re-reading n you imagine from the following headlines? gest Sunken Treasure Ever Found: $500 Million Treasure Ship Missing Since 1681 Found Sunken Treasure Ship Found 40 miles off Guyana's Coast Divers Find £155m Silver Hoard on Wreck If you found a lost treasure worth millions of dollars, what would you do? Reading text anyone who has seen Pirates of the Caribbean or read Robert Louis Stevenson’s easure Island, laden with gold, silver, precious jewels, anuquites will take them back to the colonial period of the sixteenth and h centuries, when conquered the Americas dSail€d BACK to Europe with thei If it’s big treasure you're after, however, you g myo 0 the| of the twentieth conn ‘Wo World wars, luxury liners, armored warships, merchant vessels, and freighters carried mori ‘an I from war-torn Europe to safe havens in North America. Many, like the RMS Titanic, RMS Lusitania, and HMS Edinburgh, met with enemy attack or natural catastrophe and To this day, few treasure ships have ever been recovered. 2 Of the estimated scattered over the ocean flo have captured Heaton esr head sas The most legendary is the’ On April 14, , the 882-foot, 46,392-ton luxury lid ian ee ak its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. Of the 2,223 people on hw dei eat but not forgotten, egan to in the 19605} but it was t Texas millionaire Jack Grimm undertook three Separate expeditions, only to find no trace of the ship's remains, 3 On andlin 1982, with the use of the submersible Nauti le, salvors recovered an abundance of artifacts. A total of 5,500 objects were brought up from the wreck, including personal belongings of the Passengers and crew, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, the largest display of a cs lal alliLl ; splay atthe i recovered artifacts from the ship, is on permanent di feal P eT te expeditions, ae '300 objects, Vegas, Nevada. In addition to more than ra ner’s Grand ce re have been more passengers and a full-scale reproduction of a few of which are listed in the table below, of the Titanic, 4 As HRNGHRIFESORG as ic may seem, the « faced major | hunt for treasure ship necks thatlay | huallenges, Uni the 1950s, treasure hunters had ify ng ae cen, Fe thousands ofmeterseepindarkvanddangerousswaicis AUME MUAY He tom two or often FS om he Niteansmss processin® cranking Wi"e He ine english. more ships across the seafloor Sititeyieatg neo Somietiing Int scat eo French Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee! (ASDIC) 1 a submarines by Seng i@ etn uleeetraugnmsenmarer. This revo ut a atl ‘was used to locate the Lusitania, which sank off the coast of Ireland after a oa oat attack on May 7, 1915. Behossounding evalved bythe 1960s into sonar, became a standard feature of marine navigation. In addition to side-scan sonar,2 searchers can now employ sub-bottom profilers to image objects buried beneath layers of sediment. MOGEFRSAIEMite global positioning systems(GPS) cart accurately determine theloca of a lost ship in an area as small as 500 square miles. if Once a ship has been located, divers are sent o access the wreck, but their safety success depend on suitable equipment. Bioneenaivers had to wear heavy canvas suits, 2 Copper helmet lead BOOS weighing 40 pounds each, and|léad Weights of 16 pounds to counteract buoyancy, They could safely reach a maximum depth of Oflyu2O0ifeet time they could spend under water and the speed at which they could surface suffering from the “bends”3 were severely limitedilin the 1940s, renowned French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and associate Emile Gagnan developed tie! or oxygen tank. This improvement in diver safety and mobility made diving more popular and treasure hunting more feasible. 5 Cousteau also contributed to the development of saturation diving, which allo Givers toMliveland Work from a protected sea habitat. Using a Siiallimanned Subm called a submersible, divers are able to |withstand external pressure at fel and to work under water for (iplt6ithree days, Originally Gevelped for military purposes) submersibles are equipped with FobotiGarms to recover object investigate areas of a wreck that would otherwise pose physical peril to divers. 7__ Although #dvaniGed TeehnOlOBY has made it easier for treasure hunters tolfidl investigate, and even raise sunken ships, there is no guarantee of Success, A ship interest can lie amid other wrecks, making it\iftipossible to detect or disti passage of time, Saiidlaiid iniud woverwreckage and the forces of nature erodes decompose steel, irony woodand other materials; Rugged, shifting terrain, a adverse marine and weather conditions, increase the risks of disaster to 8 The @Xaetiatiiré and Valiié OF a/Ship’s\Cargo is often Subject toa g Speculation, Since records were not always kept, ship’s cargo could be anybody’s guess. Even if ffeastr pockets and a broad time horizon t0 0 Oni quest, they havea iz 5 = eens -2t93ioa2up with no legal claim to their booty. Laws governing the ownership of shipwrecks a their contents and the right of salvage are complex, and no international agreements exist. Opponents of commercial salvage condemn these attempts as the desecration of graves, while some archaeologists argue that these sites should be preserved in their virgin state, 9 DESBIE the many GSES) there arc\iGVEHRIFEES who GARROUFESISEIeNaFeORIOSE {FEASUFE! It is HHESCA, however, that FAIS in possession of Hese doomed vessels, the sea is reluctant to GiVGRHGHTUp! Notable discoveries and salvages Estimated treasure and/orvalie of Date of discovery/ Ship cargo recovery 26,000 artifacts of historical and archaeological value