2025-12-06T23:27:16+00:00 Zend_Feed_Writer https://marinefinds.org.uk The Guardian API and Daniel Pett mas@wessexarch.co.uk https://marinefinds.org.uk

Crown estate owns seabed of treacherous sandbank off Kent that has entombed more than 2,000 shipwrecks

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2025-08-18T14:00:45+00:00 2025-08-18T14:00:45+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/18/campaigners-call-on-king-charles-protect-goodwin-sands-dredging Caroline Davies p>In 1703, five vessels were sucked into its shifting sands during a storm, including the English warship HMS Northumberland, which only now is yielding its well-preserved secrets. Campaigners fear this unique area is now at risk from destructive dredging for building sand and aggregate. They are appealing to the crown estate, which owns the seabed, and calling on King Charles for support, to protect an area rich in maritime and cultural heritage. Writing to Charles, as a “committed conservationist, head of the armed forces and as a beneficiary of the crown estate’s commercial activities”, the Goodwin Sands Conservation Trust has asked him to encourage the crown estate to remove the sands from its list of potential marine aggregate extraction sites. The king’s public duties are paid by the sovereign grant, calculated on a percentage of crown estate profits. “Does he know where this money is coming from? It’s coming from licences to develop the seabed without proper protections for what they are going to find,” said Joanna Thomson, the trust’s chair. A response from a palace aide referred it to the crown estate. “We made clear in our letter it was because we had got nowhere with the crown estate that we were contacting the king, so the reply was rather frustrating,” said Thomson. The Goodwin Sands seabed is littered with history. As well as shipwrecks, second world war allied and axis planes crashed in the area long seen as a profitable source of marine aggregate, the trust said. A licence to extract 2.5m tonnes was approved in 2018 for a Dover Harbour Board development, although it was eventually sourced from elsewhere. Marine aggregate extraction licences are granted by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), but it is the crown estate that decides what development occurs on the seabed, said campaigners. They are “disappointed” at its “flat refusal” to guarantee no dredging of the 10-mile sandbank, which has had marine protected area (MPA) status since 2019, and acts as a sea defence to the unstable coastline. Historian and TV presenter Dan Snow, who has dived on the Goodwins, said: “There are some extraordinary wrecks down there. We are obviously all very worried and sad to think it could be just mined and a lot of that would be destroyed.” Snow described it has a “magical subsea landscape”. “Every period of our history over the last 2,000 years has left a rich legacy there, which is unusual, probably unique,” he added. The crown estate said in a statement: “There are currently no plans for aggregate licences in the Goodwin Sands area. However, we are unable to provide blanket, permanent exemptions for any part of the seabed from this or other sectors, unless predicated by an organisation with regulatory or other relevant responsibility, or by a national designation such as a highly protected marine area (HPMA).” While the MMO grants marine licences for dredging, the crown estate, as landowner, must license or lease the seabed and can decline to do so and not leave the matter solely to MMO marine licensing, according to Michael Williams, visiting professor of law at Plymouth University and an expert on law relating to foreshore, seabed and underwater cultural heritage. “The crown estate can’t treat it as though the Goodwins have a blanket designation, but what they can do is have a policy. You can say this is a highly sensitive archeological area and therefore we will tend not to grant applications unless there’s exceptional circumstances. And that’s what public bodies do for culturally sensitive areas all the time.” Related: King Charles to receive £132m next year after crown estate makes £1.1bn profit He added: “The high archaeological potential of the Goodwin Sands is, or should be, a material consideration for the crown estate, even though there is no specific designation of the area in general.” Under the UK marine policy statement’s national policy, just because something is not specifically designated does not mean it is not of importance and the crown estate should take note of that policy, he said. The MMO is currently consulting on banning bottom trawling in certain areas, including the Goodwin marine conservation area, yet aggregate extraction is far more destructive, said Thomson. Another potential threat looms. National Grid wants to build an electricity converter station on Minster Marshes near the coast at Sandwich, with a cable running across Sandwich Bay, the site of many shipwrecks and just a few miles away from the Goodwins, “They need half a million tonnes of sand and there are fears they will wish to take it from the Goodwins,” said Thomson. Related: Crosses tell the story of Goodwin Sands Wessex Archaeology has identified the Goodwin Sands as holding probably the highest density of maritime heritage in UK waters, said Thomson. “If a dredger went through the remains, they would be completely destroyed. Aircraft could have crew in them, so disturbing final resting places. It’s so hypocritical. Every year we have Remembrance Day at beautiful cemeteries on land, yet there’s the crown estate potentially allowing dredgers to run riot through graves, where people are buried and have drowned. It’s a psychological loss to the nation, and an emotional loss. We wouldn’t allow that to happen on land,” said Thomson.

Race against time to study HMS Northumberland as shifting sands expose part of well-preserved wreck off Kent

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2025-07-31T04:00:00+00:00 2025-07-31T04:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/31/british-warship-hms-northumberland-1703-storm-archaeology Esther Addley s most senior administrator. Twenty-four years later, after the ship had taken part in many of the major naval battles of its day, it was at the bottom of the North Sea, a victim of the Great Storm of 1703, one of the deadliest weather disasters in British history. Now, more than three centuries later, the Northumberland is giving up its secrets thanks to shifting sands off the Kent coast, which have exposed a large section of its hull. A survey has revealed that the ship is in a remarkable state of preservation, with not only its timbers but ropes and even unopened casks having been protected from erosion and decay in the sand. The survey, funded by Historic England, which oversees protected wreck sites around the country, found that much more of the ship’s hull remains than was previously thought, potentially making the wreck of the Northumberland one of the best-preserved wooden warships in the UK. Other artefacts detected on the seabed include copper cauldrons, seven iron cannon and part of a wooden gun carriage. As more of the Northumberland is revealed, however, archaeologists say they are in a race against time to learn all they can from what has been called a “Stuart time capsule” before its timbers are claimed by the sea. The wreck of the Northumberland, one of more than a dozen navy ships lost during the Great Storm, was first located in 1980 in the Goodwin Sands, an area of shallow water off the coast of Deal, in eastern Kent. Hefin Meara, a marine archaeologist at Historic England, said the area, while difficult to access and dive, “is brilliant for preserving material like this”. He said: “We’re incredibly lucky that because this site has been covered for so long, the sand has kept it in really, really good condition. That rope, for instance, is as fresh as it was on the day the ship sailed, and we’ve got very well preserved casks and barrels and similar – at this stage we just don’t know what is in them.” While the survey found that parts of the wreck were standing proud of the seabed, Meara said there was “still quite a lot of the ship surviving even deeper into the sand”. “There is a lot of archaeology at this site, and there is a huge amount we can learn from it,” he added. That includes answering questions such as how ships were made and fitted out at a key time in English naval history, when Pepys, as secretary to the admiralty, was trying to professionalise it into a modern fighting force. Meara said the wealth of organic material surviving was unusual. “Cannon iron can survive well at wreck sites, but it is quite rare to come across the wooden carriages that they were sitting on. There are many, many things like that that give us the opportunity to drill down and find out more.” Among very well preserved naval wrecks, marine archaeologists and historians can look to the Mary Rose, from the early 16th century, and other ships from the later 17th and 18th centuries, he said. “This one fills in the gap.” Unlike the Mary Rose, however, cost and practicalities mean there are no plans to recover the Northumberland. “We have these incredibly dynamic seabed environments where wrecks can be buried for hundreds of years – and then that sand cover moves away,” Meara said. “Suddenly the wreckage is exposed to marine biological organisms and chemical processes operating on things like iron. A wreck that can survive in incredibly good condition for centuries will decay very, very quickly [once exposed]. So we have a small window of opportunity to go and discover what is there, and answer those questions. We are now at the mercy of the elements, and it is a race to see what we can save.” • This article was amended on 31 July 2025. An earlier version described HMS Northumberland as a British warship; however, it was an English naval ship constructed before the formation of Great Britain.

