He Fired When Ready-- Part 6: The Losses at the Battle of Manila Bay

The Asiatic Squadron had suffered few casualties.  Only six wounded.  However, on the Spanish side, nearly 400 sailors died and ten warships either destroyed or captured according to The History Channel site.

This source says that after two hours of the fight, the Spanish fleet was so decimated that Dewey met with his captains and ordered his crews to have a second breakfast.

Wikipedia says that American losses were 

1 dead of illness

9 wounded

1 protected cruiser damaged

*******************************

Spanish losses were

77 killed

271 wounded

2 protected cruisers scuttled

5 unprotected cruisers sunk

1 transport ship sunk

Anyway you want to look at it, this was one big disaster of a battle for Spain.

Like I Said, It Was Very One-Sided.  --Cooter

SS Germanic

Back on June 18, 2012, I wrote about the remains of the British submarine E-14 being found off the Turkish coast back then.  It had two commanders who received the distinguished Victoria Cross during its operations in World War I.

This is a follow up[ on it.

The first captain won his VC when he slipped his ship through heavily guarded straits during the Gallipoli Campaign and over three weeks sank 2 Turkish (Ottoman) warships and a White Star cruise liner carrying 6,000 Turkish troops.

That White Star liner (same company as the Titanic) had been the SS Germanic and built by Harland & Wolff (same ones who built the Titanic) in 1875.  In 1893, it was sold to an American company and in 1910, bought by Turkey and given the name Gul Djemal.

During World War I it became an Ottoman troopship before being sunk by the E-14.  It was raised and continued carrying Turkish troops to the end of the war.

After the war, it was in the Ottoman-American Line and carried immigrants to America for a new life.  It stopped that in 1931 and became the Gulcemal, survived World War II and eventually became a floating hotel before being scrapped in 1950.

During its career, the ship survived three major mishaps, two world wars and is the second-longest serving ocean liner in history.

--Cooter

Spain Gets the Gold (and Silver)

From the Feb. 25, 2012, The West (Australia) AFB "Spain to receive shipwreck treasure after legal battle."

Tons of gold and silver from a Spanish ship that sank in 1804 and was discovered by a U.S. deep sea exploration company are on its way to Spain aboard two military planes. (You don't want those pesky pirates getting it, you know.)

This ends a five-year legal battle between the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. and Spain over treasure taken from the Spanish frigate Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, the most valuable treasure discovered in history, some 49,000 pounds of gold and silver.

A British warship sank it off the Portuguese coast near the Strait of Gibraltar during the Battle of Cape Santa Maria in October 1804. (I've never heard of this battle, but expect it had something to do with the Napoleonic Wars.)

Odyssey discovered the shipwreck in May 2007 and shipped the treasure to the United States without notifying the Spanish government.

Roughly $500 million in coins, minted in Peru, were stored in a warehouse in Tampa along with religious images.

Spain wanted the treasure back for some reason and courts said it had to be returned. (Hopefully, there was a finder's fee in there somewhere.)

Of course, remembering the Spanish stole the gold and silver from the Indians.

 --Cooter

German WW I U-boat Found Sunk Off the Netherlands

From the March 16, 2011, CNN.

Dutch researchers  found the wreck of the German submarine U-106 in 2009, but kept it secret until this week.  The crew of the research ship HNLMS Snellins had hoped they had found a Dutch submarine that had disappeared in the area in 1940, but found this one.  A brass plate on the sunken ship indicated that it was the U-106.

The announcement was delayed until now while German officials sought the relatives of crew members.  It will not be raised and will be designated as a war memorial.

From the Old Salt Blog:  The submarine was discovered in the North Sea off the north coast of the Netherlands.  The ship is believed to have sunk after hitting a mine north of the Dutch island of Terschelling.  The crew of 44 went down with the 838 ton, 234-foot long submarine launched in 1917.  It is also referred to as the SM U-106.

From the Huffington Post:  The ship is 130-feet deep and 40 miles north of the island.  The Dutch submarine O-13 sank in the area in June 1940, but divers and remote cameras have identified the ship as the German one.  The identifying brass plate that indentified the ship was on a water bottle.  The U-106 sank in 1917.

Always Great to Locate a Lost Ship.  --DaCoot

Tall Ship HMS Bounty Sinks in Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy-- Part 1

From the Oct. 30, 2012, Courant Business by Dan Haas.

I was very sad to hear that this ship, built to the exact specifications of the original, sank yesterday off Wilmington, NC, when it was unable to navigate through the 40-foot waves of Hurricane Sandy, took on water and went down.

