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From the Economist

Two centuries underwater had dulled their sparkle, yet the first glimpse of silver coins drew excited cheers on board Odyssey Marine Exploration’s flagship.

The gold coins that came next really caught the Iberian sun—and the spirits.

The entire haul was worth around $500m; a record find for Greg Stemm, Odyssey’s boss. He dislikes the “treasure hunter” label, but sports a beard and cracks pirate jokes.

Like old buccaneers, he also tangles with the authorities. After five years of legal wrangling, America’s Supreme Court in 2012 upheld a ruling that, because the wreck was a Spanish warship, it enjoyed sovereign immunity.

Odyssey has already returned most of the trove, nearly 600,000 coins. A ruling by a Florida court this month could make it pay Spain’s legal costs—which run into millions of dollars.

A former chicken farmer called Mel Fisher took eight years to secure his rights to the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a 17th-century Spanish galleon. When he found it after more than a decade’s searching off the Florida coast, a hotbed for treasure hunters, the state claimed ownership of its cargo of silver coins and emerald jewellery.

Eventually the Supreme Court ruled that the site was in international waters, where finders’ rights prevail.

Such struggles with officialdom make a tough business even harder. Some 3m wrecks pepper the ocean floors, according to the UN (though few contain riches). Finding them involves lengthy research and lucky breaks.

Recovery can take months of work by specialist crews. Of 52 annual reports filed by publicly listed shipwreck-recovery firms since 1996, only five show a net profit.

In that time Odyssey, the biggest, has racked up losses of nearly $150m. The “treasure” consists of money extracted from “starry-eyed investors”, according to James Goold, a lawyer who represented Spain in the Odyssey case.

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By Mark K. Matthews - Orlando Sentinel

A team of underwater treasure hunters announced Wednesday that it has found — and recovered — major pieces of rocket engines from the Apollo moon program that were lost for decades in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral.

The team, funded by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has spent the past three weeks at sea searching for the F-1 engines, which powered the Saturn V rockets that blasted the Apollo capsules to the moon in the 1960s and '70s.

The engine pieces were discovered about 360 miles east of Cape Canaveral in waters up to 14,000 feet deep.

The engines, along with the rest of the Saturn V rockets' first stage, were designed to splash into the Atlantic after liftoff. NASA never intended to recover them.

But about a year ago, Bezos said he would do just that. And he revealed the success Wednesday in a posting made to the website of his project, Bezos Expeditions.

"We've seen an underwater wonderland — an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves as testament to the Apollo program," Bezos wrote.

He said the team recovered enough material to "fashion displays of two flown F-1 engines," though it would be difficult to know which missions they flew because many of the serial numbers were missing.

"We might see more during restoration," he said. "The objects themselves are gorgeous."

Pictures released from the recovery effort show crew members cleaning off several pieces, including a turbine, thrust chamber and manifold. An intact F-1 engine measured about 19 feet tall and weighed more than 18,000 pounds.

NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said researchers in NASA's history office were working with the Bezos team to identify the pieces and which missions they came from.

The Apollo missions stand as the highlight of the U.S. space program — culminating with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 that put the first astronauts on the moon. There were a total of 11 manned Apollo flights from Kennedy Space Center from 1968 to 1972, when the lunar program was canceled.

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From Paul Fraser Collectibles

A gold sycee ingot from China's Qing dynasty will provide one of the star lots of Baldwin's 54th Hong Kong Coin Auction of Far Eastern and World Coins and Banknotes, to be held on April 4.

The ingot is valued at $30,000-40,000, one of the highest estimates given in the sale.

It was discovered among the wreckage of the Geldermalsen, one of the largest Dutch East Indiamen, which sank in 1751 and was discovered in 1986.

The 10-Taels bar weighs 365g and is in a winged rectangular shape. It was originally part of the Christie's auction of the huge cache of porcelain and gold that was found in the wreck, which made more than $6.6m in the Netherlands shortly after its discovery.

In September 2012, Bonhams sold a gold ingot discovered among the wreckage of the SS Central America, better known as the Ship of Gold, for $146,000.

From the Scotsman

Vandals have attacked the wreckage of a World War Two era Japanese mini submarine that attempted to attack Sydney Harbor during the conflict, and have stolen parts of the craft and protected relics.

From Paul Fraser Collectibles

The violin that bandleader Wallace Hartley played as the Titanic sank has been confirmed as genuine, following British auctioneer Henry Aldridge & Son announcing its discovery in February.

The violin will not be auctioned straight away, but will be put on display for the first time, in Belfast at the end of March.

The auction house is said to be in negotiations with several museums.

When finally sold, it may well surpass the current auction record for Titanic memorabilia, which stands at £220,000 ($336,000) achieved by plans of the doomed ship, which sold in 2011.

