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From The Telegraph

Residents and pirates in the Somali port of Haradhere told the Associated Press that the boat, which was carrying eight men, overturned in a storm after dozens of pirates left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden.

Three of the eight pirates managed to swim to shore but five were believed to have drowned.

Haradhere, which has been used by pirates to launch their attacks on international vessels off east Africa, is a Somali coastal town close to where the Saudi supertanker ship was anchored.

Local sources said that the ransom payment held by the eight pirates on their get away boat had been lost at sea.

Dozens of pirates were involved in the Nov 15 hijacking of the Sirius Star, which had a £60 million cargo of crude oil. The estimated £2 million paid to release it on behalf of the ship's owners was split between many members of the gang.

The ransom was delivered on Friday by airdrop, parachuted close to the ship in a waterproof case for the pirates to collect. They were then allowed to make their escape.

By Vincent Morello

A 180-year-old shipwreck found two weeks ago on the Great Barrier Reef has been declared a protected zone by the federal government.

The wreck of His Majesty's Colonial Schooner Mermaid was discovered by underwater archaeologists from the Australian National Maritime Museum on January 2, a day after the search for the wooden-hull vessel began.

It lay hidden off Flora Reef, about 20km from Cairns in far north Queensland.

The ship's crew were unable to free the vessel when it ran aground on June 13, 1829, but escaped in boats and were rescued 11 days later by a passing merchant ship.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett on Thursday declared the wreck's resting place a protected zone under the Historic Shipwrecks Act of 1976.

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By Tuck Thompson

The man who found the HMAS Sydney off Western Australia said he would submit a proposal to locate the hospital ship Centaur.

But David L. Mearns, who heads UK-based Blue Water Recoveries, could face competition from Australians involved in the HMAS Sydney project, including deep-water oil and gas pipeline firms.

Explorers have until January 23 to respond to an advertisement for a project manager, a post expected to be filled next month.

Centaur was torpedoed off the Brisbane Coast in 1943 by a Japanese submarine, with the loss of 268 lives. Hundreds of families across Australia have waited years for the war grave to be discovered.

The Queensland Government has defended a steering committee overseeing the $4 million project .

By David Wilson

This swirling tale of intrigue sets sail off Hong Kong in the waters of the Pearl River Delta. There, in 1279 after repeated engagements, the Mongol ruler routed the Song navy, completing the grand plan of his grandfather, Genghis Khan: the conquest of China.

In the wake of victory, the new Grand Khan ruled the largest empire ever seen, stretching from the China Sea to the plains of Hungary. His navy, the world's biggest, consisted of more than 700 top-notch ships born of the great rivers that bisect the Middle Kingdom.

"The craft that plied those rivers, the coastline and the distant oceans beyond were the technological marvels of the eleventh through fifteenth centuries, surpassing anything that Europe put into the water," writes prolific undersea chronicler James Delgado.

No wonder the Grand Khan felt emboldened to embark on a spot of maritime enterprise. Cue a series of doomed shock-and-awe assaults on Japan, Vietnam and Java.

Within 15 years, the visionary ruler adept at home affairs but a less able warlord than he originally looked, had frittered his fleet.

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By McClatchy

A search for sunken treasure on the ocean floor plays out like a cold case mystery on "Treasure Quest," a new Discovery Channel series that follows the undersea salvage work of Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration.  

The 11-part series, debuting at 10 p.m. Thursday, takes viewers along on the hunt for the Merchant Royal, a trading ship loaded with gold, silver and jewels that went down in the English Channel in 1641.

A mix of adventure, science and history, "Treasure Quest" details the work of the world's only publicly traded company dedicated to deep-ocean shipwreck exploration.

"It's a chance to show people what we do and what's involved in locating, identifying and then recovering artifacts," says Odyssey co-founder and CEO Greg Stemm.

"We're doing more than just recovering lost treasure," he adds. "Our goal is to map the entire ocean bottom."

Odyssey made headlines in recent years with two major discoveries: the SS Republic, a steamship that sank 100 miles off the coast of Georgia in 1865 while carrying a fortune in gold coins, and a Colonial era shipwreck near Portugal that yielded $500 million in silver and gold coins.

From Subhashish Mohanty

A French cargo ship, Veleda, sank off the Orissa coast some 133 years ago, even before the Titanic sank in 1912.

Nobody had bothered to trace the Veleda till December 31, when a diver almost touched it. While the state government has slapped a case against him, a Hollywood filmmaker is planning a movie on the ship.
 
The 250ft long and 50ft wide ship, carrying liquor, wine, food grains, sugar and other goods from Paris, sunk near Hukitola Island, about 140 km from here as a severe cyclone struck the area.

The ship's captain failed to anchor the ship and it sank.

The ship's crew was buried at a cemetery near a lighthouse, wrote John Beames, Cuttack collector from 1875 to 1878, in his autobiography Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian.

Scuba-diver Sabir Bux, 42, decided to find the ship on the last day of 2008.

He and some friends went to the island, crossing the Gahirmatha marine sanctuary, and with some effort managed to trace the ship that sank in 1875.

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By Jeremy Grange

A muddy river bank in the flat, watery landscape of southern Essex may seem an unlikely place to find one of the most important ships in scientific history. 

But a combination of painstaking detective work and archaeology have convinced maritime historian Dr Robert Prescott that the banks of the River Roach near the village of Paglesham are the last resting place of HMS Beagle. 

The historic ship will be forever associated with Charles Darwin who served as its naturalist on her second great voyage between 1831 and 1836. 

This journey sowed in Darwin's mind the seed of the ideas that would eventually become his theory of natural selection and revolutionise the way we look at the world and ourselves.

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By Shân Ross

In 1588 a Spanish galleon believed to be laden with gold and silver plate and a chest of 30 million ducats in gold coins mysteriously blew up in Tobermory Bay in the Inner Hebrides as she fled home following the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Over the years, numerous treasure-seekers have arrived, the most recent laden with sonar technology, determined to dive to the sea bed and retrieve the riches held in the Armada's paymaster's chest.

The current search mission is being conducted by Sir Torquhil Ian Campbell, the 13th Duke of Argyll, whose family was granted rights to search for the wreck by royal charter in 1641.

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