'Ghost ship' washes ashore in Ireland after Storm Dennis

Yahoo – AFP, February 17, 2020

The 'ghost ship' washed ashore in southern Ireland after Storm Dennis lashed
the seas, bringing an end to her months-long voyage (AFP Photo)

Ballycotton (Ireland) (AFP) - A "ghost ship" drifting without a crew for more than a year washed ashore on Ireland's south coast in high seas caused by Storm Dennis, the Republic's coast guard said.

The abandoned 77-metre (250-feet) cargo ship MV Alta ran aground on rocks outside the village of Ballycotton near Cork, Ireland's second city, bringing an end to her months-long voyage.

The Alta's odyssey began in September 2018 when she became disabled in the mid-Atlantic en route from Greece to Haiti.

Her 10 crew members spent 20 days on board the listless ship as it floated 1,380 miles (2,220 kilometres) southeast of Bermuda, before they were taken off by the crew of a US Coast Guard cutter.

At the time the US Coast Guard said it was working with the then Tanzanian-flagged ship's owner to arrange a tug back to shore.

But the question of her subsequent movements then become clouded.

Maritime news site Fleetmon reported receiving correspondence from the alleged owner, saying the ship had been twice hijacked from Guyana in the process of being salvaged.

The next official sighting of the 44-year-old vessel came in August 2019 when British Royal Navy ice patrol ship the HMS Protector found the Alta floating crewless in the mid-Atlantic.

"We closed the vessel to make contact and offer our assistance, but no one replied," according to the ship's Twitter feed.

The Alta's journey ended on the rocks over the weekend as Storm Dennis raged, lashing Ireland with heavy rain and winds up to 110 kilometres (70 miles) per hour.

The Irish Coast Guard said a rescue helicopter was sent to the scene on Sunday but no crew was found.

Cork County Council said Monday there was no sign of pollution spills in the area around the ship and that a contractor would board the vessel at low tide on Tuesday for a further assessment.

"Consultations are continuing between the Irish Coastguard, Cork County Council, the Receiver of Wrecks and other relevant bodies in relation to the future of the wreck," it said in a statement.

Two wartime shipwrecks go missing off coast of Malaysia

DutchNews, July 8, 2019 

An unnamed Dutch submarine during the Second World War. Photo: Wikipedia

Two Dutch Second World War shipwrecks have disappeared from Malaysian waters, months after the two countries agreed to step up efforts to protect war graves. 

The two submarines are suspected to have been recovered illegally for their scrap metal value. Debris from one was found on the sea bed, while at the other site only the imprint of the wreck was visible. 

‘This news has hit us very hard,’ said defence minister Ank Bijleveld. ‘These shipwreck locations are the last resting places of those who served on them and are a place of remembrance. The relatives have been informed. 

‘Out of respect for the survivors a commemoration has been held at both sites by members of the expedition.’ 

Last year foreign affairs minister Stef Blok signed a deal with his Indonesian counterpart to locate and protect vulnerable wrecks in the Java Sea, after it emerged that three sunken ships had disappeared.

North Sea container clean-up bonus: the wreck of a 16th century ship

DutchNews, April 3, 2019

Minister Engelshoven (left) inspects some of the copper sheeting. Photo: Robbert
Frank Hagens / HH

A clean-up operation to retrieve some of the containers blown off the MSC Zoe in February from the bottom of the North Sea has revealed the remains of a 16th century ship, Nu.nl reports. 

The find, which was made public by culture minister Ingrid van Engelshoven on Wednesday, came to light when the salvage company fished out a number copper plates which they initially thought had been part of the contents of one of the containers. 

When their second haul contained a number of oak beams they called in marine archaeologists. 

The beams turned out to be made from trees cut down in 1536 while the copper plates were used to make copper coins which were later used by merchants in the Golden Age. 

The plates were found to be carrying the mark of the influential German Fugger banking and merchant family which dominated European business life in the 15th and 16th centuries. Archaeologists said it is the oldest copper cargo ever found in the Netherlands. 

The ship measures some 7.5 meters across and 25 to 30 meters in length. ‘It has a flat bottom so it could carry big loads,’ maritime archaeologist Alice Overmeer told Nu.nl. ‘It is the type of ship that was built in the northern Netherlands.’ 

Research into the wreck will continue during the summer. 

Some 345 containers were lost during the February storm on the North Sea with goods littering the beaches of the Wadden islands for weeks. Minister Van Engelshoven called the accidental discovery of the wreck ‘a silver lining’.

