Wrecks & Archaeology

"Bad Luck Barquentine" shipwreck from 1869 discovered in Lake Superior

 

The 144-foot Nucleus had a “checkered past” after previously sinking twice, and once rammed and sank another boat on Lake Huron, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum said in a news release announcing the discovery.

This is a pretty significant shipwreck…considering its age, the fact that it is a barquentine and we can’t overlook the vessel’s checkered past. The wreck site is littered with shovels too…and a few dinner plates, which speaks to their work and shipboard life.

Shipwreck Society Executive Director, Bruce Lynn

USS Albacore
A row of vent holes along the top of the superstructure, and the absence of steel plates along the upper edge of the fairwater allowed NHHC’s Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) to confirm the wreck site finding as Albacore.

Wreck site identified as World War II submarine USS Albacore

(Photo credit, top image: US Naval Institute Photo Archive)

The US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) confirmed the identity of a wreck site off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan, as USS Albacore (SS 218). The NHHC made the announcement on Thursday, after several months of examining Japanese surveys conducted on the site in 2022.

Californian Wreck

Diver on Californian wreck
Hardware covered with corynactis, which decorates the entire wreck of the Californian

The Californian was an American steamship built in 1900, which sank in the Gulf of Biscay, off the coast of France, in 1918, during a WWI convoy. Pascal Henaff has the story.

3D model still of 16th century ship found at Dungeness quarry
3D model still of 16th century ship found at Dungeness quarry

Remains of a rare Elizabethan-era ship found in quarry

Workers at a quarry near Dungeness made the dramatic discovery of a rare Elizabethan-era shipwreck on the coast of Kent while dredging gravel for building materials out of a lake in April.

The location is now some 300 metres from the coast, but archaeologists believe that the site was once right on the coastline. The vessel could have been wrecked or abandoned on the former shoreline, and then gradually buried in sediment as time passed and the headland expanded. 

3D-model image of the Shonisaurus popularis fossil bed at Quarry 2 in Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Nevada. Fossilised bones have been color-coded, with each color corresponding to a different skeleton.
3D-model image of the Shonisaurus popularis fossil bed at Quarry 2 in Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Nevada. Fossilised bones have been color-coded, with each color corresponding to a different skeleton.

Fossil bed in national forest in Nevada may have been breeding ground for ichthyosaurs

In the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada, there is a fossil bed in which many ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) have been found petrified in stone.

Over the years, there has been speculation that they had perished in a mass stranding incident or due to a nearby algal bloom. While these were possible, there had not been strong evidence to support these theories.

The steamship SS Pacific went down in November of 1875 with the loss of at least 325 passengers.
The steamship SS Pacific went down in November of 1875 with the loss of at least 275 passengers and crew.

Steamship lost in 1875 off Washington coast located

The SS Pacific was on its way from Puget Sound and Victoria to San Francisco when it collided with a big sailing ship in the dark off Cape Flattery on November 4, 1875 and sank in less than an hour. The Pacific had an estimated 275 passengers and crew aboard of which only two survived, making the sinking the most deadly maritime disaster in Northwest history. 

Cannon wreck seen from starboard bow
Cannon wreck seen from starboard bow

Nearly intact ancient shipwrecks found in the Baltic

The discoveries in the Baltic Sea are unprecedented and have revealed shipwrecks hundreds of years old. Two of them are with great certainty cargo vessels from the Netherlands, while the third and largest is supposed to be a Scandinavian vessel.

All three shipwrecks stand like ghost ships almost unscathed in total darkness on the seabed at a depth of approximately 150 meters and beyond the reach of modern fishing vessels.

Video file

 

In order to obtain the best footage, two Swedish photogrammetry experts Ingemar Lundgren and Fredrik Skorg from the company Ocean Discovery took part in the expedition. An underwater robot equipped with an advanced camera brought thousands of images to the surface and reproduces with great precision a virtual image of the wrecks as they actually appear.

The pictures are so detailed that you get the feeling of being able to walk around a ship that sank hundreds of years ago.

HMS Regent, long lost WW2 submarine, found in the Adriatic

The newly-found wreck lies off the coast near Villanova di Ostuni, some 19 miles from Monopoli.

First believed to be found by Italian divers in 1999, it was later determined in 2020 that the wreck thought to be Regent was in fact the Italian submarine Giovanni Bausan which had been sunk by the RAF in 1944.

Now, it seems another dive team has had better luck in identifying Regent. She rests off the coast near Villanova di Ostuni, some 19 miles from Monopoli, upside down in 70m of water. The apparent victim of a mine.

The V-1302 John Mahn started out as a German fishing trawler before being converted into a patrol boat during the war. It was sunk close to the Belgian coast in 1942 by the British Royal Air Force, as part of the Channel Dash operation.
The V-1302 John Mahn started out as a German fishing trawler before being converted into a patrol boat during the war. It was sunk close to the Belgian coast in 1942 by the British Royal Air Force, as part of the Channel Dash operation.

Abandoned WW2 wrecks leak toxic chemicals in the North Sea

The V-1302 John Mahn was a fishing trawler requisitioned by the German navy during the Second World War and sunk by UK bombers in 1942. It has rested at 30 metres below sea level in the Belgian North Sea ever since.

Together with the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, bio-engineer Josefien Van Landuyt examined samples of sediment in the area around the sunken John Mahn. In doing so, she aimed to discover whether old shipwrecks in the Belgian section of the North Sea continue to affect microbial marine life.