," said Wayne Rush, who drove two hours from Port Allegany, Pa., for the dive.Rush was the first of the divers to reach the Whelan in 145 feet of water eight miles from shore.
Rush and the others said the boat was in impeccable condition, with all of its portholes open. During their brief examination, they said they saw kerosene lanterns, fire extinguishers and porcelain light fixtures, more than enough to pique their interest.
"Next summer, I'll be out here every chance I get," said diver Dan Kuzdale of Dunkirk.
Lake Erie has at least 1,750 shipwrecks, according to Great Lakes shipwreck historian Mike Walker. He said other estimates put the total at closer to 3,000.
Only about 300 have been located, he said, and serious divers in the area are likely to have made multiple trips to most of them.
"The Holy Grail for divers in the Great Lakes is a virgin wreck," he said, noting that the cold, fresh water helps preserve wrecks for hundreds of years. "That boat is literally sitting the way it went down."
A parade of names
The George J. Whelan went down, on its side, sometime around midnight on a warm summer night in 1930, ending its brief but colorful history.
Built by the Craig Shipbuilding Co. in Toledo, Ohio in 1910 as one of the few steel lake boats designed for the lumber trade, it was 220 foot long and 40 feet wide. It originally was named for Erwin L. Fisher, the Cleveland manager of its owner, the Argo Steamship Corp.
It got off to an inauspicious start when, on its maiden voyage in 1911, the boat collided with the S.L. Clement and sank in the Detroit River.
Raised and rebuilt, it was renamed the Bayersher in 1916. During World War I, it was sold to the French government, renamed the Port De Caen, and sent to the fight in Europe.
After the war, it was returned to the United States, where it operated along the East Coast again as the Bayersher. In 1923, it returned to the lakes, where it was refitted as a coal carrier and renamed the Claremont.
At the close of the 1929 shipping season, Kelley Island Lime and Transport Co. in Sandusky, Ohio, purchased the vessel. It was renamed the George J. Whelan, and converted to a sandsucker, a specially equipped boat that mined sand from the lake bottom.
Caught in squall
Limestone, not sand, was the cargo that night as it set sail from Sandusky for Tonawanda, according to accounts in The Buffalo Evening News.
Mariners on the lake at the time reported that a violent squall developed at sunset. While no rain was reported, winds gusted, thunder rumbled and lake waves swelled.
Survivors told investigators that the limestone in the hold shifted as the boat listed under the strain of the winds and waves.
Reportedly, crew members were working below the decks to redistribute the load when a sudden gust rolled the ship onto its side. It is believed most of the 15 dead were trapped below.
All six survivors were pitched into the water, where they clung to the hull for 30 minutes before it sank. They began swimming for shore. First mate Irving Ohlemacher, who had no flotation device, stayed afloat by grabbing two other survivors who did have devices.
The survivors' faint, anguished cries for help were heard by crew members on the Amanda Stone, a coal-hauler headed to Erie from Buffalo. The ship lowered its rescue boats and picked up the crew members.
The words of the Amanda Stone's captain indicated just how lucky he considered them.
"Unless you have sailed on the lakes, you don't know what it means to locate six men swimming around in the nighttime," Capt. Walter H. McNeill said. "The ship's searchlight and the voices of the men were all that the crew . . . had to go by to find those fellows."
Ohlemacher agreed. "It was only fate that we should have been seen in that pitch darkness that surrounded us," he said. "The chances are we would have perished if we had to stay in the lake many more hours."
Seven sites proposed
The wreck was discovered by undersea search expert Garry Kozak and Captain Jim Herbert, who operates a diving company, Osprey Charters, out of Barcelona Harbor.
Kozak works for Klein Associates, training the navies of a number of countries and other parties that buy Klein's sophisticated side sonar scanning equipment.
Kozak came to Western New York to help search for a plane that went down in the lake in August and contacted his friend Herbert about taking another look for the Whelan.
"We had the advantage of using the latest technology, which allowed us to search an incredible area in one day," Kozak said in a phone interview from Europe. "We did over 32 square miles that day, which is unheard of."
Conflicting reports about where the Whelan went down led Herbert and others to search the wrong areas. "There were seven different versions of where it was," Herbert said. "One said six miles off Dunkirk. That isn't near the shipping lane."