Dutch maritime investigators searching for missing containers washed overboard during a North Sea storm have accidentally stumbled on a 16-century shipwreck, the oldest such a find to date https://t.co/nk2BZGN2w1

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 3 april 2019

Norway makes rare discovery of Viking ship traces

Yahoo – AFP, October 15, 2018

The boatlike shape was discovered in Norway inside a Viking burial mound
using radar (AFP Photo/NIKU)

Oslo (AFP) - Archaeologists said on Monday they have found what they believe are traces of a Viking ship buried in southeast Norway, a rare discovery that could shed light on the skilled navigators' expeditions in the Middle Ages.

The boatlike shape was detected about 50 centimetres underground in a tumulus, a burial mound, with the use of a ground-penetrating radar in Halden, a municipality located southeast of Oslo.

"In the middle of the mound, we discovered what is called an anomaly, something that is different from the rest and clearly has the shapes and dimensions of a Viking ship," Knut Paasche, an archaeologist at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), told AFP.

"What we cannot say for sure is the condition of the conservation. Yes there was a boat there, but it's hard to say how much wood is left," Paasche said.

The Vikings, Northern European warriors and merchants who sailed the seas between the 8th and 11th century, would bury their kings and chiefs aboard a boat hoisted onshore and left under a mound of earth.

Only three Viking ships in good condition have been discovered in Norway in the past, including the well-preserved Oseberg ship discovered in 1903. All three of them are now exhibited in a museum near Oslo.

"We need more discoveries to explain what these boats looked like and how the Vikings would sail," Paasche said.

Left without a bow and a stern, which is the back part of a ship, the traces were discovered in Halden prior to agricultural drainage operations. They are about 20 metres long, potentially making it one of the largest Viking ships discovered in Norway, according to NIKU.

The institute says it now considering what to do with the discovery, but ruled out an excavation at this time of the year.

Curled octopus spotted off Dutch coast by divers exploring wreck

DutchNews, October 16, 2018

A rare viewing of an octopus was made in the coastal waters off Callantsoog over the weekend, Noord Hollands Nieuws reports. 

The curled octopus (Eledone cirrhosa) was discovered by diver Mark Barto who was filming a shipwreck eight kilometres off the coast.

‘I was swimming away from the wreck for a bit when I saw it sitting on the bottom of the sea. I was the only one with a camera. (..) When you meet octopuses in tropical seas they are very shy but this one I could film close up. This is why I like what I do, it really rocks!’ he told NH Nieuws. 

According to Naturalis biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra, the footage of the octopus is very special. ‘There had been no pictures so far of an curled octopus moving on the ocean floor in the Dutch part of the North Sea,’ he said.

Netherlands and Indonesia agree to protect wartime shipwrecks

Dutchnews, July 4, 2018

The Netherlands and Indonesia are to set up a joint team to protect Second World War shipwrecks being plundered on the sea bed. 

Foreign affairs minister Stef Blok said he had agreed with his Indonesian counterpart to set up a team to locate and protect vulnerable wrecks by the end of the year. 

It follows the discovery last year that three Dutch wrecks had disappeared from the bottom of the Java Sea, having apparently been taken by scrap dealers. 

At least 110 Dutch ships that were sunk during the Pacific Ocean campaign are currently lying in Indonesian waters. On a visit to Jakarta, Blok said the Indonesian government was aware of the cultural significance of the shipwreck sites to the Netherlands. 

The locations of the three missing vessels – the SNLMS De Ruyter, Java and Kortenaer – will be marked as commemorative sites. The ships were sunk by the Japanese fleet in 1942, with the loss of around 1,100 sailors.

17th century Dutch shipwreck gives up more of its secrets

DutchNews, November 24, 2017

Archaeologists at the site of the find. Photo: University of Western Australia 

The ill-fated Dutch ship Batavia which sank after striking a reef off the Western Australian coast in 1629 has given up more of its secrets. 

An international team of archaeologists, including scientists from the University of Western Australia, the Western Australian Museum and the University of Amsterdam, has discovered a new communal grave in the Abrolhos Islands containing the bodies of five of the survivors.

 ‘These people probably died shortly after the shipwreck,’, archaeologist Liesbeth Smits told Trouw. ‘They died of hunger or from drinking salt water. We didn’t find any evidence of a violent death, which we saw on the remains we found earlier.’ 

