Divers raise wreckage of Confederate warship

After 150 years at the bottom of the Savannah River, the armored skeleton of the Confederate warship CSS Georgia is being raised to the surface one 5-ton chunk at a time.

In a Friday, Aug. 14, 2015 photo provided by the US Navy, Chief Warrant Officer 3, Jason Potts, on scene commander for Task Element CSS Georgia, supervises as a piece of casemate, made of railroad ties and timber, which served as the outer layer of armor for CSS Georgia, is raised from the Savannah River in Savannah, Ga. Navy divers are working in conjunction with archaeologists, conservationists, Naval History and Heritage Command and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a project directed by Naval Sea Systems Command Supervisor of Salvage and Diving to salvage and preserve CSS Georgia [Credit: MC1 Blake Midnight/US Navy via AP]

Navy divers who began working in late June to recover cannons, unexploded shells and other artifacts from the riverbed finally started midweek on their last major task — retrieving an estimated 250,000 pounds of the Civil War ironclad's armored siding.

The CSS Georgia was scuttled by its own crew to prevent Gen. William T. Sherman from capturing the massive gunship when his Union troops took Savannah in December 1864. Still classified as a captured enemy vessel by the Navy, the remains of the Confederate ironclad are being salvaged as part of a $703 million deepening of the Savannah harbor for cargo ships.

"The historical significance is evident in everything we do," Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jason Potts, the Navy's on-scene commander, said Wednesday as his crew prepared to start raising the first of three giant slabs of armor.

The CSS Georgia was a crude example of the first armored warships designed during the Civil War to stand up to cannon and artillery fire. Its 1,200-ton frame was built using three layers of timber topped with 24-foot strips of railroad iron.

In a Friday, Aug. 14, 2015 photo provided by the US Navy, from left to right, Parker Brooks, left, Jim Jobling, center, and James Duff, archaeologists assigned to the CSS Georgia project, examine a piece of casemate, made of railroad ties and timber, which served as the outer layer of armor for CSS Georgia, in Savannah, Ga. Navy divers are working in conjunction with archeologists, conservationists, Naval History and Heritage Command and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a project directed by Naval Sea Systems Command Supervisor of Salvage and Diving to salvage and preserve CSS Georgia [Credit: MC1 Blake Midnight/US Navy via AP]

Having sections of the Georgia's armor for study should reveal more about how the Confederacy compensated for the South's lack of an industrial base when it came to building ships and other war machines.

"A lot of these ironclads are built by house carpenters, they're not built by shipwrights," said Jeff Seymour, historian and curator for the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus. "So what are the construction techniques? They vary from ship-to-ship."

The Georgia proved so bulky its own engines were too weak to propel it against the Savannah River's currents. The Confederates anchored the ironclad off Old Fort Jackson as a floating gun battery. It was sunk without ever firing a shot in combat.

After months of preparation work by underwater archaeologists, Navy divers from the Virginia Beach-based Mobile Diving Salvage Unit 2 arrived in late June.

Their first task was to raise 132 unexploded shells — both cannonballs and rifled shells shaped like large bullets — found scattered across the wreckage site. Using a crane mounted on a barge, they also pulled up four cannons weighing 1,000 to 10,000 pounds apiece.

Other artifacts soon emerged from 40 feet or more of water: a flywheel, a pump and sections of the steamship's boiler. Perhaps most impressive, the Georgia's propeller was recovered intact and still attached to the long shaft that turned it.

"We don't just simply want to bring it all back to the surface," Potts said. "We want to bring it back intact. So we go to the maximum effort to make sure we don't rip these things apart on the way up."

The three large sections of the Georgia's armored casemate, however, proved too heavy to raise without cutting them down into smaller pieces. They're being separated into about 20 total chunks, each measuring about 4 feet by 24 feet and weighing roughly 5 tons.

After a century and a half, Potts said, most of the ship's wooden hull has rotted away. But the railroad iron remains essentially glued together by mud and silt from the riverbed. The crew uses a crane-held tool with a long, flat blade to slide between the iron strips and pry apart chunks of the armor.

A web of slings is then attached to the slab of armor to ensure its weight is evenly distributed as the crane lifts it from the river.

With river currents typically limiting divers to less than three hours underwater each day, Potts estimates it will take his team nearly a month to raise all of the armored siding. That's at a rate of roughly one 5-ton chunk per day.

All artifacts from the CSS Georgia are being sent to the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, for cataloging and preservation. The Navy hasn't said where those artifacts will ultimately reside.

Author: Russ Bynum | Source: Associated Press [August 17, 2015]

Read more

17th century gun-carriage salvaged from London wreck

In one of the biggest operations of its kind, archaeologists have succeeded in lifting a perfectly preserved 17th century English gun-carriage from the bottom of the Thames estuary.