It had a crew of 16.  Fourteen were rescued yesterday by  Coast Guard helicopters.  The last one off the ship, the captain is still missing.  One other man was rescued, but died later.

The vessel was constructed specifically for the 1962 movie "Mutiny On the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando.  It had been in New London, Ct., for a gathering of the crew of the submarine USS Mississippi on Oct. 25th after a month of repairs of Maine and was on its way to its home port in St. Petersburg, Florida.It went down 100 miles off Cape Hatteras in what is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic for the number of ships that sank there.

The 412 ton ship has three masts, the tallest at 115 feet and ten miles of rigging.

The crew member who was found, but later died was 42-year-old Claudene Christian (and I'm thinking when I first read it, that his last name was the same as the leader of the mutineers.  But that name sounded a bit more like that of a female.) and he reportedly is a descendant.  Later, I found out that Claudene Christian was female.  Her ancestor has been played by four of Hollywood's leading men: Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson.

More to Come. --Cooter

British World War I Sub Found

From the Telegraph "Firsrt World War British submarine found  94 years after being abandoned."

The HMS E14 executed a daring raid, slipping past the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli campaign and sinking Turkish warships and a transport.  It was found intact on the ocean bed of the Dardanelles by a Turkish documentary group.

In 1915, Lt. Cmdr. Edward Courtney Boyle received the Victoria Cross after steering the E14 throughthe heavily fortified Dardanelle Straits, under monefields and later avoiding Turkish searchlights and guns at the Narrows and then reaching open waters of the Sea of Marmura April 27, 1915. 

During the next three weeks it sank two Turkish warships and a former White Star cruise liner carrying 6,000 Turkish troops heading for Gallipoli before escaping back through the strait.

Along with the commander's Victoria Cross, the entire crew of thirty received Distinguished Service medals.  Boyle was 27 at the time and much later died in 1967 when he was run over by a lorry.

Later, Lt.-Cmdr. Geoffrey Saxon White also won a VictoriaCross posthumously in the E14 in an operation in which the submarine was abandoned and sank in January 1918.

The E14 was discovered earlier this month, the first British "E" Class submarine discovered intact.  The vessel is 20 meters deep near Kum Kayle.

A Little-Known Story.  --Cooter

Sunken Ship

From 2009 WKTV 2, Utica, NY.

A sunken ship believed to be two centuries old may be raised from the bottom of Lake Erie and put on display.

Northeast Research, LLC, has the rights and plan to put it in a tank for viewing. It will cost $4 million and the company plans to give it to the city of Buffalo for $1 on a 99-year lease.

A 1797 British coin and an American one from 1834 have been recovered from it, so it dates to the early 1800s. It is one of 90 shipwrecks in Lake Erie.

Wonder If Pat Dailey Wrote a Song About It? --DaCoot

Hazards Bubble Up from Old Wrecks-- Part 1

From the July 27th Chicago Tribune by Frank D. Roylance.

World War Ii was on and on the evening of Feb. 2, 1942, the W.L. Steed, an unarmed tanker was cruising along the Atlantic Ocean, about 90 miles off Ocean City, Maryland with 66,000 barrels of crude oil, when a German U-boat torpedoed it.

The ship was soon ablaze and sank with only a few of the 38 crew members surviving.

Shortly after the US entered the war after Pearl Harbor, the Germans moved part of their submarine pack to off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the country. By te time they shifted most of the U-boats in July to focus on convoys crossing the Atlantic, they had sunk 397 ships in US coastal waters.

Many Americans today don't even know about this war off American shores.

This wartime legacy has become an environmental concern because of concern about fuel bunkers and cargoes starting to leak after all those years under water.

I have already written about the SS Montebello (see Oct. 3rd entry) sunk by a Japanese submarine off the coast of California and the fear that its cargo of oil poses a threat. Fortunately, expeditions to the ship have found no trace of the oil that it once carried.

A Problem from the Past. --DaCoot

World War II's Battle of St. Lawrence-- Part 2

According to Wikipedia, the Battle of St. Lawrence took place over a longer period of time than just the sinking of the four ships mentioned in the previous diving article. It lasted from May 1942 to November 1944, No German U-boats were reported sunk, but Allies lost 23 ships sunk and 3 damaged and 340 killed in the various actions.

The Royal Canadian Navy had been allowed to shrink after World War I, but was rebuilt to the point where at the end of World War II, it was the third-biggest Allied Navy with 400 mostly small ships and 100,000 men and women in service.

The four Allied ships were sunk on two different nights within a month of each other.