The newly built VOC ship, on its way to Batavia, was doomed from the start. Commander Francois Pelsaert, a merchant but in charge of the ship, and his captain Adriaan Jakobsz did not see eye to eye and the latter conspired to hijack the ship which was laden with valuable merchandise and money. 

Wrecked

But a navigational mistake put paid to his plan and the Batavia was wrecked in 1629 on the Morning Reef off the Western Australian coast. The 282 survivors ended up on a small coral island termed ‘Batavia’s Graveyard’ – Beacon Island. In the following months a mutiny unfolded, leading to the deaths of around 115 people, many of whom were murdered by the mutineers. 

The communal grave was discovered earlier this month and was made up of five sets of human remains, along with various artefacts. 

Now, Smits is going to try to find out where the five men came from. ‘We are going to look at the chemical composition of the enamel on their teeth. This is formed during the first years of life and doesn’t change with age. All sorts of chemicals from the environment of your birth end up in there, via food among other things. These chemical elements can tell us very accurately where these people grew up,’ she told Trouw. 

International 

The method was used on other remains as well and showed the VOC, which was the first multinational company in the world, was a truly international company with French and British crew members. 

Jeremy Green, head of maritime archaeology at the Western Australian Museum, who has been investigating the Batavia and the story of its survivors since the wreck’s discovery more than 50 years ago, says the grave constitutes yet another piece of the ship’s tumultuous history. 

‘This latest find adds significantly to the wealth of information we have on Batavia, and shows that there are still very important discoveries to be made about the remarkable human story behind one of Australia’s oldest known shipwrecks,’ he said.

Bones, silver found in 18th-century Dutch wreck off UK

Yahoo – AFP, August 18, 2017

A diver works on the wreck of the Rooswijk, a Dutch East India Company ship
which sank in 1740, on the sea bed off the coast of Ramsgate, southeast England,
in a picture released by Historic England in London on August 18, 2017 (AFP Photo/)

London (AFP) - Maritime archaeologists said Friday they have begun excavating the wreck of a Dutch ship that sank off the English coast in 1740, recovering leather shoes, silver and the bones of its lost crew.

The Rooswijk, a Dutch East India Company ship, was on its way to what is now Jakarta when it went down with around 300 people and a large cargo of silver ingots and coinage aboard.

Following its discovery in 2005, most of the precious goods were removed, but a full excavation is now underway due to concerns it could be destroyed by shifting sands and currents.

Remains of some of the sailors who perished have been found preserved on the seabed 26 metres (85 feet) down, along with more coins, leather shoes, an oil lamp, glass bottles, pewter jugs and spoons and ornately carved knife handles.

"It's a snapshot of a moment in time," said Alison James, a maritime archaeologist at the Historic England cultural agency, while one her colleagues said it was like "an underwater Pompeii".

The items brought ashore for conservation also include wooden seaman's chests which will be x-rayed to see if they are contain cargo or personal possessions.

James told AFP it was a remarkable site: "It's incredibly well-preserved, it's a very early wreck and there's a lot of material on the seabed."

The wreck is under the legal protection and management of the British government, although the excavation is led and financed by the Dutch government, which also owns any finds.

The project is the largest of its scale on a ship from the Dutch East India Company, which lost a total of 250 vessels to shipwreck -- of which only a third have been located.

Secrets of the deep: Senegal's slave shipwreck detective

Yahoo – AFP, Jennifer O'MAHONY, 17 Aug 2017

Secrets of the deep: Senegal's slave shipwreck detective

Dakar (AFP) - Staring out to sea on a flawlessly sunny day, underwater archaeologist Ibrahima Thiaw visualises three shipwrecks once packed with slaves that now lie somewhere beneath Senegal's Atlantic waves.

He wants more than anything to find them.

Thiaw has spent years scouring the seabed off the island of Goree, once a west African slaving post, never losing hope of locating the elusive vessels with a small group of graduate students from Dakar's Cheikh Anta Diop University.

Goree was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast between the 15th and 19th century, according to the UN's cultural agency UNESCO, and Thiaw believes his mission has a moral purpose: to heal the open wounds that slavery has left on the continent.

"This is not just for the fun of research or scholarship. It touches us and our humanity and I think that slavery in its afterlife still has huge scars on our modern society," he said, pulling on a wetsuit and rubber boots for the day's first dive.

Thiaw believes his native Senegal, with its own long and violent history of trade in human flesh, could tell the world more about how modern capitalism was founded on violence inflicted on African bodies.