Archaeologists and volunteers identify Sanday timbers as from 18th-century Royal Navy frigate turned whaler

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2025-07-23T04:00:00+00:00 2025-07-23T04:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/23/ship-wreck-sanday-orkney-hms-hind-warship-archaeology Esther Addley familiar with ships that have come to grief in stormy seas, hundreds of shipwrecks having been recorded there over the centuries. But this large section of oak hull, its boards carefully knitted together by wooden pegs, appeared particularly well built and was obviously not recent. The question was, how old was the ship – and what else could they learn about it? Eighteen months after that discovery in February 2024, archaeologists and local volunteers have managed to identify the ship and to piece together the surprising history of a vessel that witnessed some of the most dramatic events of the 18th century before finally being wrecked off Sanday in 1788. Thanks to detailed timber dating and historical analysis, experts are confident the hull belonged to HMS Hind, a 24-gun Royal Navy frigate that was built in Chichester in 1749 and went on to have a remarkable career. Despite its sticky end, the Hind was “an amazingly long-lived and lucky ship”, according to Ben Saunders, a senior marine archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, who led the project alongside Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to recover and identify the vessel’s remains. The ship, naval records show, served off the coast of Jamaica in the 1750s and took part in the sieges of Louisbourg (1758) and Quebec (1759), when the British defeated French forces in Canada during the seven years war. It was among the British fleet in the American revolutionary war of the 1770s and then served for a decade as a training ship in the Irish Sea, before it was decommissioned and sold off to become a 500-tonne whaling ship in the Arctic Circle. It was in this guise, under the new name of The Earl of Chatham, that the ship was wrecked by a North Sea storm on 29 April 1788. Even then, its luck did not desert it – all 56 people onboard survived, a snippet in the Aberdeen Journal records. Identifying the vessel posed a challenge for present-day archaeologists, however. The section of hull, measuring 10 metres by 5 metres (about 33ft by 16ft), had been well preserved under the sand, allowing multiple wood samples to be sent for dendrochronological analysis. Experts found that the wood had originated in southern and south-western England, and that the earliest sample had a clear felling date of spring 1748. Saunders and his colleagues then worked closely with the community of Sanday, for whom shipwreck timber has been an important source of wood for centuries. The island is largely treeless, and “some of the people we’ve been working with have half their roofs held up with masts and deck beams”, he says. “It’s incredible.” A date in the mid-18th century was not only interesting but helpful, says Saunders, “because this is when you’re starting to get the bureaucracy of the British state kicking in, and a lot more records surviving”. A group of 20 volunteer researchers pored through maritime archives, government shipping registers and news sheets to pinpoint the right vessel among at least 270 known to have foundered on Sanday. “[The islanders] also brought a lot of their own experience,” says Saunders. “You’ve got a lot of people in Orkney who are connected to the sea anyway. That meant we could collate this massive amount of data and start saying: ‘Right, that ship is too small, that ship was built in the Netherlands, no, not that ship.’” Eventually, the records led the researchers to the Hind and its second life as a whaler when Britain’s early Industrial Revolution was relying more heavily on the products of whaling. The timbers salvaged from the shoreline are now being preserved underwater at the Sanday heritage centre while a long-term home is under discussion. Alison Turnbull, the director of external relationships and partnerships at HES, says the “rare and fascinating story” of the ship’s identification “shows that communities hold the keys to their own heritage. It is our job to empower them to make these discoveries.” Saunders says what he really enjoyed about studying this wreck was “that we’ve had to do this detective work”, combining the highly technical scientific analysis with scrutiny of a wealth of archive material. “We’re really lucky to have so much archive material, because of the period and because of where it wrecked in Orkney. It’s been very satisfying.”

Exploration of Bahamas seabed will be first time notorious New Providence hideout has been searched

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2025-06-19T10:00:21+00:00 2025-06-19T10:00:21+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/expedition-new-providence-bahamas-treasure-pirates-caribbean Dalya Alberge rine archaeologist is co-directing an expedition that has been allowed for the first time to search for pirate ships off Nassau on the island of New Providence, a notorious pirate hideout 300 years ago. No one had until now explored the seabed for their ships and treasure, let alone everyday belongings that could be as valuable to historical research as a stash of emeralds, Dr Sean Kingsley said. “The potential is enormous,” he added. “We are expecting to find some really cool stuff because this is the real home of the pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates didn’t keep journals listing their lawlessness. What happened in Nassau stayed in Nassau. If we want to discover the truth, we’re going to have to dive for it.” The Bahamas was a major crossroads for trade and more than 500 ships have been wrecked off New Providence since the 1680s, according to historical sources. But there may be dozens more, with pirate ships among them. In 1718, when Woodes Rogers sailed to Nassau to become its governor, he noted 40 seized ships on the shore that had been “either burned or sunk” to destroy evidence and “about 700 pirates”. In 1696, the privateer Henry Avery sailed to Nassau in his ship, the Fancy, laden with loot. He used some of the treasure to bribe the governor of the Bahamas, establishing Nassau as a base for fellow pirates. Top of the most-wanted hitlist of shipwrecks is the Fancy, a 46-gun flagship. Kingsley said: “Avery of Plymouth lit the fuse and threw the grenade that started the golden age of piracy after looting a Mughal treasure ship of $108m off India. He then sailed to Nassau in 1696 to lie low, party and for the crew to break up with their cut of the booty. “Avery scuttled the Fancy in Nassau. It’s the crown jewels of pirate ships. If we were to find anything associated with it, it would be spectacular. Its plunder was the greatest and most successful pirate heist on the high seas.” The New Providence Pirates Expedition – which is dedicated to science, education, entertainment and tourism in the Bahamas – is drawing on historical and archaeological evidence to conduct the first underwater survey, which begins in September. The project has secured the first-ever agreement with the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation of the Bahamas, a partner collaborator. Kingsley has explored more than 350 shipwrecks in the last 30 years and is the founding editor of Wreckwatch, the world’s only magazine dedicated to the sunken past. The affiliated Wreckwatch TV is collaborating with the New Providence Pirates Expedition to bring “the history, ruined landscape and sea dogs of the golden age of piracy between 1696 and 1730 back to life” through a documentary, The Mystery of the Pirate King’s Treasure. The film’s co-director, Chris Atkins, said: “The Bahamas, with its azure waters and crystal-clear underwater visibility, is a film-maker’s dream. For the first time in history, viewers are going to see with their own eyes the places where Blackbeard and gang terrorised the Americas. “Somewhere out there are the wine bottles they partied with, the tobacco pipes they smoked, the pieces of eight carelessly lost and so much more. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get up close and personal with the real pirates of the Caribbean.” Asked how they will identify pirate shipwrecks, Kingsley said: “Generally, if you find a Dutch, English or French shipwreck, it has a very specific type of material culture on it. If it’s Spanish, it will have olive jars, a good marker. If it’s British, it may have Bristol or London tobacco pipes, for instance. “On a pirate wreck, you will find French, English and Dutch ceramics and a mix of coins, anything from Arabian to British, and weapons such as stinkpots, explosive weapons used by pirates.” Dr Michael Pateman, the expedition’s co-director and the ambassador for history, culture and museology in the Bahamas, said: “This is the first project to reconstruct the port and landscape where Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny and the rest of the notorious Flying Gang were based. Anything could still be down there.”

‘Pilot gigs’ were crucial for islanders for centuries and 90 important sites housing the boats have been identified

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2025-05-02T10:00:37+00:00 2025-05-02T10:00:37+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/02/archaeological-project-maps-historic-boat-sheds-isles-of-scilly Steven Morris for islanders by mapping 90 sites of sheds that housed the boats, the earliest believed to date back to the 17th century. Built for strength and lightness and propelled by six oars, the gigs carried pilots to ships navigating around the archipelago, which lies 30 miles (48km) off the mainland of south-west England. They were also used in rescues and to save cargo from wrecks, as well as supporting the building and maintenance of lighthouses and transporting people and goods between the islands. Until now, there had been no data on exactly how many gig sheds there had been on Scilly in the characterful vessels’ heyday, with previously only about a dozen recorded. Cathy Parkes, the project lead archaeologist at the Cornwall Archaeological Unit, said: “We were surprised to find how many there once were. There was always a feeling that there would be more than a dozen but we didn’t know how many.” Pilot gig racing is now a popular sport in Scilly and the publication of the project report, Porths and Gigs of the Isles of Scilly (a porth is a harbour or gateway), coincides with the annual World Pilot Gig championships there this weekend. Parkes, who spoke to the Guardian just before heading off to compete in a “supervets” race, said the sites gave a fresh insight into the history of the gigs. “They tell an incredible story of maritime courage, skill and endurance as gig crews battled stormy seas to save ships and lives,” she said. The study is timely as the climate emergency means some of the sites are threatened. “It has enabled us to respond to the threat to the sites from coastal erosion and sea-level rise, by helping to record and share this heritage while it still survives,” Parkes said. Half of the sites still survive as ruins or have some visible remains. A few sheds have been restored. Their walls were usually made of granite, and their roofs thatched using rushes or reeds from pools and inlets, bracken, and straw. “One of the amazing things about the gig shed sites is they’re readily recognisable because they’re all pretty much 10 metres by three metres [about 32ft x 10ft] – the size of the boat,” said Parkes. “They’re almost like a sort of fossilised boat sitting on the edge of the shore, ready to launch.” The project, funded by Historic England, also mapped the narrow inter-tidal passages running from the doors of the boatsheds into deeper water that were created by shifting boulders out of the way to clear a route just wide enough for a gig to launch. On the island of Bryher, these are known as drangs, while on St Agnes, they are trackways. It has also pinpointed strategic hilltop lookout points, including a site that once had a mast to signal to ships that a pilot gig was putting out to sea. The project examined 19th-century maps to find the sheds and drangs, and also spoke to islanders who remembered where they used to be. Ross Simmonds, the south-west regional director of Historic England, said: “The legacy of gigs and porths matters to us all – it is part of our shared maritime heritage.”

