The Presidents Corner by Matt Rownin

Transcription

1 FAIRFIELD COUNTY DIVING ASSOCIATION August 2013 Volume 20 Issue 8 Inside this Issue The Presidents Corner by Matt Rownin page 1 FCDA Donors I page 2 July Meeting Raffle Winners page 3 Events of Interest to FCDA Members page 3 FCDA Member Ads page 3 Shark Week Up Close and Personnel pages 4 FCDA Donors II page 4 Explorers find Dozens of U-boats off United Kingdom Coast pages 5,6 Team Examining Gulf Shipwreck finds 2 other Wrecks by Michael Graczyk pages 7,8 Divers Ready to Recover more Queen Anne s Revenge Artifacts by Bob Townsend pages 9 Next FCDA Meeting page 10 The Presidents Corner by Matt Rownin Calling all Amateurs Presenters that is. The time has come once again to strut your stuff at our Annual Members Presents Night at the FCDA in September. So dust off those old videos the ones about diving only apply and let Mike or I know if you want to sign up. The presentation should be about minutes in length and can be P h o t o, Video or Things you have found and want to talk a b o u t. Don t be shy and better yet don t delay sign up now!!!! Shark Week is back and oh yes it has plenty of shows on the famous Great Whites which are now more and more prevalent off our own shores right here in our back yard. I am glad to see though there is not as much of a focus on shark attacks but more on general shark info and preservation. It s two days into it now and my DVR is busting so I have plenty to catch up so this Presidents Corner will be quick..the sharks are calling. So get your fill and the next time you are on the line doing a deco or safety stop take a look in the great beyond and wonder what is out there that you can t see but they can see YOU!!! In the theme of Sharks our next meeting is the Movie night and we will be showing the academy award winning, Emmy nominee and critically acclaimed SHARKTOPUS.It s half Shark, half Octopus what more could you ask for. Come down early for a warm-up BBQ and bring your own meat to put on the grill. Til next time.. Matt

2 Page 2 FCDA Donors The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association. New England's Tech Diving Center! New England Dive Center 476 North Colony Street Wallingford, CT Fax Dealer for OMS, UWATEC, Oceanic, Mares, Dacor, C r e s s i - S u b, P o s e i d o n, Scubapro, Bare, O ' N e i l l a n d Henderson. P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT Internet mail: fcda@aol.com Presidents 2013 Board Matt Rownin & Mike Cassetta Vice-President Mark Shannon Secretary Treasurer Charles Blanchette Paul J. Gacek The region's foremost source for scuba and technical diving gear, t r a i n i n g a n d everything for the r e c r e a t i o n a l o r serious tech diver. Draeger Atlantis I Rebreather training, certification and rental. New England Dive Center offers complete training for all levels of diving, from Open Water through the most advanced technical courses. Our instruction provides certification through SSI, PDIC, TDI and IANTD. Visit us on the Web:

3 Page 3 After a presentation on Diving Long Island Sound by Captain Noel Voroba, the club held its regular raffle to support our DAN Platinum sponsorship. The winners were: Rash Guard Tee Shirt donated by New England Dive Center - Tom Thomes; Survival ParCord Bracelet donated by New England Dive Center - Tim Tho- July Meeting Raffle Winners mas; Microfiber Towel donated by New England Dive Center - John Beninati; a Akona Dive Mask donated by Orbit Marine Dive Center Sal Florio; Dry Bag donated by Rex Marine Dive Center John Beninati; Defog Scrub Combo Pack donate by New England Dive Center; Bob Sawczuk; Pulsar Light donated by New England Dive Events of Interest to FCDA Members Center Bob Sawczuk. Thanks to New England Dive Center and Orbit Marine Dive Center for donating tonight s raffle prizes for our DAN raffle. Remember, you can't win if you don't buy tickets and you can't buy tickets if you don't get up and come out to FCDA events and meetings! Sept Annual Cape Ann Trip Sept Cape Ann Campground. Contact Mel Rich at or him at nutechpest@mac.com Oct. 20 Annual Underwater Pumpkin Carving/Beach Cleanup 11:00am FCDA Member Ads Hey - have you got a non retail-diving business that you d like to share with fellow members of FCDA? Get your business card size ad in the FCDA monthly newsletter Surface Interval for only $50.00 for one year. Give your business a boost and help support the production of our monthly newsletters. For more information, write to FCDA, P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT or to fcda@aol.com.

4 Page 4 Shark Week Up Close and Personal FCDA Donors The businesses listed on this page have donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association. Have you been in the water lately? Cape Ann Anyone???