"The Atlantic slave trade was the foundation of our modernity, so this is a history for all mankind," he added, referring to the so-called "Triangular Trade" of human labour for consumer goods between Africa, the Americas and Europe.

After making final checks on the magnetometer that will run up and down a painstakingly designated strip of seabed for traces of wreckage, Thiaw disappears under the surface of the dark green waves.

1,000 slave shipwrecks

African nations affected by the slave trade have never fully come to terms with it, Thiaw believes, and even today in countries like Senegal, a caste of people still refer to themselves as slaves.

The horrors of the so-called Middle Passage, or journey across the Atlantic, not only industrialised the trade of people but ripped entire societies from their roots.

"The umbilical cord between Africa and its diaspora was broken and in the ocean (slaves) were being seasoned to be other people, to adapt to other conditions," he notes.

Thiaw, who originates from a rural area of Senegal but went on to study in the United States, had become known for his research into slaves' living conditions on Goree island when he was approached three years ago by the US National Park Service and National Museum of African American History and Culture to find a west African base for their "Slave Wrecks" project.

They offered dive training, equipment and expertise and had already helped establish similar dive sites in Mozambique and South Africa, with one historic success.

Artifacts, including shackles and ballasts from the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa, a Portuguese slave vessel that sank in 1794 with more than 200 slaves on board, were dredged up off the coast of Cape Town in 2015.

Around 1,000 slave shipwrecks are believed to dot the seabed between Africa and the Americas, according to "Slave Wrecks" researchers, but few have been found.

Today's dive, like dozens before it, was unsuccessful.

Precious clues

"We found a modern shipwreck, a big one," the powerfully built Thiaw said, seawater running down his face, but "it's not really what we are looking for."

The trio of wrecks Thiaw seeks -- the Nanette, the Bonne Amitie and the Racehorse -- all disappeared off Goree in the 18th century, taking with them crucial evidence of how enslaved Africans were carried across the harrowing Middle Passage.

The key is building a team of Senegalese archaeological divers who will dedicate themselves to the task, as some of his students graduate and move on.

The overwhelming majority of slave ships were repurposed and simply rotted away after abolition, meaning the slave shipwrecks preserved by the sea will provide precious clues.

'Silence' around slavery

Thiaw complains that there is a lack of interest within Senegal for his work, especially at the institutional level where, he said, there was "very little funding for research".

"I think in Senegal there's a lot of silence surrounding the issue but I think the time is ripe that we start to teach our students and our children how to respect people of different or lower status, slave caste," he said.

Discrimination remains a problem in the country, with some people still referred to as slaves using the word "jaam" in the country's majority Wolof language.

"There are still people, who are still known to be slaves," he said. "Some of them would even tell you proudly: 'yes, I am a slave'."

Thiaw wants his nation to unflinchingly analyse "the most painful aspects of our history and the contradiction of our history", especially the lingering elements of a class system that designated some Senegalese as worthy only of serving others.

Senegal's past lies somewhere on the seabed between Dakar and Goree, but perhaps also its future.

"We know they are there," Thiaw said.

Migrant rescuers, island mayor win UNESCO peace prize

Yahoo – AFP, Ella IDE, April 19, 2017

Migrants are rescued off the coast of Libya by SOS Mediterranee's Aquarius
vessel in May 2016 (AFP Photo/GABRIEL BOUYS)

Rome (AFP) - UNESCO awarded its prestigious peace prize on Wednesday to migrant rescue association SOS Mediterranee and the mayor of Lampedusa, the tiny Italian island on the frontline of the refugee crisis.

The Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize goes to the European NGO and mayor Giuseppina Nicolini "for their work to save the lives of refugees and migrants and welcome them with dignity," the UN cultural body said in a statement.

The plight of migrants constitutes "one of the crucial issues of our day, notably in the Mediterranean where nearly 13,000 men, women and children have perished in shipwrecks since 2013," said acting jury head Joaquim Chissano, former president of Mozambique.

Lampedusa, Italy's most southerly outpost, was the first port of arrival for thousands of migrants setting off from North Africa in the first years of the crisis, which began in 2011 and has developed into the worst since World War II.

SOS Mediterranee, founded in 2015, rescues hundreds of men, women and children each week from flimsy dinghies and boats in the Mediterranean, along with other NGOs.

