Raider’s Emblem Surfaces
In February, divers recovered perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the German World War II raider Admiral Graf Spec. A massive bronze eagle atop a Nazi swastika, weighing more than 800 pounds, was pulled from the ocean off Montevideo, Uruguay. It is believed to be the decoration that adorned the Panzerschiffe's stem.
After suffering damage on 13 December 1939 in the Battle of the River Plate, the first major naval battle of the war, Kapitan zur See Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff put into the neutral port at Montevideo. Before the battle, the “pocket” battleship had sunk nine merchant ships; of those, none lost a crewman and all were put ashore on arrival in Montevideo.
Believing a telegraphed British ruse to be true, on 17 December, Langsdorff put off the majority of the crew, and with a skeleton staff on board, sailed three miles outside Montevideo harbor and anchored. That evening the Graf Spee was scuttled using explosive charges. On the 20th, Langsdorff took his own life in his hotel room.
The recovery is part of a multimillion- dollar effort, begun in 1998, by Argentine and German investors to refloat the remains of the Nazi warship and open a museum. Previously the group raised the ship’s rangefinder and a 150-mm gun. Hector Bado, the project operations manager, said that the group’s next efforts would be on raising three more 150-mm guns, a dual 37-mm antiaircraft mount, and one of the Graf Spee’s 283-mm main guns.
First for HNS A Conference
The Imperial War Museum’s HMS Belfast will play host to the 41st Historic Naval Ships Association (HNSA) Conference in London from 8 to 12 October 2006. This marks the first time the event has been held outside North America. All meetings will take place on board the cruiser.
The forum provides an opportunity for fleet members from the United States to meet with other members from around the world to exchange ideas and for all delegates to hear initiatives in ship operation and preservation. The conference will not only examine ship preservation and education, but it will also view these and other issues in the context of running maritime heritage sites and museum ships as businesses, with insights into fundraising and marketing, business continuity, and emergency planning. Nonmembers of HNSA will be able to contribute to the sessions, and a call for papers will be circulated shortly.
Events begin Sunday, 8 October, with the directors and CEOs participating in a board meeting and a director’s seminar. The conference proper starts Monday and runs through Thursday. One day will be spent at conference co-host Chatham Historic Dockyard, which features 18th- century buildings and a quarter-mile-long (and fully operational) ropewalk. The dockyard is home to the last Victorian sloop, HMS Gannet, the submarine HMS Ocelot, and fellow HNSA fleet member HMS Cavalier. After the conference is an optional day at Portsmouth’s historic yard, with the opportunity to visit the Royal Navy Museum and see Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, HMS Warrior, and HMS Victory.
HMS Belfast offers the opportunity to sleep on board in the fully restored 1950s mess-deck complex, which normally plays host to school parties and youth groups. The cost will be £35.00 per night; a sleeping bag is essential. Those new to sleepover programs should be prepared to share the area with 25 other people. The mess deck is split into two compartments, each accommodating 25 people in bunks. There are separate cabins usually reserved for six teaching staff, but which can be made available for female delegates.
For more information about the conference, visit the HNSA Web site at www.hnsa.org or contact Jeff Nilsson, Executive Director, HNSA, at (757) 356- 9422 or [email protected].
Oldest Ship Timber Found
After 20 years of researching ship timbers, Florida State University anthropology professor Cheryl Ward received an invitation to examine some wood found in man-made caves at the edge of the Egyptian desert. In December 2005, Ward joined fellow researchers at the site, a sand-covered bluff along the Red Sea called Wadi Gawasis. She knew immediately what and how old the weathered boards were: “It’s a site that has kept its secrets for 40 centuries.”
Ward has determined that the shipworm-eaten cedar of Lebanon planks are about 4,000 years old, making them the world’s most ancient ship timbers. The Italian expedition’s archaeologists, Kathryn Bard of Boston University and Rodolfo Fattovich of the University of Naples l’Orientale, discovered the planks along with other lumber—pieces of acacia—which because it is not worm-riddled is believed to be pieces of superstructure and, some by their shape, fastenings. The archaeologists also found empty cargo boxes. Hieroglyphics on them suggest that the ancient Egyptians traded with the southern Red Sea center of Punt, about 1,000 miles away.
Scholars have long debated Punt’s exact location and whether the Egyptians reached there by land or sea. Some believed that the ancient Egyptians did not have the technology to travel long distances by sea, but the findings at Wadi Gawasis confirm that they sailed a 2,000- mile round trip voyage to Punt. Ward believes this places the port in what is today Ethiopia or Yemen.
Ward, an expert on ancient shipbuilding who previously was a member of Robert Ballard’s Black Sea project team, joined the archaeologists as the chief maritime archaeologist at the site. The project, which Ward will detail in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, was conducted with the support of Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Located about 13 miles south of Port Safaga, the site was an industrial shipyard of sorts with six rock-cut caves the ancient Egyptians used as work and storage rooms to protect their equipment from the harsh desert conditions, Ward said. Along with timber and cargo boxes, the archaeologists found large stone anchors, shards of storage jars, and more than 80 perfectly preserved coils of rope in the sealed caves.
The team also found a stela, or limestone tablet, of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, who ruled between 1844 and 1797 BC, which provided further evidence that discoveries at the site date to Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period. While in use, the ancient shipyard was central to a sophisticated government operation for the expeditions to Punt, which Ward likened to NASA’s space program. She theorized that ships were originally built at a Nile shipyard, disassembled, and carried across 90 miles of desert to the Red Sea, where they were reassembled and launched on the voyage.
On the fleet’s return several months later, the crews unloaded the cargo and began breaking down the ships piece by piece, their adze and chisel marks still easily identifiable, she noted. Shipwrights inspected the vessels and marked unsatisfactory pieces with red paint. Others were cleaned, rid of shipworms, and recycled. As many as 3,700 men may have taken part in the expeditions.
