Anglesey Bone Setters DNA Project

Genes hold secret of shipwrecked Anglesey bone setter

Point Lookout Lighthouse

In honor of Halloween, it seems appropriate to post about the Point Lookout Lighthouse of St. Mary’s County, Md., at the junction of the the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay, which is said to be the most haunted lighthouse in the United States. The lighthouse was built in 1830 and the area surrounding it was initially a summer resort. All that changed with the Civil War, when the largest camp for Confederate prisoners was built just North of the lighthouse. Between 1863 and 1865, 52,000 prisoners were held in the camp and 4,000 reportedly died.  The lighthouse was closest to the camp hospital building and parts of the lighthouse may have been commandeered by the Union troops.  In addition to ghosts of lighthouse keepers and of Civil War soldiers, there have been reports of ghosts from several shipwrecks just offshore.  For photographs and recording of ghostly appearances and voices check out Paranormal Happenings at Point Lookout Lighthouse.   The light house has made its way into popular culture, appearing in the action, roll=ply video game, Fallout 3.

Ghosts of Point Lookout Maryland and the Most Haunted Lighthouse in the USA

The ghost of a Confederate soldier runs across the road at dusk. The ghost of an old woman searches for her own grave. And a long dead lighthouse keeper still sings at night. This is Point Lookout.

Point Lookout in Scotland, Saint Mary’s County, Maryland is probably the most haunted area in the state. The Point Lookout Lighthouse has been called the most haunted lighthouse in the United States.

Located on a point of land where the wide Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay, Point Lookout was a place of numerous disasters and tragedies. It was once the site of a Civil War era hospital; a prisoner of war camp; a refugee camp for runaway and freed slaves; shipwrecks; and a hotel that burned to the ground.

The Point Lookout Lighthouse at the southern tip is often visited by investigators into paranormal activities. Casual visitors as well as state employees and park rangers have claimed to see, hear, and even meet ghosts.

It is easy to see why Point Lookout has the reputation of hauntings. The southernmost tip of Maryland, a bleak and lonely spit of sand torn by storms and shifting currents is, at times, mist enshrouded; at other times wind whipped and wild. The eerie cry of whistling ducks undulating over the fog enveloped Bay; the lonely scream of an eagle, and the shifting shadows in the woods all contribute to suggest the presence of spirits and paranormal occurrences.

The wreck of the pirate Blackbeard‘s Queen Anne’s Revenge, which sank in 1718, was believed to be discovered in 1996.   After 15 years of excavation, the State of North Carolina and the North Carolina Maritime Museum announced today that they had confirmed that the ship wreck is absolutely Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

It’s official: Ship found off N.C. coast was Blackbeard’s

This announcement dovetails with a new exhibit, Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge, which opens today at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, North Carolina , which displays artifacts from the shipwreck and several models of Blackbeard’s ship.  (See our post from last week - Raising the Anchor from Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge.)

On the Trail of the Pirate Bluebeard

The new exhibit will feature newly released key artefacts including a whole wine bottle, sail cloth, glass beads, cannon tompions, clothing items, cask parts and French ceramics. Old favourites such as cannon and weapons from previous displays will be featured as well.

Work is also under-way to retrieve an anchor from the wreck. Project director Mark Wilde-Ramsing said the anchor is the second-largest on the site. The team will attempt to lift the 4 metre long anchor during a project that will last until the 3rd June 2011.

In addition to the exhibition at the Maritime Museum in Beaufort, visitors can also visit “Hammock House” where Blackbeard established his headquarters.

Thanks to Irwin Bryan for passing the article along.

World’s Oldest Champagne in 170-Year-Old Shipwreck Auctioned for $78,400

Collectors have been paying higher prices for Champagne, especially for prized vintages, said Juhlin, who had forecast that the bottles might fetch 100,000 euros, 10 times the minimum price of 10,000 euros. The second lot, containing vintage Veuve, fetched 30,000 euros. Bidders applauded at the Veuve price, given by the same Singapore-based Internet bidder who minutes before gave 24,000 euros for a bottle of Juglar.

The bottles were sold in Mariehamn, capital of Aaland, a Finnish-controlled archipelago of 6,500 islands in the Baltic Sea, where divers discovered the precious cargo in a previously unknown shipwreck.

As the sands of Fire Island are swallowing

Cyclone Winds Unbury Island’s 130-Year-Old Shipwreck

The huge cyclone’s intense winds blew away sand on one Queensland island, unearthing the outline of a mysterious shipwreck. It’s a 100-foot (30-meter) longboat, stuck in the sand on Hinchinbrook Island’s beach. The vessel may have been buried under the sand for more than 130 years, reported the Brisbane Times.

