Many factors influence the formation of shipwreck sites: the materials from which the ship was built, the underwater environment, and subsequent events such as human activity, storms, and chemical reactions. In this first volume to comprehensively catalogue the physical and cultural processes affecting submerged ships, Matthew Keith brings together experts in diverse fields such as geology, soil and wood chemistry, micro- and marine biology, and sediment dynamics. The case studies identify and examine the natural and anthropogenic processes - corrosion and degradation on one hand, fishing and trawling on the other - that contribute to the present condition of shipwreck sites. The contributors also discuss how these varied and often overlapping events influence the archaeological record. Offering an in-depth analysis of emerging technologies and methods-acoustic positioning, computer modeling, and site reconstruction - this is an essential study for the research and preservation of submerged heritage sites. Co-published with The Society for Historical Archaeology.

For 250 years encrusted wonders have been turning up in fishermen's nets: everything imaginable from prehistoric animal bones to priceless Roman statues. Fishing trawlers annually sweep an area equivalent in size to half the world's continental shelves. Everything in the wake of these bulldozers of the deep is battered. A devastating trail of smashed shipwrecks runs from the North Sea to Malaysia. The profound threat of the global fishing industry remains a black hole in marine archaeology, poorly understood and unmanaged. Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage is the first global analysis of the threat of bottom fishing to underwater cultural heritage, examining the diversity, scale and implications on endangered finds and sites. Throughout, the key questions of whether it is too late to save the planet's three million wrecks and how sustainable management is achievable are debated.

Entranced by history and myth, captivated by the wonders of nature, Damian Le Bas explores the meaning we find in sunken ruins around the world.

Thousands of years ago, an island off the Straits of Gibraltar went to war with ancient Athens. The battle was lost, and an earthquake cleaved the land in two. Overnight the island sank beneath the waves – or so legend tells.

As a young boy, Damian Le Bas was captivated by the story of the lost city of Atlantis. As an adult, he dreams of diving to discover its ruins. After the death of his father, torn between his lifelong desire and the taboo his Romany culture places on the ocean, he comes by chance across a dive shop. He can’t help but go in.

Under the waves, Damian enters a breathtaking world. As he masters the skills of this exhilarating sport, diving with seals in the Farne Islands, exploring submerged Roman ruins in Naples and mapping the sunken city of Port Royal in Jamaica, he is entranced anew, by wonders both man-made and natural.

Plato's writings on Atlantis were a parable about the hubris of humankind; in witnessing our effects on oceans and ocean communities, Damian finds echoes of this in the modern world.

A spellbinding love letter to diving, The Drowned Places is also a profound examination of the power that myth has over us, and what happens when it crosses over into reality.

A detailed and riveting account of the U.S. Navy's greatest mutiny and its wide-ranging cultural and historical impact The greatest controversy in the history of the U.S. Navy of the early American Republic was the revelation that the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a bloody mutiny that would have turned the U.S. brig Somers into a pirate ship. The plot discovered, he and his co-conspirators were hastily condemned and hanged at sea. The repercussions of those acts brought headlines, scandal, a fistfight at a cabinet meeting, a court martial, ruined lives, lost reputations, and tales of a haunted ship "bound for the devil" and lost tragically at sea with many of its crew. The "Somers affair" led to the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy and it remains the Navy's only acknowledged mutiny in its history. The story also inspired Herman Melville's White-Jacket and Billy Budd. Others connected to the Somers included Commodore Perry, a relation and defender of the Somers' captain Mackenzie; James Fenimore Cooper, whose feud with the captain, dating back to the War of 1812, resurfaced in his reportage of the affair; and Raphael Semmes, the Somers' last caption who later served in the Confederate Navy. The Curse of the Somers is a thorough recreation of this classic tale, told with the help of recently uncovered evidence. Written by a maritime historian and archaeologist who helped identify the long-lost wreck and subsequently studied its sunken remains, this is a timeless tale of life and death at sea. James P. Delgado re-examines the circumstances, drawing from a rich historical record and from the investigation of the ship's sunken remains. What surfaces is an all-too-human tale that resonates and chills across the centuries.

