| JimmyAEMT-I |
Posted on Oct 10 2008, 02:39 PM |
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I'll take the copper. That's selling well right now  |
| Andy in West Oz |
Posted on Oct 3 2008, 05:52 AM |
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I'll take the cannons in case I need to "cut the head off a snake"... 
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| tonym5 |
Posted on Sep 29 2008, 11:46 PM |
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Let me at the Gold and everyone else can have all the rest!!    |
| Andy in West Oz |
Posted on Sep 29 2008, 09:44 PM |
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Time is short. Cool coin photo at link.
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/09/2...0m_treasur.html
| QUOTE | Time is running out for archaelogists to salvage over $100 million in gold coins, silver coins and other treasure from a 500-year-old Portuguese shipwreck recently discovered off of the southern coast of Namibia.
According to AFP, the salvage project is so expensive that it will not be able to continue after October 10. The problem is that the sea wall that allowed the salvage operation to proceed cost $12,500 a day to maintain. The culture ministry and state diamond mining company of Namibia have shared the expense, but will not do so after October 10.
The shipwreck was discovered by diamond miners when they used bulldozers to create the sea wall from sand for the purpose of diamond dredging. The salvage operation is only possible while the sea wall is maintained.
Along with the gold and silver coins, other items salvaged from the sand include six bronze cannons, eight tons of tin, 13 tons of copper and more than 50 ivory elephant tusks.
Everything found in the wreck belongs to Namibia under international maritime laws.
To archaelogists, the wreck has much more than just financial value. The wreck may be the largest of its kind found in Africa outside of Egypt and the best-preserved Portuguese ship found outside of outside Portugal. |
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| Andy in West Oz |
Posted on Sep 22 2008, 09:50 PM |
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http://www.topnews.in/scientists-study-gol...-namibia-269828
| QUOTE | Oranjemund, Namibia - A treasure-laden 16th-century Portuguese vessel that ran aground off Namibia's Atlantic coast was hailed Monday by archaeologists as providing a rare insight into the heyday of seafaring explorations between Europe and the Orient.
"This is a cultural treasure of immense importance," Bruno Werz told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa when offering journalists a first glimpse of the precious find at the excavation site in Namibia's diamond-rich "sperrgebiet" or no-go zone.
The shipwreck, which was discovered by geologists dredging the seabed for diamonds in April and was covered in sand Monday for preservation purposes, is believed to be the oldest yet found in sub-Saharan Africa.
Werz is leading a team of archeologists and geologists from Namibia, the United States, Portugal, South Africa and Zimbabwe in excavating the ship.
Speculation had been rife that the vessel could be linked to Portuguese explorer Bartholomew Diaz, the first European to round the Cape of Good Hope in the year 1488.
But that theory was put to bed by the archaeologists, who revealed that some of the around 2,000 gold coins discovered at the site were dated October 1525, 25 years after Diaz disappeared.
A Portuguese archaeologist described the wreck as the best-preserved example of Portuguese seafaring efforts found outside Portugal. He attributed its good condition to its long burial in sand, which preserves wood.
Apart from the gold, the ship's rich bounty includes 1.4 kilograms of silver coins, copper ingots, cannons and navigational instruments.
A trident indented on the ingots shows them to have been supplied by German merchant house Jakob Fugger - a known supplier of ingots to the Portuguese crown in the era of the Habsburg dynasty.
The shipwreck is located near Oranjemund, around 160 kilometres south of the town of Luederitz, site of a small diamond mine.
With state diamond mining company Namdeb spending vast amounts of money on keeping the sea at bay while the excavations are taking place, pressure is on the team to wrap up the work by early October.
The coins, which are now the property of the Namibian government, have already been spirited away for safe-keeping. The wood is destined in the short-term for the US, where it will be preserved. (dpa)
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| Andy in West Oz |
Posted on Sep 17 2008, 10:58 PM |
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Ship identified. I'm intrigued by how they have linked the ship to Diaz.
http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=249763
| QUOTE | A MYSTERY shipwreck laden with gold discovered by geologists off the coast of Namibia in April was a 16th century Portuguese vessel that had been bound for Asia, the country’s information ministry announced yesterday.
The ship’s rich bounty includes 2000 gold coins and 1.4kg in silver coins, the ministry said in a statement.
Researchers also found navigational instruments among the remains of the ship, which was discovered by geologists prospecting for diamonds.
The shipwreck is believed to be the oldest ever discovered off the coast of sub-Saharan Africa. The vessel has been linked to Portuguese explorer Bartholomew Diaz, who was the first European to round the Cape of Good Hope on the tip of Africa, in his efforts to establish a sea route from the Atlantic to Asia in 1488.