Yasi blew away about 100 feet (30 m) of sand from a dune that was covering the front of the shipwreck. Just enough sand was swept away to reveal the top 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of the shipwreck.

Shipwreck experts are analyzing the ship’s timber to pinpoint its identity. The most likely candidates are three ships that wrecked in shallow water nearby from 1879 to 1880: The Harriet Armytage in 1879, the Charlotte Andrews in 1879 and the Belle in 1880.

Thanks to Irwin Bryan for the passing the news along.

Photo: Will van Dorp

Fire Island is a thirty mile long barrier island on the south shore of Long Island, east of the entrance of New York harbor.   Last week, Le Papillon, a 50′ steel pinky schooner, went ashore on the beach on Fire Island near the village of SaltAire.   The 19 year old captain and the two 20 year old passengers were rescued without injury.  Will van Dorp of the Tugster blog captured dramatic photos of the grounded schooner in the Fire Island surf. What will become of  Le Papillon? That is difficult to say, but by Tuesday of this week, an ad appeared in Craigslist offering the schooner for sale for $15,000, with the important requirement: “Needs immediate removal.”  Le Papillon is neither the first nor likely to be the last vessel to run aground on the Fire Island shoals.

One hundred and eighteen years ago, a historically significant ship ran aground up the beach from where Le Papillon now lies. The Gluckauf, built in 1886, was the first “modern tanker ” and the basis for many tankers to follow.   Despite her name, she was very unlucky on March 24, 1893 when she went aground off Blue Point Beach on Fire Island.   She was never salvaged.  Over time she was simply swallowed up by the Fire Island sands.  She was 300 feet long, had a 37 foot beam, and displaced 2,307 gross tons. She is now  is completely buried beneath the sand only 100 feet offshore in 25 feet of water.

From the New York Times of November 10, 1895

The Unlucky Gluckauf

A BIG STEAMSHIP’S FATE – Now Only a Prey for Seaside Relic Hunters.

On the 24th of March, 1893, just before dawn, and during a slight snow squall, the German tramp steamship Gluckauf, an oil tank boat of 2,000 tons, chartered by the Standard Oil Company, went ashore on Fire Island beach, opposite Sayville, about fifty miles from New-York, on the south side of Long Island. The men from the Blue Point Life Saving Station were promptly on hand, and the Captain and crew of the ship were brought ashore without trouble, for the sea was not rough. In fact, it was so calm a night that a rumor went along the coast to the effect that the grounding of the Gluckauf showed curious lack of care; she was insured for $200,000 in German companies, and was said at the time to be worth twice that sum. At all events, she grounded on the outer bar and a storm coming up the next day, before wrecking steamers could reach the spot, she was driven, bow on, right to the beach. Had she gone a thousand feet further she would have cut the Blue Point Life Saving Station in two. With her bow clear of the sand, so that a man could walk under her keel, the surf broke over her stern, and, at high tide, all along her starboard side.

For a few weeks it was hoped that the wrecking companies might get her off, and some thousands of dollars were spent in attempts to pull her from the sand at high tide. With every day’s delay, however, she seemed to sink deeper into the sand, and when another storm opened a breach in her hold and poured in hundreds of tons of sand all hope was abandoned. She was stripped of most of her rigging, engines, fittings of every portable description, and left there for the sea to break up.

Since she came ashore three years ago the sea has dug a pit at the stern. With the result that the bow is steadily rising. She is also canted over at a sharper angle. From the land, or port, side. a wire cable hangs over the side, enabling visitors with any ambition to climb the twenty feet to the deck. Until last year there was a rope ladder provided, but the privilege was abused by relic hunters, the last one carrying off the ladder with him, and now the wire Cable has to suffice, and it does suffice for most men and for lots of women. From the deck the view is a fine one, especially if the tide is high and a good surf crashes against the other side. Each incoming wave or breaker meets the iron sides of the ship with a tremendous crash that sends the spray forty feet into the air. The ship shakes from stem to stern, and the wonder is that, if a July surf can produce this effect, how anything is left after a January pounding. Having recovered breath from your climb, you make the tour of the ship, holding on to the rail most of the way; the deck is almost at an angle of 45 degrees. Of the four masts three remain. The fourth was cut away the night the ship came ashore. Everywhere are evidences of the marvelous power of the waves – iron bars an inch thick twisted as if made of wax: bits of machinery weighing tons tossed 40 feet out of place; bolts too heavy for a man to lift torn out and hanging in the rigging.