It has been seven years since the music teacher who currently owns the violin first approached the auction house, and it has been undergoing meticulous testing since.

It was finally confirmed as authentic after the inscriptions on the plaque were discovered to be contemporary, and the corrosion was found to be compatible with immersion in seawater.

Wallace Hartley died as the Titanic sank, with his body only discovered 10 days afterwards.

The violin is thought to have been found in a leather bag strapped to his body and was later returned to his fiancee Maria Robinson, who had gifted it to Hartley to mark their engagement in 1910.

Maria Robinson died in 1939, and her sister donated the violin to her local Salvation Army band, where it eventually found its way to the current owner.

The story of "the band that played on" is one of the most memorable from the sinking, with the band continuing to play to calm the passengers, yet sacrificing themselves in the process. All eight members were killed, though only three bodies were found.

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From The Northern Times

The need to “designate” the remains of an historic shipwreck off the north west Sutherland coast has resulted in Scotland’s first tranche of Historic Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) being announced today.

The well-preserved 17th, or early 18th, century merchant shipwreck was found close to the harbour of Drumbeg by a local scallop diver, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Historic Scotland’s marine archaeologists visited the site, with the diver, during summer last year to assess his discovery and concluded that the wreck is an historic asset of national importance, meriting statutory protection.

Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, has also outlined a further six proposals for Historic MPAs around Scotland’s coast.

These sites (including one at Kinlochbervie) are currently safeguarded by the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 and will have their protection transferred to the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 – the first time the MPA powers of this Act have been used.

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Photo Edwina Pickles

From The Age

In 1629, the Batavia sunk on the stunning coral isles west of Geraldton. Linda Jaivin visits the wreck’s site, and discovers a dark past.

Shipwreck, skulduggery, madness, murder and mayhem.

As we fly over the Abrolhos Islands, 122 wisps and droplets of land in the coral sea 80 kilometres west of Geraldton, WA, our pilot, Brendan, points out an execution site here, a mass grave there.

Then he dips the wing of the little seven-seater GA8 Airvan. As the horizon falls away on one side, the glittering turquoise of the Indian Ocean fills the windows on the other.

A patch of electric light blue shimmers up from the aquamarine, with a shape that suggests both boat and gravestone.

An instant later it disappears like a mirage in the slanting afternoon light. Flying at 500 feet, we make several passes around this eerie watermark on the gem-like sea: the site of the wreck of the Batavia in 1629, and the first chapter in one of the most chilling and riveting episodes in maritime history.

The Batavia, of the Dutch East India Company, was seven months out from Amsterdam on her maiden voyage.

In her hold, the tightly packed cargo included chests of silver, fine velvets and a sandstone portico for the Dutch fort at Batavia, today's Jakarta, where she was bound.

The 50-metre ship rounded the Cape of Good Hope and was tacking north on the final leg of the voyage. Her fresh-food supplies were exhausted and worms swam in the drinking water.

The ship stank of urine and unwashed bodies and there was a whiff of mutiny in the air.

At 3am on June 4, 1629, most of the Batavia's passengers and crew - 322 men, women, children, soldiers and sailors - were asleep.

A sailor on watch alerted Captain Ariaen Jacobsz to a patch of white water dead ahead.

The navigational science of the time was better at judging latitude than longitude; the captain hadn't realised how close to the Great Southern Land the strong westerlies known as the Roaring Forties had blown the ship.

Jacobsz dismissed the sailor's concerns; it was just moonlight. Minutes later, that moonlight - in reality a coral outcrop 4.6 metres beneath the surface - snagged the rudder and the Batavia slammed into the reef.

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By Gillian Graham - Portland Press Herald

Rough seas that washed sand away from the beaches of York last weekend left behind a surprising sight for local residents: the remnants of a shipwreck.

Although the skeleton of the ship, believed to be at least 160 years old, has appeared from time to time on Short Sands Beach, little is known about the boat or how it ended up buried in the sand.

What's left of the wooden hull – catalogued by the state as the Short Sands Beach Wreck – made news in the 1950s after being exposed by a storm. It last appeared after the powerful Patriots Day storm in 2007.

"It always seems to stir the town up when it does arrive," said Tim Ellis, a lifelong resident whose mother brought a historian to York in 1958 to look at the wreck.

The sight of the timbers sticking out of the sand drew photographers and curious beachcombers to the wreck at low tide during the weekend and Monday. It remains to be seen how long it will take the waves to push sand back over the wreck, and when it will surface again.

The 51-foot-long hull is believed to be from a late colonial or early post-colonial sloop, which means it would date from 1750 to 1850, said Leith Smith, a historical archaeologist with the Maine Preservation Commission.

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