Category Archives: Underwater Heritage

A North Carolina Filmmaker Continues to Challenge State Sovereign Immunity

Posted on: October 28, 2022 by Gina McKIveen

For nearly two decades, Rick Allen, an experienced underwater videographer and professional photographer, documented the retrieval and recovery process of an 18th century pirate shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina. A dispute over the copyright in the works produced between Allen and the State of North Carolina (the “State”) is now approaching its tenth […]

A feat of Endurance: lost vessel of explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton found 107 years after sinking

Posted on: March 24, 2022 by Paul Stevenson

Media outlets last week revealed that scientists had found the wreck of Endurance more than a century after she sank in the Weddell Sea, a find many had claimed to be impossible. The find has been hailed by marine archaeologists around the world. The BBC reports that Bensun Mound, a member of the expedition team, […]

Discovery of gothic sculpture in Spanish river – thoughts on Spain’s finds regulation system

Posted on: July 13, 2020 by Marta Suárez-Mansilla

Last month, a fisherman found in the Sar River, near the city of Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain), a 14th-century gothic sculpture of the Virgin and Child, half-submerged, and covered in moss and slime. On paying closer attention to the shape of the object, he noticed some engravings suggesting that what he was looking at […]

Iconic Titanic Marconi telegraph subject of key judgment

Posted on: May 28, 2020 by Paul Stevenson

Readers will recall the lore surrounding Titanic’s Marconi wireless operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, who, it is said, famously stayed at their post sending distress messages whilst the Atlantic Ocean lapped at their feet. There has been conflicting and contradictory information about the demise of Phillips and Bride. Bride survived but it is almost […]

Renewed search for one of Spain’s “greatest treasure galleons”

Posted on: February 25, 2020 by Paul Stevenson

Media reports this month claim that almost four centuries after the ill-fated galleon Nuestra Señora del Juncal (“the Juncal”), a Spanish naval vessel, sank off the Mexican coast in a storm in October 1631, researchers from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History and Spain’s National Museum of Underwater Archaeology are to undertake a 10-day […]

Is the Titanic struggle over?

Posted on: January 28, 2020 by Paul Stevenson

Everyone knows that the wreck of RMS Titanic is special. Media reports have confirmed as much over the past week, which has seen reports about the wreck site and a bespoke international compact relating to the ill-fated vessel make headlines. As media reports have confirmed, a treaty negotiated in 2003 (Agreement Concerning the Shipwrecked Vessel […]

Finder of RMS Titanic in bid to solve Earhart mystery

Posted on: August 20, 2019 by Paul Stevenson

In something a bit different for followers of underwater cultural heritage, and a reminder that underwater heritage is not only about shipwrecks, news this week from the New York Times amongst others that veteran underwater sleuth Dr Robert Ballard, finder of RMS Titanic, has charted a course for a remote atoll in the Pacific island […]

Judicial review undertaken for HMS Victory salvage

Posted on: April 10, 2019 by Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds

Treasure, bounty, pirates – these words conjure up romantic adventures in peoples’ minds, none the more so than when they relate to historically important wrecks. An example of this is the HMS Victory which sank in 1744 in the Channel on its way back from a mission to relieve British ships blocked in the River […]

UNESCO weighs in over potential billion-dollar shipwrecked treasure

Posted on: May 5, 2018 by Paul Stevenson

Last Friday, the UN cultural agency UNESCO called on Colombia not to exploit commercially the three centuries’ old wreck of the Spanish galleon, San Jose, hailed by some as “the holy grail of shipwrecks”. Reports suggest that the San Jose contains a cargo worth billions of dollars. Colombian authorities reportedly intend to recover the San […]

Commentary on prosecution of UK man for antiquities smuggling

Posted on: August 30, 2017 by IAL Admin

A UK man, Toby Robyns, was apprehended ten days ago by Turkish authorities, as he tried to leave Turkey with a dozen coins. He had found the coins with his children on the seabed while snorkelling. He is still in prison, awaiting a decision by the Turkish courts. Our Assistant Director, Alexander Herman, was interviewed […]