Letter reveals disappearance of 17th century British pirate was tied to William III’s spy ring, Daniel Defoe and an archbishop

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2024-03-30T15:00:00+00:00 2024-03-30T15:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/30/explorers-unlock-the-mystery-of-pirate-king-henry-avery-who-vanished-after-huge-heist-at-sea Dalya Alberge iamonds worth more than £85m in today’s money. He became the most wanted criminal of his day but vanished without trace and was the stuff of legend for 300 years. Now shipwreck explorers Dr Sean Kingsley and Rex Cowan claim to have solved what they call the longest cold case in pirate history: the “pirate king” had entered the service of the king of England, William III, as a spy. Operating within a tangled web of royal espionage, conspiracy and subterfuge, Avery dedicated himself to protecting the English crown from dangers at home and abroad, apparently having exchanged part of his loot for a royal pardon. The evidence lies in a previously unpublished coded letter written by “Avery the Pirate” from Falmouth in Cornwall. It had lain, forgotten, in a Scottish archive after being misfiled. It is dated December 1700, four years after his disappearance following the looting of the ship belonging to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, then the world’s richest man. Kingsley and Cowan discovered that the letter links Avery with one of the first great spy rings, believed to have included Daniel Defoe, the Robinson Crusoe author, and Thomas Tenison, the archbishop of Canterbury. Together, they were protecting Protestant England from the threat of “popery”, a Catholic invasion from France and an enemy seizing the throne. The letter was found by Cowan’s late wife, Zélide, when the pair were tracking down sunken Dutch East India Company traders. Kingsley said: “She knew she had stumbled across a once-in-a-lifetime historical treasure.” Kingsley, a marine archaeologist who is editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine and co-directing a Bahamas project to dive for lost pirate ships, spoke of the excitement of the letter’s discovery considering Avery’s importance in pirate history and our “eternal fascination” with such sea dogs. Tantalisingly, half of the letter cannot be read, as it is in a numeric code, he said: “In 1700, who writes in code? British diplomats and spies.” “We spent years trying to decipher Avery’s secret,” Cowan said. Various experts, including some who worked for the CIA, have tried in vain. In one passage, Avery wrote: “I am not the least concerned for Tank 29 f B26 being out of the T9211597.” Its meaning remains secret. Elsewhere he referred to meeting his contact that evening and working with “noe suspicion upon any Account”. The letter notes that a reply was to be addressed to the “posthouse” in Falmouth. Kingsley said: “Falmouth in 1700 is where the post office is. That’s where the package ships go from. So if you want to be in a place to influence, intercept and stop threats, that’s where you might be.” Kingsley and Cowan say that at that time Defoe was in Cornwall, posing as a shipwreck treasure diver named Claude Guilot. Defoe worked in intelligence for William III in 1692 and invented a numeric code for sending letters. The letter’s recipient was Reverend James Richardson in Orange Street, London. Research reveals that it was the address of the capital’s first public lending library, set up by Tenison with Richardson as librarian. The address is so obscure that it is among several features that reassured Kingsley and Cowan that the letter is authentic: “No scammer would know to address a bogus letter there.” One of the king’s aides saw Tenison illegally opening letters from Catholics that had been intercepted from the post office, describing him as a master forger – “so dangerous an art that, unless his Majesty commands him, I perceive he is desirous it should be discovered to nobody”. The research, revealed in Kingsley and Cowan’s new book, The Pirate King: The Strange Adventures of Henry Avery and the Birth of the Golden Age of Piracy, suggests that for Avery piracy was about revenge. He was orphaned as a child and his governor had stolen his inheritance. Related: Woke the plank! Were pirate ships actually beacons of diversity and democracy? Theories about his fate ranged from his escape to Madagascar to being cheated out of his riches and dying penniless in Devon. Most of the infamous pirates were hanged or drowned at sea, but Avery simply vanished. “More 18- and 19th-century books, ballads, poems and plays were written about Avery than any other pirate,” said Kingsley. “In inns and taverns, they sang ballads about him – he was a hero. To the authorities, he was the enemy of all mankind, wanted dead or alive. But they couldn’t get him.” Pirates continue to capture imaginations today, he added: “They’re like working-class heroes. A lot of it is the swashbuckling ‘giving it all up and to hell with the world’. It was Avery who kickstarted the golden age of piracy.”

Largest cluster of sunken vessels from the 18th and 19th centuries have been identified, bearing ‘silent witness’ to the colonial past

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2024-02-25T09:00:00+00:00 2024-02-25T09:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/25/highway-to-horror-14-wrecked-slavers-ships-are-identified-in-bahamas Dalya Alberge a previously unknown “highway to horror”. The fate of the African men, women and children trafficked in their holds is unknown, but if a vessel was sinking, they were often bolted below deck to allow the crew to escape. Sean Kingsley told the Observer that this extraordinary cluster of wrecks reveals that enslavers had used the Providence Channel heading south to New Providence, Cuba and around to New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico. These ships, which date from between 1704 and 1887, were mostly American-flagged, and profited from Cuba’s sugar and coffee plantations, where enslaved Africans faced a life of cruelty. Kingsley said: “Cuba pretended to accept rules to end the slave trade, but pursued the largest trafficking [of enslaved people] in the world, making massive profits in sugar cultivation.” Interactive The wrecks have been identified during research by the Bahamas Lost Ships Project, managed by Allen Exploration, founded by Carl Allen, a philanthropist and explorer with two passions – the Bahamas and its sunken past. The project is compiling an inventory of every shipwreck in the Bahamas. Through historical sources, it has identified 596 wrecks in the Greater Abaco region, dating from 1657 onwards, when these sea lanes began to witness substantial maritime traffic. Kingsley is one of five co-authors of a report, published this weekend to coincide with Black History Month in the US. Entitled Greater Abaco’s Shipwrecked Echoes of the Caribbean Plantation Economy, it describes the wrecks of slaver ships as “silent witnesses to a period of history that the world would rather forget but that must be respected to bear witness to the horrors and memories of the colonial past”. It notes that the number of the trafficked humans ranged from 15 people on the Atalanta, heading from Charleston for New Orleans in 1806, to 400 on an American schooner, the Peter Mowell, which sank in 1860. Another was launched in England in 1806 before being destroyed in a severe storm in 1820, 1.5 miles off western Abaco. Its cargo included clothing and blankets, thought to have been purchased for a sugar plantation factory. In a section on the fate of shipwrecked Africans, the report notes their “unimaginable horrors”, with many never even having seen the sea before: “Now, closing in on the end of their harrowing journeys… they were forced to endure a totally new experience – the terror of shipwreck. Unlike crews free to swim for it or to take to a ship’s boat, the enslaved were often locked and bolted below deck when a vessel foundered to ensure the crew got optimum space while escaping in the ship’s boat or were not attacked amidst the panic… “More often than not, the fate of the enslaved casualties went unrecorded. To the captains commanding the voyages and the owners of the human cargoes, their drowning was an economic inconvenience that was not assessed in human terms.” One of the wrecks was the ship on which the formerly enslaved Olaudah Equiano sailed in 1767. Kidnapped from his Igbo village in Nigeria, he had been trafficked to Barbados aged 11. Having eventually bought his freedom, he was preparing for a new life when the ship on which he was travelling was lost. He survived the disaster and went on to become a leading voice in the abolition movement. Michael Pateman, director of the Bahamas Maritime Museum, said: “Nothing was worse than ending up in the sugar plantations of Cuba.” Allen added: “Of all the extraordinary cargoes sunk off the Abacos, from shipments of locomotives and ice to gold and silver, brandy and tea, none hit you in the chest like the trafficking of Africans. It’s a tale that needs to be remembered. History and archaeology let us give new life to the memories using physical evidence that nobody can ignore.” While all wrecks are the property of the government of the Bahamas, Allen Exploration sponsors the Bahamas Maritime Museum in Freeport, which displays any finds recovered from the seabed. The new report will be published in the Ocean Dispatches series by the museum.

