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From India Today

Work to salvage the sole surviving German Dornier Do-17 bomber plane flown in the Battle of Britain in World War Two began on Friday, more than 70 years after it crashed into the English Channel.

Project managers said the plane, lying 16 metres (52 feet) deep, remains in surprisingly good condition and will be raised using a purpose-built cradle later this month in the biggest recovery of its kind in British waters.

It was first noticed when a fisherman caught his net in the aircraft almost 10 years ago and it was identified as a bomber by divers in 2008.

The plane will be packed in gel and plastic sheeting to shield it from the air before it can be transported to hydration tunnels where the crust created by 70 years underwater will be washed away over the next two years.

Eventually, the bomber will be exhibited in the Royal Air Force Museum in London, the city Adolf Hitler had hoped to bring to its knees, said Peter Dye, the director general of the museum, which is leading the project.

These aircraft were nicknamed the Luftwaffe's "flying pencil" bombers because of their narrow fuselage.

Research by the museum showed the plane was shot down on August 26, 1940 during a series of air attacks by the Germans known as the Battle of Britain, the first major campaign fought entirely by air forces.

"Britain remained a focus of defiance when all seemed lost," said Peter Devitt, historian and curator at the RAF museum.

"It won this extraordinary, very narrow victory at the Battle of Britain and from there could be used as a springboard to defeat the German forces and liberate Europe."

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From Huffington Post

It is a city shrouded in myth, swallowed by the Mediterranean Sea and buried in sand and mud for more than 1,200 years.

But now archeologists are unearthing the mysteries of Heracleion, uncovering amazingly well-preserved artifacts that tell the story of a vibrant classical-era port.

Known as Heracleion to the ancient Greeks and Thonis to the ancient Eygptians, the city was rediscovered in 2000 by French underwater archaeologist Dr. Franck Goddio and a team from the European Institute for Underwater Acheology (IEASM) after a four-year geophysical survey.

The ruins of the lost city were found 30 feet under the surface of the Mediterranean Sea in Aboukir Bay, near Alexandria.

A new documentary highlights the major discoveries that have been unearthed at Thonis-Heracleion during a 13-year excavation. Exciting archeological finds help describe an ancient city that was not only a vital international trade hub but possibly an important religious center.

The television crew used archeological survey data to construct a computer model of the city.

According to the Telegraph, leading research now suggests that Thonis-Heracleion served as a mandatory port of entry for trade between the Mediterranean and the Nile. So far, 64 ancient shipwrecks and more than 700 anchors have been unearthed from the mud of the bay, the news outlet notes.

Other findings include gold coins, weights from Athens (which have never before been found at an Egyptian site) and giant tablets inscribed in ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian.

Researchers think that these artifacts point to the city's prominence as a bustling trade hub.

Researchers have also uncovered a variety of religious artifacts in the sunken city, including 16-foot stone sculptures thought to have adorned the city's central temple and limestone sarcophagi that are believed to have contained mummified animals.

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By Edward Colimore - Philly

But as the Ella Warley sailed south, with 30 passengers and a cargo worth $175,000, including gold, it was struck on the starboard side, near the wheelhouse, and began taking on water.

The North Star, a U.S. transport, smashed through the side-wheeler's stateroom and engine room and heavily damaged a boiler, which spewed steam while the crew and passengers fled in lifeboats.

Within 20 minutes, the Warley disappeared in about 60 feet of water five miles off Belmar, Monmouth County. Six crew members were lost along with the gold, believed to now be worth more than $1 million.

One of 7,000 vessels that have sunk off New Jersey's coast, the Warley will be the focus of a shipwreck symposium from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the InfoAge Science History Learning Center and Museum in Wall Township, Monmouth County.

The wreck of the Warley has been claimed by a Florida diver who hopes to salvage it. An "admiralty arrest," filed in federal court, gives him exclusive rights to the watery bounty.

"Divers have been recovering all sorts of riches for years," said Dan Lieb, museum director and president of the New Jersey Historical Divers Association. "It's not like they've found great troves on the seafloor, but they have brought up some valuable items from time to time."

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By Arminta Wallace - The Irish Times
 

In January 1835 a three-masted barque sailed from Cork harbour, bound for Australia, with 241 people on board.

Most were Irishwomen who had been convicted of various crimes and sentenced to transportation to the colony of New South Wales. Some were the wives of Irishmen who had already been banished. There were also more than 30 children, mostly babies and toddlers.

On May 13th the ship hit a reef north of King Island, off Tasmania, and sank with the loss of 224 lives.

A few survivors managed to get to King Island, but most of those died on its beaches from cold, exposure and shock.

It was the second-largest maritime disaster in Australian history and the greatest catastrophe in almost a century of convict transportation.

Yet the name of the Neva , and the story of its pitiful human cargo, is almost unknown in Ireland.

Now the Cork historian Cal McCarthy has teamed up with the Australian artist and designer Kevin Todd to tell that story in a new book.

The Wreck of the Neva does more than just reconstruct the drama of the shipwreck; it also gives a vivid sense of the lives of these women from all over Ireland, filling in many of the human details behind the stark historical facts.

