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Marine archaeologists have identified 10 shipwrecks, including one from the Roman era, in the waters around a Greek island in the Mediterranean. The finds came to light during a multiyear project carried out by a team in collaboration with Greece's National Hellenic Research Foundation and the country's Ministry of Culture. The project has been surveying an area around the island of Kasos, which lies in the Aegean Sea, a portion of the Mediterranean between the Greek peninsula to the west and Turkey's Anatolia peninsula to the east. "This research was conducted to shed light on the maritime history of the...

Tim Wollack and his daughter, Henley, were on a fishing trip at Lake Michigan when they thought they saw an elusive Green Bay octopus hovering beneath their boat, the Wisconsin Historical Society said in a Facebook post. But what they actually uncovered was a shipwreck that had been missing for more than 152 years. Officials believe the boat is the George L. Newman. “Working with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Conservation Warden Mike Neal, the shipwreck was investigated with Video Ray ROV on December 4,” the society noted in the post. “The wreck is of a wooden three masted sailing...

Researchers exploring the waters off the Greek Island of Kefallinia have unearthed one of the largest Roman-era shipwrecks ever found.As Julia Buckley reports for CNN, a team from Greece's University of Patras located the remains of the ship, as well as its cargo of 6,000 amphorae—ceramic jugs used for shipping—while conducting a sonar scan of the area. The 110-foot-long vessel, newly detailed in the Journal of Archaeological Science, was situated at a depth of 197 feet.According to the paper, the "Fiscardo" wreck (named after a nearby fishing port) was one of several identified during cultural heritage surveys undertaken in the...

Colombia is hoping to expedite its mission to recover a three-century-old sunken treasure worth as much as $20 billion as the ownership of the fortune lies in legal limbo amid an ongoing court battle. President Gustavo Petro ordered his administration to exhume the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks” — the Spanish galleon San José — from the floor of the Caribbean Sea as soon as possible, the country’s minister of culture told Bloomberg last week. Petro wants to bring the 62-gun, three-masted ship to the surface before his term is up in 2026 and has requested a public-private partnership be formed...

A remarkably well-preserved ancient Roman ship has been discovered on the seabed off the coast of Sardinia. The 2,000-year-old wreck was found at a depth of 150ft by a specialised diving unit of the Italian police, working in collaboration with archaeologists, in the strait that separates Sardinia from Corsica. The ship was carrying a load of terracotta tiles, which are also in a good state of preservation. The roof tiles, believed to have been produced in or around Rome, were packed into the hold of the vessel, which is 60ft long and 23ft wide. They were probably going to be...

A diver who spotted something metallic not far from Sardinia's coast has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of ancient bronze coins.Italy's culture ministry said Saturday that the diver alerted authorities, who sent divers assigned to an art protection squad along with others from the ministry's undersea archaeology department. The ministry posted images and video of the stunning discovery.The coins dating from the first half of the fourth century were found in sea grass, not far from the northeast shore of the Mediterranean island. The ministry didn't say exactly when the first diver caught a glimpse of something...

They’re hungry, hungry mollusks. Thousands of historic shipwrecks sunk in the American Great Lakes are at risk of being lost forever thanks to invasive, wood-destroying mussels. The lakes are home to an estimated 6,000 shipwrecks, with some dating back to the 17th century, according to estimates from the University of Buffalo. The Quagga mussel, originally native to the waters of Russia and Ukraine, is believed to have arrived in the Great Lakes in 1989 — possibly as a result of ballast dumps from transoceanic freighters traversing the lakes. The population of Quagga mussels has exploded in the waters of the...

The remains have been identified as those of a gunner killed when the badly damaged aircraft crashed into the sea in 1943.Archaeological divers have recovered human remains from the wreck of a U.S. bomber that crashed near the Mediterranean island of Malta in May 1943.Scientific analysis by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has confirmed the remains are those of U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) Sgt. Irving R. Newman, who was 22 years old when the aircraft — a B-24 Liberator based in Libya — suffered engine trouble and was hit by anti-aircraft fire during a bombing raid over the...

A bronze artifact salvaged from an ancient Greek shipwreck, recognized as the world’s oldest computer, may hold the secrets of the universe.When we talk of the history of computers, most of us will refer to the evolution of the modern digital desktop PC, charting the decades-long developments by the likes of Apple and Microsoft. What many don’t consider, however, is that computers have been around much longer. In fact, they date back millennia to a time when they were analog creations. Today, the world’s oldest known “computer” is the Antikythera mechanism, a corroded bronze artifact which was found at the...

An engineer was conducting a regular survey of the Mediterranean Sea off Egypt's coast when he noticed something in the water.It turned out to be a 2,300-year-old shipwreck, according to an Aug. 5 news release from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.The ancient ship was discovered less than a half-mile off the coast of El-Alamein — which was an important commercial region during the third century BC, Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in the release. The find gives more insight into Egypt's role as a center for trade, economy and tourism in ancient times.Archaeologists...