Diaz went missing in 1500.
Archaeologists and geologists from the United States, Portugal, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe met in August and decided to carry out the excavation over a number of weeks in September, the statement said.
South Africa-based German archaeologist Dr Bruno Werz led the team.
Journalists are to have a first peek at the ship next week.
The geologists made the find in April after clearing a stretch of seabed at the site and draining it.
Besides the treasure, they also found cannons and elephant tusks on the seabed. — Sapa- DPA
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Didn't know elephants could use cannons... |
| tonym5 |
Posted on May 5 2008, 04:42 AM |
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*Growls lustily* |
| Andy in West Oz |
Posted on May 4 2008, 11:34 PM |
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Comes up fine for me. Pays to be a geologist!
Here's the text Tony from another article Tony:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hLN9iGw...bF08TQD90D2HC80
| QUOTE | JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins — and cannons to fend off pirates. But it had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable African coast, and it sank 500 years ago.
Now it has been found, stumbled upon by De Beers geologists prospecting for diamonds off Namibia.
"If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli said in an interview Thursday.
Namdeb Diamond Corp., a joint venture of the government of Namibia and De Beers, first reported the April 1 find in a statement Wednesday, and planned a news conference in the Namibian capital next week.
The company had cleared and drained a stretch of seabed, building an earthen wall to keep the water out so geologists could work. Noli said one of the geologists saw a few ingots, but had no idea what they were. Then the team found what looked like cannon barrels.
The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since the mid-1980s and has advised De Beers since 1996 on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia.
The find "was what I'd been waiting for, for 20 years," Noli said. "Understandably, I was pretty excited. I still am."
Noli's original specialty was the desert, but because of Namdeb's offshore explorations, he had been preparing for the possibility of a wreck, even learning to dive.
After the discovery, he brought in Bruno Werz, an expert in the field, to help research the wreck. Noli has studied maritime artifacts with Werz, who was one of his instructors at the University of Cape Town.
Judging from the notables depicted on the hoard of Spanish and Portuguese coins, and the type of cannons and navigational equipment, the ship went down in the late 1400s or early 1500s, around the time Vasco de Gama and Columbus were plying the waters of the New World.
It was, Noli said, "a period when Africa was just being opened up, when the whole world was being opened up."
He compared the remnants — ingots, ivory, coins, coffin-sized timber fragments — to evidence at a crime scene.
"The surf would have pounded that wreck to smithereens," he said. "It's not like `Pirates of the Caribbean,' with a ship more or less intact."
He and Werz are trying to fit the pieces into a story. They divide their time between inventorying the find in Namibia and doing research in museums and libraries in Cape Town, South Africa, from where Noli spoke by phone Thursday.
Eventually, they will go to Portugal or Spain to search for records of a vessel with similar cargo that went missing.
"You don't turn a skipper loose with a cargo of that value and have no record of it," Noli said.
The wealth on board is intriguing. Noli said the large amount of copper could mean the ship had been sent by a government looking for material to build cannons. Trade in ivory was usually controlled by royal families, another indication the ship was on official business.
On the other hand, why did the captain have so many coins? Shouldn't they have been traded for the ivory and copper?
"Either he did a very, very good deal. Or he was a pirate," Noli said. "I'm convinced we'll find out what the ship was and who the captain was."
What brought the vessel down may remain a mystery. But Noli has theories, noting the stretch of coast was notorious for fierce storms and disorienting fogs.
In later years, sailors with sophisticated navigational tools avoided it. The only tools found on the wreck were astrolabes, which can be used to determine only how far north or south you have sailed.
"Sending a ship toward Africa in that period, that was venture capital in the extreme," Noli said. "These chaps were very much on the edge as far as navigation. It was still very difficult for them to know where they were."
Noli has found signs that worms were at work on the ship's timber, and sheets of lead used to patch holes, indications the ship was old when it went down.
Imagine a leaky, overladen ship caught in a storm. The copper ingots, shaped like sections of a sphere, would have sat snug, he said. But the tusks — some 50 have been found — could have shifted, tipping the ship.
"And down you go," Noli said, "weighed down by your treasure." |
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| loren1 |
Posted on May 3 2008, 01:24 PM |
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I don't know what the problem is, I just clicked it and it came up. Keep trying. I know what you mean about seed money. We can dream anyway.  |
| tonym5 |
Posted on May 3 2008, 12:20 AM |
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kept clicking on it but everytime it was blocked. This ole Pirate is indeed interested in more information. It's hard to find seed money for adventures with c.c. debt and bills to pay. |
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