Herbert did more research and picked a target area. "We had an element of luck in that it truly showed up right where we selected," Kozak said.
Finding the Whelan was a priority because it meets several criteria that make it desirable for divers, Herbert said.
"It's a big ship, with a loss of life," he said. "It's in relatively shallow water, and not too far from the shore."
Chance to be first
For veteran divers like Rush, Michael Domitrek and Jack Papes, the chance to be the first to see the Whelan was worth using whatever excuse they could to take the day off from their real jobs.
"We're going to be the first human beings in 75 years to see this wreck," said Domitrek, from Welland. "It's a snapshot of a piece of history, frozen in time."
Papes, who drove from Akron, Ohio with his equipment and underwater camera, said he, like many divers, is curious about the stories behind the wrecks.
At 145 feet, the water "is dark and it's cold," Papes said. "You have to have an interest in the history to enjoy it."
Judging by the smiles as the divers returned from their trip to the lake bottom, the Whelan will occupy their time underwater for quite some time.
"We'll be diving the hell out of this next season," Papes said.
River reveals sunken steamboat
VERMILLION - On Oct. 27, 1870, the North Alabama steamed up the Missouri River, burning through a cord of wood every hour.
As it traveled, riding high on the river, paddle wheels churning, it snagged on something just beneath the water. The hold filled with sand. The crew couldn't save their ship, so they salvaged what they could.
Now, the remains of a ship that archaeologists think is the North Alabama sit exposed, uncovered for the first time in 75 years.
"All indications seem to be that this is the North Alabama that sunk on this date in 1870," Larry Bradley, an archaeologist at the University of South Dakota, said Thursday, standing on a sandbar in the middle of the Missouri.
Last year, Bradley said, he would have been under six feet of water.The river's low water level, sand migration and the ongoing drought all played a part in exposing the ship's hull.
To Larry Murphy, the boat's bleached, deteriorated remains are a fascinating reminder of the lifeblood of a lost era, when the country's rivers were as vital to commerce as the highways and the air are today.
"People growing up now see the river in a very different way, rather than fundamental to their existence," said Murphy, director of the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center in Santa Fe, N.M.
The park service and the university have been working for two weeks to document the precise location of the boat's remains, each morning ferrying their gear to a sandbar in the stretch of river southwest of Vermillion where the boat snagged.
The location of the wreckage, as well as the details of its construction, tell the small crews that this is indeed the North Alabama, a riverboat designed to move large amounts of cargo.
Using global positioning locators and electric pulse imaging, the archaeologists can document and map the exact location, to within 1 centimeter, of every piece of eroding wood and rusted metal.
"All we can see now is just a small percentage of the boat," Bradley said. Some of the remains now sit under the sand, including another rudder - the North Alabama had four.
The ship's skeleton reaches out of the water, then winds back under, the bow still pressing, just beneath the water, against the heavy stump that probably brought it under 135 years ago.
The hull is split down the middle, and much of what made the boat a boat has been lost to time and scavengers and the relentless river.
Murphy has seen the Titanic, the monuments at Pearl Harbor and Spanish galleons with the parks service.
For him, the planks and boards of the boat that once traversed North America's most dangerous river to navigate are a treasure. He pointed upriver at the stumps and logs jutting out of the water, hazards that would have been impossible to see when the river was higher.
Piecing together history
"Every time there's a chance to look at one, we are able to learn a little bit more and to piece together a history that's going on 150 years old," he said.
Centuries from now, men like Murphy might be picking over the fascinating skeleton of a rusted jet.
Because the boat's remains are well-preserved, the crew has been able to document a substantial amount, Murphy said.
"The only real threat now is that people are removing things," Murphy said. That danger is much more significant than the river, which erodes the oak slowly.
Even so, Murphy hopes people will come to visit the wreckage.
"This is a part of our common history," he said.
A 260-ton steamboat built in Pittsburgh in the 1860s, the North Alabama was captained the day it was lost by Grant Marsh, who had found his fame four years earlier, when he transported wounded soldiers down from the Little Big Horn River, bringing with them the news of Gen. George Custer's defeat.
Not built to last
Riverboats were built light and fast to save money, Murphy said, and they typically had a life span of only five or six years. Their architecture was unique the world over.
Owners could make back their investment in one trip, provided the ship carried enough cargo, and every trip thereafter was pure profit.