Hundreds of discoveries made on Sir John Franklin’s ships, but storm damage makes wrecks increasingly dangerous

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2024-01-27T14:00:00+00:00 2024-01-27T14:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/27/race-against-time-to-unlock-secrets-of-erebus-shipwreck-and-doomed-arctic-expedition Robin McKie, Science Editor discoveries include pistols, sealed bottles of ­medicines, seamen’s chests and navigation equipment. These are now being studied for clues to explain the loss of the Erebus and its sister ship Terror, and the deaths of the 129 men who sailed on them. The work is considered to be particularly urgent because the wreck of the Erebus – discovered 10 years ago in shallow water in Wilmot and Crampton Bay in Arctic Canada – is now being battered by increasingly severe storms as climate change takes its grip on the region. Interactive “Parts of the ship’s upper deck collapsed recently and other parts are sloping over dangerously,” said Jonathan Moore, manager of the Parks Canada underwater team that ­completed the most recent exploration of the wreck. “It’s getting tricky down there.” Investigators’ efforts were made even more pressing by Covid-19, which halted all exploration in 2020 and 2021, and by severe weather that badly disrupted investigations in 2018. As a result, marine archaeologists have been left in a race against time to unlock the vessel’s secrets. Sir John Franklin set off from Greenhithe in Kent in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage, a polar route that linked the Atlantic and Pacific. His ships, Erebus and Terror, were fitted with steam-driven propellers to help them manoeuvre in pack ice while their holds were filled with three years’ worth of tinned ­provisions. The ships failed to return, however, and it was not until the 1850s that the Scottish explorer John Rae discovered, after interviewing Inuits, that Franklin had died in 1847 after his ships had been trapped in sea ice for two years. Later his men, by now starving, started to eat each other. Victorian society was appalled and Rae was denounced, with his chief persecutor, Charles Dickens, claiming that the explorer had no right to believe “a race of savages”. Then, in 1997, the bones of several crewmen were discovered on nearby King William Island – with marks consistent with having been cut up and eaten. Trapped in the ice for years and afflicted by scurvy, starvation, and possibly lead poisoning from their poorly preserved tins of food, the men had suffered appalling fates. But the exact sequence of events that led to the expedition’s survivors to leave their ship to make their desperate bid to seek salvation in the south seemed destined to remain a mystery – until the ­discovery of the wrecks of Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016. These now offer the ­tantalising prospect of understanding the precise unfolding of the catastrophe that overwhelmed the expedition and crew. One report from Inuit legend indicates that at least one body remained on the Erebus after it was abandoned. Could this have been the corpse of Franklin? Could his body be lying in a casket in the hold of the Erebus, archaeologists have wondered. At present, investigation of the ship – which is proceeding with considerable caution, with explorers descending very slowly down through the wreck – has discovered no human remains. On the other hand, a great many distinctive personalised remains have been discovered and brought to the surface, revealing intriguing details about those who manned the ship. In one cabin, believed to be that of Second Lieutenant Henry Dunda Le Vesconte, Moore and his colleagues found items that included an intact thermometer, a leather book cover and a fishing rod with a brass reel while a leather shoe, storage jars and a sealed pharmaceutical bottle were found in an area believed to represent the pantry of the captain’s steward. The team has also begun excavating a seamen’s chest in the forecastle area, where most of the crew lived. Inside they have found pistols, bottles of medicines and coins. Archaeologists have also captured thousands of high-resolution digital photos that will be used to produce highly accurate 3D models which will be vital in understanding how the site is changing over time. In the past, this work was exceptionally difficult to carry out, Moore pointed out. The sea above the wrecks is only free of ice for short periods, while diving in traditional scuba equipment has been difficult, cold and unpleasant. Most of the time, the sea temperature there is only one or two degrees above freezing. But recent innovations had made investigations of Erebus far less intimidating, Moore added. “We have air supplied from the surface and we have heated suits, and that has made it much easier to work down there. In fact, we were able to make 68 dives for the 12 days we worked at the wreck in September. In that way we were able to do a lot more exploring and retrieval of artefacts.” Related: Inuit argue for say as Canada and Britain decide fate of HMS Terror wreck Virtually all this work has focused on the threatened Erebus. By contrast, Terror – which sank in deeper water about 45 miles away from the wreck of Erebus – is less at the mercy of the elements and was only visited briefly last year. “Terror is 24 metres below sea level, but Erebus is only 11m down, and that makes the latter our prime concern,” said Moore. “We are going to concentrate on it and peel back its story layer by layer.”

Archaeologists to survey waters off coast of northern France using latest technology to scour seabed

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2023-09-20T16:00:00+00:00 2023-09-20T16:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/20/britain-france-jointly-excavate-dunkirk-shipwrecks-wwii Esther Addley hurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/">miracle of deliverance”, but the operation to rescue more than 330,000 troops trapped by German forces in May 1940 came at a heavy cost. Of the up to 1,000 vessels, from military warships to fishing boats, lifeboats and pleasure craft, that scrambled to help the stranded men, hundreds were sunk during the nine-day Operation Dynamo with the loss of many lives. More than eight decades later, French and British archaeologists are embarking on a joint survey of the waters off the northern French town, using the latest technology to scour the seabed for shipwrecks from the heroic rescue armada. They hope to learn more about 37 wrecks whose locations are known in the vicinity, and to locate other sunken ships – the exact whereabouts of which are unknown. The project, jointly run by France’s department of underwater archaeological research (Drassm) and Historic England, will begin next week with a surface-level scan of the seabed, using geophysical survey equipment including a multibeam echosounder, side-scan sonar and magnetometer. The hope, said Cécile Sauvage, an archaeologist co-leading the expedition for Drassm, is to build a detailed picture that will allow divers to return next year for closer investigations. Having carried out a similar survey of vessels involved in the Normandy landing, she is aware that those that survive may be in a precarious condition after more than 83 years underwater. “We want to save them by studying them,” she said, adding that she hoped the survey would encompass the wide range of craft that took part. “I do not want to find one warship or just one type. I [would love] to understand the event by finding different types of ships that were involved.” Many different vessels, flying British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Polish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish flags, were involved in the evacuation – from military destroyers and gunboats to yachts, lifeboats, fishing boats, tugs and (famously) small private boats that rushed from the English coast to help. Those that survive underwater are likely to be the larger vessels, said Antony Firth, Historic England’s head of marine heritage strategy. “The popular imagination is around Dunkirk’s ‘little ships’, and there’s no taking away from their significance, but more troops were lifted by larger vessels. Related: The forgotten Australian hero who saved thousands from the Nazis’ crimes “Because they are more robust, they will tend to be more visible to the kinds of methods that we’re using.” While smaller craft are unlikely to have survived intact, they may have left remnants, such as engines and boilers, that could be detected in the seabed, said Firth. Many of the wrecks are known by name and one that will be examined is the Brighton Queen, a paddle steamer that had been pressed into service as a minesweeper. It was carrying 700 French Moroccan troops, of whom nearly half perished when it was sunk by German gunfire. “Dunkirk is not just a British event – I think it’s important to remember that,” said Firth. The survey, he said, would “bring the focus back to the maritime dimension of Dunkirk and the fact that physical remains of that are still there on the seabed, as they are with many different aspects of our maritime heritage”. The Dunkirk evacuation, despite its celebrated position in British memories of the second world war, is much less well known in France, said Claire Destanque, a French archaeologist who will co-lead the operation. She has conducted research which found at least 305 vessels were scuttled, burned, destroyed, abandoned, stranded or lost during the operation. “I don’t think I had ever heard about Operation Dynamo before starting my research. But with everything I have read about it, and every aspect of my research – yes, of course, it was a retreat, but it was an extraordinary one. “And French forces really made a difference … it was because of French forces that we could hold Dunkirk, and all the soldiers could go across the Channel. So I really think it was British and French combined that make this an extraordinary moment of the war.”

Artefacts, video and 3D model tell tragic story of the Gloucester, which ran aground carrying future king

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2023-02-25T14:00:04+00:00 2023-02-25T14:00:04+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/25/remains-of-17th-century-shipwreck-go-on-display-in-norfolk Sophie Zeldin-O'Neill he royal passenger was saved, but as many as 250 people drowned. Artefacts rescued from the wreck will be displayed for the first time, including wine bottles, a urine flask, spoons, the mouthpiece of a brass trumpet, parts of a woman’s shoe, combs, clay pipes, a leather pouch and the ship’s bell. The exhibition, at Norwich Castle museum, also features underwater footage filmed last summer by the divers and brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell. The ship is split down the keel and the remains of the hull are submerged in sand, but items including an anchor, rope and cannon are visible in the film, along with glass bottles. Also visible are fishing nets that have been lost over the years, which the team says highlights the vulnerability of the site. The exhibition also features work by Garry Momber and Brandon Mason, of the Maritime Archaeology Trust, who conducted photogrammetry of the wreck to produce a 3D model, which will give visitors a diver’s-eye interactive tour of the site. Momber describes the wreck as the “most significant” they have ever dived. After running aground on a sandbank on 6 May 1682, the Gloucester’s whereabouts remained unknown until it was found in 2007 by the Barnwells and their friend, the retired ex-Royal Navy submariner and diver James Little. The ship’s identity was confirmed in 2012 and its discovery was made public in June 2022. Lincoln said: “We’re delighted to be able to share these glimpses of the wreck site, more of which visitors will be able to see in the exhibition, and excited to share the rescued artefacts for the first time with the public. Julian added: “The discovery of the Gloucester has been an incredible adventure for all three of us, and we feel very honoured that its story is being told in such a professional and detailed manner. “We are confident that anyone who visits the exhibition will come away with a better understanding of the events of 6 May 1682, and not only their historical and political impacts, but also the human impact on the individuals involved.” The academic partner in the Gloucester shipwreck project is the University of East Anglia, with the research being led by maritime history experts Prof Claire Jowitt and Dr Benjamin Redding. Jowitt said: “Until now, only a handful of people have been able to see what the Gloucester wreck site looks like. This footage, together with the artefacts and ongoing historical research, will help underline the importance of Britain’s maritime heritage to our island story.” She added: “We truly believe this is Norfolk’s Mary Rose.” The project team are in the process of forming a new charity, The Gloucester 1682 Charitable Trust. They plan to explore the possibility of a permanent museum in the coastal town of Great Yarmouth. The Last Voyage of the Gloucester: Norfolk’s Royal Shipwreck, 1682 runs from Saturday 25 February to Sunday 10 September 2023, at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery

