Ships In The Coral

that's the bottom into the bilge pump didn't do much good for them right I'm embracing an important part of Australia's early history this wreck is a sunken time capsule of our past and the shroud that called is yet to reveal her secret now there are hundreds and hundreds of shipwrecks scattered throughout the Great Barrier Reef cannon anchors and ballast cargo I just screwed up like a coal graveyard and the coal includes her victims very well a marine archaeologists dug the HMS Pandora the most significant rectified in the southern hemisphere she was carrying 14 of the bounty mutineers who foolish not restrained by eating as she poked through a passage through the Great Barrier Reef and some 30 metres of water Pandora is just one of many significant shipwrecks that we're about to seek out and explore so come with me on a voyage of adventure and discovery as we see [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] after a fruitless search for the bounty hms Pandora sailed for home with 14 of the bounty mutinies chained to her decks on August 28th of 1791 she approached the Great Barrier Reef and searched for a safe passage through the endless line of breakers that night disaster struck the Pandora went down in the early morning 35 drown and for these four the mutiny is still trapped in their leg irons this is my new boat call of the wild and we're spending north to the wreck site the Pandora beckons me once more it's been 10 years since I first laid eyes on her I remember the wild Reed's the strong currents the Sharks even this little sand cake was the scent of so much drama when the Pandora went down just over there are three miles away these survivors either swam or rode they're both into this tiny little sand cake in fact they called it wreck K now Captain Bligh has been given a very cruel reputation as far as the Hollywood and press have been concerned that he was a mere lamb compared to captain Edwards now the mutineers suffered enormous hardships under under Edwards in fact three of them drowned in the wreck because he failed to allow the keys to be passed down to them so they taken under their leg irons and then when they came ashore here this is where the real hardship began they were naked he wouldn't let them be covered at all and they had to bury themselves deep in the sand here to right up to there next to to cover themselves up in fact they were they skin was virtually played from their bodies as good as a cat-o'-nine-tails would ever do and one of the mutineers actually said that his body looked like it had been dipped in a boiling tub of oil now the 99 survivors left here in poor boats and Heather 15 wore when they reached England the mutinies went on trial and seven were pardoned only three were hung so seven were actually innocent of the crime and yet they had to endure this enormous hardship and cruelty from captain Edwards and so the Pandora lay out there in a watery grave 486 years until in 1977 that that's when I led an expedition here in search of her it was November 15 the day we were to rendezvous with the hour delay of plane carrying a special magnetometer while the Gibbons and I'd worked out a flight plan for the search plane we had already narrowed the search area down to only two likely coral bommies my dinghy became the marker boy at the center of the search area 11 a.m. and the Neptune bomber arrived on time I gave them the coordinates we had just worked out and they began to apply a series of parallel sweeps over the search area yacht revelry joined us skipper Steve Dom was a partner in this historic expedition we both placed our hopes in the skill of the magnetometer operator to pinpoint the wreck for us for the first half hour there was nothing no readings we were very worried [Music] and then on the planes final leg the magnetometer needle suddenly jump a retro rocket flare was fired to mark the spot and I knew then the Pandora was down there we quickly anchored marker boys over the site before the flares drifted away the neptune made another run recorded a second reading and drop the second flare and how we were very excited even the fact that the two marker flares were 200 meters apart didn't bother us then and that Coons radio operator said there's definitely a wreck down there how easy it all seemed now we'll just sit down and have a look at the Pandora but that was not to be the wreck was not under or near the marker boys it could be anywhere within a 300 meter radius and that's quite a big dive area when the water is 33 meters deep we all took turns to dive without any success the disappointment was crushing the next morning I decided to ignore the market boys and studied instead the lay of the coral bommie the Pandora must have hit with the wing from the southeast on that fateful night and the ship drifting west perhaps 100 metres after she smashed over the reef I mentally pictured where she must lie it was here that I dropped my anchor my nephew Ron Bell was the first to go down and he swam along our anchor chain to see if I was right there's no mistake in the joint fluke of a ship's anchor and there's myelin ANCA lying across the wreck we found the Pandora I'll always remember that first dive on the Pandora only the corals and fish have adorned her these past a hundred and eighty-six years the sandy floor is a littered with relics the wooden superstructure long since rotted and washed away everywhere there are items of interest encrusted and disguised by coral growth but recognizable to us this