So when the North Alabama hit the snag, it wasn't a complete disaster. Nobody drowned, and many of the usable parts of the boat - the paddle wheels, in particular - were quickly salvaged.
In the 1930s, Bradley said, the boat surfaced briefly.
"All the local bars emptied out," he said. People flocked to pick over the wreckage. The rumor was that "there's a hold full of whiskey, and it's well-aged," Bradley said.
Anything is possible, but it's unlikely that anyone scored anything of value.
Until last year, that was the last time anyone saw the North Alabama above the water.
When the boat surfaced in 1890, Murphy said, the town came out to gawk.
"It was quite spectacular," he said. "The local news at the time said, 'The river has given up one that it had once taken.' "Now, a century later, it has given it up again.
Sailing event spotlights Ancient Roman wrecks
Archaeologists in this western Sicilian city are hoping that a modern sailing event could help them unlock some of the underwater secrets of the island's maritime past.
The highly publicized pre-America's Cup Louis Vuitton series, the final chapters of which were staged off the coast here prior to the winter break, helped spotlight an area that is home to numerous wrecks of archaeological value.
Dozens of ancient vessels are still lying unsalvaged on the seabed, in part, due to a lack of funds .Among the wrecks are a group that sank over 2,200 years ago during the Punic Wars, in a landmark battle between the Romans and the Carthaginians that shaped history.
The wild weather sunk 70 Carthaginian vessels and 30 Roman ones and despite some archaeological plundering in the 1970s, numerous finds are still waiting to be rescued from their resting place.
Around 60 amphorae lie scattered on the seabed, at least one of which still marked with its 2,000-year-old label. The wine was made by the Papia family from Campania, and was exported throughout the Mediterranean.
As well as the Roman ship remains and the amphorae, there are also invaluable discoveries to be made in wrecks from other periods.
"One of the most momentous finds we have made so far is a pewter flask, which still contained wine that was 600 years old," said Sebastiano Tusa, a leading Italian archaeologist and Sicily's Sea Superintendent.
"This is one of the most ancient existing sample of wine still in liquid form." Experts believe the seabed in the area is littered with such important items but excavation projects have been continually hampered by a lack of cash.
Local authorities are now hoping that the recent sailing event will generate enough tourism and investments to help draw attention to a new archaeological initiative that could turn the situation around.
"We're hoping to be able to tap the enormous popularity created by the Louis Vuitton Cup in the area, in part to promote an enormous museum complex being built," said Trapani Cultural Heritage Superintendent Giuseppe Gini.
The museum is being developed inside a renovated building on the nearby Aegadian island of Favignana.
It will provide a home for finds that have already been rescued, as well as items that experts hope to bring to the surface over coming years.
Although the complex won't be finished until 2008, it forms part of a broader drive to make the most of the area's historical maritime heritage, including a new period of salvage work and real-time film transmissions from one of the ships.
"The museum will eventually host a room with screens entirely dedicated to the wonders of the seabed," said Tusa.
"Visitors will be able to admire the archaeological remains of a Roman relic dating back to the 1st century AD, which sank near Cala Minnula on Levanza," another one of the Aegadian islands.
A number of cameras will be set up around the ship, which sank to 27 meters' depth with a cargo of the popular Roman fish paste, garum, on board. Images from the site will then be broadcast live to the control centre.
The cameras will start transmitting in November. Their images will initially go a small existing museum on Favignana, and later to an expanded, modernized complex that is being developed.
Tsunami reveals ancient temple sites
BBC
By Paddy Maguire
October 27, 2005
Archaeologists say they have discovered the site of an ancient temple in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
It is the latest in a series of archaeological discoveries in the area struck by December's tsunami, which desilted large areas of the coastline.
The brick temple dates back more than 2,000 years to the late Tamil Sangam period and was discovered on the beachfront near Saluvankuppam, just north of a famous World Heritage site at Mahabalipuram.
The discovery lends more weight to growing evidence that a huge tsunami hit the east coast of India during this period, obliterating large habitations along the coastline.
Two periods
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) made the discovery while looking for a 9th Century Pallava temple.
"The tsunami exposed inscriptions on a huge rock that had previously been protected as a site of importance," said T Satyamurthy of the ASI.
"These inscriptions dated back to 935 AD and said that Krishna the Third, from the Rashtrakuda Dynasty in Karnataka, had given gold to a temple to pay for keeping an eternal flame alight.