Our Blue Planet provides a comprehensive introduction to the field of maritime and underwater archaeology. Situating the field within the broader study of history and archaeology, this book advocates that an understanding of how our ancestors interacted with rivers, lakes, and oceans is integral to comprehending the human past. Our Blue Planet covers the full breadth of maritime and underwater archaeology, including formerly terrestrial sites drowned by rising sea levels, coastal sites, and a wide variety of wreck sites ranging across the globe and spanning from antiquity to World War II. Beginning with a definition of the field and several chapters dedicated to the methods of finding, recording, and interpreting submerged sites, Our Blue Planet provides an entry point for all readers, whether or not they are familiar with maritime and underwater archaeology or archaeology in general. The book then shifts to a thematic approach with chapters exploring human interactions with the watery world, both along the coasts and by ship. These chapters discuss the relationships between culture, technology, and environment that allowed humans through time to spread across the globe. Because ships were the primary means for humans to interact with large bodies of water, they are the focus of several chapters on the development of shipbuilding technology, the lives of sailors, and the uses of ships in exploration, expansion, and warfare. The book ends with chapters on how and why the non-renewable submerged archaeological record should be managed, so that both current and future generations can learn from the achievements and failures of past societies, as well as on how anyone can become involved in maritime and underwater archaeology. Throughout, the reader benefits from the personal reflections of a number of leading figures in the field.

The spectacle of archaeology stirs the public interest like few other topics. Sowing the detective story, finding the missing pieces of the puzzle, understanding an instilled sense of identity, making connections to the material culture, following the global discourse on heritage protection and conservation (i.e. the Elgin Marbles) are all part of the nexus of cultural values that define the meaning of archaeology to individuals and to the public at large. Along with the debates, archaeological sites are also often in view of the public - on land, as well as, underwater. Maritime cultural resources encompass sites that, because of their (often) proximity to urban or traveled areas (harbors, rivers, ports) are easily damaged but not easily visible. This leads to special challenges to site management regarding conservation, protection, and enforcement of legal mandates for public education outreach and interpretation. The editors have brought together state of the art ideas, research and scholarship associated with maritime public education and interpretation. interpretation of maritime and submerged cultural resources, this edited volume will add to a limited body of knowledge in a field that is steadily growing.

In the early 1980s the author was asked to investigate the newly discovered wreck of the Xantho, an iron screw steamship active off the Australian coast during the period 1848 to 1872, and to develop a strategy to stop the looting that was occurring at the site. This relatively straightforward assignment turned into a long-term research program for applying maritime archaeology to the conservation of iron-hulled wrecks.

What does it take to dive Titanic's sister ship? This huge vessel from a bygone golden age of ocean travel lies at over 100 metres (330') below the surface. It is not a dive for the faint-hearted. Requiring meticulous planning, precise execution and good conditions, only the most capable technical divers will ever experience it. Even then, tragically some do not make it back to the surface. Expedition Britannic is the story of the May 2019 mission to dive the Olympic-class liner-turned-hospital ship, HMHS Britannic. Sunk near the Greek island of Kea during World War I, she will only be ticked off the bucket list of relatively few of the most dedicated deep divers. Steeped in history, the opportunity to see a largely intact near-replica of the world's most famous ocean liner makes it an ultimate dive to aspire to. Deep wreck photography specialist Rick Ayrton is one such diver. Assisted by expedition leader Scott Roberts, he takes us through the planning, logistics and preparation essential for scaling one of the pinnacles of wreck diving. Then we explore the wreck with him - going deeper than most divers will in their lifetimes to photograph this once great ship - and make new discoveries.

Although underwater archaeology has assumed its rightful place as an important subdiscipline in the field, the published literature has not kept pace with the rapid increase in the number of both prehistoric and historic underwater sites. The editors have assembled an internationally distinguished roster of contributors to fill this gap. The book presents geographical and topical approaches, and focuses on technology, law, public and private institutional roles and goals, and the research and development of future technologies and public programs.

A characteristic trait of the maritime museums is that they are often located in a contemporary and/or historical environment from which the collections and narratives originate. The museum can thereby be directly linked to the site and its history. It is therefore vital to investigate the maritime museums in terms of relationships between landscape, architecture, museum and collections. This volume unravels the kinds of worlds and realities the Nordic maritime museums stage, which identities and national myths they depict, and how they make use of both the surrounding maritime environments and the architectural properties of the museum buildings.

