Ship Wreck

[Alexandre]

I still think we might have some good news coming down your way... :)

[DUNJA WRBKA]

??  Well don't keep us in suspense please Alexandre....

<---------------  V E R Y    N O S E Y! 

[Michael Alexander]

I just got a phonecall from Jim MurrAy in JHB, Dr.DIeter Nolie has surfaced on Radio 702 today... SO Jim thought he would phone in and tell them about his wreck form the 60's....

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

Did someone listen in to the story Jim was telling?  Would like to know what the reply was......  can one find it online?

[Michael Alexander]

We don't get 702 down here, he reckons they limited his time, and also reckon that somebody else also phoned in, but not aired before Jim and mentioned the 2nd Galleon...

[Michael Alexander]

Just heard that a meeting was being held today with the mine and the experts who have started to arrive...... I have asked my source to get me names of the people....... lets see what experts these are......

[Alexandre]

Sorry for the long absence but I am away, at sea, excavating a wreck, with hardly a whisper of an internet link (in cold water, on the mouth of a river with almost nil visibility, here are two pics).

There is indeed a meeting going on in Namibia and three portuguese are there: the Portuguese consul, Francisco Alves, the director of the National Center for Underwater Archaeology and Luis Filipe Castro, who worked with us here Portugal and is now an associate professor in Underwater Archaeology with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas A&M University.

[Michael Alexander]

Alexandre'...thanks for that, what are you guys looking for in the river? May we know where the river is?

[Michael Alexander]

I believe excavations by the Professional will begin on the 5th of September......

[Alexandre]

Alexandre'...thanks for that, what are you guys looking for in the river? May we know where the river is?

Sure, its in the Arade river. After the Guadiana, the Arade is the most significant waterway west of the Bay of Cadiz. Both rivers discharge in the Algarve, the southern part of Portugal that constitutes the oceanic intrusion of Andaluzia, the Iberian historical and geographical interface between the Atlantic ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

As such - and unsurprisingly - both it's coastal area and it's hinterland have been influenced since pre-historic times by these two great cultural territories. Silves, 12 km upriver on the Arade was a flourishing city on the Islamic period; Portimão was developed, on it's west bank, probably from a still archaeologically undocumented Portus Hannibalis.

It is in the Arade river that we find the oldest reference to a shipwreck in Portugal, from a written note by the muslim chronicler Ibn Adati, dating the partial destruction of a Viking fleet, that sailed upriver on the intent of attacking Šilb (Silves) to the 1º ragebe of the year 355 (the 23rd July, 996).

The underwater cultural heritage potential of the river Arade has not ceased to grow in notoriety since 1970, the year in which several ancient remains, nautical and non-nautical, mainly dating back to the Roman period, were recovered during the dredging works done at the river's mouth. The Divisão de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática (DANS), aware since it's creation in 1997 - as CNANS and following in the footsteps of the MNA in the 80's - of the Arade river's importance in terms of underwater archaeology has organized a series of yearly projects and interventions. In 2004, CNANS made, under contract by Instituto Portuário e dos Transportes Marítimos – Delegação do Sul, a magnetic and a side scan sonar survey of the lower riverine area in order to minimize and mitigate the impact caused by future dredgings. In this survey, about 200 man-made targets were located and inspected in two months by the CNANS archaeology diving teams – as a result, several of these targets showed intrinsically archaeological potential.

The most significant of these targets, located south of the São João castle, was code named Arade 23. This tumulus of ballast stone, ship timbers and fixed rigging elements was the object of the 2007 archaeological survey campaign promoted by DANS. This campaign had two objectives: first, to document the remains, as is usual with any archaeologically significant find; second, to participate in the MACHU, the European project that has, in Portugal, two test-pilot areas, the ria de Aveiro and the rio Arade.

That's where we were until today...

[Michael Alexander]

Here we go... the official statement from yesterdays briefing....

[georg ruf jr.]

Still very exciting...

[Michael Alexander]

I do not know if I posted this somewhere, but I believe work on the wreck should be commencing on the 5th of Sept...

In other developments , local Oranjemund politicians were highly pissed of after the National news last night reported that The Luderitz business community had allocated funds for a museum to be built for "their " wreck to be located to Luderitz......

Bugger them..... since when does 30 km north of Oranjemund constitute the Luderitz Waterfront.....

[Paula Gottsch (Willson)]

you tell them Mike!

Huh, I think this is the first time I agree with Mike, I must be getting sick or something, where's my meds!

[Alexandre]

I do not know if I posted this somewhere, but I believe work on the wreck should be commencing on the 5th of Sept...

In other developments , local Oranjemund politicians were highly pissed of after the National news last night reported that The Luderitz business community had allocated funds for a museum to be built for "their " wreck to be located to Luderitz......

Bugger them..... since when does 30 km north of Oranjemund constitute the Luderitz Waterfront.....

It's supposed to be on the 5th, yes.

By the way, that stakeholders meeting agreed on calling it the "oranjemund wreck" instead of the "U60 wreck"... :)