"This led us to dig further. Near the surface we found coins, pottery, stucco figurines and bronze lamps and so we knew there must be something more. Soon we discovered the remains of the 9th century Pallava temple."
As they continued to excavate they came across the earlier Sangam temple. The distinctive shift from courses of brickwork to large granite slabs indicates the different periods.
"The Pallavas just built on the brick foundations left behind after the Sangam temple was levelled. The two periods are there, clear to see," said Dr Satyamurthy.
Tsunami deposits
But it is the question of how these two temples were destroyed rather than their age that has fired the interest of the teams involved.
Layers of sea shells and debris in the sand show that tsunami activity had twice levelled the temple complex.
"The Pallava structure was destroyed by waves some time in the 13th Century and evidence suggests that beneath it, we are looking at the remains of a brick temple that was destroyed by a tsunami approximately 2,200 years ago," said Badrinarayanan S, a retired director of the Geological Survey of India.
Another archaeologist from the ASI, G Thirumoorthy, said: "We can see these tsunami deposits in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. We've found that devastation happened along about 1,200km (750 miles) of India's eastern coastline.
"The discovery of this Sangam temple will lead us to other geological sites along the coast and teach us more about the pre-Pallavan period."
Since the tsunami on 26 December, marine archaeologists have also discovered evidence of large structures on the seabed up to 1km out to sea.
They think the structures may be part of a former, legendary city of Mahabalipuram.
Myths state the city was destroyed by a flood sent by gods envious of its beauty.
Diving into the ocean's past
The Miami Herald
By Marcia Freidenreich
October 23, 2005
At Aquatic Ventures, Gary Beitner offers classes in scuba certification and leads dive trips to explore underwater archaeological finds.
Gary Beitner has combined his passions -- archaeology and scuba diving -- into a unique business.
The Hollywood resident, who has a master's degree in archaeology from Florida Atlantic University, worked his way through school by teaching others how to dive.
Beitner has been teaching diving and going on archaeological digs for more than 25 years.
At his new store, Aquatic Ventures, Beitner offers courses in skin diver/snorkeling certification, open to people age 12 and older; junior scuba diver, structured for young people ages 12 to 15; open water diver; and advanced diver.
Specialty courses include dive rescue, wreck diver, deep diver, night diver, search and recovery, and underwater archaeology technician.
Beitner said he was drawn to diving as a youth after he saw a John Wayne movie (Wake of the Red Witch, made in 1948) in which the actor played a diver who tangled with a giant octopus.
Fortunately, Beitner hasn't seen such a creature in his travels, but he did see an eight-foot sturgeon while diving in a lake in Canada.
''It scared me when I first saw it moving slowly towards me. Underwater, everything is magnified and looks 30 percent larger,'' Beitner said. ``Finally I realized it was just a big fish, not some monster.''
People who book underwater adventures with the shop can check out Spanish galleons sunk hundreds of years ago off the cost of Florida.
On some underwater archaeological expeditions, people can see archaic Indian villages 6,000 to 8,000 years old, Beitner said.
''Thousands of years ago, the sea level was 30 feet lower,'' he said.
In some areas in the Gulf of Mexico, divers have seen the fossils of horses that once populated Florida, along with prehistoric objects such as teeth from the giant white shark, he said.
Though Beitner conducts many archaeological expeditions on land, he admits he feels more comfortable in the water because he feels like a ''klutz'' on terra firma.
''Underwater I'm much more graceful,'' he said. ``I also like the feeling of zero gravity. When you come back up on the beach after diving you feel very weighted down.''
Beitner has even taught people to dive who suffer from claustrophobia.
''At the end of the course, if they still feel uncomfortable, we continue to work with them until they feel good,'' he said.
Aquatic Ventures charges $250 for its scuba certification course, which combines lectures, pool work and ocean drills. If the weather is favorable, students can receive certification in two weeks, Beitner said.
His philosophy can be summed up by a hand-typed sheet of paper on the window of his business, on which he posts the store hours: ``All other hours we are at our other office, the ocean."
Divers unveil Java Sea treasure trove
ABC News
October 26, 2005
In a non-descript warehouse in Jakarta, treasure hunter Luc Heymans dips into plastic boxes and pulls out jewels and ornaments that lay hidden at the bottom of the Java Sea for 1,000 years.