On September 5, 1942, the U-513 sank the SS Sacanaga and the SS Lord Strathcone.

On November 2, 1942, the U-518 sank the PLM 27 and the SS Rosecastle.

These four ships collectively today are called the Bell Island Wrecks and can be seen at low tide.

Before sinking the two ships, the U-518 had fired a torpedo at the loading pier on Bell Island, the only location in North America to be subject to enemy attack by German forces during World War II.

Again, Never Heard of It. --DaCoot

World War II's Battle of the St. Lawrence-- Part 1

Definitely a little-known battle between the Allies and Germany during the war, and one that occurred in North America. It was a series of confrontations between German U-boats and anti-submarine units on the lower St. Lawrence River in Canada.

From the September 21st Huffington Post Travel Blog "Diving Newfoundland's World War II Shipwrecks" by Margie Goldsmith.

She had the U-513 sinking the four ships featured, although I found that elsewhere, there were two U-boats involved.

All fours sunken ships are in just 60 feet of water and sitting upright.

The SS Sayanaga wreck has a torpedo hole you can swim into. At 11:07 am, Sept. 5, 1942, the U-513 slipped into the bay and found the Sayanaga on its way out headed for North Sydney with a load of iron ore. It fired two torpedoes, but a battery switch on each was not set and the torpedoes sank to the bottom. Two more were fired and struck, sinking the vessel in less than 30 seconds.

of the 48 crewmembers (including three naval gunners), 30 were reported missing.

The four sunked ships today are considered to be some of the best cold water diving in the world.

Newfoundland has at least 10,000 shipwrecks.

I Had No idea Newfoundland Had That Many Shipwrecks. --Cooter

SS New York, Treasure Ship

From the March 5, 2010, Daily Iberian.

Gary and Renee Hebert were diving World War II shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico when they came across the wreck of the SS New York which sank in 1846. After that, their hobby became a job after they got legal claim to it and formed the Gentlemen of Fortune Company.

Their goal is to unearth, remove debris and sand and recover as many artifacts as they can like the ship's bell, but especially the cache of rare and expensive coins.

The 365 ton, 160-feet long side wheel steamer New York (launched in 1837) carried 53 passengers and was en route from Galveston to New Orleans when it steamed smack into a hurricane and sank. Everyone survived but 17 died before rescue came from the SS Galveston.

Sunken treasure. I Can Dig It. --DaCoot

Ship Unearthed in New York City-- Part 3

Continuing with the story about the remains of a ship discovered at the site of the World Trade Center.

The pit where the ship was discovered is on a sixteen acre site where the new 1776 foot World Trade Center is going to be built. A marine historian believes that the ship may have sailed in the Caribbean, based on the 18th century organisms that had bored into the timber.

A 100 pound anchor was found a few yards from the hull. When the city was extending its shore line, derelict ships were often used to provide fill.

The ship had been weighted down and sunk into the bottom of the river as support for new city piers.

Another such ship was found in 1982 in Water Street.

The remains will be removed, but the wood is so delicate they are not sure how much of it will remain. It is deteriorating fast now that it is exposed to the air.

Archaeologists are measuring and photographing the ship's remains, but it is not clear how long the ship actually was.

Now, This is My Kind of Story. --Cooter

Ship Unearthed in New York City-- Part 2

Back on July 16th, I came a cross a short article in the USA Today about a ship from the 1700s that was found on the site of the World Trade Center, but not much else about it.

The fact that it was not discovered when the WTC was being built, survived the terrorist attack and is that old fascinates me.

I did some research and found coverage, believe it or not, from New Zealand, but nothing else from the US.

Here's what the July 16th Channel 3 News had to say about the ship.

It is a 32-foot piece of the former ship, not the whole thing as I was led to believe in the USA article and found twenty feet below street level. Workers at the site were unexpectedly thrilled by the find. From what they see, they believe it was a ship from the 1700s. They know that back around 1810, derelict ships and earth and rocks were buried in the area to extend New York's shoreline to accommodate the huge increase in trade as the city was really bustling.

It was first spotted Tuesday, July 13th, in the pit where the new World Trade Center is being built.

More to Come. --DaCoot

Ship Unearthed in New York City

From the July 16th USA Today "Ship Unearthed in NYC"

I came across an interesting photo and short blurb about the remains of an 18th century 32-foot long vessel that was discovered at the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City.

Construction workers unearthed it from the mud about thirty feet underground.

How it got there and how it wasn't discovered during the WTC construction is still a mystery. If it sank, that would mean that the site was once under water.

From the photo, it appears that a large portion of the hull is still in one piece. I don't know why they are working at the site but imagine it's probably for a memorial.