Nicolini was recognised for "her boundless humanity and unwavering commitment to refugee crisis management and integration in response to the arrival of thousands of refugees on the shores of Lampedusa and elsewhere in Italy".

The mayor of Lampedusa, Giuseppina Nicolini, has been recognised for her

work at the frontline of the refugee crisis (AFP Photo/ANDREAS SOLARO)

'Watery grave'

"I dedicate this prize to all those who did not make it across the sea because they were swallowed up, and also to Gabriele Del Grande," said Nicolini, referring to an Italian journalist arrested in Turkey this month while researching the lives of Syrian refugees.

"He was the first to count the Mediterranean's dead on a website, back when nobody even knew people were dying in the Mediterranean. He is now a prisoner in Turkey," she said, calling on the government to "bring him home".

The jury said SOS Mediterranee's Aquarius vessel, co-run by Doctors Without Borders, had saved more than 11,000 lives since it began search and rescue missions off Lampedusa in early 2016.

"We're so happy to be given this award together with Nicolini. We visited her when we were starting up and she said 'you are crazy but I am with you, because this is what we need after the failures of the EU'," said Sophie Beau, SOS Mediterranee co-founder.

The jury appealed to the international community "to ensure that the Mediterranean sea becomes, once again, a place where solidarity and intercultural dialogue hold sway, and that it ceases to serve as a watery grave".

Private rescue vessels sounded the alarm this weekend over the "unprecedented mass rescues" of people fleeing horrors in conflict-torn Libya, recovering seven bodies including that of an eight-year-old, and warning more migrants risked drowning without EU action.

Close to 37,000 people have been brought to safety in Italy so far this year, a 45 percent increase on the same period in 2016.

Migrants waiting to disembark from the Aquarius which has saved more than

11,000 lives since early 2016, the jury said (AFP Photo/Giovanni ISOLINO)

Solidarity

The EU's border control agency Frontex has accused donor-funded vessels of doing more harm than good by acting "like taxis" off Libya and tempting human traffickers to put as many people as possible out to sea in flimsy vessels.

Italian prosecutors have suggested they may have links with traffickers and in March named SOS Mediterranee's activity as being of interest to investigators, along with other private rescue vessels.

Their charges have been fiercely rejected by the NGOs, with SOS Mediterranee saying Wednesday it had "never, not once" been put in contact with migrants via smugglers.

"European governments need to show more solidarity to the humanitarian organisations that are working on the front line of this humanitarian crisis. Border control is not the solution," said Regina Catrambone, the director of MOAS rescue service.

UNESCO's Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize, created in 1989 to honour those making a significant contribution to peace, has gone in the past to Nelson Mandela, Israel's Shimon Peres and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, King Juan Carlos of Spain and former US president Jimmy Carter.

VOC ship sunk off the coast of England in 1740 to be investigated

DutchNews, April 18, 2017

Coins salvaged from the Rooswijk were sold on Ebay in 2007

A Dutch ship laden with chests of silver which sunk off the coast of England in 1740 is to be partly excavated and its cargo recovered, the education ministry said on Tuesday. 

The Rooswijk was a VOC ship and sunk close to the Goodwin Sands sandbank on its way to Asia in a heavy storm. The ship had a crew of some 350 and was laden with silver and coins to trade. 

The wreck is now threatened by shifts in the current and a project to extract sand from the area, the Telegraaf said on Tuesday. The Netherlands and England have therefore decided to carry out a proper survey of the ship and its spoils, which will take place from July 1 to October. 

Education minister Jet Bussemaker said there is increasing awareness of the importance of wrecks as part of the Dutch identity. Wrecks, she said, are ‘time capsules’ full of stories. 

‘The two century history of the VOC is part of our collective memory, including all we are proud of, but also what we are now ashamed of,’ she said. 

Divers first found and explored the wreck in 2004. In 2005, they recovered one thousand bars of silver, gold coins and a mustard jar which were given to the Dutch government. 

VOC

The Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC (Dutch East India Company) was established in 1602 when it was given a 21-year monopoly to trade with Asia. It went on to trade throughout Asia for two centuries before being dissolved in 1798. 

The VOC is often described as the world’s first multinational corporation and was also the first company to issue stocks.

Fossils of 12 million year old whales found off Dutch coast

DutchNews, April 10, 2017

Fossils of five previously unknown species of marine mammals have been discovered off the Dutch coast. 

The fossils date back 12 million years and include the remains of the oldest direct ancestor of the blue whale. 

