Bronze Bell from Long-Lost Arctic Shipwreck Revealed

by Megan Gannon

Divers recovered a bronze bell from the wreck of the HMS Erebus, a British ship that was missing for nearly 170 years after an ill-fated expedition to the Canadian Arctic.
In 1845, British Royal Navy officer and explorer John Franklin led more than 100 men on a quest to find a Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But they never completed their mission; in 1846, their ships — the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — became trapped in ice near King William Island in northern Canada.
The weeks and months that followed were grim. Many of the crewmembers died of some combination of exposure, starvation, scurvy and lead poisoning. Some may have resorted to cannibalism. Search parties looking for the missing crew turned up empty, though a few graves were later found. The fate of the ships, meanwhile, remained a mystery until this past September. [See photos of the ship's bell]
Since 2008, Parks Canada led six searches for the sunken vessels. The agency finally succeeded this year, after capturing sonar images of a wreck in the eastern part of the Queen Maud Gulf.
Underwater archaeologists dove to the shipwreck seven times over two days during the so-called 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition. They took photos and measurements of the wreck, and during the last dive, they recovered the bell. After reviewing the data they collected during that intensive investigation, Parks Canada officials felt confident in saying they had found the HMS Erebus.
"The locating and identifying of this ship goes a long way solving one of Canada's greatest historical mysteries," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement at the time.
The bell is clearly marked with the Royal Navy's broad arrow symbol, and the date 1845 is also embossed on its surface.

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"Like the chiming of a clock, the bell would have been struck every half hour both day and night to announce the march of time and to signal the changing of the crew's watches," Parks Canada representatives said in a statement.
Though the artifact is in relatively good condition, it will have to undergo at least 18 months of conservation. The bell is currently soaking in a bath of distilled water, and its chemistry is being closely monitored, according to Parks Canada.

Discovery News

270-Year-Old Shipwreck May Soon Reveal Its Secrets

by Tia Ghose

A bronze canon protrudes from a sandbank at the site of the HMS Victory shipwreck. Credit: Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc.

A British warship that sank off the coast of England 270 years ago may soon reveal its secrets.
The U.K. Secretary of State for Defense has given the go-ahead to Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., a deep-ocean exploration company based in Tampa, Florida, to mine the HMS Victory for archaeological artifacts at risk of being damaged.
"We are looking forward to sharing the progress of this exciting archaeological project and the stories told by the recovered artifacts with the public," Lord Lingfield, chairman of the Maritime Heritage Foundation, said in a statement. (The Maritime Heritage Foundation is spearheading the efforts to study and preserve archaeological artifacts from the site.) "HMS Victory is the only wreck of a first-rate English warship discovered underwater anywhere in the world." [See Images of the HMS Victory Shipwreck]
Among the ship's treasures are dozens of bronze cannons emblazoned with the seals of King George I and King George II.
Premier warship
The HMS Victory was the premier ship in the U.K.'s flagship fleet when it first set sail in 1737. But just nine years later, on Oct. 5, 1744, the ship and all its crew were lost. After winning a skirmish against the French, Admiral John Balchin was navigating the ship through the English Channel when the Victory hit stormy seas. The HMS Victory was separated from the other 16 warships in her fleet, and though those ships eventually made it to port, damaged but intact, the Victory never reappeared, according to the website victory1744.org.
At the time, people in Alderney, the northernmost Channel Island, reported hearing shots fired from a ship, and witnessed flotsam drift ashore at various islands in the chain. People have long suspected that the ship capsized not far from Alderney.
The Victory's top-heavy weight distribution from its many guns, as well as rotting timbers and a shoddy design, could have doomed the ship to capsize, according to victory1744.org. For more than two centuries, historians believed that the ship had been ripped apart on the rocky islets of The Casquets, an underwater sandstone ridge in the English Channel known for rough waters.
Wreck discovery
In 2008, Odyssey Marine Exploration deployed a remotely operated underwater vehicle named Zeus in the general region thought to harbor the ship's wreckage. That survey revealed wooden planks, iron ballasts, anchors and 41 bronze cannons at a site about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from its supposed resting place.
Among the shipwreck treasures are two bronze cannons, one emblazoned with King George I's crest, and another with King George II's seal. Both have the mark of the maker ("SCHALCH"), from Andrew Schalch, who operated the Royal Brass Foundry. The cannons also have distinctive dolphin handles that were characteristic of weaponry from the time period, according to Odyssey Marine Exploration officials.
The last 270 years have not been kind to the HMS Victory. The nooks and crannies at the site are teeming with octopuses, fish and crabs, making it an attractive place for fishermen to trawl. But the boats dredging the seafloor have also disturbed the site of the shipwreck. Since its discovery in 2008, a massive cannon has been upended, and in subsequent expeditions, glass bottles, lobster traps and even video cassette tapes have been found, according to a 2009 research team that surveyed the site.
The new approval from the U.K. Ministry of Defense will allow Odyssey Marine Exploration to harvest some archaeological artifacts that may be most at risk of being damaged if they remain on the seafloor.
Live Science

Sunken 'Ship of Gold' Contains Bounty of Jewelry, Treasures

In April 2014, gold bars were recovered from a reconnaissance dive to the SS Central America shipwreck.

