HOT NEWS !

By Anne Atkins

Spies and intrigue. Vital dispatches sent through treacherous waters.

The initials of one of the most powerful politicians in the land, etched on a gun lying deep under the sea. A small country, fighting with cutting-edge military technology against a terrifying power.

Hidden treasure sitting undisturbed for four centuries, which divers risk their lives to recover.

And all of it is true. On the Timewatch programme tonight on BBC Two, viewers can see for the first time the events that led to a groundbreaking discovery.

The story begins with the location of a wreck half a mile off the tip of the Channel Island of Alderney, where an Elizabethan ship, heavily armed with cannon, was reported lost in 1592.

Raised from the sea bed four centuries later, the guns and shot led a marine archaeologist to propound a theory that could rewrite English naval history.

A new and tantalising mystery emerged too, prompted by a set of initials found engraved on one of the cannon.

“You do get these moments — I call them ‘mind touch’ — which transport you back over the centuries,” said Mensun Bound, the marine archaeologist and Fellow at St Peter’s College, Oxford, speaking from his 14th-century manor house in the Oxfordshire village of Horspath.

“It was like that with this.”

By Jonathan Amos

A French battleship sunk in 1917 by a German submarine has been discovered in remarkable condition on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Danton, with many of its gun turrets still intact, is sitting upright in over 1,000m of water. It was found by the Fugro geosciences company during a survey for a gas pipeline between Algeria and Italy. The Danton, which sank with 296 sailors still onboard, lies 35km southwest of the island of Sardinia.

Naval historians record that the Danton's Captain Delage stood on the bridge with his officers and made no attempt to leave the ship as it went down.

The French government is now keen to see that the site is protected. 

"Its condition is extraordinary," said Rob Hawkins, project director with Fugro GeoConsulting Limited.

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From Eurekalert

University of Miami receives $250,000 from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice to support research expansion at archeological site in Florida.

The Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice has awarded the University of Miami (UM) $250,000 toward expansion of research and educational facilities at the underwater archeological and ecological preserve, Little Salt Spring (LSS), in North Port, Sarasota County, Florida.

The site is of enormous archeological and anthropological value due to its antiquity and exceptional preservation of ancient organic material.

The gift was announced earlier this year, during a reception in Naples, Florida, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the University's exploration of the preserve. The site is a national archeological treasure, said Teri A. Hansen, president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice.

"Little Salt Spring is arguably one of the most important archaeological sites in the country, and it's right here in southern Sarasota County," said Hansen.

"By supporting the University of Miami's work at the spring, we can help create a significant archaeological research facility in North Port while also providing public access and educational opportunities at this fascinating preserve."

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By Lamaur Stancil

It’s taken almost four centuries for someone to find the shipwrecked remains of a Spanish treasure galleon, and it’s just east of Indian River County.

Orlando-based treasure hunter Tom Gidus said he’s been examining the debris from the ship, which is more than 14 miles east of the barrier islands. Indialantic shipwreck historian Robert Marx said he reviewed pieces Gidus found and concluded they are from the ship known as the Espiritu Santo el Mayor, a 480-ton galleon that sank in a storm in 1626.

“A bronze cannon was found a number of years back and that is what led us to the area,” Gidus said.

Retrieving the pieces of the wreckage has become a long-term project, Gidus said. He’s dived and removed just a handful of loose pieces from the wreckage for identification purposes.

Much of the rest is partially or fully submerged under the sand of the ocean basin, he said. His crew will use either an airlift or underwater handheld blowers to retrieve the ship’s belongings.

By Dan Koeppel

Out of service for 40 years, the SS United States still holds speed records. But what fate awaits this storied piece of naval history ?

When I remember the great ocean liner, we're steaming into the wind, east across the Atlantic. I'm at the bow. I let go of a balloon and run aft, trying to keep pace with the floating object.

But it rises too high long before I reach the ship's end. As it vanishes into the clouds, my attention is drawn downward to the perfectly symmetrical wake trailing behind us.

Though I didn't know it then, at age 4, that wake, sharp and narrow, was a clue to what made the SS United States one of the greatest—if not the greatest—ocean liners of the 20th century.

To cut such a trail in the water a ship has to be fast, and there was no ocean liner faster than the one known to enthusiasts as the "Big U." Although four city blocks long and 17 stories high, the United States could slice through water at 44 knots, or more than 50 mph—14 knots faster than today's largest cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2.

During her maiden voyage in 1952, the ship set records on both the east and westbound crossings; the latter, three days, 12 hours and 12 minutes at an average speed of 34.5 knots, has never been broken.

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By Mark Strevenson

Mexico has denied a U.S. sea salvage company's request to explore and recover artifacts from a sunken 17th-century Spanish galleon in the Gulf, the government said Monday.

The ship in question, the galleon Our Lady of Juncal, was part of a fleet hit by a powerful storm in 1631 in "one of the greatest tragedies that has ever occurred in Mexican waters," according to Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.

The proposal by Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. of Tampa, Florida, "is not intended to conduct research and does not have the approval of archaeologists or an academic institution of recognized prestige," the Institute said.

It added that "treasure hunters have always had their eyes on" the wreck site.

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The Juncal

By Gregg K. Kakesako

The USS Arizona is in "far better shape than can be imagined based on scientific evidence," says Brett Seymour, of the National Park Service.

Navy divers are helping the Park Service map the hull of the sunken battleship using 3-D, high-definition imaging. The Park Service is finding soft and hard coral on the battleship -- where no hard coral was growing in the 1980s.

Also under way is a film of the underwater world of the Arizona that will be shown in the new visitors center.

Officials say the new technology helps them better understand the structural integrity of the 93-year-old vessel and whether it is any danger to the environment.

The camera system also will be used to videotape a Japanese midget submarine sunk off Pearl Harbor in the 1941 attack.

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By Bruce Smith

It could be one of the nation’s oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the CSS H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship ?

Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the blockade ship USS Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 then disappeared.

The Hunley’s fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since it was raised in 2000.

But the submarine has been agonizingly slow surrendering her secrets.

“She was a mystery when she was built.

She was a mystery as to how she looked and how she was constructed for many years, and she is still a mystery as to why she didn’t come home,” said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the S.C. Hunley Commission, which raised the sub and is charged with conserving and displaying it.

Scientists hope the next phase of the conservation, removing the hardened sediment coating the outside of the hull, will provide clues to the mystery.

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