5 Page 5 Explorers find Dozens of WWI U-Boats off United Kingdom Coast On the old game show "What's My Line?" Briton Mark Dunkley might have been described with the following words: "He does what many adventurers around the world can only dream of doing." ANZEIGE Dunkley is an underwater archeologist who dives for lost treasures. His most recent discoveries were anything if not eerie. On the seafloor along the southern and eastern coasts of the UK, Dunkley and three other divers have found one of the largest graveyards in the world's oceans, with 41 German and three English submarines from World War I. Most of the submarines sank with their crews still on board, causing many sailors to die in horrific ways, either by drowning or suffocating in the cramped and airtight submarines. Several U-boats with the German Imperial Navy are still considered missing today. Lists provide precise details on which of the U-boats the German naval forces had lost by the time the war ended in November But it was completely unclear what had happened, for example, to UB 17, a subway crewed by 21 men under the command of naval Lieutenant Albert Branscheid. Neither was it clear where the 27-member crew of UC a minelayer commanded by naval Lieutenant Werner von Zerboni di Sposetti -- had perished. Securing British and German Heritage But now things have changed. Dunkley and his team of divers found UB 17 off England's east coast, near the county of Suffolk. UC 21 sank nearby. The fate of many other submarines, especially those that had suddenly disappeared in the last two years of the war, can now be considered known. All of the sunken U-boats are relatively close to the coast, at depths of no more than 15 meters (about 50 feet). The diving archeologists will undoubtedly find the remains of sailors with the German Imperial Navy inside the wrecks. In the language of archeology, such finds are referred to as "disaster samples." In any case, the divers will be searching for signs of the crewmembers that died inside the U -boats. "We owe it to these people to tell their story," says Dunkley. He works for English Heritage, a public body that is part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its primary mission is to secure Britain's cultural heritage. The British could see it as a peculiar irony of history that these measures are now benefiting the heritage of their former enemy. Since the Germans attacked civilian targets in World War I, British propaganda derisively referred to the submarines as "baby killers." "Many have forgotten how successful the German U-boat fleet was for a time," says Dunkley -- an assessment that is by no means intended to glorify the German attacks. In fact, one of the goals of the most recent English Heritage project is to remind people that, although they might be more familiar with submarine warfare from World War II, the ships also caused considerable devastation in the previous world war. A Slowly Embraced Weapon Indeed, it had practically vanished from popular memory that the Germans caused great losses to their main enemy, Great Britain, in World War I through targeted torpedo strikes against the British Merchant Navy. At the beginning of the war, there were only 28 U-boats under the supreme command of Kaiser Wilhelm II, a tiny number compared to the Allied fleet. At first, many political decisionmakers in Berlin were unclear about exactly how the military devices, which were still novel at the time, could be used. Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz had such a low opinion of the importance of the steel diving vessels that he even referred to them as a "secondary weapon." An operations order signed by Kaiser Wilhelm on July 30, 1914 also assigned a secondary role to the U- boats at first. Under the order, they were to be used primarily to engage hostile ships in naval battles with the Imperial High Seas Fleet, which had been upgraded at considerable cost. But after a German U-boat sank three English armored cruisers, an unbridled enthusiasm erupted in the German Empire for this still relatively untested form of naval warfare. A large number of volunteers signed up for submarine duty, even though serving in the cramped cabins was practically a suicide mission at the time, especially in comparison with the types of underwater vessels used