Vessel that sank with more than 200 transported people onboard is being used to humanise the story of slavery

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2023-01-08T05:00:00+00:00 2023-01-08T05:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/08/a-search-for-ourselves-shipwreck-becomes-focus-of-slavery-debate Sam Jones in Madrid ved people, the wreck of the Portuguese slave ship the São José Paquete D’Africa had been found. When told the news, a Makua leader responded with a gesture that no one on the delegation will ever forget. “One of the chiefs took a vessel we had, filled it with soil and asked us to bring that vessel back to the site of the slave ship so that, for the first time since the 18th century, his people could sleep in their own land,” says Lonnie Bunch, now the secretary of the Smithsonian. For Bunch and his colleagues, the importance of the find cannot be overstated. Although the São José – which was bound for Brazil – is the first ship to be recovered that is known to have sunk while transporting enslaved people, it was just one of the tens of thousands that plied their trade over the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, during which more than 12 million African men, women and children were enslaved. And yet, as Bunch points out, maritime archaeology has tended to focus its masked eye on the wrecks of rich and famous ships rather than those that traded in flesh and blood. There are 3m lost vessels under the waves, and with new technology finally enabling us to explore them, Guardian Seascape is dedicating a series to what is being found: the secret histories, hidden treasures and the lessons they teach. From glimpses into storied wrecks such as the Titanic and Ernest Shackleton’s doomed Endurance, to slave vessels such as the Clotilda or Spanish galleons lined with plundered South American gold that confront us with our troubled history, shipwrecks are time capsules, holding clues to who we are. But they are also ocean actors in their own right, home to huge colonies of marine life. They are victims, too, of the same threats faced by the ocean: invasive species eating away at their hulls, acidification slowly causing them to disintegrate. Shipwrecks are mirrors showing us not just who we’ve been, but what our future holds on a fast-heating globe. The pull of these wrecks has been a boon for science, shedding light on a part of the planet that has been shrouded in mystery. “If shipwrecks are the sirens that lure us into the depths, they encourage exploration into what truly is the last frontier of the planet,” says James Delgado of shipwreck company Search Inc. “A frontier that we don’t really know much about.”Chris Michael and Laura Paddison, Seascape editors Redressing that archaeological, academic and sociocultural imbalance was the driving force behind the Slave Wrecks Project, a partnership established in 2008 between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and other institutions and organisations in Africa and the US. “People talk about the slave trade; they talk about the millions of people who were transported, but it’s hard to really imagine that, so we wanted to reduce it to human scale by really focusing on a single ship, on the people on the ship, and the story around the ship,” says Bunch. “Yes, we tell you about the thousands of ships that brought the enslaved, but we also say: ‘Here’s a way to humanise it.’” The basic idea, he adds, was to tell people that “discovering your enslaved past is as important a treasure as finding the Titanic”. As well as locating the wreck of the São José, the Slave Wrecks Project has developed programmes to broaden and diversify the field by training people in Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and the Caribbean in diving, archaeology and museum conservation and curation. Today, the project is investigating a handful of slave wrecks in Brazil, the Caribbean, west Africa and North America. “We need to think about how these matters that seem submerged and lost are really waiting there for us all to find, and to change our scope of how we understand our world,” says Paul Gardullo, a curator at the NMAAHC and director of the Slave Wrecks Project. “This search is connected to something much, much bigger than any one particular search for a ship; it’s a search for ourselves and it’s a search for how we relate to each other in the world and how we make the world better.” The Smithsonian’s activities, however, extend well beyond the seabed. Bunch and Gardullo have been in Lisbon for the past few days to take part in an international symposium on slavery, museums and racism. The choice of host country is not accidental. Like other former slave-trading colonial powers, Portugal – the European country with the longest historical involvement in the slave trade – has struggled to confront its past. Last year, Europe’s top human rights body, the Council of Europe, urged Lisbon to rethink its approach to teaching colonial history, saying: “Further efforts are necessary for Portugal to come to terms with past human rights violations to tackle racist biases against people of African descent inherited from a colonial past and historical slave trade.” As Gardullo notes: “Portugal is very proud of its maritime heritage, but is very silent about that heritage’s connection to slavery and colonisation.” Both he and Bunch hope the conference – which includes a one-day symposium with visitors from Angola, Brazil, South Africa, the UK and the Netherlands – will reinvigorate stalled efforts to get Portugal to reflect on its past. “Often we’re prophets without honour in our own land and in essence when someone else comes in and says these are important issues, suddenly that then stimulates a lot of what people are doing,” says Bunch. “Part of it is saying that this is OK to wrestle with – it’s more than OK; it’s crucially important.” Last month, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, formally apologised for the role of the Netherlands in the slave trade, saying it had “enabled, encouraged and profited from slavery” and done things that “cannot be erased, only faced up to”. For Bunch, the need for honest conversations “about the underlying issues that we have to grapple with” has been underlined by the murder of George Floyd, by Black Lives Matter and by the Brixton riots. At its most basic, it is about being truthful about a painful and shameful shared history. “I think that people are really ambivalent about discussing slavery and looking at its past because the notion is: ‘Is this about guilt?’” he says. “For me, it’s about: ‘How do you understand yourself?’ There’s a big part of who you are – whether it’s Portugal, or Brazil, or the US – that you can’t understand without that. I’ve always been struck by how people are comfortable recognising that their great-grandfather or great-grandmother’s DNA shapes them, but what they’re not as comfortable understanding is the history that shaped their great-grandfather and which also continues to shape them.” Related: Norwegian cargo ship refloated after running aground in Suez canal It is also about respect, remembrance and perseverance. When the day finally came to scatter the earth from the Makua elder, the conditions in Cape Town were all too reminiscent of those that must have accompanied the sinking of the São José in December 1794. “We’re there and we can’t get the boats out because the water’s so bad, the wind and the rain are so bad,” says Bunch. “The divers swim out as far as they can and then they sprinkle the soil. And on all that’s holy, the sun came out, the rain stopped, the wind stopped blowing. It was the most beautiful day you could imagine. “I had never in my career really talked about ancestors or spirituality, but that moment made me realise that there is something so much greater than what we can be: literally the moment that soil was poured, the weather changed dramatically as a way to say that remembering is powerful.”

Fish and crustaceans eating wreck to prey on shipworms and snails while storms could expose more wood to damage

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2022-08-16T17:00:30+00:00 2022-08-16T17:00:30+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/17/worm-eaten-shipwreck-of-captain-cooks-endeavour-under-threat-from-more-marine-animals Tory Shepherd ational Maritime Museum say time is critical in the race to save parts of the wreck that are important both historically and for future study. In February, the museum announced the identity of the wreck at the site known as RI 2394. That announcement caused a stoush with the Rhode Island custodians, who said it was premature. However, the museum says it has the evidence it needs and wanted to use the declaration to push for the site’s protection. Reuben Shipway, a University of Plymouth marine biology lecturer, has dived the site. He found teredo navalis – worm-like molluscs known as shipworms or the “termites of the ocean” – riddling the wood, along with boring crustaceans called gribbles. Related: Shipwreck of Captain Cook’s Endeavour being eaten by ‘termites of the ocean’, expert says Australians have no power to directly intervene, but hope the Americans will take measures to preserve what’s left. The museum has discussed site protection with the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap), and has warned that it needs “active management”. The museum has also raised it with the local Rhode Island heritage authorities. After the report that the exposed wood was already riddled with shipworms and gribbles, experts now say fish, lobsters and other marine animals are eating the wood to try to get at the worms inside. Meanwhile, a storm could shift the sand on the ocean floor, exposing more wood to animals and the elements. Dr James Hunter, the museum’s curator of naval heritage and archaeology, said many people think about looters when they hear about the need to protect shipwreck sites. “That’s an immediate concern and one that’s legitimate, but the natural processes can get overlooked,” he said. “You have issues with shipworm and with gribbles [and] fish; I’ve watched fish chew on timber. “They feed on just about anything, and what they’re trying to get out is worms and snails and whatever happens to be in the wood.” Kieran Hosty, the museum’s maritime archaeology manager, said the threats were “nothing new” and that wrecks had “no chance” if timber was above the sea bed and in temperate waters. “We have encountered shipworms before on all the timber sites in Rhode Island,” he said. “If the Endeavour is left exposed, there’s a continued threat to the site.” Related: ‘Magnificent’ jellyfish found off coast of Papua New Guinea sparks interest among researchers While there’s a chance storms could expose more of the wreck, he said, it was also possible they could return to the site and find it entirely buried and therefore protected. But there are also ways humans can stop the damage. Hunter said any parts that were buried were “deoxygenated”, so nothing could get at them. It’s also possible to use a “geotextile” – similar to a shade cloth – to keep the worms out. Hosty said the easiest and cheapest way is sandbagging the site, using sand from the local environment. “[Or] you can have sand pumped on to the site. In more extreme circumstances, you can use artificial seaweed – basically a [neoprene] seaweed frond on a mesh base – which attracts sand as it goes past,” he said. “We’ve used all these techniques successfully.” Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Cook sailed the Endeavour through the South Pacific and to New Zealand and Australia, where he claimed the eastern coast for Great Britain in 1770, calling it New South Wales. During the American war of independence, the ship, by then known as Lord Sandwich, was scuttled. After the museum declared earlier this year that the wreck was the Endeavour, Rimap’s head, Dr Kathy Abbass, blamed “Australian emotions or politics” for the “premature” announcement. Abass declined an interview but said the reports of damage would be included in a Rimap report due to be published shortly. “You will see an interpretation of Dr Shipway’s results as part of Rimap’s archaeological study,” she said.