This volume initiates a new series of books on maritime or underwater archaeology, and as the editor of the series I welcome its appearance with great excitement. It is appropriate that the first book of the series is a collection of articles intended for gradu ate or undergraduate courses in underwater archaeology, since the growth in academic opportunities for students is an important sign of the vitality of this subdiscipline. The layman will enjoy the book as well. Academic and public interest in shipwrecks and other submerged archaeological sites is indicated by a number of factors. Every year there are 80 to 90 research papers presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology's Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, and the Proceedings are published. Public interest is shown by extensive press coverage of shipwreck investigations. One of the most important advances in recent years has been the passage of the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987, for the first time providing national-level law con cerning underwater archeological sites. The legislation has withstood a number of legal challenges by commercial treasure salvors, a very hopeful sign for the long-term pres ervation of this nonrenewable type of cultural resource. The underwater archaeological discoveries of 1995 were particularly noteworthy. The Texas Historical Commission discovered the Belle, one of La Salle's ships, and the CSS Hunley was found by a joint project of South Carolina and a private nonprofit organization called NUMA."

This book initiatively and systematically presents the latest discoveries in the context of shipwreck archaeology in China, telling the exciting story of the wrecks' distribution, connotation and the research advances and empirically reconstructing the development of overseas trade and maritime cultures along the Maritime Silk Road, which flourished for more than 2000 years. The book features numerous high-quality images and comprehensively describes and reviews the development of the methodologies and technologies used in China's underwater archaeology and underwater cultural heritage administration in recent decades.

This two-volume set highlights the importance of Iberian shipbuilding in the centuries of the so-called first globalization (15th to 18th), in confluence with an unprecedented extension of ocean navigation and seafaring and a greater demand for natural resources (especially timber), mostly oak (Quercus spp.) and Pine (Pinus spp.). The chapters are framed in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary line of research that integrates history, Geographic Information Sciences, underwater archaeology, dendrochronology and wood provenance techniques. This line of research was developed during the ForSEAdiscovery project, which had a great impact in the academic and scientific world and brought together experts from Europe and America. The volumes deliver a state-of-the-art review of the latest lines of research related to Iberian maritime history and archaeology and their developing interdisciplinary interaction with dendroarchaeology. This synthesis combines an analysis of historical sources, the systematic study of wreck-remains and material culture related to Iberian seafaring from the 15th to the 18th centuries, and the application of earth sciences, including dendrochronology. The set can be used as a manual or work guide for experts and students, and will also be an interesting read for non-experts interested in the subject. Volume 2 focuses on approaches to the study of shipwrecks including a synthesis of dendro-archaeological results, current interdisciplinary case studies and the specialist study of artillery and anchors.

Maritime cultural landscapes are collections of submerged archaeological sites, or combinations of terrestrial and submerged sites that reflect the relationship between humans and the water. These landscapes can range in size from a single beach to an entire coastline and can include areas of terrestrial sites now inundated as well as underwater sites that are now desiccated.

However, what binds all of these sites together is the premise that each aspect of the landscape -cultural, political, environmental, technological, and physical - is interrelated and can not be understood without reference to the others. In this maritime cultural landscape approach, individual sites are treated as features within the larger landscape and the interpretation of single sites add to a larger analysis of a region or culture. This approach provides physical and theoretical links between terrestrial and underwater archaeology as well as prehistoric and historic archaeology; consequently, providing a framework for integrating such diverse topics as trade, resource procurement, habitation, industrial production, and warfare into a holistic study of the past.

Landscape studies foster broader perspectives and approaches, extending the study of maritime cultures beyond the shoreline. Despite this potential, the archaeological study of maritime landscapes is a relatively untried approach with many questions regarding the methods and perspectives needed to effectively analyze these landscapes.

Thechapters in this volume, which include contributions from the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Australia, address many of the theoretical and methodological questions surrounding maritime cultural landscapes. The authors comprise established scholars as well as archaeologists at the beginning of their careers, providing a healthy balance of experience and innovation. The chapters also demonstrate parity between method and theory, where the varying interpretations of culture and space are given equal weight with the challenges of investigating both wet and dry sites across large areas.

