troia. Monteiro explained that his investigation uncovered detailed information about the ship, including its cargo of 22 tonnes of gold and silver and even the name of the captain’s mother.

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By Catherine Nicoll - BBC

A hunt for better fishing grounds led a man to spend over three decades documenting more than 2,000 shipwrecks in the Irish Sea.

Adrian Corkill's interest in finding vessels lost in the waters around the Isle of Man was sparked in 1987 when he started fishing in a boat on a wreck off Laxey in his spare time.

Curious about the ship on the seabed below, he began researching its story, and went on to uncover 150 other wrecks. Having complied a database of more than 2,000 wrecks, nearly 2,000 wreck sites, and about 1,100 vessels, the 58-year-old transferred the information to Manx National Heritage for safekeeping.

Looking back on his 37-year hobby, Mr Corkill said his interest was initially "fish-orientated".

"I thought the wrecks are good places for fishing, and if you can find more wrecks then you can get more fish." But as time went on his interest intensified, and culminated with him learning to dive to broaden the range of wrecks that could be reached.

While a ship's bell was the most straightforward way of identifying a vessel, finding it was not always that simple. "It's a detective story. Sometimes you're lucky and you get the bell straightaway, and that's job done.

"Other times you can dive a wreck repeatedly and still not find the bell. "It's probably covered in debris, because a lot of the wrecks are quite collapsed.

"If a bell falls within the wreckage it can be buried underneath metal or sand, so it will be there somewhere.

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By John Grady - US Naval Institute

The Chinese dredger suspected of plundering two World War II Royal Navy shipwrecks last year has been detained by Malaysian maritime authorities.

MV Chuan Hong 68 and the entire crew is being held for paperwork violations including port clearances and having 60 unregistered LPG containers aboard and not illegal scavenging, according to a report in Maritime Executive.

But the larger question being raised by Southeast Asia news media and investigated by local authorities is how a ship like Chuan Hong 68 with its “bad reputation” that goes back years even be allowed to return to Malaysian waters.

Kuala Lampur’s New Straits Times reported Malaysian investigators are looking into why and by what means Chuan Hong 68 was issued permits to carry out salvage operations on MV Armada in February and a wreck identified as “Maritime Fidelity” in September last year, both off Johor. The dredger’s suspected plundering of the two warships for its steel, aluminum and brass fittings took place in May 2023.

Since these metals were produced before nuclear weapons’ use and testing they are considered of great value in highly specialized manufacturing.

During the May 2023 boarding of the Chuan Hong 68, inspectors found rusting artillery shells and other scrap that likely came from the two warships. Shortly after that boarding, Malaysian authorities confiscated two cannons, more ordnance and other objects in a junkyard that also likely came from sunken warships.

The newspaper’s account said both “notices to mariners” that salvage operations were being conducted had been deleted from the country’s maritime posting website. These notices are also guides to authorities to what vessels are operating in their territorial waters.

Local police, Malaysia’s National Heritage Department and its Maritime Enforcement Agency and Marine Department are also participating in the investigation as to how the permits were granted and their purging from the website.

In May last year before the second salvaging operations began, Malaysian authorities detained Chuan Hong 68 in the same waters for allegedly crushing and removing the wreckage of the Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse, USNI News reported.

Both were sunk by Japanese bombers during the invasion of the Malay Peninsula in December 1941, days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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By Shawna Healey - Manchester Evening News
 

Two million pounds' worth of sunken treasure recovered from infamous shipwrecks is going under the hammer. The Shipwreck Treasure Museum in Cornwall is auctioning off more than 7,000 items - offering maritime buffs the unique opportunity to bag a piece of history.

The award-winning museum which is dedicated to shipwrecks and treasures hauled up from the bottom of the ocean went on the market back in August but sadly no one came forward to take it over. Now, the collection is being sold piece by piece.

Owned by Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project, the museum houses treasures gathered from the wrecks of the Mary Rose, Titanic, Lusitania and the Royal Charter, as well as from the Royal Yacht Britannia, Admiral Nelson and HMS Victory.

When the sale of the museum was announced, SBC Property in Truro said Smit Associates Ltd. was looking to consolidate its other businesses, especially the Lost Gardens of Heligan, as Cornwall Live reports. They said the aim was to find a buyer for the lot but confirmed that, as a plan B, the collection would be auctioned off separately if no buyer for the museum could be found.

Jeremy Beeching from the estate agent said: "Once the collection is removed then I am instructed to sell the vacant site inviting offers £1.5m. This would most likely be of interest to developers, investors and bar/restaurant operators."

Lay's Auctioneers in Penzance have been painstakingly putting the sale of the museum's collection together over the past few months.

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From Greta Cross - USA Today

Glass bottles over 300 years old have been retrieved from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Divers discovered two well-preserved onion glass bottles from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Indian River County in Florida in 2021 and 2022.

While the exact ship has yet to be identified, the vessel was a part of the 1715 Treasure Fleet, Mark Ard, Florida Department of State director of external affairs, told USA TODAY.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Spanish Plate Fleets traveled back and forth from Spain to the Americas, transporting treasures from the New World. The 1715 Treasure Fleet was one in particular that did not make the return home.