Ward will return to the site next year to continue to excavate and record ship timbers, document the ship assembly and break-up process, and reconstruct the vessels as they were originally configured.
Remember is the Important Part
December 7; June 6; September 11. You know the corresponding years and events, right? But what about February 15? 1898? Havana, Cuba?
Remember the Maine!
With the passing of 108 years it is easy to forget that 355 sailors and Marines died that day when a mysterious explosion ripped through the Maine and became the nominal cause—and forged the battle cry—of the Spanish-American War.
The day did not pass without remembrance this past February, however, as Navy reservists from the Naval Reserve Center Bangor, Maine, paid tribute to those who died. Lieutenant Commander Brian Emory, commanding officer of the center, gave the memorial address:
“The men aboard Maine were young Americans far from home, who gave their lives in the service of this country,” Emory said. “Today we remember them . . . not just the men of the Maine, hut all of the service men and women who have been lost in our nation’s history. The most important part of ‘Remember the Maine’ is the ‘Remember’ part, and that is why we are here.”
One seaman noted the special link of history in Navy tradition. “There is a lot of pride and ownership showcased at this event,” Storekeeper 2nd Class Aitialele John said. “Knowing that the crest of the Maine is here in Bangor and being able to participate in this part of history is very special.”
Three commissioned ships have borne the name of Maine. The nuclear- powered ballistic-missile submarine SSBN-741, serving in the Atlantic; BB- 10, a battleship that served during World War I, and the not-forgotten second-class battleship.
A Reef Named Oriskany
The long-awaited sinking of the Oriskany (CV-34) is set for 17 May 2006. After two years of waiting, dozens of former crewmembers and interested spectators have made plans to sail out 22'/2 miles south of Pensacola, Florida, to witness her final moments afloat. If successful, the combat veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars will be the first aircraft carrier to be deliberately scuttled as an artificial reef and the world’s largest artificial reef project.
The 888-foot carrier had quite an odyssey to reach her final resting place, which will eventually be an international fishing and diving destination. In April 2004 Pensacola was chosen by the Navy as Oriskany's final port over communities in Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and South Florida. Pensacola’s civic leaders are looking to the ship to bolster their tourism industry, which was devastated by hurricanes in 2004 and 2005.
The Navy planned to sink the 32,000- ton Oriskany in 2004, but environmental issues delayed the ship’s move from Corpus Christi, Texas, where she had been stripped of dangerous materials, to Pensacola until December 2004. The sinking was rescheduled for the following September, but approval by the Environmental Protection Agency of a sink permit delayed plans, and finally the weather took control. More than 2,500 of the ship’s veterans had made plans to go to Pensacola for the event. In June, the carrier went back to Texas—at a cost of $800,000—this time towed to a Maritime Administration facility in Beaumont to weather hurricane season.
After surviving Hurricane Rita with no damage, Oriskany was prepared early this year for the trip back to Pensacola. In February, the EPA issued one final permit allowing the ship to be sunk with some 700 pounds of PCBs on board. She arrived back in Pensacola for the last time on 22 March.
Congress had committed $2.8 million to the project, a prototype for a program to cheaply dispose of decommissioned vessels to benefit coastal communities. Of the total, $2.1 million was allocated for removal of contaminants. This ballooned to more than $7.6 million, at least half being spent on the unforeseen removal of the wooden flight deck. Elevated PCBs—the result of fluid used in her catapults— caused the $3 million-plus increase in removal cost.
Other costs, including the multiple round trips between Pensacola and Texas, have pushed the total expenditure by the Navy to $12.7 million. Despite the inflated figure, the Navy considers the program a bargain, compared to the $24 million cost of scrapping a ship the size of Oriskany.
When it happens, the final resting place of the ship, featured in the films The Bridges at Toko-Ri and Men of the Fighting Lady, will be in 210 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico at 30° 2’ North latitude, and 87° 0’ West longitude.
Research on the Roanoke
For more than 140 years the wooden and iron remains of the USS Otsego were little more than a snag in the Roanoke River of eastern North Carolina. Without the cachet of her more famous cocombatants, even local residents ignored her. But researchers from East Carolina University have given what is left of her a rejuvenation of sorts.
The Otsego was one of the 22-ship Sassacus-class of “double-enders” built by the Union to operate in the shallow, narrow channels of Southern waterways during the Civil War. Nothing remains of her 21 sisters. Larry E. Babits, director of ECU’s maritime program, said, “We can look at it as a sole survivor of its class.” The gunboat was part of a Union fleet on 9 December 1864, when she struck two mines and sank.
The wreck’s location near Jamesville was confirmed by students and faculty in ECU’s Program in Maritime Studies and mapped for further research. The remains of the Bazely, a Union tugboat destroyed by a mine when she tried to assist, were also found.
The 220-foot-long double-ender warship—a design favored by the North that permitted easy navigation in either direction, fore or aft—had been commissioned the previous spring. After the destruction of the CSS Albemarle that October by the audacious Lieutenant William B. Cushing, little on the Roanoke stood between the bluecoats and the interior of the state. Otsego was steaming upriver when she ran into a Confederate mine field.
She sank to her upper deck. Troops, however, chose to remain on board to guard the boat. Later, Union forces recovered her cannon and shot up the ship to destroy her machinery'.
Whereas Albemarle was salvaged and scrapped, Otsego was left where she lay. Many decades later, while dredging the channel in the 1930s, the Army Corps of Engineers dragged her remains into a hole a short distance downstream. The ship’s location had not been pinpointed until the work of the researchers was completed. During the month-long project, ECU divers scoured a six-mile stretch of river near Jamesville with sonar equipment and metal detectors.