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A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology.
Mel Fisher was an American treasure hunter best known for finding the 1622 wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha in Florida waters.
Nuestra Señora de Atocha was a Spanish treasure galleon and the most widely known vessel of a fleet of ships that sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. At the time of her sinking, Nuestra Señora de Atocha was heavily laden with copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, and indigo from Spanish ports at Cartagena and Porto Bello in New Granada and Havana, bound for Spain. The Nuestra Señora de Atocha was named for a holy shrine in Madrid, Spain. It was a heavily armed Spanish galleon that served as the almirante for the Spanish fleet. It would trail behind the other ships in the flota to prevent an attack from the rear.
The Spanish treasure fleet, or West Indies Fleet, was a convoy system of sea routes organized by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790, which linked Spain with its territories in the Americas across the Atlantic. The convoys were general purpose cargo fleets used for transporting a wide variety of items, including agricultural goods, lumber, various metal resources such as silver and gold, gems, pearls, spices, sugar, tobacco, silk, and other exotic goods from the overseas territories of the Spanish Empire to the Spanish mainland. Spanish goods such as oil, wine, textiles, books and tools were transported in the opposite direction.
The year 1985 in archaeology involved some significant events.
Treasure hunting is the physical search for treasure. For example, treasure hunters try to find sunken shipwrecks and retrieve artifacts with market value. This industry is generally fueled by the market for antiquities. The practice of treasure-hunting can be controversial, as locations such as sunken wrecks or cultural sites may be protected by national or international law concerned with property ownership, marine salvage, sovereign or state vessels, commercial diving regulations, protection of cultural heritage and trade controls.
The 1715 Treasure Fleet was actually a combination of two Spanish treasure fleets returning from the New World to Spain, the "Nueva Españo Fleet", under Capt.-General Don Juan Esteban de Ubilla, and the "Tierra Firme Fleet", under Don Antonio de Echeverz y Zubiza. At two in the morning on Wednesday, July 31, 1715, seven days after departing from Havana, Cuba, all eleven ships of the fleet were lost in a hurricane along the east coast of Florida. A 12th ship, the French frigate "Le Grifon", had sailed with the fleet. Its captain was unfamiliar with the Florida coastline and elected to stay further out to sea. The "Grifon" safely returned to Europe.
The Black Swan Project is the project name given by Odyssey Marine Exploration for its discovery and recovery of an estimated US$500 million worth of silver and gold coins from the ocean floor. Initially Odyssey kept the origin of the treasure confidential. It was later proved in trial that the recovered cargo was being carried by the Spanish frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, which was sunk by the British Royal Navy off Portugal in 1804.
The Royal Merchant was a 17th-century English merchant ship that was lost at sea off Land's End in rough weather on 23 September 1641. On board were at least 100,000 pounds of gold, 400 bars of Mexican silver and nearly 500,000 pieces of eight and other coins, making it one of the most valuable wrecks of all time.
Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. is an American company engaged in deep-ocean exploration with a focus on the exploration, development and validation of subsea mineral resources. Starting out as a shipwreck pioneer, Odyssey has discovered some of the most famous deep-ocean shipwrecks in history including the SS Republic, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, HMS Victory, SS Gairsoppa and SS Ancona. Their work has been featured on the Discovery Channel, PBS and National Geographic.
Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was a Spanish Navy frigate which was sunk by the British off the south coast of Portugal on 5 October 1804 during the Battle of Cape Santa Maria.
The action of 7 April 1800 was a minor naval engagement fought between a British squadron blockading the Spanish naval base of Cádiz and a convoy of 13 Spanish merchant vessels escorted by three frigates, bound for the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The blockade squadron consisted of the ships of the line HMS Leviathan and HMS Swiftsure and the frigate HMS Emerald, commanded by Rear-Admiral John Thomas Duckworth on Leviathan. The Spanish convoy sailed from Cádiz on 3 April 1800 and encountered Duckworth's squadron two days later. The Spanish attempted to escape; Emerald succeeded in capturing one ship early on 6 April. The British captured a brig the following morning and the British squadron divided in pursuit of the remainder.
The action of 7 July 1799 was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars in which the Spanish 34-gun frigate Nuestra Señora del Carmen captured the Royal Navy's 18-gun Hired armed cutter Penelope, which was under the command of Sir Frederick Maitland.
Encarnación, was an armed Spanish merchant ship of the Nao class, which was built in Veracruz, Viceroyalty of New Spain, likely sometime in the mid-1600s. The ship sank in a storm in 1681 at the mouth of the Chagres River and was discovered by archaeologists from the Texas State University in 2011.
El Salvador alias El Henrique was a Spanish treasure ship that ran aground near present-day Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina during a hurricane in August 1750. She was traveling with six other Spanish merchantmen including the Nuestra Señora De Soledad which went ashore near present-day Core Banks, NC and the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe which went ashore near present-day Ocracoke, NC.
The National Museum of Subaquatic Archaeology in Cartagena (Murcia), Spain is an underwater archaeology museum. It owns a large collection of pieces recovered from shipwrecks that begins in the Phoenician period, and arrives until the 19th century.
References
- ↑ Meet Tom Dettweiler Archived 2009-03-25 at the Wayback Machine . The show also included a failed search for the Merchant Royal , a 17th-century shipwreck that went down with an estimated $1 billion worth of cargo, and HMS Victory, a British warship codenamed "Legend" on the show. Treasure Quest was produced by JWM Productions, LLC.
- ↑ Richey, Warren (May 14, 2012). "Who gets to keep shipwreck treasure? Supreme Court declines Spain case". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved May 15, 2012.