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By Donna Bryson


The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins — and cannons to fend off pirates.

But it had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable African coast, and it sank 500 years ago.

Now it has been found, stumbled upon by De Beers geologists prospecting for diamonds off Namibia.

"If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli said in an interview Thursday.

Namdeb Diamond Corp., a joint venture of the government of Namibia and De Beers, first reported the April 1 find in a statement Wednesday, and planned a news conference in the Namibian capital next week.

The company had cleared and drained a stretch of seabed, building an earthen wall to keep the water out so geologists could work. Noli said one of the geologists saw a few ingots, but had no idea what they were. Then the team found what looked like cannon barrels.

The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since the mid-1980s and has advised De Beers since 1996 on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia.

The find "was what I'd been waiting for, for 20 years," Noli said. "Understandably, I was pretty excited. I still am."

By Randy Boswell

She was, at the dawn of the 20th century, a stately ship of dreams for thousands of British emigrants bound for a new life in Canada.

She became a ship of war, transporting wave after wave of Canadian troops overseas to help liberate Europe from the Kaiser's thrall.

Finally, she was the British government's secret treasure ship, packed with 39 tonnes of gold intended for Halifax to pay Canadian and U.S. munitions suppliers at the height of the First World War.

But that was the mission that doomed the SS Laurentic -- along with 354 of her British and Canadian crew -- when the ocean liner dressed in cannons struck a German mine off the Irish coast in 1917, sinking in the North Atlantic with her cargo of 3,211 ingots.

An appeals court has ruled that the U.S. government should have authority for now over a Lake Michigan shipwreck that could be The Griffin, a 17th century vessel built by the French explorer La Salle.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati reversed a ruling by District Judge Robert Holmes Bell in a dispute between the state of Michigan and the private underwater exploration company that found the wreckage seven years ago.

Great Lakes Exploration Group LLC wants the federal government to have jurisdiction but to appoint the company as custodian until the courts determine who has ownership and salvage rights.

The company says the French government may want to submit a claim.

The state is seeking title, saying federal law gives it ownership of all abandoned vessels "embedded in the state's submerged lands."

From Turkish Press

The coasts of Anatolia are sprinkled with ancient cities whose harbours bustled with ships engaged in the thriving sea trade of the Aegean and Mediterranean.

But not every ship made it safely to harbour.

Many were wrecked in storms and sank with their cargoes to the seabed, and the remains of these have lain hidden on the seabed for long centuries.

Wrecks of both merchant and warships each have their historical tale to relate, and are among the underwater sights that fascinate divers today. No other region of the world is so rich in sunken history as the seas around Turkey.

The world's oldest known wreck was discovered at Uluburun near Kas, and after years of work was lifted to the surface and placed on exhibit.

Nautical archaeology began in Turkey, and today is recognised as a distinct branch of archaeology throughout the world.

The first scientific excavation carried out entirely underwater took place at in 1960. This was followed by excavations of the Uluburun, Roman, Yassiada Eastern Roman, Ottoman, Bozburun and Pabuçburnu wrecks, all of which passed into archaeological literature and were followed with interest all over the world.

The timbers of wrecked ships are destroyed within a few years by fireworms, but their cargoes often resist erosion by the sea water for thousands of years. Commodities of many kinds were transported in amphoras, pottery jars with pointed bases and two handles.

Such jars are known to have first been used in the city of Troy in 3000 BC.

The tapering pointed shape enabled them to be stacked safely in ships' holds and kept upright so that their contents did not spill.

As well as wine and olive oil, these jars were used for grain, salted fish and many other dry commodities.

Despite the passage of thousands of years, most of these amphoras remain undamaged at the bottom of the sea.

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From Typically Spanish

The company says the most likely probability is that the vessel is the Spanish galleon "Nuestra Señora de la Mercedes".

The ‘Black Swan’, the name of the vessel found by the United States treasure salvage company, Odyssey, has finally been revealed to be ‘Nuestra Señora de la Mercedes’ – a Spanish galleon which went down in a battle with the British on October 5 1804 off Faro in Portugal.

The Mercedes was loaded with gold and silver, and included the wages for the soldiers and wealth of the mercenaries travelling on board.

The estimated value of the treasure recovered by Odyssey is close to 1.5 million $. Odyssey announced the find, without naming or locating the vessel, in May last year, saying they had found 17 tons of silver coins, and at the time the Spanish Government thought that La Mercedes had been found.

The judge who is hearing the case between the two sides, Mark Pizzo, had given Odyssey 30 days to reveal the boat’s identity, but the co-founder of the company told El País on Friday that there was still some doubt as to the vessel’s identity.

Legal experts now consider that Spain will now argue that they had never searched for La Mercedes, but that does not mean that the ship had been abandoned, and because it was acting for the Spanish state at the time of the battle the Spanish Government can now reclaim her and her contents.

Odyssey however consider that the boat was not engaged in military activity when she went down, and if anyone is entitled to the contents it is the family descendents of those on board.

The legal battle is set to last for months, if not years to come.

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By John Tagliabue

After the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the demise of the French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on a reconnaissance mission in World War II has ranked as one of flying's great mysteries.

Now, thanks to some sleuthing by a French diver and marine archaeologist, the final pieces of the puzzle seem to have been filled in.

The story that emerged about the disappearance of Saint-Exupéry, in self-exile from Vichy France, proved to contain several narratives, a complexity that would probably have pleased the author of several adventure books on flying and the famous tale "The Little Prince," about a little interstellar traveler, which was also a profound statement of faith.

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By Marc Caputo

A Miami legislator asks how many millions the state could earn by selling shipwreck treasure to fill holes in the state budget.

As legislators scramble for cash in the worst budget crisis they've ever faced, tens of millions of dollars in treasure lies just within their reach outside the Capitol. This is real treasure - The kind hauled up from sunken Spanish ships.

The state has one of the world's largest publicly owned collections of colonial Spanish doubloons and reales, as well as a few gold and silver ingots and chains.

Much of it lies safe and hidden in a vault, known only to a few, and occasionally loaned out to museums around the country.

But now Rep. Juan Zapata of Miami wants to crack it open and sell a little treasure to help fill some holes in the proposed $66 billion budget, which is more than $4 billion smaller than this year's spending plan.

And the Republican is accusing the Florida secretary of state's office of throwing him off the scent and hiding the booty.

By Eric Gaertner

Not far from the Hackley and Hume historic sites and the Muskegon County Museum downtown are structures waiting to provide visitors a look at a different time in our history.

Yet few people realize the existence of these structures, some more than 100 years old and hundreds of feet long, unseen by the naked eye.

They are shipwrecks that reside at the bottom of Lake Michigan off the West Michigan coastline -- underwater historical exhibits telling tales of tragedy, history and, in some cases, survival.

These local wrecks from Grand Haven to Pentwater cover a wide range of sizes, shapes and shipping eras.

They are found in various depths, from just off the shoreline in 15 feet of water to hundreds of feet below the surface where only the most advanced divers are able to descend.

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