Over the last 30 years, hydrographical marine surveys in the English Channel helped uncover the potential wreck sites of German submarines, or U-boats, sunk during the conflicts of World War I and World War II. Through a series of systemic dives, nautical archaeologist and historian Innes McCartney surveyed and recorded these wrecks, discovering that the distribution and number of wrecks conflicted with the published histories of U-boat losses. Of all the U-boat war losses in the Channel, McCartney found that some 41% were heretofore unaccounted for in the historical literature of World War I and World War II. This book reconciles these inaccuracies with the archaeological record by presenting case studies of a number of dives conducted in the English Channel. Using empirical evidence, this book investigates possible reasons historical inconsistencies persist and what Allied operational and intelligence-based processes caused them to occur in the first place. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of nautical archaeology and naval history, as well as wreck explorers.

As human activity makes a greater impact on the environment, sustainability becomes an increasingly imperative goal. With the assistance of current technological innovations, environmental systems can be better preserved. Oceanographic and Marine Cross-Domain Data Management for Sustainable Development is a pivotal resource for the latest research on the collection of environmental data for sustainability initiatives and the associate challenges with this data acquisition. Highlighting various technological, scientific, semantic, and semiotic perspectives, this book is ideally designed for researchers, technology developers, practitioners, students, and professionals in the field of environmental science and technology.

David Mearns has discovered some of the world's most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. From the mighty battlecruiser HMS Hood to the crumbling wooden skeletons of Vasco da Gama's 16th century fleet, David has searched for and found dozens of sunken vessels in every ocean of the world. The Shipwreck Hunter is an account of David's most intriguing and fascinating finds. It details both the meticulous research and the mid-ocean stamina and courage required to find a wreck miles beneath the sea, as well as the moving human stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies. Combining the derring-do of Indiana Jones with the precision of a surgeon, in The Shipwreck Hunter David Mearns opens a porthole into the shadowy depths of the ocean.

Over the last 30 years, hydrographical marine surveys in the English Channel helped uncover the potential wreck sites of German submarines, or U-boats, sunk during the conflicts of World War I and World War II. Through a series of systemic dives, nautical archaeologist and historian Innes McCartney surveyed and recorded these wrecks, discovering that the distribution and number of wrecks conflicted with the published histories of U-boat losses. Of all the U-boat war losses in the Channel, McCartney found that some 41% were heretofore unaccounted for in the historical literature of World War I and World War II. This book reconciles these inaccuracies with the archaeological record by presenting case studies of a number of dives conducted in the English Channel. Using empirical evidence, this book investigates possible reasons historical inconsistencies persist and what Allied operational and intelligence-based processes caused them to occur in the first place. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of nautical archaeology and naval history, as well as wreck explorers.

Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition departed England in 1845 with two Royal Navy bomb vessels, 129 men and three years' worth of provisions. None were seen again until nearly a decade later, when their bleached bones, broken instruments, books, papers and personal effects began to be recovered on Canada's King William Island. These relics have since had a life of their own-photographed, analyzed, cataloged and displayed in glass cases in London. This book gives a definitive history of their preservation and exhibition from the Victorian era to the present, richly illustrated with period engravings and photographs, many never before published. Appendices provide the first comprehensive accounting of all expedition relics recovered prior to the 2014 discovery of Franklin's ship HMS Erebus.

The waters of Latin America and the Caribbean are rich with archaeological sites, including coastal settlements, defensive forts, freshwater sources, fishing-related activities, navigational aids, anchorages, harbours, ports, shipbuilding sites, shipwrecks and survivor camps. Tragically, treasure-hunting has had a deep impact on these maritime cultural resources, especially on shipwrecks. In the last 20 years, archaeologists have been fighting the battle against these treasure hunters in an attempt to preserve these resources as a source of cultural heritage, rather than allow them to be viewed solely as a means for financial reward. Case studies written primarily by Latin American and Caribbean archaeologists demonstrate exciting and cutting edge research, conservation, site preservation, and interpretation. As a result, this groundbreaking book documents the emerging research interests of maritime archaeologists in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Jeremy Green's systematic overview of maritime archaeology offers a step-by-step description of this fast-growing field. With new information about the use of computers and Global Positioning Systems, the second edition of this handbook shows how to extract as much information as possible from a site, how to record and document the data, and how to act ethically and responsibly with the artifacts. Treating underwater archaeology as a discipline, the book demonstrates how archaeologists, "looters," academics, and governments interact and how the market for archaeological artifacts creates obstacles and opportunities for these groups. Well illustrated and comprehensive in its approach to the subject, this book provides an essential foundation for everybody interested in underwater environments, submerged land structures, and conditions created by sea level changes.