US researchers find 18th-century British warships

[RussR]

Pretty interesting. IThe article doesnt say what kind of shape the wrecks are in, if they were at all intact it would be amazing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060516/ts_nm/life_ships_britain_dc

 

[sean22]

Pretty interesting. IThe article doesnt say what kind of shape the wrecks are in, if they were at all intact it would be amazing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060516/ts_nm/life_ships_britain_dc

They are not intact ships by any stretch of the imagination. They are rock ballast piles
with varying amounts of buried pieces of wood ribs/keel structure.

 

[RussR]

Too bad. Still pretty interesting what is lieing on the bottom of the ocean floor...

 

[97fxdwg]

That's pretty precise.

 

[sean22]

That's pretty precise.

It's simply figured by taking the total number that are now found (2 of which were in fact found by sport divers years before these folks started looking for them) (6) and dividing it by the the total number that allegedly were sunk(13). The really workd out to 46% by my calculation.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

This seems to me to be a case of changing a ship's luck when you chage it's name:

"According to the team of archaeologists, one of the 13 ships in the sunken British fleet was the "Lord Sandwich," which records show was once the Endeavour, the vessel Cook used to sail the Pacific Ocean, map New Zealand and survey the eastern coast of Australia in 1768-1771."

 

[kent_1848]

So just look for piles of Rocks off of Rhode Island, and you can call it a shipwreck Still interesting, and strange that if they are in only 30 ft. of water, they weren't found before now. Neat to think there are still unfound treasures out there for us to find.

 

[sean22]

So just look for piles of Rocks off of Rhode Island, and you can call it a shipwreck Still interesting, and strange that if they are in only 30 ft. of water, they weren't found before now. Neat to think there are still unfound treasures out there for us to find.

Like I said in my post above, sport divers did find the first two, several years ago.
And it is quite likely that several of the others have been dived too. The problem is that the archeaological community here continues to malign sport divers in the local press as a bunch of looters. With that said, there isn't much incentive for people to report any new sites that they find. It's really too bad. Maybe someday the environment will change.

 

[sean22]

For anyone that is interested in the locations of 3 of these vessels, check out the following link: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/map_item.pl This is a map generated by the French Army/Navy when they occupied Newport in 1780 it shows the positions of the vessels in the fleet. If you blow up the chart and look at the area just off the North tip of Goat Island, you will see positions marked "57" these are the sunken vessels as recorded by the French forces. Enjoy!

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Like I said in my post above, sport divers did find the first two, several years ago.
And it is quite likely that several of the others have been dived too. The problem is that the archeaological community here continues to malign sport divers in the local press as a bunch of looters. With that said, there isn't much incentive for people to report any new sites that they find. It's really too bad. Maybe someday the environment will change.

It's the same all over. Locally we have a river with a long and interesting history of long boat, barge and steam boat traffic. The thing is if you find something interesting or historically significant that sunk or fell off a boat or dock, the local governments claim it 100% as their own. That removes any incentive for divers to report the find so that an investigation of the site and possible acheological excavation could be done (assuming funding could be found). And the reality is that as the river winds back and forth covering and uncovering artifacts, if divers do not find them, they will not be found.