The find, including artefacts from China's Five Dynasties period from 907 to 960 AD and ancient Egypt, is already causing a stir among archaeologists who say the cargo sheds new light on how ancient merchant routes were forged.
An ornately sculpted mirror of polished bronze is one masterpiece among the 250,000 artefacts recovered over the last 18 months from a boat that sank off Indonesia's shores in the 10th century.
On a small mould is written the word "Allah" in beautiful Arabic script, on top of a lid sits a delicately chiselled doe.
Tiny perfume flasks accompany jars made of baked clay, while slender-necked vases fill the shelves of the hangar along with brightly coloured glassware from the Fatimides dynasty that once ruled ancient Egypt.
A team of divers, among them three Australians, two Britons, three French, three Belgians and two Germans, excavated the vessel laden with rare ceramics which sank more than 1,000 years ago about 130 nautical miles from Jakarta.
Archaeological treasures
"It is a completely exceptional cargo," Mr Heymans said, the Belgian chief of the excavation team.
"There is very little information about the Five Dynasties era and very few things in the museums. This wreck fills a hole."
Close to 14,000 pearls and a profusion of precious stones were found in the wreck, including some 4,000 rubies, 400 dark red sapphires, and more than 2,200 garnets.
"On the second last day of diving, I spotted some broken ceramics. Under 30 centimetres of vase, I uncovered the handle of a golden sabre," Daniel Visnikar, the leading French diver, said.
Salvage operation
It took more than 24,000 dives to recover all the treasure from the boat that rests 54 metres below the surface.
Material recovered from the site has whetted the appetite of overseas experts.
"A 10th century wreck is very rare, there are only a few," Jean-Paul Desroches said, a curator at the Guimet Museum in Paris, after seeing photographs of the early hauls.
He says the wreck and its cargo offers clues to how traders using the Silk Road linking China to Europe and the Middle East, used alternative sea routes as China's merchants moved south because of invasions from the north.
The variety of loot pulled from the depths is hard to imagine: dishes adorned with dragons, parakeets and other birds; porcelain with finely-carved edges; teapots decorated with lotus flowers; and celadon plates with their glaze intact.
"These porcelains come from a very special kiln, an imperial kiln, perhaps from the province of Hebei in the north of China," Peter Schwarz, a German ceramics specialist, said.
Controversy
Mr Heymans insisted the treasure - the subject of controversy when the divers were chased from their barge in the open-sea by the Indonesian navy last November - was stored in a comprehensive and transparent manner.
"Every piece is indexed and we know which part of the boat it comes from. Every week we sent (the Indonesian authorities) a DVD with digital photographs of all the pieces," he said.
As well being chased by the Indonesian Navy, an incident that began a long dispute over the booty, Mr Heymans says another group of treasure hunters also tried to move in on the swag.
The divers say the treasures might be bought by a foreign museum or are expected to be shown between 2006 and 2007 in an auction, as the cargo is valued at several million dollars.
Indonesia will receive 50 per cent of proceeds from the sale of the treasures.
Greek and American scientists to continue successful joint deep-sea exploration project
The United States and Greece will continue their successful deep-sea exploration program in the summer of 2006.
The project, part of a long-term partnership between Greek and American scientists and engineers, explores the deep-sea basins of Greece to locate, map and interpret ancient shipwrecks and geological and chemical features in three areas.
American Ambassador to Athens Charles Ries is holding a dinner on Tuesday in honor of the team as well as to present the results of the partnership’s 2005 project.
The program is jointly supported by the Greek Culture Ministry, the Ephorate of Underwater Activities, the Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The precision surveys are carried out by the SeaBED (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, or AUV) developed by WHOI. The next mission, in summer 2006, will investigate a Byzantine-era shipwreck (c. 10th century AD) 110 meters below the surface, a Classical/Hellenistic wreck (c. fourth century BC) at a depth of 500 meters, an active submarine volcano and unexplored sea floor.
The Greek and American partners each contribute equipment, funding and skilled personnel. Their goal is to find answers to fundamental questions about the sea and human interaction with it.
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Bear in mind while reading references to deterioration and not enough money to preserve, etc., etc., etc. -- all those problems could be solved if they'd only do one thing: cooperate with the private sector . . .
Locations of Spanish Missions along the coastline:
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