6 Page 6 Explorers find Dozens of WWI U-Boats off United Kingdom Coast (continued) in World War II and, even more so, today's submarines. The conditions inside the boats were claustrophobic and extremely hot. There were cases in which entire crews were wiped out when a torpedo misfired. Likewise, since aiming torpedoes was still such an imprecise science, the submarines had to come dangerously close to enemy warships. And if spotted, they became easy prey: Early submarines moved through the water so slowly that enemy warships could easily take up pursuit and sink the attackers, either with depth charges or by ramming. In fact, some 187, or almost half, of the 380 U-boats used by the German navy in World War I were lost. A Race Against Time Dunkley and his colleagues examine the wrecks with ultrasound sonar devices they wear on their wrists like watches. The devices allow them to measure wall thickness and determine the extent to which corrosion has already eaten away at a ship's hull. Measures to secure the vessels are urgently needed, says Dunkley. Since the U-boat graveyard at sea is gradually disintegrating, time is of the essence for the archeologists. Under the strict guidelines of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heri- tage, the World War I wrecks sitting on the seafloor are currently not even considered archeological artifacts deserving special protection. The disintegrating war machines are currently just shy of the 100 years required to attain this status. For this reason, Dunkley's team is trying to wrest as many secrets as possible from the wrecks in the coming months. In cases where mines or torpedoes have torn large holes into the vessels, the archeologists can even peer inside. When this is not the case, robotic vehicles will cut open the hatches of the steel coffins and go inside. "We divers only approach the boats with great caution. Venturing inside would definitely be extremely dangerous," Dunkley says. It is hard to determine how almost a century of lying in place, as well as sedimentary deposits, have changed the structural integrity of the wrecks. If a U-boat turns over as a result of the divers' movements, its narrow corridors could become deathtraps. The treatment of the crews' remains is also complicated. By law, the sites are considered inviolable gravesites. Nevertheless, the archeologists don't want to miss the opportunity to try to recover other signs of the erstwhile sailors in the underwater crypts. "Perhaps we'll find a cup or a sign with a name on it," Dunkley says. Attacking and Sinking in Groups The marine archeologists were struck by the fact that sometimes two or three German U-boats were found lying in close proximity to one another. For historians, this serves as evidence of a certain German combat strategy in an especially drastic phase of the U-boat war. In February 1917, the Imperial Navy had altered its strategy and was now torpedoing and firing guns at British commercial ships on a large scale. The Royal Navy reacted by providing the freighters with warship escorts, as well as using airships and aircraft to spot enemy submarines from above. German military strategists devised a plan to break up these massive convoys: attacking the naval convoys with several U-boats at the same time. But the strategy was difficult to implement because it was very difficult to coordinate such complex maneuvers at the time. Historians are divided over whether the convoy system ultimately saved the United Kingdom from defeat or whether it was the United States' entry into the war on April 6, Before then, the British had relied on creativity to fend off U-boats and other enemy ships. The hulls of their own ships were painted with confusing patterns designed by artists at the Royal Academy in London. But there is no historical evidence to prove that this measure saved even a single ship from the German torpedoes. Reprint from Foxnews.com

7 Page 7 Team Examining Gulf Shipwreck finds 2 other Wrecks by Michael Graczyk Marine archaeologists made a thrilling discovery this week while examining a wellpreserved shipwreck deep in the Gulf of Mexico two other sunken vessels that likely went down with it during an early 19th century storm. Much isn't known about the ships, including the flag or flags they sailed under and the year they sank about 170 miles southeast of Galveston. They came to rest 4,363 feet, or nearly three-quarters of a mile, below the surface, making them the deepest Gulf or North American shipwrecks to have been systematically investigated by archaeologists, the researchers said. "What you're going to see and hear I hope will blow your mind. Because it has ours," lead investigator Fritz Hanselmann told reporters at a Thursday news conference in which the team revealed its initial findings. "We went out with a lot of questions and we returned with even more. The big question we're all asking is: What is the shipwreck? And the answer is we still don't know," said Hanselmann, a researcher from Texas State University in San Marcos' Meadows Center for Water and the Environment. Artifiacts including ceramic plates, platters, bowls plus glass liquor, wine, medicine, and food storage bottles of many shapes and colors found inside a wrecked ship's hull, in the Gulf of Mexico about 170 from Galveston, Texas. During eight days of exploration that ended Wednesday, the scientists used remo te - controlled machines to recover more than 60 artifacts from the initial shipwreck site, including musket parts, ceramic cups and dishes, liquor bottles, clothing and even a toothbrush. The artifacts, including china from Britain, ceramics from Mexico and at least one musket from Canada, will help researchers determine the ships' histories, Hanselmann said. "Nationalities, cultures, all collide in these shipwrecks. We hope to return in the future next year with more work," he said. Although they weren't allowed to retrieve artifacts from the two new sites under the terms of their agreement to examine the initial one, the researchers took thousands of photos and closely examined the wreckage of all three ships, which came to rest within five miles of one another. Two of the ships were carrying similar items, and researchers believe they may have been privateers, or armed ships that governments would hire, Hanselmann said. The third vessel was loaded with hides and large bricks of tallow, suggesting that it may have been a prize seized by the privateers. The artifacts are headed for preservation work at a Texas A&M University research facility. "For now, there's lot of conjecture, lots of hypotheses," said Jim Delgado, the director of the Maritime Heritage Program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We may have answered some questions, but we have a large number of new questions. But that's archaeology." (Continued on page 8)