Shipworms and crustaceans called gribbles have infiltrated the wood of the vessel off Rhode Island

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2022-08-14T09:00:12+00:00 2022-08-14T09:00:12+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/14/shipwreck-of-captain-cooks-endeavour-being-eaten-by-termites-of-the-ocean-expert-says Tory Shepherd hat famous historical ship. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap) challenged that assertion, sparking a transatlantic spat over the site known as RI 2394. Related: Row erupts over wreck in US waters identified as Captain Cook’s Endeavour Now an expert has told the Boston Globe that he has found evidence that shipworms have infiltrated the wood. Reuben Shipway, a University of Plymouth marine biology lecturer, dived down to the wreck and found shipworms had infiltrated a piece of wood belonging to RI 2394. The shipworms – actually a worm-like mollusc – infiltrate and eat through wood. “It means one of the most important wrecks in human history is being destroyed right underneath our noses,” Shipway said. “This is a vessel that connects the UK to Australia, and to America, because it also played a really important role in the battle for American independence. It’s our shared cultural heritage. And it’s being destroyed.” The Australian Maritime Museum said the site needed to be protected. “When the museum made the announcement regarding the Endeavour we raised the need for the ongoing protection of the site as a major concern,” a spokesperson said. “There are a number of solutions that could be put in place to protect not only the site of the Endeavour but other important vessels in Newport Harbour.” Australian researchers have been working with Rimap for more than two decades to positively identify the wreck but the relationship soured after the museum’s former chief executive, Kevin Sumption, said he was “confident” it was the Endeavour. Rimap’s head, Dr Kathy Abbass, angrily hit back. She said while it might be the famous ship, work was ongoing. At the time she said Rimap was the lead organisation and would post its eventual report when it was sure. “Rimap recognises the connection between Australian citizens of British descent and the Endeavour, but Rimap’s conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics,” she said. The museum spokesperson said they looked forward to receiving Abbass’s report, which is expected shortly. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning The Endeavour sailed the South Pacific from 1768 to 1771, as Cook conducted scientific research and charted the coast of New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coastline before claiming the land for Great Britain. In 1778 British forces scuttled it in Newport Harbour, during the American war of independence. It’s one of several shipwrecks in the area. Shipway said the exposed wood of the wreck was being eaten from within by Teredo navalis, naval shipworm. “The shipworms’ guts are full of wood,” he told the Boston Globe. Another species, crustaceans called gribbles, were also eating the wood. Shipway said anyone who cared about the wreck should come up with the resources and funding to protect it.

Marine archaeologists stunned by priceless cache long hidden beneath the Bahamas’ shark-infested waters

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2022-07-31T09:00:00+00:00 2022-07-31T09:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/after-350-years-sea-gives-up-lost-jewels-of-spanish-shipwreck Dalya Alberge and gold chains are among spectacular finds that have now been recovered, having lain untouched on the seabed for hundreds of years. The Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (Our Lady of Wonders) went down on the western side of the Little Bahama Bank, over 70km offshore, but the newly discovered treasures were found across a vast debris trail spanning more than 13km. Allen Exploration, with Bahamian and US marine archaeologists and divers, was licensed by the Bahamian government to explore the Maravillas scientifically and is committed to displaying the finds in a new museum in the Bahamas. An elaborate, gold filigree chain, with rosette motifs, is among treasures that suggest some of the discoveries were destined for wealthy aristocrats, if not royalty. A gold pendant bearing the Cross of Santiago (St James) and an Indian bezoar stone, then valued in Europe for its healing properties, is shaped like a scallop shell, the symbol recognised by pilgrims heading for Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. It is among finds linked to the sacred Order of Santiago, a military-religious order of knights, who protected pilgrims and were active in Spain’s maritime trade. Interactive Another pendant features a gold Cross of St. JamesSantiago over a large, green, oval emerald framed by a dozen square emeralds, perhaps symbolising the 12 apostles. Clusters of emeralds and amethysts mined in Colombia and now recovered offer evidence of contraband trafficking as they were not registered on the manifest. Dr Sean Kingsley, an English marine archaeologist and editor of Wreckwatch magazine which will feature the finds in a forthcoming issue, told the Observer that such “marvels” are particularly dramatic as they were in the middle of nowhere, under dense sand. “This is successful key-hole archaeological surgery,” he said. The Maravillas, named after a “miraculous” 13th-century sculpture of the Virgin Mary in a Madrid convent, was part of a fleet. It was heading home to Spain from Havana with treasures from the Americas, both royal and private consignments, as well as contraband and a lavish cargo rescued from another Spanish galleon wrecked off Ecuador. But at around midnight on 4 January 1656, it sank, following a navigational error in steering clear of shallow waters. Colliding with its fleet flagship, it hit a reef and only 45 of 650 people on board survived. Many were eaten by sharks. Allen Exploration was founded by Carl Allen, who developed a successful plastics business before retiring early, becoming a philanthropist and explorer with two passions – the Bahamas and its sunken past. “When we brought up the oval emerald and gold pendant, my breath caught in my throat,” he said. “I feel a greater connection with everyday finds than coins and jewels, but these Santiago finds bridge both worlds. The pendant mesmerises me when I hold it and think about its history. How these tiny pendants survived in these harsh waters, and how we managed to find them, is the miracle of the Maravillas.” He added: “The wreck of the galleon had a tough history – heavily salvaged by Spanish, English, French, Dutch, Bahamian and American expeditions in the 17th and 18th centuries, and blitzed by salvors from the 1970s to early 1990s. Some say the remains were ground to dust. Using modern technology and hard science, we’re now tracking a long and winding debris trail of finds.” He was convinced that not all the ship was destroyed and pulled together a team and ships to search for the lost sterncastle, which is thought to have broken away and drifted off. But he wanted to study the wreck archaeologically, unlike his predecessors who did not publish any science, and who simply sold off finds. His team is using cutting-edge science to work out how the Maravillas was wrecked and then scattered by centuries of hurricanes. The expedition is also collecting data on the reef health, seafloor geology and plastic pollution to understand how the archaeology and marine environment interact. Related: Marble head of Hercules pulled up from Roman shipwreck site in Greece “The sea bottom is barren,” said Allen. “The colourful coral that divers remembered from the 70s is gone, poisoned by ocean acidification and choked by metres of shifting sand. It’s painfully sad. Still lying on those dead grey reefs, though, are sparkling finds.” The team has recorded stone ballast, iron fasteners that once held the hull together, and iron rings and pins from the rigging. Evidence of shipboard dining, from olive jars to Chinese and Mexican plates, and personal belongings, including a soldier’s silver sword-hilt and a pearl ring, have also been found. All wreckage in Bahamian waters is the property of the government of the Bahamas and Allen Exploration is keeping the finds together by sponsoring the Bahamas Maritime Museum, which opens on 8 August in Freeport.