Fisherman and amateur fossil expert Klaas Post discovered the site, in the Westerschelde estuary near Terneuzen, in 2014. The area is around 30 metres below the surface and a few hundred metres wide, but was inaccessible until now because of shipwrecks. 

Last autumn fossils dating back around 40 million years were found near Walcheren. They include a primitive species of whale with distinctive back legs.

Three missing Dutch warships in Java Sea were salvaged for scrap

DutchNews, February 13, 2017

The HNLMS Kortenaer in the 1930s 

Three Dutch naval wrecks that went missing from the bottom of the Java Sea appear to have been taken illegally by scrap dealers, NOS reports. 

An investigation by Dutch and Indonesian experts found evidence of a salvage operation at the sites where cruisers SNLMS De Ruyter, Java and Kortenaer were sunk by Japanese ships in 1942, with the loss of around 1,100 sailors. 

Prime minister Mark Rutte asked the Indonesian government to investigate after divers reported in December that the wrecks had vanished. 

Photographs of the seabed and interviews led researchers to the conclusion that the ships had been deliberately removed. Education and science minister Jet Bussemaker said a detailed study of the seabed would now be carried out. 

In total seven shipwrecks have disappeared from the Java Sea. Divers made the discovery during preparations for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Java Sea which involved Dutch, Indonesian, British, American and Australian warships. 

A total of 2,200 Allied servicemen died, including 900 Dutch and 250 Indonesian nationals. The battle led to the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies. 

Related Article:

Indonesia says not to blame for missing WWII shipwrecks

Indonesia says not to blame for missing WWII shipwrecks

Yahoo – AFP, Dessy Sagita, November 17, 2016

The Dutch and Indonesian naval commanders laid a wreath during a 2014 ceremony
 to commemorate the 1150 sailors who died in the Battle of the Java Sea in
1942 (AFP Photo)

Jakarta (AFP) - Indonesia refused to take the blame Thursday for the disappearance of at least six British and Dutch World War II shipwrecks -- considered war graves -- that investigators believe could have been salvaged for scrap.

Former colonial ruler The Netherlands has launched a probe into how three Dutch navy ships seemingly vanished from the bed of the Java Sea, while Britain has urged Indonesia to investigate what has happened to three of its vessels.

It is believed the military wrecks -- lost in 1942 during the Battle of the Java Sea -- were removed by illegal scavengers looking for scrap metal, an effort that could have taken years.

More than 900 Dutch and 250 Indo-Dutch sailors died during the battle in which the Allied navies suffered a disastrous defeat by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Indonesian authorities have sought to distance themselves from the mystery, saying they could not be expected to protect the sites without assistance.

"The Dutch government cannot blame the Indonesian government because they never asked us to protect those ships," said Bambang Budi Utomo, head of the National Archeological Centre under the Ministry of Education and Culture.

"As there was no agreement or announcement, when the ships go missing, it is not our responsibility."

Amateur divers in 2002 discovered the long-lost wrecks of three Dutch ships, 60 years after they sank while in action against Japanese forces.

But an international expedition that sailed to the wreck site ahead of next year's 75th anniversary of the battle was shocked to discover the wrecks had vanished.

Britain expressed its distress at the disappearance of its own warships and asked Indonesia to "take appropriate action" to protect the sites from further disturbance.

But Utomo said Indonesia did not have the resources to maintain a constant patrol over its vast archipelago, a hotspot for other criminal enterprises like illegal fishing and people smuggling.

Row over naval war graves (AFP Photo)

'Looters are fearless'

Treasure hunters and scrap collectors are lured to Indonesia's relic-rich seas, experts say, where countless vessels have gone to a watery grave over centuries of trade, colonial conquest and war.

"Looting is really huge, not only on these World War II shipwrecks, but also on ancient shipwrecks," said Veronique Degroot, a Jakarta-based archaeologist.

The prize find for scavengers targeting the warships would be the huge bronze propellers used to power these juggernauts -- a far more lucrative find than iron or other scrap, according to Utomo.

"The looting must have been going on for years for such a huge ship to disappear," he said.

"Looters are fearless," he added, saying that divers risked death and injury sucking air through tubes to retrieve valuable scrap and antiquities, taking the wreck apart piece by piece.

While some larger, commercial operations use cranes and platforms to wrench heavy loads from the seabed, smaller ventures keep a low profile as they ship metal to scrapyards along Indonesia's thousands of kilometres of coastline.