large object was once a galley stove we nicknamed at Pandora's box where the relics and that's about while is moving several bronze rather petals which will carry the spares now that Phil thus at first to find rather fittings at the wrong end of the ship dozens of iron cannon are well disguised and half buried while he's counting them but that shouldn't be too difficult as the Pandora was a twenty four gun man of war [Music] Lindau makes an exciting find it's a stone where water cask there must be more of these buried under the sand time slips by we've been down here 20 minutes and there's only five minutes left before we run the risk of the bins those last few minutes are not wasted while they will halt this war the cars gap after the dive it's a valuable relic for the museum and proof of our historic discovery the Pandora reveals more of her secrets that's coming up next on ships in the Coral [Music] we have a rendezvous with the Queensland Museum on board their mothership Sir Walter Raleigh Ron Coleman has brought to get a large team of marine archaeologists to work the Pandora site in the months of October and November this is when the weather is at its best this is what you've got this morning one yes it's one of the things that came up today obviously the father of a rifle let's know what kind of rifle well it was a flintlock musket but because it's decorated here and it suggests that it may not be see service and it may belong to one of the officers here we found the brown bess a popular one always had it didn't have this section here it was bit like the the 303 rifle but that you see today so things like one and this is now your third expedition Ron what do you envisage achieving in this one well this one is a continuation of what we started last year with major excavation we are in this turn area of the shipwreck were expecting to find a considerable amount of material it belonged to the officers as they lived in the after part of the ship as we go further falls in the erect site we're getting deeper and deeper because the ship is almost intact one third of it is intact under the sand we'll be getting deeper as we move forward and what do you look at as the future well the ultimate goal of course is to finish the job and I think we've shown that there's a tremendous amount to be learned from the excavation of the Pandora it's been suggested a few years down the line we might consider raising the hull such as they did with Mary Rose which would be a tremendous touristic attraction but of course funding is always a big problem and it's very difficult to come by well wrong how do you think the Pandora compares with other ship breaks in Australia and around the world as far as archaeological significant the significance is twofold one is of course being associated with the mutiny on the bounty in it grabs everyone's attention but the other aspect of course is she's one of the best archaeological sites as well and she's teaching us a tremendous amount the selvedge is around-the-clock operation each team has an inflatable dinghy to transport them to the wreck site three miles away as one team completes their dive another is waiting to take their place Oh Gabby can you mark my time please I've got no I'm 21 [Music] it's busy on the bottom the wreck has to be measured and photographed before any of the relics are removed a sitemap evolves marking the relics visible above the sand the anchors Canon and numerous ships fittings hidden beneath the sand lies a treasure trove of historic artifacts [Music] there's another Alibaba type stories jar it's identical to the one we salvaged on our discovery day teams changed by the hour but the suction dredge never rests it excavates to a predetermined depth in one square grid at a time [Music] the yellow bin of precious relics are now entrusted to the expert care of Neville Agnew and Christine Jana of the conservation department [Music] the Timbers very fragile but still sound inside I think the the surface deterioration is quite extensive there he has a sword-hilt I've taken a bit of the concrete morphe together and you can see the the screw head very warm and the foam will fit on one end there but it's going this and there's the presumably the tang of the sword fitted in there yeah Neverland Graeme Henderson conduct a show-and-tell discussion of the finds after each dive this sandstone water purifier is a prized find it's called a drip stone a standard issue to naval ships in those days we follow one of the team on the second dive of the day they have only 20 mins button time and Lady Luck will decide if the thirsty dredge uncovers anything worthwhile on their dive the position of every relic is entered into the computer at the touch of a button we can window in on a close-up of any part of the ship [Music] each box in the computer represents a 2-liter square grid and the relics uncovered inside it by the dredge it's nice it's not a full wheel looks like it's intentional isn't it what do you think it's from so it has nothing to do with the bilge pump you think this museum excavations really opened up a Pandora's box but not of terrible roads but still lots of headaches for the marine archaeologists because this wheel is merely a piece one piece in the jigsaw that they've gotten pieced together and until they find the rest of this they really will not be absolutely sure of what it belongs to as the grains head it may be a rope making machine it may have another use but it may also be quite a few years of excavation before the