Rich archaeological area 50 metres under sea off Antikythera gives up yet more treasures after boulders removed

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2022-06-21T17:00:31+00:00 2022-06-21T17:00:31+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/21/marble-head-of-hercules-pulled-up-from-roman-shipwreck-site-in-greece Helena Smith in Athens it, including the missing head of a statue of the demigod Hercules. “In 1900, [sponge divers] pulled out the statue of Hercules [from the sea] and now in all probably we’ve found its head,” said Prof Lorenz Baumer, the classical archaeologist who is overseeing the underwater mission with the University of Geneva. “It’s a most impressive marble piece,” he said, describing characteristics that bore all the hallmarks of one of the great heroic figures of Greek and Roman mythology. “It is twice lifesize, has a big beard, a very particular face and short hair. There is no doubt it is Hercules.” The discovery of the sculpture – along with the plinth of another marble statue, human teeth and parts of the ship’s equipment – had been made possible by the removal of three 8.5-tontonne boulders that had partially covered the wreck at the bottom of the sea bed. For three weeks the research team of marine archaeologists and specially trained divers – working at depths of 50 metres – had access to an area never previously explored. “It’s so deep they can only be down there for 30 minutes,” said Baumer. “But now we have an idea of what has been hiding under those rocks … each find helps us piece together more context in our understanding of the ship, its cargo, the crew and where they were from.” The two teeth were embedded in encrusted marine deposits that had accrued on the 2,000-year-old shipwreck. Genetic and isotopic analysis of the remains could prove groundbreaking in shedding light on the people who sailed the ship. The boat, which is thought to have sunk in a storm off the tiny island of Antikythera within the first 50 years of the first century BC, was retrieved by sponge divers in 1901. Most famous among its cargo of giant marble and bronze statues, ceramics and glassware was a mysterious geared device used to map the motions of the sun, moon and planets, which has been described by scientists as the world’s first analog computer. Why the instrument, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, was aboard a vessel increasingly believed to be a merchant ship travelling from the eastern Mediterranean to Rome remains unknown. Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BST Further expeditions are expected to reveal further secrets in the seabed off the tiny isle. “The ship could have gone down anywhere but, that said, every discovery puts us on the map and is exciting,” said Stratos Charchalakis, the mayor of Kythira, under whose jurisdiction the Aegean outpost falls. “The truth is that for an island with just 30 inhabitants, the wreck has had a huge social and economic impact. It has helped keep its shops and people going.” Prof Baumer said the team had “an idea” of what future investigations may bring. “You never know what archaeology will deliver tomorrow, but what we do know is that the Antikythera wreck is an extremely rich site, the richest in the ancient world.”

Rhode Island archaelogists denounce Australian National Maritime Museum announcement as ‘premature’ and driven by ‘Australian emotions or politics’

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2022-02-03T03:00:31+00:00 2022-02-03T03:00:31+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/03/captain-cook-ship-endeavour-identified-confirmed-shipwreck-us-rhode-island Tory Shepherd and AAP pwreck in waters off Rhode Island in the US was “the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history”. But the museum’s US partner organisation, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap), said the claim the Endeavour had been identified was a breach of contract, and blamed “Australian emotions or politics” for the “premature” announcement. The museum responded that it was not in breach of any commitments, and that Sumption was “confident” the wreck was the Endeavour. Cook sailed the ship around the South Pacific before landing on the east coast of Australia in 1770. It was scuttled in Newport Harbor by British forces in 1778, during the American War of Independence. Related: How to kill a god: the myth of Captain Cook shows how the heroes of empire will fall Since 1999 maritime archaeologists have been investigating several 18th-century shipwrecks in the area. Announcing the positive identification on Thursday, Sumption paid tribute to Rimap and its head, Dr Kathy Abbass, for their “commitment to the site and its history”. But Abbass said Rimap was the lead organisation for the study and that while the shipwreck was consistent with “what might be expected of the Endeavour”, there was no “indisputable data” to prove it. “There are many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification,” she said in a statement provided to Guardian Australia. “When the study is done, Rimap will post the legitimate report on its website. Rimap recognises the connection between Australian citizens of British descent and the Endeavour, but Rimap’s conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics.” In a statement, the Australian museum said it had worked with Abbass for 22 years and acknowledged “that she is entitled to her own opinion regarding the vast amount of evidence that we have accumulated”. “As stated today, our director Kevin Sumption is confident that the preponderance of evidence identifies shipwreck site RI 2394 in Newport Harbor as the last resting place of Endeavour,” the statement said. “The museum has reviewed our previous agreements with Rimap and we conclude that we are not in breach of any current commitments. We look forward to pursuing a due process of peer review and consultation with all stakeholders in Rhode Island.” Several details on the wreck convinced archaeologists they had found Endeavour after matching structural details and the shape of the remains to those on 18th-century plans of the ship. “I am satisfied that this is the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history,” Sumption said at the maritime museum. “The last pieces of the puzzle had to be confirmed before I felt able to make this call. Based on archival and archaeological evidence, I’m convinced it’s the Endeavour. “It’s an important historical moment, as this vessel’s role in exploration, astronomy and science applies not just to Australia, but also Aotearoa New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.” Only about 15% of the vessel remains and researchers are now focused on what can be done to protect and preserve it. Related: How Captain Cook described the weather on Antarctica voyage Originally launched in 1764 as the Earl of Pembroke, the ship was renamed Endeavour in 1768 by Britain’s Royal Navy and prepared for a major scientific voyage to the Pacific. From 1768 to 1771, the Endeavour sailed the South Pacific, primarily to record the transit of Venus in Tahiti in 1769. Cook then sailed it around the South Pacific searching for “the Great Southern Land”, charting the coast of New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coastline before claiming the land for Great Britain on 22 August 1770. The Endeavour was later sold to private owners, renamed Lord Sandwich and deliberately sunk in 1778 by British forces during the American War of Independence. A year later Cook was killed in Hawaii during his third Pacific voyage, 10 years before the first fleet arrived in New South Wales to establish a British colony.

‘Incredible’ discoveries at submerged ancient city off coast of Egypt have lain untouched

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2021-08-02T04:00:00+00:00 2021-08-02T04:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/02/fruit-baskets-from-fourth-century-bc-found-in-ruins-of-thonis-heracleion Dalya Alberge city disappeared beneath the waves in the second century BC, then sank further in the eight century AD, following cataclysmic natural disasters, including an earthquake and tidal waves. Related: Doggerland: Lost ‘Atlantis’ of the North Sea gives up its ancient secrets Thonis-Heracleion – the city’s Egyptian and Greek names – was for centuries Egypt’s largest port on the Mediterranean before Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331BC. But the vast site in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria was forgotten until its re-discovery by the French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio two decades ago, in one of the greatest archaeological finds of recent times. Colossal statues were among treasures from an opulent civilisation frozen in time. Some of the discoveries were shown in a major exhibition at the British Museum in 2016. Goddio has been taken aback by the latest discoveries. He told the Guardian that the fruit baskets were “incredible”, having been untouched for more than 2,000 years. They were still filled with doum, the fruit of an African palm tree that was sacred for the ancient Egyptians, as well as grape-seeds. Guardian graphic “Nothing was disturbed,” he said. “It was very striking to see baskets of fruits.” One explanation for their survival may be that they were placed within an underground room, Goddio said, noting a possible funerary connotation. It is within an area where Goddio and his team of archaeologists have discovered a sizeable tumulus (a mound raised over graves) – about 60 metres long by 8 metres wide – and sumptuous Greek funerary offerings. They date from the early fourth century BC when Greek merchants and mercenaries lived in Thonis-Heracleion. The city controlled the entrance to Egypt at the mouth of the Canopic branch of the Nile. The Greeks were allowed to settle there during the late Pharaonic period, constructing their own sanctuaries. Goddio said of the tumulus: “It is a kind of island surrounded by channels. In those channels, we found an unbelievable amount of deposits made of bronze, including a lot of statuettes of Osiris [the ancient Egyptian fertility god]. “On that island, something totally different. We found hundreds of deposits made of ceramic. One above the other. These are imported ceramic, red on black figures from Attic.” The finds are all the more intriguing because there were vast quantities of miniature ceramics – high-quality Ancient Greek examples, including amphorae– under the tumulus. Bronze artefacts were around the tumulus, including mirrors and statuettes. Goddio also found extensive evidence of burning, suggesting a “spectacular” ceremony that led to people being barred from entering this site again. It appears to have been sealed for hundreds of years as none of the artefacts found were from later than the early fourth century, even though the city lived on for several hundred years. “There’s something very strange here,” he said. “That site has been used maybe one time, never touched before, never touched after, for a reason that we cannot understand for the time being. It’s a big mystery.” He hopes to find answers within some of the treasures, which include the well-preserved remains of a wooden sofa for banquets, a large Attic vase and a gold amulet of “exquisite quality”. About 350 metres away, the archaeologists also found a unique Ptolemaic galley, 25 metres in length. While built in the classical tradition, with mortise-and-tenon joints, it also contains features of ancient Egyptian construction, with a flat-bottomed design that would have been perfect for navigation on the Nile and in the delta. The European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, led by Goddio, works in close cooperation with Egypt’s ministry of tourism and antiquities and with the support of the Hilti Foundation. The finds will be studied and preserved before being put on display in museums. The potential for further discoveries is tantalising. Even after conducting repeated excavations over the past two decades, Goddio estimates that only about 3% of the area has been explored so far.