Australia has been working closely with Indonesia to protect HMAS Perth -- which sunk off Java in World War II, claiming hundreds of lives -- after discovering in 2013 that the warship was being plundered for brass.

A spokesman for the Indonesian navy said the missing ships should not have been disturbed as they were war graves.

"However, the Indonesian navy cannot monitor all areas all the time," spokesman Gig Jonias Mozes Sipasulta told AFP.

"If they ask why the ships are missing, I'm going to ask them back, why didn't they guard the ships? They should have been more proactive."

Naval warships and war graves are protected under international law that makes the desecration of such shipwrecks illegal.

The HNLMS Kortenaer in the 1930s

Related Articles:

British start investigation into vanished Java Sea ships

British second world war shipwrecks in Java Sea destroyed by illegal scavenging

British start investigation into vanished Java Sea ships

DutchNews, November 17, 2016

The HNLMS Kortenaer in the 1930s 

The British authorities have started an investigation into the disappearance of seven shipwrecks – including three Dutch navy vessels – from the Java Sea. 

Earlier this week, Dutch defence minister Jeanine Hennis said the wrecks of cruisers HNLMS De Ruyter and HMLMS Java and much of destroyer HMLMS Kortenaer has vanished from the sea bed. 

The Guardian newspaper then reported that three British ships and a US submarine have also been destroyed by illegal scrap metal scavengers. 

The British government has now contacted Indonesian authorities to express ‘serious concern’ and request they investigate and take ‘appropriate action to protect the sites from any further disturbance’, the paper said. 

The discovery of the illegal salvage was made by divers during preparations for next year’s 75 year anniversary commemorations, Hennis said in a statement to parliament. 

The battle, involving Dutch, British, American and Australian ships, took place on February 27, 1942 and proved disastrous for the allies. Some 2,200 people died, including 900 Dutch nationals and 250 people of Indonesian Dutch origin. 

Related Article:

British second world war shipwrecks in Java Sea destroyed by illegal scavenging

Whey to go: 17th-century cheese found in Baltic wreck

Yahoo – AFP, Gael Branchereau, July 28, 2016

Divers exploring the historic royal shipwreck "Kronan" off the south-east coast
 of Sweden have discovered 340-year-old cheese buried in the sea bed below
the wreckage (AFP Photo)

Stockholm (AFP) - Divers searching the wreck of a 17th-century Swedish warship on the bed of the Baltic say they have found de Brie.

Sifting through the ancient timbers of the Kronan, a ship that sank in 1676 off the Swedish coast, they found not diamonds as they had hoped... but a cheese.

Inside a watertight pot was a semi-firm 340-year-old "dairy product" smelling of yeast and Roquefort cheese, expedition leader Lars Einarsson told AFP on Thursday.

"Unlike the others, I find its smell is quite pleasant," he said. "It smells of life."

The unusual find is being sent to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences for tests.

The Kronan (Crown) sank off the island of Oeland, southeastern Sweden on June 1, 1676 in a battle with a Danish-Dutch fleet.

Squabbling officers and too much sail caused the ship to capsize and then explode. Only about 40 of the 800 crew survived.

The wreck was found in 1980 by Anders Franzen, an amateur naval archaeologist who 24 years earlier discovered the warship Vasa, which sank in 1628 in Stockholm port on its maiden voyage.

The Vasa's timbers were brought to the surface -- the ship, housed in a maritime museum in Stockholm, is now one of Sweden's star attractions.

This handout picture shows the wreckage of Kronan at the bottom of the Baltic

sea of the coast of southern Sweden (AFP Photo)

But in the Kronan's case, the blast was so powerful that pieces of the ship were scattered over a wide area of seabed. Fishing nets, minesweeping and the forces of the sea have added to the dispersal.

Around 80 percent of the estimated site has been explored, revealing a trove of treasure and historical artefacts.

Around 30,000 items have been brought to the surface so far, including bronze cannon, chests, dishes, navigational instruments and a German-made trumpet, as well as diamonds and gold coins.

Divers have also found flour, animal bones, liquor and wine — items that are a potential bonanza for historians eager for insights into how food was made centuries ago.

The cheese survived thanks to the chill and low salinity of the Baltic and the fact that it lay under a thick layer of sediment, which protected the pot from corrosion.

In 2010, divers recovered 145 bottles of vintage Champagne from the wreck of a ship that sank off the Finnish archipelago of Aland between 1825 and 1830.