rest of it is found and we know truly what this item is interesting place to air on this is bronze yeah a nice condition to the diff'rence entities coming up there at its function as an interesting name to speculate on well it's the type of mechanism I would expect to see on something like ships pumps and it comes to the right area and I think it just might be associated conservation of shipwrecked relics begins on the seabed because if we don't take care now we can do more damage in five minutes and the sea has taken 200 years so these relics from the Pandora will undergo an extensive conservation treatment before they go on display in the Queensland Museum and three years of excavation work here on this red side has merely scratched the surface of the same above the Pandora site so in this wild remote corner of the Great Barrier Reef the Queensland Museum archeological team will be working for many more years on the pandora site we raise her really from Captain Cook's endeavour coming up next on ships in the coral now this is a very special rock it's not coal they claim from the shores of England in fact Captain Cook through this rock overboard along with six Cannon and about 50 pounds of pig iron ballast when he ran the ground here on Endeavour re-cook spent for the eight days repairing his ship at the mouth of the Endeavour River here they came face to face for the first time with the Aborigines the kangaroo the dingoes and the crocodile now back in 1968 I rather have to search for food scanners and I found a lot of these ballast right here and I was very excited because I knew that I was very close to the Canon in fact I knew today it would have to be just in the southeast direction out here in the surge of the sea but I swam I looked police nothing and I finally realized that the camera must be buried deep under the coral and were not visible to the naked eye and so about three weeks later an American team came in and they were equipped with a special magnetometer which can search out a ferrous metal under the coral and about three weeks later they found the cannon quite quickly but they did find that though buried four feet down into the pole and for me that was quite a disappointment because I knew that I was so close to the cannon and so terribly close and yet I just couldn't see them and I learned quite a lot from that first expedition when cups cans were salvaged they lift some of the pig iron ballast and I'm salvaging this one for my shipwreck museum I should have led caught my eye I knew I've made an important find [Music] oh look after that pressure step one that would you believe is something that the people account the cannons either didn't understand whether it was or mister it's called a matron of lead and it was laying over the cannons to keep the vent hole covered and that's to keep the powder dry so it's actually quite a really because that belong to one of Captain Cook's cannons very historic piece of lead [Music] [Applause] [Music] when the ship marina was wrecked near an island in 1859 the castaways saw another shipwreck a very old one for they salvaged the bronze cannon from her which had the name Santa Barbara and the date 1596 inscribed on it now that fine created quite a Spanish galleon legend it's an ancient wreck yet to be rediscovered or disproved so every time I find an old shipwreck I think of that galleon but this one proved to be the Ferguson lost in 1842 in wreck Bay the brass campaign buckles was the number 50 easily identified her she was carrying the soldiers of the Queen's Own 50th foot regiment to reinforce the British garrison in India the Karl is littered with hundreds of musket balls and brass pieces from old ground-based rifles [Music] these are these are the really good things campaign bucknall's campaign buckles from well the 50th regiment that were on board they can today win the Battle of the Nile you see this is a sphinx tape it's venison and the British crown Queens on 50th yeah and then this speaks well that's better given these out for the battery the Nile there was about 800 of them on board but all of them all of the Richmond were rescued none of them died in the wreck but when they went on to the Battle of penny are in India I think was about 560 died half of them in the barracks for life that regime is still alive still still being can't still going after all these years an island full of turtles was the castaways salvation next on ships in the coral into the Pandora we've had 35 other shipwrecks in this same area and seven of those 25 we found on this one three great defense this wreath is a navigational hazard because it protrudes beyond the north-south line of the Alpha Barrier Reef and has to be skirted for a ship to enter the channel beside Raine Island it certainly collected a lot of ships in one corner nearby Rhett Bay also trapped several ships for the opposite reason the bay appears from sea wood to be a wide entrance then the Rings close in the ship cannot turn in time and the strong currents set her onto the reef mr. Charles how the islands bacon the survivors of most of the shipwrecks in the Rick betta great detached area these two islands had no hand hunters and a Thurman for the hull this is what the castaways all came for that's not very good is it I suppose if your thirst haesol right places if it's been here four hundred and thirty years I'll take your word for you can survive on that alright get your stick it's quite peeps parameter there well there's this thing for the whole league before