A revolutionary new class of amphibious vehicle will transform the search for lost vessels on the ocean floor, says marine archaeologist Dr Robert Ballard

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2021-07-04T10:00:00+00:00 2021-07-04T10:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/04/deep-sea-robots-will-let-us-find-millions-of-shipwrecks-says-man-who-discovered-titanic Dalya Alberge a> and other historic sunken vessels around the world. Now Dr Robert Ballard is pioneering cutting-edge technology – autonomous underwater vehicles that will “revolutionise” the search for more than three million shipwrecks that lie scattered across ocean floors, according to a Unesco estimate. Many will offer new insights into life on board at the time of sinking, hundreds or even thousands of years ago. “We’re going to be finding them like crazy,” Ballard told the Observer. “It’s going to be rapid discovery because of this technology. New chapters of human history are to be read. “All the work I’ve done in the past in archaeology used vehicles that were connected to a ship. The ones that we’re building now are revolutionary new vehicles, able to work in extremely complex and rugged terrains – a new class of autonomous underwater vehicles that have their own intelligence and that are going to revolutionise the field of marine archaeology.” They are all the more extraordinary because they allow marine archaeologists to explore the ocean floor without needing to go to sea themselves. In the US, he recently undertook an expedition exploring Lake Huron and found an 1800s wreck – a search that was all done from land. “I don’t have to be on my ship now,” Ballard said. “We don’t even have to have ships. But I come because I want to get away.” The explorer, who has just turned 79, is on his 158th expedition, conducting a scientific exploration of the deep sea in the Pacific. National Geographic this month publishes his memoir, Into the Deep, in which he writes of a passion for ocean exploration that was inspired by Nemo, the fictional captain of the submarine Nautilus in Jules Verne’s classic novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Aged 12, he watched Disney’s screen adaptation: “It blew my mind … I wanted to be Captain Nemo. I wanted to walk on the ocean floor.” He now owns and operates the exploration vessel Nautilus, a state-of-the-art ship rigged for research in oceanography, geology, biology and archaeology, which can be followed by the public online. As a pioneer in the early use of deep-diving submersibles, he is particularly excited by the latest technology as it is far cheaper to operate. A mobile system that can go on smaller ships or work from the shore costs a few thousand pounds a day, rather than tens of thousands. The vehicles can travel to the deepest depths and stay down for days on end. They can also descend to a wreck much faster. “You can’t just instantly get to the deep bottom as a diver,” Ballard said. “You reach terminal velocity at about 100 metres every minute. To get to the Titanic, it took me 2½ hours to descend 4,000 metres. With these vehicles, it would have taken little over an hour.” Would I have found the Titanic sooner with this technology? Oh God, yes Robert Ballard While the technology is being used in marine research and environmental monitoring, the archaeological world has been slow to adopt it, he said: “It started in the military, like most of these advanced technologies. I served in the US Navy for 30 years, and I had access to a lot of technology that was classified and that slowly leaked out… the social sciences tend to lag in adopting new technologies because it’s not their strength.” For years, Ballard had dreamed of finding the wreck of the Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912: “In 1985, a top-secret navy assignment to explore sunken nuclear subs gave me the opportunity to follow that dream.” Asked if he would have found it sooner with this latest technology, he said: “Oh God, yes.” He is among marine archaeologists, scientists and geophysicists involved with a new “Dive & Dig” podcast series, presented by historian Bettany Hughes and funded by the Honor Frost Foundation.

Early settlers left flint tools and wooden relics. As sea levels rise again, what we leave behind may expose the reason for our demise

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2021-06-08T05:00:00+00:00 2021-06-08T05:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jun/08/britain-future-archaeologists-discover-plastic-coated-coastline-sea-levels-rise Paul Brown tlers made platforms next to the sea and built boats. The wood, which survived only because of waterlogged anaerobic conditions, is fast disappearing because of tidal erosion. The finds also give insight into diets including burnt hazelnuts and show wheat arrived in Britain 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. This was a time when Britain was still part of the continent and the Channel an inhabited valley. Sea levels were rising sharply as the huge ice sheets from the ice age melted. After millennia of stability, sea levels are rising again and we are losing glaciers and ice sheets ever faster in response to heating of the atmosphere caused by humans. Scientists are discussing whether the rise will be one or two metres this century. If there are still marine archaeologists in another 8,000 years, living on what will be a much smaller island and looking for our former coastline, they will not have to search so hard for our civilization – it will be marked by layers of plastic.

Marine archaeologist unearths evidence suggesting biblical king’s riches were based on voyages he funded with Phoenician allies

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2021-04-25T09:00:00+00:00 2021-04-25T09:00:00+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/25/was-king-solomon-the-ancient-worlds-first-shipping-magnate Dalya Alberge f the magnificent palace and temple he is supposed to have built in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, the Israelite king has sunk into the realm of myth. Now British marine archaeologist Dr Sean Kingsley has amassed evidence showing that Solomon was not only a flesh-and-blood monarch but also the world’s first shipping magnate, who funded voyages carried out by his Phoenician allies in “history’s first special relationship”. Over 10 years, Kingsley has carried out a maritime audit of “the Solomon question”. By extending the search beyond the Holy Land, across the Mediterranean to Spain and Sardinia, he found that archaeological evidence supports biblical descriptions of a partnership between Solomon, who “excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom”, and the Phoenician king Hiram, who “supplied Solomon with cedar timber and gold, as much as he desired”. Kingsley told the Observer: “I’ve spread a very wide net. That kind of maritime study has never been done before.” He said: “For 100 years, archaeologists have scrutinised Jerusalem’s holy soils, the most excavated city in the world. Nothing definitive fits the book of Kings’ and Chronicles’ epic accounts of Solomon’s palace and temple. By exploring traces of ports, warehouses, industry and shipwrecks, new evidence shakes up the quest for truth.” He explored Andalusian port towns from Mezquitilla to Málaga and found that the archaeological evidence reveals “a Phoenician coast”. He visited the site of the great mine of the ancient world, Rio Tinto – 70km inland from Huelva – which produced gold, silver, lead, copper and zinc – and where, crucially, he realised that old maps and historical accounts referred to a particular spot as Cerro Solomon or Solomon’s Hill. One 17th-century account notes that Solomon’s Hill was previously called Solomon’s Castle, and another describes people being “sent there by King Solomon for gold and silver”. At the site, archaeologists have found ancient mining tools, such as granite pestles and stone mortars used to crush minerals, and remnants of lead slag that held a high proportion of silver. Kingsley said that lead isotope analysis has shown that silver hoards excavated in Israel originally came from Iberia. Recent digs in nearby Huelva have found evidence of the Israelites and Phoenicians, including elephant tusks, merchants’ shekel weights and pottery. The Near Eastern link can be dated as far back as 930BC, the end of Solomon’s reign, and Kingsley has concluded that Huelva is “the best fit for the capital of the biblical Tarshish”, the ancient source of imported metals, which archaeologists have “signposted wildly”, everywhere from southern Israel to the Red Sea, Ethiopia to Tunisia. He was struck by texts and ruins that support a “far more conclusive candidate” in this area of the southern Iberian Peninsula, which was known in antiquity as Tartessos, a Greek derivation of Tarshish. A Phoenician script on a ninth-century BC stele found in Sardinia refers to the land of Tarshish, also proving its historical reality. Kingsley, who has explored more than 350 shipwrecks in the past 30 years, will publish his research in the forthcoming spring issue of Wreckwatch magazine, the free journal for maritime archaeology, which he also edits. Solomon is believed to have built the First Temple of Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. Kingsley writes that everything historians know about it comes from the Bible, including details such as its inner sanctum lined with pure gold: “Building cities, palaces and a flagship temple didn’t come cheap. Long-distance voyages to the lands of Ophir and Tarshish brought a river of gold, silver, precious stones and marble to the royal court. “Neither Israel nor Lebanon could tap into local gold and silver resources. The biblical entrepreneurs were forced to look to the horizon. The land of Tarshish was a vital source for Solomon’s silver. As the Book of Ezekiel recorded: ‘Tarshish did business with you because of your great wealth of goods.’” Kingsley added: “What turned up in southern Spain is undeniable. Phoenician signature finds, richly strewn from Rio Tinto to Málaga, leave no doubt that Near Eastern ships voyaged to what must have seemed the far side of the moon by 900BC. “When I spotted in ancient accounts the name of the hill where silver was mined at Rio Tinto – Solomon’s Hill – I was stunned. Biblical history, archaeology and myth merged to reveal the long-sought land of Tarshish celebrated in the Old Testament. “It looks like Solomon was wise in his maritime planning. He bankrolled the voyages from Jerusalem and let salty Phoenician sailors take all the risks at sea.”