I hope to find out more information.

Boy, Am I Ever Interested in Stories Like This. --Cooter

The Titanic's Last Secret-- Part 1

From the Oct. 13, 2008, Time Magazine "The Titanic's Last Secret" by Jeneen Interlandi.

I recently came across this article I had filed away about one of the things in history that has always attracted me, the sinking of the Titanic. I'm also interested in the Alamo and Pearl Harbor. I just can't get enough of these topics.

A few months ago, I saw the special about this new secret on PBS here in Chicago.

Historian Steven Biel has said, "Only Jesus and the Civil War (something else I'm really into) have been written more about." Close to 200 books, documentaries and movies have been written and made about the event. And that includes the highest-grossing film of all time.

How the largest ship of the time which was referred to as "unsinkable" could sink in just two hours and forty minutes and cause 1,522 deaths has long been discussed since then.

Brad Marsen has a book out now called "Titanic's Last Secrets" and he says the questions were answered a long time ago in an investigation. It is now known that the ship broke into three sections and it went down faster and at much less of an angle than has been thought and depicted.

In addition, documents from Harland and Wolff, the builders of the ship in Belfast, Northern Ireland, reveal incompetence and poor construction and negligence as well in that the hull was too flimsy.

There's Got to Be a Morning After, Or Does There? --Cooter

There's Gold in Those Waters!!!

The SS New York which sank off the Louisiana coast in an 1846 storm has proven to be a treasure trove of gold coins. Some of these are from the now-forgotten Dahlonega, Georgia, US Mint.

These coins, some of which are in uncirculated mint condition could bring up to $100,000 each at auction. Some of them are called quarter eagles and half eagles with face value at $2.50 and $5.00.

Mints in Charlotte, NC, and Dahlonega, Georgia, operated from 1838 to the onset of the Civil War in 1861. The Dahlonega Mint produced 1.38 million gold coins and Charlotte 1.2 million.

Most of these disappeared after the US Treasury confiscated gold coins in 1933 and melted them down which is why, besides being gold, makes them so expensive.

Dahlonega was a major source of gold in the 1830s.

From the May 15th 2009 Access North Georgia.

Man, Diving for Sunken Treasure. I Would Have Liked to Do That. --Cooter

500 Year-Old Shipwreck Found Off Africa

The May 2nd papers were reporting that the wreck of a 500 year-old Spanish or Portuguese ship has been found on the Atlantic coast of Namibia in Africa. Spanish and Portuguese coins minted in the late 1400s and early 1500s have been found. The reverse sides have the likenesses of monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand.

This find could date back to the earliest African exploreres like Vasco de Gama and Christopher Columbus.

Copper ingots, elephant tusks and cannons have been found as well.

The Namdeb Diamond Corporation found the wreck after they cleared and drained the seabed offshore to search for diamonds. This is a joint effort by the governmewnt of Namibia and the DeBeers Corporation. An earthern wall has vbeen built to keep the water out.

The surf would have pounded the ship to pieces. Plans have been made to go to Spain and Portugal to research ships lost during that time carrying similar cargoes.

And I Wanted to Do Underwater Archaeology in My Younger Days. --Cooter

China Raises 800 Year-Old Ship

China has raised an 800 year-old sunken vessel from off the south China coast. It had first been discovered in 1987 in 65 feet of water. The whole ship was lifted to the surface in one piece.

Between 60,000 and 80,000 artifacts are aboard so the ship will give a very good impression of what was going on on China in the 1200s.

Dec. 23rd Yahoo News.

Captain Kidd Plundered Here

The remains of the Quedagh Merchant were found just off the coast (70 feet to be exact) of the Dominican Republic in less than ten feet of water. This was one of the last ships Captain Kidd captured before he set off to clear his good name of piracy charges. He didn't, and the good folks of London got to see his body decaying over the River Thames for two years.

There was always a question as to whether he was a pirate or a privateer. A privateer has the legal right to act like a pirate, but does so in the name of a country.

Charles Breeder of Indiana University said he'd been to thousands of shipwrecks in his career, but, "This is one of the first sites I've been on where I haven't seen any looting. We've got a shipwreck in in crystal clear water that amazingly is untouched."

This is especially true considering its nearness to shore and depth.

Growing up, I had fond thoughts of being an underwater diver in search of sunken treasure. But, teaching got in the way. I sure would like to be on that site right now instead of sitting here in northern Illinois enjoying the sub-freezing temperatures.

Oh, Well, I Did Really Enjoy Teaching. --the Old Coot