long long while it was marked on the very oldest of charts of Australia ever since man sailed this Coral Sea mr. Charles how the islands have received their share of castaways and flotsam clean over here look at this what a cask is this is the wooden plug that's quite something it can't be that old though it's how it can't go way back because it it's doing reasonable condition on the where the guy he's a brought that in no take it back to thee that's me a grave then yeah this will be a child's gravitation sure just wonder whether from the castaways in the way back hundred and thirty forty years ago or maybe there was a beach summer camp here they set that up here in the late last century listen maybe one of the people who didn't survive Raine Island was another castaways refuge it lies just a few miles north of great detach reef and marks what was once the main entrance through the Great Barrier Reef into the Torres Strait so many ships came to grief in this area these green turtles are mating and are gathering for the greatest beach assault known to man for Raine Island is the largest turtle rookery in the world my sons Dean and air them join in the fun [Music] in 1824 the government built his towers have beacon to guide ships through the reef it rises 12 meters high and was lined with Timbers from a wrecked ship food and water was stored inside for any shipwreck survivors yeah just that every person who's come here specially named up on the on the wall thing right that's good the where's the shovel to get down seven feet it's going to be down under here isn't it I think if we were supposed to be nasty just use your head oh there's a pretty clear the young figured would have been here but I get the message a little ad something handy rain island has always been one of nature's most bountiful providers but it's also a tragic graveyard of animal suffering you're grading yeah this is the only all the turtles to the died and the last season skull of a turtle this one Evan last last time we were here we counted 560 yeah you tell those that are died in the one season they go upside down and they can't get back onto their tummies again dead men tell no tales but the bones of their ships do that's next on ships in the coral at great detach reef I rendezvous with a magnificent old sailing ship called the zebu [Music] operation rally was taking a group of young people on the voyage of adventure they've just come from the pandora wreck and now I was offering to guide them over the seven wreck sites I discovered on great detached reef I soon had on board an excitable young group led by zebu owner Nick Braille them this is where we're going this is a mud map that I've drawn showing all the rigs and we're going to drop her go up to the Charles eaten first we won't dive on that straightaway it's it's a bit tight too high so what if we drop the market boy there okay that's sometimes even here and then get around to it another rig here right and have a look at that one the tides right for that and then we can come back and I'll show you all the this these four other wrecks around this area back near the Anchorage there's been several on the dropping side I should be an interesting project for the ventures and the wrecks are laid out nicely and that's mostly low tide to see them they have you changed just running right across the reef very beautiful well most of them never seen a wreck before in her life so they might know what to expect yeah just bigger [Music] this is a wreck mark here with the anchor chain running across and that big rock just beside it can you see the anchor chain across the reef there not too sure try try the Polaroid thanks a lot ghostly about 11:30 yeah and I think I've got it it's a little dark dark shape coming towards us in the drop of oil while my enthusiasm for exploring shipwrecks is never waned it was refreshing to see the excitement generated among these young people as they explored their first shipwreck [Laughter] this is a directive we just came up here right on the outside you've got two anchors just in the surf line and then the anchor chain running across and you might remember there's another anchor lying to that there and then you have the inside edge of the reef and you've got gun barrels lying in here against the coral in deep water well yes just a little bit deeper water just off there off the drop off but that's the basic plan of the rig that's the wreck site number one number one year's operation rally will return to the wrecks to map them for the Queensland Museum Murray Island now beckons me for the religions of Spanish treasures to be investigated on his charming Isle [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Maree island truly has some great legends and some of them relate to early visitors here there's one in particular that really intrigues me the oldest told me that the early last century a raft came ashore here loaded with castaways and also several chests of coins now the Islanders beckon the castaways in and the sailors were suspicious but they really had no choice so they landed here on this beach and struggled off the beach with the Chester of the treasure and buried them in the same throughout that night the drum of mirth founded the Dominus threat and the head had a warrior's Dance themselves into a murderous frenzy the attack came at dawn from all the castaways lost their heads and those gruesome Kofi's and were strung up on a bamboo loop ready for a big celebration but what about the treasure it just lay