For a modern reader, one of the most startling aspects is the harshness of the sentences that British courts imposed in Ireland for what we would consider to be minor misdemeanours.

One woman received seven years for the theft of a handkerchief; another got a life sentence for stealing sheep. But, as McCarthy says, by the standards of the day this could be seen as getting off lightly.

“Forty years earlier a lot of those crimes would have resulted in execution. So I suppose transportation would have been seen as a lighter sentence.”

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From Mail Online

Two rare bottles of whisky salvaged from a shipwreck which inspired a book and film are to be auctioned.

The collector's items were part of the cargo on the 8,000-ton cargo ship the SS Politician which sank off the shores of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in 1941 and inspired the book and film Whisky Galore.

The bottles, which have documents of authentication, are to be sold as a pair by Britain's biggest internet-only auction site Scotch Whisky Auctions, based in Glasgow, with bidding opening on Saturday and closing on May 5.

>A great deal of interest is expected due to the unusual and legendary story behind where they came from.

Scotch Whisky Auctions director Bill Mackintosh said: 'Everybody loves the idea of the wily islanders diving to the bottom of the wreck and coming back up with bottles of whisky which they would then hide from the customs.

'But it is true that there are only eight which have have been authenticated recently and these are two of those which were sold at Christie's some time ago.'

The eight bottles surfaced in 1987 when local man Donald MacPhee from South Uist in the Outer Hebrides explored the wreck and found his liquid treasure.

He sold them at auction with Christie's and got £4,000 for his loot.

Two of those bottles were bought by a man in Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire. He has recently died and his widow decided to sell them along with the neck tags from Christie's and letters of authentication.

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By Fiona Govan - The Telegraph
 

Almost four hundred years after its treasures were lost to the deep during a hurricane, the underwater exploration of a Spanish galleon has helped shed light on Spain's collapse as a colonial power.

Using a deep sea probe named Merlin, marine archaeologists discovered the bounty lost when a flotilla of merchant ships went down 400 miles off the Florida Keys killing some 500 on board including 121 missionaries.

The findings revealed today include 39 gold bars and 1,184 silver pieces of eight that were retrieved from the ocean floor by deep sea archaeologists, Odyssey Marine Exploration.

The Tampa-based company believe they located the wreck of the 117-ton merchant galleon Buen Jesus y Nuestra Senora del Rosario, one of 28 vessels sailing from the colony of Cumana, in what is now Venezuela, for Spain when it was hit by a hurricane.

Experts believe that the loss of the treasures helped break the Bank of Madrid, already weakened by a series of expensive wars and rising inflation.

"It is the most important Spanish galleon to be found because of what its loss meant," Sean Kingsley, a British archaeologist who has been studying the remains since 2005, told The Times.

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From gCaptain
 

Salvage crews have removed the first of seven barges stuck near the Marseilles Dam on the Illinois River, but officials warned that an imminent drop in water levels is going to cause extended delays to commercial ship traffic.

The barge, which is loaded with iron ore fines, was pulled from the dam Tuesday morning by tugs, and work continued Wednesday on the remaining six barges either floating or submerged near the dam.

The barges have been stuck there since last Thursday when the M/V Dale A. Heller, a 128-foot towing vessel owned by Ingram Barge Company, lost control of its tow due to strong currents from heavy rainfall that has impacted the region.

Seven of the Dale A. Heller’s 14 barges broke free and came to rest against the Marseilles Dam, causing damage to some of the dam’s gates.

Four of the seven barges also sank near the dam. So far there have been no reports of pollution.

“Ingram is working closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that all salvage operations are handled in a safe and secure manner,” Scott Noble, senior V.P of ingram Barge Company, said on Tuesday.

“[Tuesday] we made substantial progress in removing the first barge safely from the area and we began work on salvaging a second barge.”

Salvage continued Wednesday with the dewatering of one of the submerged barges. The Army Corps of Engineers was on scene with a large crane to offload the barge’s cargo if needed to help with the refloat.

An inspection by the Army Corps of Engineers on Sunday determined that the dam was structurally sound but the anchorage systems on gates two and three had been broken.

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By Richard Gray - The Telegraph

She was first raised from her underwater resting place more than 30 years ago and has been prized as an archaeological gem, but it appears the she still has some secrets to surrender.

Scientists studying Henry VIII’s naval flagship, which sank 468 years ago off the south coast of England in a battle with the French, are making new discoveries about the vessel that will change our understanding of history.

New finds will be among 19,000 artefacts going on show in a new £23 million museum, built around the skeleton of the vessel, due to open later this year.

Archaeologists have found the remains of a dog that lived on board, and longbows found on board have revealed a great deal about archery at the time.

Among the items most exciting archaeologists are cannonballs believed to be early examples of armour-piercing rounds.

Such shells were thought to have been developed during the late 1800s, before the technology was refined during the world wars.

But the new findings by experts working with the Mary Rose Trust, which has been preserving the ship, now suggest the technology was being used several centuries earlier — although it could also have been a money-saving strategy, using cheaper iron inside the lead balls.

Powerful imaging technology has revealed cubic-shaped lumps of iron encased in the soft, lead cannonballs, which would have allowed guns to punch through the sides of enemy vessels.

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