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By Mark Prigg - Mail Online

Divers have uncovered a preserved 'ghost ship' in 2,000 feet of water nearly 20 miles off the coast of Oahu in Hawaii.

Sitting upright, its solitary mast still standing and the ship's wheel still in place, the hulk of the former cable ship Dickenson, later the USS Kailua, was found on the seabed.

Experts were stunned to find the ship was surprisingly intact for a vessel that was sunk with a torpedo.

Researchers from the University of Hawai'i (UH) and NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries today revealed the ship was found by a robotic submersible. 

It is always a thrill when you are closing in on a large sonar target with the Pisces submersible and you don't know what big piece of history is going to come looming out of the dark, said Terry Kerby, the submersible pilot.

One of our first views of the USS Kailua was the classic helms wheel on the fantail. 


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By Henry Brean - Review Journal

As early as this summer, divers could once again have the chance to explore the wreckage of a World War II-era bomber at the bottom of Lake Mead.

The National Park Service announced Thursday it will accept bids from dive companies interested in taking people on guided tours of the 66-year-old B-29 wreckage, which has been closed to divers since 2009.

Record low water levels have brought the sunken Superfortress within reach of recreational divers for the first time ever, and the aircraft will only get easier to reach as the reservoir continues to shrink.

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the B-29 was one of the last built and was delivered to the U.S. Army eleven days after the end of World War II.

Stripped of armaments, it became a post-war reconnaissance plane used in an upper atmospheric research program based at Muroc Army Airfield in California.

“Part of this research was focused on the development of a device that used the sun as a point of reference to guide missiles as they arched from the United States towards the Soviet Union,” NOAA said.

On July 21, 1948, the plane was being flown on a mission to test a secret missile guidance system. While descending over the smooth-as-glass lake, the pilot lost depth perception and flew the bomber into the water at 230 mph. It skipped once, settled onto the surface and sank.

All five crew members survived, but the bomber was lost until August 2001, when a team of local divers discovered it sitting upright and mostly intact on the lake bottom.

In 2003, archaeologists from the Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center mapped and documented the wreck. Five years later, the Park Service awarded one-year permits to two companies — one from Lake Havasu City, Ariz., and the other from Ventura, Calif. — for guided technical dives at the site, then at a depth of roughly 160 feet.

Technical dives exceed 130 feet in depth and require more training and equipment than more common and less hazardous recreational scuba dives at lesser depths.

Christie Vanover, spokeswoman for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, said those first two permits were not renewed in 2009 because the companies struggled to turn a profit under the restrictions placed on them.

The Park Service is now offering what it hopes is a more enticing deal: a two-year, commercial-use permit allowing up to 100 divers a year at the B-29 wreck and unlimited scuba instruction and charter dives to other “submerged resources” in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Vanover said the Park Service hopes to issue two of the permits by April and see visits to the B-29 resume by summer.

“We have had people express an interest over the years. We think this is the best option, and it provides a business opportunity,” she said. “We hope to see multiple applications.”

The wreckage now rests under roughly 110 feet of water in the Overton Arm, at the northern end of the lake. The Park Service won’t give the precise location or depth because the site is considered a “protected resource.”

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From Examiner
 

The term underwater archaeology conjures up images of discovering artifacts long-hidden on the seafloor. The more romantic notions involve treasure-hunting amongst shipwrecks.

One notable underwater archaeologist is Robert Marx, who has written over 60 books on the subject. He was one of the founders of the Council on Underwater Archaeology as well as the Sea Research Society. Marx was also instrumental in creating the professional research degree of Doctor of Marine Histories.

For these and more, Marx has earned the description of being “The True Father of Underwater Archaeology,” according to noted diving pioneer and magazine publisher, Dr. E. Lee Spence.

Marx’s main quest nowadays is a 1715 Spanish shipwreck that occurred off the Florida coast, near what is now Sebastian Inlet. It involved the flagship Capitana, which was then skippered by Don Juan Esteban de Ubilla.

“The 300th-year anniversary is coming up for the loss of that wreck and the whole fleet,” Marx informs. “I want to make sure people know about it.”

Centuries ago, during the Age of Exploration, fleets carrying treasure from the Americas would travel to Spain in galleons loaded with precious cargo. The return trip to Spain was often more hazardous because crews by then were fatigued – or even plagued by malnutrition and tropical diseases.