In July 1715, 11 Spanish fleet ships were destroyed in a hurricane off the Florida coast, according to the National Park Service. The ships were full of "silver, gold, gemstones, tobacco, exotic spices and indigo."

For about 200 years, the ships remained untouched in the Atlantic Ocean. Today, however, they are protected as part of the Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserves.

The recently-discovered onion glass bottles represent a rare collection of well-preserved artifacts from the fleet.

"These bottles are very fragile, and for them to survive the destruction of the shop and then being submerged under water for (more than) 300 years where they were subject to tidal forces is incredible," Ard said.

Though the bottles were empty upon recovery, Ard said they likely contained an alcoholic spirit. The thin-glass bottles were probably made in England, Ard added, as the Spanish did not make their own glass.

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From The Guardian

They are some of the most evocative historic artefacts that fate ever consigned to the bottom of the sea. Now, coal from the Titanic, a piece of rope from the Mary Rose and musket flints from the shipwreck that inspired William Wordsworth to write one of his greatest works are to be sold at a very rare auction.

The artefacts are among the 8,000 objects salvaged from 150 wrecks that will go under the hammer for the first time next month.

The entire collection of the Shipwreck Treasure Museum in Charlestown, near St Austell, Cornwall, is up for sale after the tourist attraction, which is owned by the family of Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project, was put on the market for £1.95m earlier this year but failed to attract a buyer.

“I can’t imagine there’s a more important collection of maritime archeology worldwide,” said David Lay of Lay’s Auctioneers, which is selling the lots. “There are many wonderful, rare discoveries.”

Founded in 1976 by Richard Larn, a former navy diver and historic shipwreck expert, the museum’s extraordinary collection is being broken up into 1,254 lots and includes rare items from wrecks that are now legally protected historic sites or designated war graves.

This includes 46g of coal, recovered in 1994, which was onboard the Titanic to fuel the steamship’s doomed voyage to New York in 1912. While a gold pocket watch recovered from the body of the Titanic’s wealthiest passenger, John Jacob Astor, sold for a record-breaking £1.2m earlier this year, the lumps of coal have been valued at £400 to £600.

Lay is hoping the auction will attract fans of the Titanic from around the world. Another collector’s item in the sale is a piece of rope recovered from Henry VIII’s Tudor flagship, the Mary Rose.

Estimated to fetch £5,000 to £10,000, it was given to Larn after he reportedly helped the Mary Rose Trust to dislodge the ship from the depths of the Solent using underwater explosives.

By Natasha Geiling, updated by Meilan Solly - Smithsonianmag.com

The USS Indianapolis had delivered the crucial components of the first operational atomic bomb to a naval base in the Pacific, racing from San Francisco to Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands, in a record-breaking ten days.

In just under two weeks, the bomb would level the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

But for now, on July 28, 1945, the Indianapolis was sailing from Guam, without an escort, to meet the USS Idaho in the Philippines’ Leyte Gulf, where the two warships would prepare for the Allied invasion of Japan.

July 29 was quiet, with the Indianapolis traveling through swells in the seemingly endless Pacific Ocean at a speed of about 17 knots. As the sun set, the sailors played cards and read books; some spoke with the ship’s priest, Father Thomas Conway.

Shortly after midnight on July 30, a Japanese torpedo hit the Indianapolis, ripping off its starboard bow and igniting a tank containing 3,500 gallons of aviation fuel into a pillar of fire.

Then, another torpedo from the same submarine struck closer to midship, hitting fuel tanks and powder magazines and setting off a chain reaction of explosions that effectively ripped the Indianapolis in two. Still traveling at 17 knots, the ship began taking on massive amounts of water; it sank in just 12 minutes.

Of the 1,196 men aboard, about 900 made it into the water alive. Their ordeal was just beginning. As the sun rose on July 30, the survivors bobbed in the water. Life rafts were scarce.

The living searched for the dead and appropriated their life jackets for those who had none. Hoping to maintain some semblance of order, the sailors began forming groups—some small, some made up of several hundred men—in the open water. Soon enough, they would be staving off exposure, thirst and sharks.

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By Tom Metcalfe - Livescience.com

Shipwreck hunters have discovered the remains of a famous American submarine that sank with 79 crew on board while fighting a Japanese warship near the Philippines in 1944.

According to the New York-based Lost 52 Project, which made the discovery, the wreck of USS Harder now lies on its keel on the bottom of the South China Sea near the northern Philippine island of Luzon at a depth of around 3,750 feet (1,140 meters).

Naval reports of the sub's final mission say the Harder — a Gato-class sub named after a type of fish (the harder mullet) and nicknamed the "Hit 'Em Harder" — sank with all crew on Aug. 24, 1944 after it was heavily damaged by depth charges in a battle with a Japanese destroyer.

The Harder was one of the most famous American submarines of World War II. U.S. Navy records report that it torpedoed and sank five Japanese destroyers and several other enemy ships during six successful patrols in the Pacific war theater

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