there buried in the sand now perhaps some of the Native children you know dug in the sand and uncovered some of these Spanish coins but again they just discarded them just like toys and then an old chief named Jack came up with the story that he was here on that fateful day when he was a boy of 15 and he said him though Englishmen Frenchmen I think now that's a very intriguing statement now if this story is true and lesions are usually based on some fact then there has to be an awful lot of treasure buried under the same probably Spanish coins because that was a popular currency in those days now we know that east of here is a shipwreck also carrying a lot of coins and I've put a lot of research on this treasure ship and of unearthly space in 1788 the French explorer La Perouse lost these two ships of Vanacore in the New Hebrides now he built a small cutter from the wrecks and he sailed off actually toward here but he sailed into oblivion he was French yes but I doubt whether he was carrying lots of ruthian coins but in 1826 the brig Sun was wrecked on Boot Reef and that's east of here and she was carrying about 40,000 Spanish dollars and her captain was French now I presume the treasure was put in one of her long boats and this was also lost from the hit another reef we know the 24 of her crew disappeared now we do have a solid link there but that's not the end of this story in 1890 a logger that was owned by Frank Jardine was shelfing from a storm behind the reef just out here and the crew became interested in an old anchor up on the reef and when they pulled this anchor free a mess of silver coins tumbled out in fact there were about 15,000 Spanish silver coins this fine became known as a Jardine treasure and then in 1902 a liger crew discovered another pile of Spanish dollars embedded in the coral just east of Murray and they find also was pure luck now a cyclone that push their luggage into a lagoon and they had to clear a lot of coal rocks to float this log of three and when a crowbar smashed into what looked like a coral rock out spilled a mass of coins also method together it's possible that these coins also belong to the Jardine treasure or we may even have another treasure ship now dead men tell no tales but the bones of these ships do and I'm going out to search for these shipwrecks there's a few mysteries to be solved and maybe is a few [Music] there was only a short passage to boot brief 40 miles out in the Coral Sea and were all day dreaming of treasures on the reef the nice carlson is scanning the rooftop with binoculars for any sign of wreckage our search over boot read is thorough we crisscross the reap top by dengue looking for any black lump or a straight line which would tell us an old ship lay on the coral then I towed rich burn up by Mantha board to an underwater inspection of the wreckage [Music] for two days research using every technique on you the disappointment was crushing we no longer dreamed of the treasure ship but we'll always remember boot Reap to the Magnificent underwater scenery in action it had to offer [Music] Tonie sharks are big lazy and harmless but they can give you a powerful ride [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I spent 10 miles south to Ashmore reef it was due east of Murray Island and therefore a likely location for the elusive treasure ship I haven't given up hope yet Lynn was not impressed by the big tiger shark which greeted us as we began our search that's an angle chain took me a long black line he comes in right from the other side of the race comes right through it it's pretty obvious and the big deal in facts in the middle of it is they okay I think we'll have a look at that [Music] there's no mistake in the anchor chain running across the reef is this the treasure ship for Spanish pieces of eight lie with a Colt or the bottom out of the ship our excitement and expectations were um wild [Music] that's a cannon encrusted with coral and there's a second cannon a big one called a Karen odd we found a really old ship cannon balls are everywhere 24-pounders I think almost too heavy to lift [Music] the nieces found something they look like coins but they're so heavily encrusted with coral it's hard to tell what currency they are [Music] and there's more than there they've washed into a little hole in the coral [Applause] Rick you are here we come boy [Music] I don't think we found the treasure ship a dozen coins is not afforded treasure they look like Spanish silver dollars but such coins were widely used in those days and ships always carried some money to buy fresh food the real treasure is the archaeological value of the relics and the historic importance of the ship in relation through our early history this is what makes a wreck discovery are truly exciting fine being round they could be British crowns unlucky that's the Spanish to the shore anyway I've got some hydrochloric acid and you'll be able to clean them up and see [Music] I'll search for coins in these shipwrecks is but one of the many treasures revealed in the sunken time capsules of our part [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Ben Cropp

Views: 26,735

Rating: 4.6331878 out of 5

Keywords: Ben Cropp, Adam Cropp, Dean Cropp, Documentary, Doco, Australia, Shipwreck, Wreck, Pandora, Mutiny, Castaway, Lynn Cropp, Great Barrier Reef, Discovery, Cannon, Museum, Archeological, Artifacts, 50th Regiment, Ferguson, Raine Island, Turtles, Treasure

Id: Ih21Z1JzJGk

Length: 48min 0sec (2880 seconds)

Published: Mon May 28 2018