What’s more, the heavily laden fleet became vulnerable to pirate attacks. But bad weather was considered the greatest threat on account of its unpredictability.

Spain was highly dependent on the influx of riches from the New World to fill its coffers. Unfortunately the expansion policies of France, Britain, the Dutch, and the Holy Roman Empire had practically dwindled the currency flow from the Americas to Spain.

The English were a particularly formidable foe, effective in sinking many of Spain’s ships. By 1715 the War of Succession had ended, and Spain was in even more dire need of New World gold and silver to relieve its financial strain.

By Curt Brown


It’s late November, so when talk turns to Minnesota shipwrecks, Lake Superior quickly comes to mind. The Edmund Fitzgerald vanishing in a 1975 gale with 29 aboard. The frozen bodies chipped from the icy deck of the Mataafa just off Duluth’s piers in 1905. And so on.

But Minnesota’s largest maritime disaster went down some 200 miles south of Duluth Harbor in Lake Pepin, that rodent-in-the-snake widening of the Mississippi River.

On July 13, 1890, 215 people in Red Wing piled on to the Sea Wing, a wooden paddle-wheeler less than three years old, and its barge cohort, the Jim Grant.

The people, decked out in Victorian Sunday finery, were on an excursion to Lake City — where Gov. William Rush Merriam and other dignitaries gathered for a weekend exhibition at the Minnesota National Guard’s summertime encampment.

Cannons would be fired, bands would play, soldiers would march in formation and a grand time would be had by all.

It was hot, humid and sticky. So many people wanted to take the pleasure cruise — perhaps hoping it would be cooler out on the water — that the barge was tied on to the Sea Wing to accommodate about 70 of the 215 passengers.

Scattered showers and some squalls foretold the trouble to come. At 5 p.m. in St. Paul, a tornado spun across Lake Gervais, killing six and injuring 11.

David Niles Wethern, the storekeeper skippering the Sea Wing, wouldn’t have known about the lethal twister in St. Paul, but he sensed conditions were growing ominous. He blasted the Sea Wing’s whistle at 7:30 p.m. and sailed north for Red Wing at 8 p.m.

Passengers were crammed shoulder to shoulder in the cabin on the skinny boat — 135 feet long but only 16 feet wide with a 22-foot-high pilot house. Straight-line winds began to whip Lake Pepin, with waves swelling from six to eight feet.

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From Stuff

It has been 112 years since the ill-fated SS Ventnor left New Zealand shores carrying the bodies of 499 Chinese miners who died here and couldn't afford the passage home.

The gold miners had been buried in New Zealand then disinterred and sent home so that, according to Chinese culture, their souls could be tended to by their families and they could finally be at peace. Chinese community members had pooled their money to send the remains home but tragically, the men never arrived.

Today, Maori and Chinese community leaders announced that the ship's wreckage has finally been recovered and efforts are being made to bring closure to the families of those lost at sea.

The SS Ventnor sank off the Hokianga Heads after striking a reef near the coast of Taranaki in October 1902.

Officially 13 crewmen died in the shipwreck and local iwi on the coast buried the bones which washed up.

This is the first time artefacts and footage from the wreck have been shown publicly.

Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis and MP Jian Yang spoke at the conference as did the chairman of the Ventnor Project Group John Albert and vice president of the New Zealand Underwater Heritage Group Keith Gordon.

Yang said there was a saying in China that fallen leaves return to their roots. "So it is very important for these people to be returned to China."

The great great grand-daughter of one of the miners Angela Sew Hoy said it would be "just amazing" to be able to pay the respect to the dead men that they deserved. "For me it's about my

children's heritage as well and it would be nice to see him make the trip home."

The ship was only built a year before it sank so it didn't last long, Gordon said. "The wreck is in a state of deterioration and in a few years there won't be much there."

In 2012, Albert and Gordon studied the wreck using an echo sounder. Last year, the group travelled to the site and deployed a remote operated vehicle onto the wreck. 

Full story...

From The Guardian

A rare and historical find. That’s how Transport Minister Stephen Cadiz has described the recent discovery of the remains of a 17th-century Dutch ship, the Huis de Kreuningen, in Tobago.

