Wrecks & Archaeology

In one of the largest, most complex underwater archeological undertakings in Canadian history, Parks Canada and Inuit are working in collaboration to explore the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror―the storied ships of the 1845 Franklin Expedition that set sail from England on a quest to find the sea route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific through the Arctic Ocean―across what is now Canada's Arctic and Nunavut.

Statnett, the Norwegian state-owned power grid operator, made the astounding discovery of the lost Karlsruhe cruiser around 488 meters (1,600 feet) below sea level off the Southern coast of Norway, some 13 nautical miles from the port of Kristiansand. Signs of wreckage were first detected three years ago during inspection work when sonar detected a shipwreck only 15 meters from an undersea power cable between Norway and Denmark.

On 18 March 2020, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard issued the following tweet. "It is with a heavy heart that we have decided to close all of the sites of The National Museum of the Royal Navy. This is a difficult decision but we've done so with the wellbeing of our staff, volunteers and visitors in mind." Director General Dominic Tweddie

Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England stated "Our historic places bring us together. It is vital that they survive intact. Our emergency grants are providing a much-needed safety net to organisations and businesses that are helping to save our most precious heritage.”

The grant from Historic England is very timely and much appreciated. Mary Rose Trust

Greek archaeologists have discovered the remains of a massive Roman vessel believed to be the largest classical shipwreck found in the eastern Mediterranean. Believed to have sunk some 2,000 years ago, the 35-metre vessel was discovered at a depth of around 60m during a survey off Kefalonia, one of the Ionian islands off Greece’s west coast. The site is situated 1.5 miles from the entrance to the harbour of Fiscardo, the island's only village to not be destroyed during World War II.

The wreck of the German battlecruiser SMS Scharnhorst, sunk by the Royal Navy during the First World War with the loss of all her crew and Admiral Graf von Spee has been found in the South Atlantic. SMS Scharnhorst, the flagship of the East Asia Squadron which was once the scourge of the Royal Navy, went down with most of the rest of the formation on December 8, 1914, in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

The battlecruiser sank on Dec. 8, 1914, with more than 800 crew members on board, including German Adm. Maximilian Graf von Spee.