Posts Tagged ‘shipwreck’
My heroine of the Costa Concordia disaster
A young Peruvian waitress whose body was recovered from the shipwrecked Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio has been hailed a heroine.
Erika Fani Soriamolina’s body was found by divers on the sixth deck of the vessel wearing the ship’s uniform but no life jacket.
Witnesses said Soriamolina had helped dozens of terrified passengers into lifeboats on the night of the disaster before giving the life jacket to an elderly man.
A tourism graduate, Soriamolina was working on only her third cruise on the Costa Concordia.
The recovery of the young woman’s body ended a desperate search by her parents and sister Madeleine who were among the family members of passengers and crew waiting for news of their loved ones on Giglio…
Seventeen people are now confirmed dead after the cruise ship struck rocks and ran aground on January 13 with 4,200 passengers and crew on board and more than 15 people are still missing.
Time after time, the worst circumstances bring out the best in that class of people termed “ordinary” by our culture, by all the rules that say who is important in our society – and who isn’t. The same applies to my grayhead peer whose life she probably saved.
She didn’t need to wring her hands over ideology, she simply acted to solve a need facing her in the quickest most certain way possible.
Let us remember her courage, her concern for another person in peril.
Satellite view of Costa Concordia
Photo from DigitialGlobe
Click on photo to enlarge
World’s oldest champagne found in Baltic shipwreck
Divers have found 30 bottles of champagne thought to pre-date the French Revolution on the Baltic seabed.
When they opened one, they found the wine – believed to have been made by Clicquot (now Veuve Clicquot) between 1782 and 1788 – was still in good condition.
The bottle – whose shape indicates it was produced in the 18th Century – has now been sent to France for analysis.
If confirmed, it would be the oldest drinkable champagne in the world.
Diver Christian Ekstrom was exploring a shipwreck on the Baltic seabed when he found the bottles.
He took one to the surface, where he opened it and tasted it with his colleagues.
“It was fantastic,” he told the Reuters news agency…
If the bottles do come from the 1780s, that would make them around 40 years older than the current record-holder, a bottle of Perrier-Jouet from 1825.
Wine experts estimate each bottle would fetch around $69,000 at auction.
Better than Ripple, eh?
Shipwreck treasure joining Basra and Hunan
I am on a fishing boat in the Gaspar Strait, near Belitung Island, off the south-east coast of Sumatra.
Since time immemorial, this funnel-shaped passage linking the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean has been one of the two main shipping routes. The Malacca Straits is the other, from China to the West.
Ten years ago, at a spot known locally as “Black Rock”, two men diving for sea cucumbers came across a large pile of sand and coral. Digging a hole, they reached in and pulled out a barnacle-encrusted bowl. Then another. And another.
They had stumbled on the oldest, most important, marine archaeological discovery ever made in South East Asia, an Arab dhow – or ship – built of teak, coconut wood and hibiscus fibre, packed with a treasure that Indiana Jones could only dream of.
There were 63,000 pieces of gold, silver and ceramics from the fabled Tang dynasty, which flourished between the seventh and 10th centuries.
The Belitung wreck is a time capsule that has revolutionised our understanding of two ancient civilisations that fill the airwaves today, China and the Middle East
Interesting article ["from our own correspondent"] about a shipwreck from 1,200 years ago. A cross-cultural record set in time, we begin to get a clearer picture of commerce between Persia and China. A start to a study which could occupy your waking hours for decades. 