The find, believed to be the ruins of the 1677 ship, was discovered during the July-August period in the Scarborough Harbour by University of Connecticut professor and maritime archaeologist Kroum Batchvarov. The Huis Kreuningen went to her watery grave on March 3, 1677.

Batchvarov, assistant professor of maritime archaeology in UConn’s Department of Anthropology, is an internationally known researcher specialising in 17th-century ship building and maritime archaeology. He is leading a multi-phased investigation to find and study the remains of 16 vessels that were sunk in a fierce battle that took place between the invading French and the Dutch in the harbour.

The sea battle, which was for control of the island, resulted in the loss of 2,000 people, including 250 Dutch women and children, and 300 African slaves. The story was published on October 21, this year, Batchvarov and his team began a remote sensing survey in the harbour and picked up some promising signals. 

Batchvarov said although his team did not find the ship’s hull structure intact, they found cultural material that dates to the third quarter of the 17th century,  including seven or eight canons, delft and bellarmine pottery jars, lead shot that was never fired, dozens of Dutch tobacco pipes, and bricks that perfectly match the standard dimensions for bricks made in the Dutch city of Leiden in 1647.

“To find what we believe to be the Huis de Kreuningen — almost by accident, as she was outside the boundaries where we expected to find her—undiscovered and untouched for over 300 years was an exciting moment,” Batchvarov said.

The find is a significant source of information for the maritime history of the period. “Although we have some written records of the battle itself, we possess no detailed plans of 17th-century warships.

So our only sources of information about the ships of the day are the wrecks themselves. It isn’t an overstatement to say that what has been discovered is a treasure trove for archaeological researchers,” Batchvarov said. 

The Huis de Kreuningen, though the largest in the Dutch fleet at 39.6 metres long and 9.62 metres in breadth, was only about three quarters of the size of her French foe, the much newer and better armed Glorieux.

In addition to the Huis de Kreuningen, which was the largest ship in the Dutch fleet, the Glorieux, the flagship of French Vice Admiral Comte D’Estrée, was also sunk and all but 80 of the 450 men aboard were lost.

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By Frik Els - Mining

Odyssey Marine Exploration announced Tuesday that it recovered recovered more than 15,500 silver and gold coins including Double Eagles, 45 gold ingots, gold dust, nuggets jewelry and other artifacts

from the SS Central America shipwreck site since April.

"While the exact value of the recovered Central America cargo will not be known until it is monetized, we know it is valued in the tens of millions of dollars and well in excess of the project costs,” said Mark

Gordon, Odyssey's chief executive officer.

The SS Central America wreck was discovered in 1988 at a depth of 7,200 feet and the Florida-based company said during the final month of the 2014 recovery season, the Odyssey Explorer performed a

161,000-square-meter, high-resolution video survey of the shipwreck and surrounding seabed.

An additional survey with Odyssey's new dual-head SeaBat 7125 deep tow survey system is currently underway and Odyssey will evaluate information and data gathered from the 2014 operations,

including these new surveys, "to determine future plans".

With one of the largest documented cargoes of gold ever lost at sea, the SS Central America contributed to the Panic of 1857

The Central America, carrying mainly mine workers and bosses returning east from the California gold rush was caught in a hurricane and sank on September 12, 1857 roughly 260 kilometres off the South

Carolina coast.

477 passengers, mostly miners and businessmen returning east from California with their personal possessions and fortunes in gold accumulated after years of prospecting during the Gold Rush were on board the steamship during her final voyage.

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By Megan Gannon - News Discovery

Divers recovered a bronze bell from the wreck of the HMS Erebus, a British ship that was missing for nearly 170 years after an ill-fated expedition to the Canadian Arctic.

In 1845, British Royal Navy officer and explorer John Franklin led more than 100 men on a quest to find a Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But they never completed their

mission; in 1846, their ships — the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — became trapped in ice near King William Island in northern Canada.

The weeks and months that followed were grim. Many of the crewmembers died of some combination of exposure, starvation, scurvy and lead poisoning. Some may have resorted to cannibalism. Search

parties looking for the missing crew turned up empty, though a few graves were later found. The fate of the ships, meanwhile, remained a mystery until this past September.

Since 2008, Parks Canada led six searches for the sunken vessels. The agency finally succeeded this year, after capturing sonar images of a wreck in the eastern part of the Queen Maud Gulf.

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