The gun carriage was discovered in the wreck of the English warship, 
the London, built by Oliver Cromwell’s government in the 1650s 
[Credit: © MSDS Marine/Cotswold Archaeology]

It had been discovered in the wreck of the English warship, the London, built by Oliver Cromwell’s government in the 1650s.

The  1.6 metre long, 70 centimetre wide piece of artillery equipment would originally have held a 9 foot long cannon, capable of firing 24 pound cannon balls up to two miles.

The gun carriage has just been recovered with the help of a crane on-board a giant barge. The operation has been funded by Historic England.

Archaeologists will now study the carriage to try to determine whether the gun it held is one of those still believed to be on or under  the seabed or whether it is one of the few that have already been brought to the surface.

Drawing of a 17th century gun carriage from Stirling Castle - 
the same type as on the London wreck 
[Credit: Richard Endsor]

Specialists will also examine the carriage  to discover what wood it was made of. Elm was preferred by the navy because it splintered less in combat and therefore reduced casualties. However in the 1650s, Dutch elm disease massively reduced the availability of elm wood in England – and naval carpenters in the late 1650s and the rest of that century  were forced to use oak instead when making gun carriages.

The London broke in two and sank when the vessel exploded two miles off Southend, Essex in 1665.

“The newly raised gun carriage is a very important find and  in remarkable condition” said Charles Trollope, a leading expert in 17th century naval artillery.

A bronze cannon raised from the wreck 
[Credit: © Maritime and Coastguard Agency]

Apart from a naval gun carriage at Windsor Castle, the newly raised artefact is the only known well-preserved example in existence. However it is  possible  that other well-preserved gun carriages still survive buried on the wreck site.

Its recovery has saved it from being destroyed by changing currents and sea worms that are increasing in English waters because of climate change.

Much of the archaeological investigation of the London wreck site has been carried out by volunteer divers from Southend. The newly raised gun carriage will now begin a long period of conservation.

Bronze sundial recovered from the wreck of the London which 
blew up off Southend Pier in Essex in 1665 
[Credit: © Steven Ellis]

Alison James, a Historic England maritime archaeologist, said: “This 350 year old gun carriage is in near-perfect condition. It’s a national treasure and the key to new knowledge of our social and naval history. We had to recover it quickly or it would have broken up and been lost forever.

“It’s complete with all the implements that the gunner would have used to make the cannon fire – all the archaeological material is there with it so it’s hugely exciting. Until now, it’s been well preserved, enclosed in an anaerobic environment, oxygen-free mud, safe from all the creepy-crawlies that would normally erode it.  We’ve even got the 350 year old rope going through the pulley block. But as parts of the gun carriage recently became exposed, we had to act fast to save this rare piece of our history from the ravages of the waves and biological attack,” she said.

Author: David Keys | Source: Independent [August 14, 2015]

Read more

Finding Utica’s long lost harbour

In 1101 BCE, a group of Phoenician settlers stood atop a promontory on Tunisia’s north shore, looking out to the site that would become one of their first African colonies. Down below, the Mejerda River flowed into the Mediterranean Sea, carving a fertile valley fit for farming wheat and raising cattle. But for this culture of sea traders and sailors, it was likely the nearby natural harbour that made this the perfect place to set down roots. And so, the city of Utica was founded.

A tile mosaic of fishermen from Utica [Credit: Nico Tondini/
Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis]

Utica was one of the earliest colonies in the Western Mediterranean, and the harbour kept the city connected—economically and culturally—to the rest of the ancient world. But the river, the one that provided water for the fields and carried boats full of grain to far off markets, also provided a constant flow of silt into the harbour. Over time, Utica’s harbour became shallower and more difficult to navigate and in the fifth century CE, the once prosperous port city was cut off from the sea.

Today, so much silt and sediment has built up at the mouth of the Mejerda that the remains of ancient Utica now sit ten kilometers inland. And the location of the city’s harbour, now filled in with earth, has remained a mystery—until now.

While conducting a geological survey of the land that was once the Tunisian shoreline, a group of researchers discovered what they think is the exact location of Utica’s ancient harbour. The researchers analyzed a series of sediment cores taken from across the area. Looking at how the sediment in the cores changed over time allowed the researchers to recreate the geological history of the shoreline and to see how the Mejerda River silt was changing the depth of the harbour as well as the location of the coastline.

In the ancient world, Utica was the second most important city in North Africa, trailing only Carthage. For the past 100 years, the city’s ruins have been of intense interest to archaeologists.

Columns and stone blocks stand in the ruins of ancient Utica 
[Credit: Roger Wood/Corbis]

Throughout its long history, Utica sided with, at times, both the rising Roman Republic and the Carthaginians in a series of wars for supremacy over the Mediterranean. From 149 to 146 BCE, Utica sided with Rome in a war that ended with the Roman army razing Carthage. In the post-war period, Rome made Utica the capital of their new province of Africa.

