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From BBC News


The execution of two pirates from Aberdeen is to be re-visited during September's Scottish Archaeology Month. Robert Laird and John Jackson were among the Granite City's lesser known sea robbers.

They were hanged in 1597. 

Their story will be explored during an event called Tales from the Tolbooth, which will include a re-enactment. 

More famous Aberdonian pirates include Provost Robert Davidson who fought Highland forces at the Battle of Harlaw, near Inverurie, in the 1400s.

Chris Croly, of Aberdeen City Council archaeology unit, said the pirates went to the gallows for a raid on a ship at anchor at Burntisland, Fife.

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By Nick Meo


More than 160 years after they vanished into the northern ice on a doomed mission to find a North West Passage to Asia, an expedition will set off in search of the lost ships of Victorian explorer Sir John Franklin, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror. 

If the Canadian Coastguard's sonar manages to locate the remains of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, they will solve one of the great mysteries of maritime exploration. 

The last recorded sighting of the two vessels and their 128 hand-picked officers was on July 26, 1845, two months after they had set sail from Greenhithe in Kent on a mission to chart the North West Passage. Their failure to make to their intended destination of China sparked one of the longest rescue missions in maritime history, in the course of which the passage was finally located after centuries of failed efforts. 

Of the Franklin expedition itself, however, only rumours of starvation, madness and cannibalism filtered back to London, based on the reports of Inuit people in the Arctic wastes north of Canada, who reported a group of white men trapped by the ice and slowly dying of hunger. In the 1980s the frozen bodies of two seamen and a petty officer in an ice-filled coffin were found.

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By Nalea J. Ko


When the British whaling ship Gledstanes sank off Kure Atoll in 1837, those onboard escaped unharmed, but the ship was lost to the depths - until scientists discovered it last month.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration archaeologists returned to Oahu yesterday after a monthlong expedition to the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

They made two new archaeological discoveries in the area, including the Gledstanes shipwreck.

"It's an incredibly rich place," said Kelly Gleason, a maritime archaeologist and chief scientist for the expedition.

"The natural resources are amazing, but then there's also a very rich human story, and the seafaring stories of surviving at sea are really incredible."

From The International Herald Tribune


The largest collection of antique shipwrecks ever found in Norway has been discovered under mud at the building site for a new highway tunnel in Oslo, the project's lead archaeologist said Friday.

Jostein Gundersen said at least nine wooden boats, the largest being 17 meters (56 feet) long, were found well preserved nearly 400 years after they sank at Bjoervika, an Oslo inlet near the new national opera house.

"For us, this is a sensation," he told The Associated Press. "There has never been a find of so many boats and in such good condition at one site in Norway."

The wrecks were remarkably well preserved because they had been covered in mud and fresh water, where river waters run into the sea, he said.

"We have a fantastic opportunity to learn more about old shipbuilding techniques and the old harbors," said Gundersen of the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo.

By Bob Weber


A few scraps of copper and a handful of nails are the tantalizing first fruits of the latest search for the ships of the doomed Franklin expedition.

While heavy Arctic winds have hindered crews on the waters where the 19th-century British ships are thought to have sunk, searchers combing the shores of four nearby islands have turned up a few relics that may have come from the Erebus or the Terror, two of the world's most sought-after marine archeological prizes.

"We found additional small fragments of copper and what appear to be nails and other materials," Doug Stenton, Nunavut's chief archeologist and a member of the team that recently began the search, said yesterday.

The findings suggest European presence in the area, and the area where they were found will be searched again, he said.

By Matt Cunningham


WWII memorabilia believed to have been taken from a protected Darwin shipwreck is being offered for sale on the Internet. 

A Melbourne vendor is asking more than $200 for the World War II ship compass, which he believes came from either the USS Peary or the USAT Meigs.

But his bid for quick cash has hit a snag, with the NT Government asking Internet auction site eBay to remove the item until it authenticity can be verified.

The vendor claims he bought the compass from an antique dealer in Darwin eight years ago.

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By Francis Pope


The dark waters of the Thames estuary are the last resting place of a secret sunken navy - from 17th-century galleons to Second World War victims of the Luftwaffe.

Now the London Port Authority is deepening shipping channels to allow some of the world's biggest boats to approach the capital. As a result of the dredging, historic shipwrecks are again seeing the light of day.

The HMS London should have been an auspicious ship; she was one of the first vessels of Charles II's reformed Royal Navy, having been part of the fleet that brought him back from exile in the Netherlands in 1660 to end the anarchy that had reigned since Cromwell's death two years previously. Yet she was anything but lucky. 

When she was lost in 1665 all was peaceful: we were between squabbles with the Dutch. The London was sailing up the river with 300 men and noblemen on board - and 14 tons of gunpowder.

Either traders had sold the ship cheap, unstable powder, or a flame - from a candle carried by a crew member - blew up the warship.

From This Is London


The largest-ever post-war salvage operation on the Thames has discovered seven shipwrecks up to 350 years old. 

They include a warship that was blown up in 1665, a yacht converted to a Second World War gunboat, and a mystery wreck in which divers found a personalised gin bottle.

The vessels, in the Thames Estuary, are just some of about 1,100 ships which went down in the whole of the river.

The salvage by Wessex Archaeology and the Port of London Authority, which regulates the river, was both historical and practical.

Jagged metal from the wrecks which stick out of the mud, silt, and gravel act as a 'can-opener' that can split apart vessels, especially large container ships which can skim within half a metre of the riverbed.

The operation was filmed for the BBC and took four months, using a dozen divers who used 3D survey equipment to locate the wrecks in near-zero visibility.


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