Marine archaeologists began studying the 39-foot-long vessel—nicknamed the "Zambratija boat" because of its location in the Bay of Zambratija—after hearing reports from local fishermen in 2008. Researchers were surprised to learn the vessel dated to between the 12th and 10th centuries B.C.E, which they say makes it the oldest entirely hand-sewn boat in the Mediterranean.Workers painstakingly constructed the vessel by using flexible fibers to stitch together pieces of wood. While that technique was popular around the world both before and after the introduction of metal components, researchers say the Zambratija boat is unique because it's a rare surviving example of...

Erosion along Daytona Beach, Florida, caused mainly by two hurricanes last fall, exposed a shipwreck last week that archeologists hope to learn more about, according to reports. FOX 35 in Orlando reported that researchers planned to examine the wreckage Monday, though it is not clear whether inclement weather deterred those plans. The wreck was exposed near Daytona Beach Shores because of beach erosion allegedly caused by hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022 and high tides. Aerial footage captured by the station’s SkyFox drone depicts wreckage in the shape of a hull, estimated to be 25 to 30 feet long. FOX...

The Benin Bronzes Consist of Thousands of Metal Sculptures and Plaques Which Adorned the Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Benin, Presently Located in Edo State, Nigeria...Although the collection is commonly referred to as the Benin Bronzes, the pieces are predominantly crafted from brass of varying compositions using the lost-wax casting method, a process by which a duplicate sculpture is cast from an original sculpture.Edo artisans used manillas, meaning bracelet, as a metal source for making the Benin Bronzes. Manillas were also used as decorative objects and currency across parts of Western Africa.In a new study published in the journal,...

Anchor from 'most valuable shipwreck in history' found Anchor found off of U.K. coast could be from one of Britain’s richest ship wrecks An anchor brought up in a trawler's fishing nets off the coast of the U.K. is reportedly from a 17th-century shipwreck. The anchor is believed to be from the Merchant Royal, which has been described as one of Britain’s richest wrecks, carrying cargo worth around $10.5 million. SWNS reports that the anchor, believed to be from the Merchant Royal, was brought up in a fishing vessel’s net 20 miles off Land's End, Cornwall. The merchant ship sank...

In 2012, the wreck was discovered 350 meters (1150 feet) deep. The wreck was initially thought to be in French territorial waters, and the underwater archaeology department of France’s Culture Ministry conducted some preliminary surveys in 2013 and 2015. Diplomatic negotiations on where to draw the border shifted the discovery site into Italian territorial waters in 2016, and the two countries agreed to collaborate on a wreck study. The joint mission’s first campaign took place in the first week of this month...This robot, one of the smallest and lightest in its category, can reach 2500 meters and allows not only...

Four previously unknown shipwrecks have been discovered some 30 kilometers off the Bay of Irakleio, Crete, in recent underwater exploration conducted by the ephorate of underwater antiquities. The new finds comprise two Roman era shipwrecks, one containing 1st and 2nd-century Cretan amphorae and the other containing 5th-7th century post-Roman era amphorae, and two shipwrecks containing Byzantine amphorae, dated from the 8th-9th century and later. The finds, which were made south and east of the Dia islet, which lies 7 nautical miles north of Irakleio, were documented and taken ashore for further analysis. Three more recent shipwrecks were also discovered, as...

........[The] SS Robert E. Lee was carrying survivors from sister ships torpedoed in the Gulf, from Trinidad to New Orleans. On the June 30,1942, as it reached just 25 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River, a German torpedo hit. According to historical accounts, a lookout spotted the torpedo coming in and alerted the steamer's escort, the American submarine chaser USS PC-566. The sub immediately began dropping depth charges. The German U-boat, U-166, which launched the attack, was sunk with no survivors. Its wreck cannot be disturbed, now protected as a war grave for the 52 crew lost. On...

Nautical archaeology takes a leap forward For centuries the harbour of Ancient Constantinople, modern Istanbul, was the inlet of the Golden Horn, running north between the peninsula on which the city’s core stands and the commercial and foreign quarter of Galata and Pera to the east. A boom across the inlet protected the city from attack, although the Ottoman troops of Mehmet II stormed across the Golden Horn in 1453 to end the Byzantine Empire. A second, mainly commercial, harbour, in use from the 5th-10th centuries AD, has been found on the south shore of the peninsula, on the Sea...

WASHINGTON - Undersea explorer Robert Ballard leans back and smiles at the screens arrayed above his desk. One displays a view of a remote operating vessel, another scans along a seafloor never before viewed by humans. It's the Black Sea, not far from Ukraine, a region long closed to outsiders and now yielding a treasure trove of Byzantine vessels that met their ends 1,000 or more years ago. For Ballard the archaeologist, those vessels and their contents are a delight. For Ballard the explorer, the modern technology he's testing for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is pretty exciting, too....

The coasts of Anatolia are sprinkled with ancient cities whose harbours bustled with ships engaged in the thriving sea trade of the Aegean and Mediterranean. But not every ship made it safely to harbour. Many were wrecked in storms and sank with their cargoes to the seabed, and the remains of these have lain hidden on the seabed for long centuries. Wrecks of both merchant and warships each have their historical tale to relate, and are among the underwater sights that fascinate divers today. No other region of the world is so rich in sunken history as the seas around...