It is a common thing for people who visit great steamships to exclaim as they examine the massive fittings, that it is incredible that seething water could create havoc and make playthings of such ponderous things. Let them climb aboard the Gluckauf where everything bears the mark of the ocean’s fury – where nothing is quite erect or straight, or whole, where everything is bent, twisted or broken. Down in the main cabin, by means of the now crazy steel stairs, the impact of the surf reverberates like thunder, driving the more timid visitors to the deck. Bits of seaweed and sand fill what once was a comfortable cabin. Everything that man or the elements could carry away is gone. In the cook’s galley souvenir hunters have even pried up the encaustic tiles; every bolt or nut that could be unscrewed has been taken. Made bold by familiarity and the absence of any caretaker, people have brought axes, saws, and hatchets with them with which to hack away trophies. What they cannot carry away they disfigure. Some wretched vandals even succeeded this Summer in tearing away two of the brass letters of the name “Gluckauf,” on the port side. The letters K and F are gone. Those who carried off the K and the F must have had a cold chisel with them. A recent visitor managed to chop off a copper bolt from one of the hatches: later he had the name of the Gluckaut, with the date, engraved upon it for a young woman who wanted a paper weight. Where people have failed to get a piece of the Gluckauf, they have vented their spite in scribbling their insignificant names in conspicuous places, upon the masts especially. Worse than that, some pill-maker has scrawled the name of his nostrum in letters 3 feet high on the sides of the ship. It appears to be only a question of time when every available square foot will be covered by these signs which deface our trees, fences, and big rocks. It was here on this beach last year that a Long Island genius plastered the advertisement of his cough syrup upon the broad back of a dead whale that drifted ashore.

The Long Island coast has many wrecks to boast of besides the Gluckauf, but as a rule they last only a few weeks or months. There was the Louis V. Place, that came ashore a year ago last Winter, and of which’ not a vestige remains. She was a wooden vessel. Iron seems to defy the surf. The mains of the boilers and engines of the steamship Franklin, wrecked off Bellport in 1848 are still there. It may, therefore, take half a century before the Gluckauf ceases to be an object of Interest.

Refugee boat tragedy on Australian island

As reported by the Los Angeles Times:

Shortly after dawn Wednesday, residents of an isolated Australian island community heard the screams of children just offshore.

One by one, the inhabitants of tiny Christmas Island ran to the water’s edge to find scores of asylum-seekers — their wooden boat dashed against razor-sharp rocks — being tossed about by seas one onlooker likened to “an open washing machine.”

Late Wednesday, officials were still searching for survivors and tallying the mounting deaths. An estimated 50 people were presumed dead with 40 others rescued from a boat thought to be carrying at least 90 passengers.

Christmas Island, a phosphate mining center about 1,600 miles northwest of Perth, is home to Australia’s main offshore immigration detention center. The island has about 1,400 residents, most of them living near the community of Flying Fish Cove.

The refugee issue has divided Australia and played a role in recent parliamentary elections, where one conservative candidate campaigned on a platform to “stop the boats.” As many as 6,000 undocumented boat refugees arrive in the country each year.

Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the story along.

Artist Josh Beckman’s “Sea Nymph” in LA’s Machine Project gallery is nothing less that a shipwreck in an art gallery.  To accompany the installation, the gallery has hosted a series of nautical-themed events, performances, lectures, and workshops, as well as an opera by and for dogs. Sea-dogs, we hope. The exhibition continues through October 8th.

Josh Beckman’s Sea Nymph: A shipwrecked boat inside Machine

After a service life of almost 40 years, the Soviet light cruiser Murmansk was decommissioned and sold for scrap.  On Christmas Eve in 1994, the ship was under tow to India when the tug lost control of the ship in a storm.  The Murmansk ran aground outside the harbor breakwater just off Sørvær in northern Norway.  In 2009 money was finally appropriated to remove the wreck.   The plan is to enclose the wreck behind new temporary jetties, drain the water around the wreck, then cut the vessel in pieces on the dry bottom.  The operation should be completed in 2011.   The wreck removal is being documented as a part of a new documentary.   A panoramic webcam also has been set up for those wishing to monitor progress of the project.  Click  on the image above to see the panorama.

Shipwreck removal to become documentary

Windlass on the L.R. Doty

In October of 1898, the wooden steamship L.R. Doty disappeared in Lake Michigan in a storm with seventy mile an hour winds and thirty foot waves. Her crew of 17 and two ship’s cats were lost.   A group of Wisconsin divers recently discovered the shipwreck , intact and upright, in 300 feet of water off the Milwaukee shore.

Sunken Treasure In Lake Michigan: Century-Old Ship

L. R. Doty Shipwreck Video Clip