Free Republic

Nautical Research Group has returned from a highly successful scientific research expedition to RMS Titanic. In the course of processing the high quality digital video shot on Titanic last week, two startling observations of note were discovered. Preliminary findings have revealed that Titanic is in an advanced state of deterioration and some data may provide new clues to how she broke up near the surface. The first significant observation was that the mast has finally collapsed in the area above the bell stanchion. In a recent scientific article that Nautical Research Group president, David Bright will present at Oceans 2005,...

The reputation of a disgraced wartime navy captain has been restored, thanks to the discoveries of a documentary featuring the finder of the Titanic. For more than 60 years, Captain Herbert G. Claudius was blamed for letting a Nazi U-boat ‘get away’, after it sank the Robert E. Lee passenger freighter in the Gulf of Mexico in 1942. But an undersea expedition – aided by Dr Robert Ballard who rediscovered the Titanic 30 years ago – has revealed the first published pictures of the submarine’s wreckage, showing how bombs dropped by Cpt Claudius’ crew successfully sunk the attacker U-166. ........

<p>The desert winds swept over the sands and out to the sea. Waters churned and the ships, loaded with wine from the ancient city of Tyre, tumbled in the storm.</p> <p>Swamped, the Tanit and Elissa foundered around 800 B.C., coming to rest upright some 1,300 feet under the Mediterranean, too deep for recovery.</p>

The ship had a cargo hold filled with ceramic jars, some -- and perhaps all -- of them filled with salt fish. It probably left from a seaport in what is now Turkey and sailed northwest through the Black Sea to the Crimea to pick up its load. Then, for unknown reasons, it sank in 275 feet of water off the present-day Bulgarian coast, coming softly to rest on a carpet of mud. Last week, archaeologists announced they had found the long-lost vessel. Sunk sometime between 490 B.C. and 280 B.C., it is the oldest wreck ever found in the...

Ballard Chases History Again In The Black SeaExcavation of shipwreck part of 3-leg research trip By Katie Warchut Published on 8/14/2007 It's a painfully slow process, watching a robotic arm brush, inch-by-inch, the sediment off a 900-year-old shipwreck 400 feet underwater in the Black Sea. But when the dust settles, Robert Ballard, president of the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium, and his team hope to have a better look into a time capsule of early human history. About 6 miles off the coast of Ukraine, Ballard watched from a NATO research vessel Monday on a high-definition plasma television screen....

WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- The United States has signed a treaty that designates the Titanic as an international maritime memorial. The pact with Great Britain still needs approval by the Senate. The treaty limits visits to the Titanic, now resting on the ocean floor 225 miles from Newfoundland, and regulates the taking of artifacts from the ship. The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in April 1912, killing hundreds of people. Oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the ship in 1978, hopes France, Canada and Russia will also sign the treaty. With the United State and Great Britain, they are...

The discovery of two large pieces of the Titanic's hull is changing the story of how the luxury ocean liner sank 93 years ago. Undersea explorers said Monday that the Titanic broke into three pieces, not two pieces as commonly believed and portrayed in James Cameron's 1997 film version of the catastrophe. That means the ship likely sank faster than believed. The hull pieces were found this summer by an expedition sponsored by the History Channel. Its leaders called it the most significant find at the site since undersea explorer Robert Ballard discovered the wreck 20 years ago and declared...

The very controversial Law of the Sea Treaty, LOST, which is still in committee, is a done deal, according to a senior White House official. Of the 145 countries that have ratified this United Nations treaty, the U.S. is the only major power not to have ratified it. Various groups of countries that have signed it include all of the G8 countries with the exception of the U.S., almost two-thirds of the countries in our hemisphere that are members of the Free Trade Areas of the Americas, as well as both NAFTA partners. The Law of the Sea was placed...

News of the Grunion.Someone please ping the steely-eyed killers. Thanx.

There was no distress call, no indication of enemy depth charges exploding or bulkheads breached, just a dead silence that stretched from a few days into 60 years. The USS Grunion disappeared in July 1942, leaving 70 American families grieving and the three sons of skipper Mannert L. "Jim" Abele without a father. Abele's boys -- who were 5, 9 and 12 and lived in Newton, Mass., when their father disappeared -- grew up and built their own lives. But they dwelt on the fate of their father. At 2 a.m. Wednesday, a grainy sonar picture e-mailed via satellite appeared...

Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...