8 Page 8 Team Examining Gulf Shipwreck finds 2 other Wrecks by Michael Graczyk (continued) (Continued from page 7) Delgado said the ships likely went down during the first two decades of the 1800s, which was a time of great upheaval in the Gulf region and in the New World, in general. "Empires were falling, Spain was losing its grip, France was selling what it has, Mexico becomes independent, Texas independent, Latin America becomes independent and the U.S. is beginning to make a foothold in the Gulf," he said. "So these wrecks are all tied to that, we are sure." It's likely each ship was carrying 50 to 60 men and that none of them survived. Among the wreckage were telescopes and other navigational tools that survivors likely wouldn't have left behind if they could have helped it, the researchers said. Delgado said the ship the team set out to examine was armed with six cannons and may have had two masts. Undersea images show the outline of a copper-clad, 84-foot-long by 26- foot-wide wooden hull. A Shell Oil Co. survey crew notified federal Interior Department officials in 2011 that its sonar had detected something resembling a shipwreck. It also detected some other material. "Like a medical ultrasound, interpreting can be difficult," said Jack Irion, of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. "This case is the same way. You can't tell if it's an historic shipwreck or just a pile of stuff." A year later, a National Oce- anic and Atmospheric Administration vessel examining seafloor habitat and naturally occurring gas seepage used a remote-controlled vehicle to briefly examine the wreck. Besides determining the ship's dimensions, the examination showed it to be undisturbed and likely from the early 19th century. That ship has been dubbed the "Monterrey Shipwreck," adopting the name Shell had proposed for its development site. Researchers have examined several other historically significant Gulf shipwrecks in recent years. In 1995, after a more than decade-long hunt, Texas Historical Commission archaeologists found one of famed French explorer La Salle's vessels in a coastal bay between Galveston and Corpus Christi. The remains of the LaBelle, which went down in a storm in 1686, have been recovered and are undergoing an unusual freeze-drying treatment at Texas A&M. The ship is to be reconstructed next year and become a centerpiece of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin. Earlier this year, researchers used special 3-D imagery to map the remains of the USS Hatteras, which was the only U.S. Navy ship sunk in the Gulf of Mexico in combat during the Civil War. The 210-foot iron-hulled ship went down in 1863 about 20 miles off the Galveston coast during a runin with a Confederate raiding vessel. Researchers believe that heavy storms in recent years shifted the sea floor sand and exposed the wreckage, which rests 57 feet below the surface. Reprint from U.S. News on NBCNEWS.com

9 Divers ready to recover more Queen Anne's Revenge artifacts By: Bob Townsend Page 9 ATLANTIC BEACH, NC (WECT) - He was a real-life pirate of the Caribbean and his reputation was known and feared. Now, almost 300 years after his death, marine archaeologists have been recovering artifacts from Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, located just off the North Carolina coastline. The items recovered will go through an extensive conservation effort before going on public display. This week, divers are scheduled to head back to the wreck site, in hopes of bringing up more artifacts. If divers are successful in lifting more cannons from the QAR site, they would join more than a dozen other cannons that have been retrieved since the wreckage was discovered in However, since they have been underwater for almost 300 years, everything is encrusted with a substance similar to concrete. Many of the items recovered are called artifact conglomerates, or clusters of metallic objects, which have stuck together as they deteriorated. All of the wreck site has been explored, and more than half of the artifacts have been recovered. In addition to bringing up large items, the teams have been affixing experimental zinc anodes to any large metal items they are not yet able to recover. The devices will conserve the artifacts before they can be brought to the surface by slowing, and possibly even reversing, the process of corrosion. "We have been monitoring that throughout the project, and four of the guns that are coming up have been part of that process," said Billy Ray Morris, head of the Queen Anne's Revenge team. "We are going to take the last bit of data captured in this project this month to get all of the information we need, and then we will compare it with what they do when they are in the water at the lab, in a controlled environment." The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources owns the artifacts, and the largest display is at the Maritime Museum in Beaufort. But as more artifacts are being recovered and go through the conservation effort at the QAR lab in Greenville, the state is making it possible for more people to see them. A statewide touring exhibit is now in western North Carolina, and more traveling exhibits are in the works as more artifacts are recovered and interest in one of North Carolina's most feared pirates grows. All of the artifacts should be recovered from the wreck site by the end of next year, but because of their fragile condition, it may take up to 15 years before all of the items will be conserved enough to be put on public display. Reprint from WECT FOX NEWS June 14, 2013

10 Page 10 Next FCDA Meeting Friday, August 23, :00 PM Pre-Meeting Cookout 7:00 PM (BYOM*) *meat Coast Guard Cottage, South Benson Marina, Fairfield, CT "FCDA at the Movies" featuring "Sharktopus" It is known as S-11, a diabolical hybrid of shark and octopus created by genetic scientist as the U.S. Navy's next super-weapon. But when its control implants are damaged during a training experiment, the beast escapes to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a taste of sun, sand, bikini babes, jet-skiers, spring breakers and beyond. Now a hotshot mercenary, an investigative reporter, and Sand's biomechanical engineer daughter must stop a creature like none ever witnessed before: Fairfield County Diving Association P.O. Box 3005 Fairfield, CT Address Service Requested