Browsing: shipwrecks

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More Remains Revealed of Historic Shipwreck

The sands of time are finally taking their toll, revealing more of the remains of a historic shipwreck on a beach in Ipswich, Massachusetts, just above Cape Ann. Indeed, the shifting sands are now uncovering more pieces of the hull of the Ada K. Damon, an 84-foot Grand Banks schooner that ran aground on Crane Beach on Dec. 26, 1909. The Ada K. Damon was launched at Burnham Boat Building in Essex, Massachusetts, in 1875. A sturdy vessel, it had a 23-foot beam and an 8-foot draft. At first, it was used for fishing, and later for transporting sand. It …

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Deepest Shipwreck Ever Found in Pacific

A team of American and British deep-water explorers just found the deepest shipwreck in the world, the remains of an American destroyer sunk by the Japanese in the Second World War that was 22,621 feet under water. The team was under Victor Vescovo, a Texas investor, adventurer and reservist in the U.S. Navy. He also founded Caladan Oceanic Expeditions, based in Dallas, which runs a deep-diving submersible. Caladan was working with EYOS Expeditions, from the U.K., in the search for the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a 306-foot destroyer that was sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October, 1944.…

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“Holy Grail” of Shipwrecks Filmed: See Video

The three-masted, 64-gun Spanish galleon San José was on its way home, loaded with treasure from the New World in 1708. It was the flagship of a flotilla of two other warships and 14 merchant ships that had left Panama and was heading to Cartagena before returning to Spain. The 1,051-ton San José itself was filled with treasure worth about $17 billion today, a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds sailing back to King Philip V of Spain. But on June 8, it ran into a British squadron off the Cartagena coast, and the British fired a cannonball that hit…

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Coast Guard, NOAA, Find Historic Wreck

Researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Coast Guard have found the wreck of the legendary U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, which was lost at sea in 1963, about 90 miles south of Cape Sable in Nova Scotia. NOAA and the Coast Guard, as well as some academic institutions, had been searching for the wreck for decades. The Bear had been one of the most significant ships in Coast Guard history. It was used by the Navy as part of the rescue for the Greely Expedition to the Arctic in 1884, and it actually saved a few…

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Mysterious Maine Shipwreck Dates to 1769

A determined marine archeologist has determined that the skeletal remains of shipwreck that keeps getting uncovered on a Maine beach is that of the Defiance, a 60-foot sloop that dates to before the Revolution. Stefan Claesson, the scientist, recently told the Board of Selectmen in York, in southern Maine, that the remains probably belong to the Defiance, a narrow commercial vessel that washed ashore in a terrible storm in 1769. The ship, carrying pork, flour, English goods and a crew of four, was on its way from Salem, Massachusetts, to Portland, Maine, about 45 miles above York. During the storm…

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International Dispute About Cannons, Other Artifacts from 1565 Shipwreck off Cape Canaveral

What we know is that in September, 1565, French navigator Jean Ribault, who’d already been exploring the Florida area for three years, was sailing his fleet of three ships up to St. Augustine to attack the new Spanish colony there. All three disappeared in a storm. In May and June, 2016, Global Marine Exploration, a marine salvage firm operating with permits from the state of Florida, found artifacts from an old shipwreck on the sandy seafloor in seven different spots off Cape Canaveral. The debris includes three brass cannons (each one, pictured above, is worth about $1 million), plus a marble…