The traditional circular sea route by which merchants are thought to have sailed around the ancient Mediterranean runs counter-clockwise: from the Greek Mainland to Crete, south to Egypt, up to Syro-Palestine and Cyprus, west to the Aegean via the southern coast of Anatolia, then to Rhodes and the Cycladic Islands, and ending up again at Crete and Mainland Greece. Longer routes incorporated the Central and Western Mediterranean as well. Merchants may, of course, have started in on this route at any point, for instance in Italy or Syro-Palestine rather than Crete. Recent evidence has demonstrated that a clockwise route...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - The undersea explorer who found the Titanic will search the Pacific around the Solomon Islands for the remains of PT-109, John F. Kennedy's World War II boat. Robert Ballard plans to use remote cameras to find for the 80-foot, wooden-hulled patrol torpedo boat that was commanded by Kennedy. National Geographic (news - web sites) is working with Ballard on the search, set for this month. It may prove a difficult task. PT-109 sank on Aug. 2, 1943, after it was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. Two members of Kennedy's crew died in the...

Two of the shipwrecks were likely from the end of the 19th century or beginning of the 20th century, including a "large motorized metal wreck" with no traces of cargo. In that wreck, researchers noted that the davits, which would have been used to lower lifeboats, were facing outward, which means any crew may have been able to leave the ship. The second ship was likely a wooden fishing boat.A third shipwreck was likely a merchant vessel that sailed between the first century BC and the second century. The ROV spotted artifacts that appeared to be amphoras, or tall, two-handled...

A set of ancient copper ingots shaped as discs have been found in a shipwreck near a Black Sea cape in Southeast Bulgaria shedding light on the maritime trade of the Ancient Thracians during the Late Bronze Age (second half of the 2nd millennium BC) as they are analogous to copper ingots found in two famous ancient shipwrecks on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, at Gelidonya and Uluburun. The disc-like Late Bronze Age copper ingots in question have been discovered inside a Late Bronze Age shipwreck near Bulgaria's Maslen Nos, i.e. "Oily Cape", alongside other artifacts. Their discovery has been...

It is an uphill battle to track down the culprits, the programme Undercover Asia finds out. Meanwhile, experts urge greater protection of underwater cultural heritage. Deep-sea diver Dave Yiu has done countless dives to Asia’s World War Two shipwrecks over the past 20 years. He imagines what life was like aboard the ships, and is awed by their historical value and the surrounding marine life. In recent years, however, he has also witnessed their destruction first-hand. Two wrecks that he has often visited are the British Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS (Her Majesty’s Ship) Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales....

37 shipwrecks from the Byzantine Empire have been discovered as part of archaeological excavations that began in Turkey in 2004. The shipwrecks were discovered in Yenikapi, Istanbul, a port of the ancient city which was called Constantinople during the Byzantine period. The ships are in exceptionally good condition say the archaeologists, especially since they date back to between the fifth and eleventh centuries. Cemal Pulak, a study author from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, stated, "Never before has such a large number and types of well preserved vessels been found at a single location." Eight of...

Dr. Mike Brennan: Unfortunately, on the E/V Nautilus expeditions, we have seen that many of the wrecks in the Aegean and Black Seas are heavily damaged by trawling activity. For example, one shipwreck, Eregli E, is the most trawled shipwreck in the Black Sea based upon scatter and damage to the artifacts and surrounding seabed. When we found it last year we saw that it was really damaged. The site had been so disturbed, it uncovered materials from beneath the sediment, including human bones. The bones had been preserved in the mud, but then had been ripped out by trawls...

A dugout probably dating back to the prehistoric age has been discovered the bottom of the Black Sea, National History Museum Director professor Bozhidar Dimitrov told Focus News Agency. On Friday evening at some 15 miles in the sea, east of Maslen Cape, between the seaside cities of Sozopol and Primorsko, a fishing ship found an enormous dugout, he added. "You can find nowhere similar dugouts, as well as any type of vessels older than 3 years of age, because water rots the wood away, but in the Black Sea below a certain depth there is dissolved sulphuretted hydrogen, which...

A ship from the 8th century discovered off Dor Beach in the Mediterranean is thought to be the only vessel from that era ever found in the region. "We do not have any other historical or archaeological evidence of the economic activity and commerce of this period at Dor," said Ya'acov Kahanov from the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies and the Department Of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. "The shipwreck will serve as a source of information about the social and economic activities in this area." The wreck [image] was found almost a decade ago but only...