by Stephanie Pappas

A trove of gold coins, bracelets, buckles and broaches are among the precious treasures retrieved from a 157-year-old shipwreck off the coast of South Carolina.
The "Ship of Gold," known in its sailing days as the SS Central America, was loaded down with 30,000 lbs. (13,600 kilograms) of gold when a hurricane sent it to the watery depths 160 miles (260 kilometers) from the coast of South Carolina on Sept. 12, 1857. In 1988, the shipwreck site was discovered, and recovery efforts pulled large amounts of gold from the bottom. But only about 5 percent of the site was excavated.
Now, deep-sea exploration company Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., is re-excavating the site. Divers first pulled up five gold bars and two gold coins from the wreck in April 2014. Now, the recovery ship, the Odyssey Explorer, is benched for repairs, and archaeologists are quite literally counting the booty. [Gold Rush: Photos of a Real-Life Underwater Treasure Hunt]

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Odyssey divers and archaeologists have now recovered more than 15,500 gold and silver coins and 45 gold bars from the wreck site, according to the company. They've also found gold jewelry, gold nuggets and snippets of 19th-century life, from glass containers to chewing tobacco still in its package.
Down with the ship
The SS Central America was a wooden-hulled, copper-plated steamship that traveled between New York and San Francisco during the heady days of the California Gold Rush. At the time the ship sank, it was carrying numerous gold ingots and freshly minted Double Eagle coins, which were worth $20 apiece at the time. So much gold was lost that public confidence in the banks — already overstretched at the time — was shattered, causing bank failures and a financial panic (The Panic of 1857) that resulted in a three-year economic depression.
Some of the 571 passengers and crew on board the SS Central America managed to evacuate to other ships during the storm, but 425 died.
Odyssey has conducted a new high-resolution video survey of the wreck site, and is currently evaluating the data from the survey while the company's recovery ship, the Odyssey Explorer, is being repaired. The company gets 80 percent of the proceeds from the recovery of the "Ship of Gold's" treasure, pending the payment of a negotiated day rate and fee by Recovery Limited Partnership, the business financing the recovery. After these fees are set, Odyssey will receive 45 percent of the proceeds from the recovered treasure.

Photos: Shipwreck Hunt Turns Up 'Tar Lilies'

Sunken treasure
Among the artifacts retrieved from the shipwreck are glass stemware and perfume bottles, as well as a gold locket, a gold ring and a gilded bracelet, according to documents registering the finds with the court system.
Many of the finds harken back to the lives lost on the ship. Clay pipes, tobacco and even old photographic plates have been found resting in the debris field of the wreck. So have bits of jewelry, including earring hooks, badge pins, buckles and a set of gold-and-quartz cufflinks. In early August, divers found pieces of an old music box. Even the pits from long-rotted fruit have been recovered from the wreck.
Odyssey plans to resume excavations at the site within the next year.

Discovery News

Historic 'Ghost Ships' Discovered Near Golden Gate Bridge

By Megan Gannon

This huge ship now rests on the bottom of the Gulf of the Farallones, just west of San Francisco. Named Selja, it sank in 1910 after a collision with another ship. Credit: San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park

The waters just west of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge hide a graveyard of sunken ships. By some estimates, there are 300 wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area alone. But only a fraction of them have been seen by scientists.
Marine archaeologists and researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have set out to document those lost vessels. Over the course of a five-day survey that just ended yesterday (Sept. 15), the team discovered the sites of at least four wrecks: the 1910 SS Selja shipwreck, the 1863 wreck of the clipper ship Noonday and two unidentified wrecks.
"We're looking at an area that was a funnel to the busiest and most important American port on the Pacific Coast," said James Delgado, director of Maritime Heritage for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. The wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones span a huge chunk of history, from 1595 to the present. Perhaps the best-known recent example is the tanker Puerto Rican, which exploded and sank off San Francisco in 1984. [See Photos of the Sunken Ships Near San Francisco] 
Delgado told Live Science that the team used a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to assess eight spots that had intriguing sonar signals. Four of of those sites turned out to have shipwrecks.
One of the newly located wrecks, the SS Selja steam freighter, was a workhorse that carried goods between the Pacific Northwest and China and Japan. On Nov. 22, 1910, the 380-foot-long (116 meters) vessel sank after it collided with a steamer named Beaver off Point Reyes, California. The Master of Selja, Olaf Lie, tried suing the Beaver and its owners for the loss of the ship, but the maritime court ruled against Lie, claiming he had been going too fast in a thick fog and was responsible, according to NOAA.
A volunteer who reanalyzed a cache of NOAA sonar data found a signal that was the right size and in the right location to be the clipper ship Noonday. The vessel had brought men and supplies to California during and after the Gold Rush. On New Year's Day in 1863, after a 139-day journey from Boston, the Noonday struck a rock just as it was approaching its destination, the San Francisco harbor. It quickly took on water and sank. Today, the vessel is obscured by mud.

The blip in this sonar image is the clipper ship Noonday, which sank in 1863 after hitting a rock just outside of San Francisco harbor.
Credit: NOAA

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The team also discovered one badly broken-up wreck covered in fishnets and a rather intact tugboat where no wreck was expected to be found, Delgado said. "We have a little homework to do there," he added.
NOAA additionally completed the first sonar survey of the wrecks of the tankers Frank H. Buck and Lyman Stewart, which were both loaded with oil when they ran aground in 1937 and 1922, respectively, after collisions with other vessels in thick fog. The engines from both shipwrecks are visible today when the tide goes out off San Francisco's Lands End park.
NOAA has created an online inventory of underwater footage, sonar images, historic photographs and documents related to the wrecks that have been located.
Live Science