Nearly 100 years later, Utica became embroiled in the Roman civil war. The city became a base for some of the legions opposed to Julius Caesar. In 46 BCE, the Utican opposition suffered a decisive defeat at the battle of Thapsus. One of Caesar’s opponents, the respected political leader and philosopher Cato the Younger, committed suicide in Utica rather than live under Caesar’s rule.

Despite the political turmoil, Utica continued to prosper for another 500 years or so, growing to a peak population of 15,000 to 30,000. Yet all through its history, the delta of the Mejerda River was expanding out to sea, filling the harbour with silt. As the new geological research shows, by the middle of the sixth century CE a peat bog had developed on the northern side of the promontory atop which the settlers had once stood—a murky, thick landscape that cut the city off from its harbour. Eventually, the harbour became impassable and the city’s fate was sealed.

“The harbour was a vital lifeline,” says Elizabeth Fentress, an archaeologist who worked on the project. “Its final silting up in the late-Roman period caused the abandonment of the town.”

The new geological research shows the location of the harbour—on the northwest side of the city—but doesn’t provide much other new information. But that should change now that archaeologists know where to look.

“Knowledge of the port system [will be] fundamental to determining the nature of the city during the Phoenician and Roman civilizations,” says geologist Hugo Delile. The team has finished their planned excavations, but they will continue to explore the harbour by taking more sediment cores in the hope that they will be able to find out more about the harbour that connected Utica to the world.

Author: Zach Zorich | Source: Hakai Magazine [August 14, 2015]

Read more

'Sea monster' figurehead salvaged from Danish wreck

A wooden figurehead of a sea monster with ears like a lion and a crocodile's jaw was carefully lifted from the sea in southern Sweden on Tuesday by divers bringing up treasures from the wreck of a 15th-century Danish warship.

A wooden sea monster emerges from the Baltic sea after lying on the seabed 
for more than half a century [Credit: Mercury Press]

The figurehead came from the wreck of the Gribshunden, which is believed to have sunk in 1495 after it caught fire on its way from Copenhagen to Kalmar on Sweden's east coast.

Although the hull suffered extensive damage, the remaining bits make it one of the best preserved wrecks of its kind, dating from roughly the same period as Christopher Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria.

"Last time it looked at the world, Leonardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus were still living," Johan Ronnby, professor of marine archaeology at Sodertorn University, said as the ferocious-looking figurehead, which was intended to scare the enemy, was brought to the surface.

The 500-year-old mythic figurehead salvaged from a sunken medieval warship
 off the coast of Sweden [Credit: Johan Ronnby/Sodertorn University]

"It's a monster. It's a sea monster and we have to discuss what kind of animal it is. I think it's some kind of fantasy animal - a dragon with lion ears and crocodile-like mouth," Ronnby said.

"I'm amazed, We knew that it should be a fantastic figure, but it was over our expectations when we saw it now. It's a fantastic figure, unique in the world."

Researchers are hoping to bring more of the wreck to the surface in future. They say the hulk is well preserved, because sea worms do not like the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea.

"The ship comes from a time just when Columbus was sailing across the ocean and Vasco da Gama also went to India, and this is the same period and we can learn very much about how the ships were made, how they were constructed since there are no ships left from this time," said Marcus Sandekjer, head of the Blekinge Museum, which is involved in the salvage effort.

"It's unique in the world and I think there are going to be more excavations around here and we're going to find some more unique objects. But this ... today is just fantastic."

Author: Michael Roddy | Source: Reuters [August 13, 2015]

Read more

Sunken 5,000-year-old settlement found in Greece

A large underwater settlement of the 3rd millennium BC was brought to light by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and the University of Geneva under the auspices of the Swiss School of Archaeology in Argolis, Peloponnese.

Surface reconnaissance of the sunken settlement 
[Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture]

The research began in 2014 in a marine near Franchthi Cave with the Terra Submersa mission and the solar boat “Planet Solar.” The team looked for traces of prehistoric human activity on the eastern side of the Argolic Gulf. This year, the research began on July 13 and focused on Lambagiannas beach, where the team eventually located the prehistoric settlement.

Paved section of the settlement 
[Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture]

The settlement, located at a depth of 1m up to 3m, covers an area of around 3 acres. It used to be fortified and located by the seaside. Archaeologists found rectangular and circular building foundations as well as paved streets.

The stone foundation of the outer defensive wall 
[Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture]

Furthermore, they have located part of the settlement’s fortification and at least three large horseshoe-shaped foundations attached to the wall line (possibly part of the fortification that may have been towers). They also found numerous stone tools, obsidian blades and other artifacts.

Lampagiannas beach in the Kilada Cove in Argolis 
[Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture]

The investigation will continue until August 14, 2015, with geophysical research in the maritime area. In order to raise awareness in the local community, the research team will present its preliminary findings to the public on site, on August 16 and 17.

Author: Ioanna Zikakou | Source: Greek Reporter [August 13, 2015]

Read more