A 22-gun British warship that sank during the American Revolution and has long been regarded as one of the “Holy Grail” shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water, explorers announced Friday.

Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780.

The 80-foot sloop of war is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes, Scoville and Kennard said.

“To have a Revolutionary War vessel that’s practically intact is unbelievable. It’s an archaeological miracle,” said Canadian author Arthur Britton Smith, who chronicled the history of the HMS Ontario in a 1997 book, “The Legend of the Lake.”

The finders of the wreck said they regard it as a war grave and have no plans to raise it or remove any of its artifacts. They said the ship is still considered the property of the British Admiralty.

Although the vessel sits in an area where the water is up to 500 feet deep and cannot be reached by anyone but the most experienced divers, Kennard and Scoville declined to give its exact location, saying only that it was found off the southern shore.

The sloop was discovered resting partially on its side, with two masts extending more than 70 feet above the lake bottom.

“Usually when ships go down in big storms, they get beat up quite a bit. They don’t sink nice and square. This went down in a huge storm, and it still managed to stay intact,” Scoville said. “There are even two windows that aren’t broken. Just going down, the pressure difference, can break the windows. It’s a beautiful ship.”

Smith, who was shown underwater video of the find, said: “If it wasn’t for the zebra mussels, she looks like she only sunk last week.”

The dark, cold freshwater acts as a perfect preservative, Smith said. At that depth, there is no light and no oxygen to hasten decomposition, and little marine life to feed on the wood.

The Ontario went down on Oct. 31, 1780, with a garrison of 60 British soldiers, a crew of about 40, mostly Canadians, and possibly about 30 American war prisoners.

The warship had been launched only five months earlier and was used to ferry troops and supplies along upstate New York’s frontier. Although it was the biggest British ship on the Great Lakes at the time, it never saw battle, Smith said.

After the ship disappeared, the British conducted a sweeping search but tried to keep the sinking secret from Gen. George Washington’s troops because of the blow to the British defenses.

Hatchway gratings, the binnacle, compasses and several hats and blankets drifted ashore the next day. A few days later the ship’s sails were found adrift in the lake. In 1781, six bodies from the Ontario were found near Wilson, N.Y. For the next two centuries, there were no other traces of the ship.

Explorers have been searching for the Ontario for decades, and there have been numerous false finds over the years, said Eric Bloomquist, interpretative programs manager at Old Fort Niagara.

Kennard, an electrical engineer who has been diving for nearly 40 years and has found more than 200 wrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, the Finger Lakes and in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, began searching for the Ontario 35 years ago but quit after several frustrating and fruitless years.

Six years ago, he teamed up with Scoville, a diver who developed the remote-controlled submersible with students from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Since then, the pair have found seven ships in the lake.

Over the years, Kennard obtained documents from British and Canadian archives on the Ontario, including the ship’s design plans. Even then, it took the pair three years of searching more than 200 square miles before they found the vessel earlier this month.

After locating the wreck with the sonar, the explorers used the submersible to confirm their find, documenting their discovery with more than 80 minutes of underwater video.

“Certainly it is one of the earliest discovered shipwrecks, if not the earliest,” said Carrie Sowden, archaeological director of the Peachman Lake Erie Shipwreck Research Center of the Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermillion, Ohio. “And if it’s in the condition they say, it’s quite significant.”

A rare feature that helped identify the ship: the two crow’s nests on each mast. Another was the decoratively carved scroll bow stem. The explorers also found two cannons, two anchors and the ship’s bell.

The clincher was the quarter galleries on either side of the stern - a kind of balcony with windows typically placed on the sides of the stern-castle, a high, tower-like structure at the back of a ship that housed the officers’ quarters.

Kennard said he and his partner have gathered enough video that it will not be necessary to return to the site. He added that they hope to make a documentary about the discovery.

There are an estimated 4,700 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, including about 500 on Lake Ontario.

—

On the Net:
Jim Kennard/Dan Scoville: http://www.shipwreckworld.com
Great Lakes Historical Society: http://www.inlandseas.org

Watertown, New York
July 2006

Our Nakuru District team hosted a football tournament as part of our growing outreach and health awareness work.

The Nakuru street boys are a tough bunch, most are HIV orphans and substance abusers, living both with the disease and the impact it can have on an already fragile family structure.  A lot of healing and community help is needed in practical support, nutritional care and team building. With the help of Francis Mwangi - a former street boy, now ICROSS community health worker – we organized a series of tournaments and community activities; we are spreading out these activities to more areas this month. The ICROSS staff put a small collection of their own money together, and this goes towards the event costs.   Local women in the community are paid the equivalent of a day’s wages to cook a large meal that on the day manages to feed between 60 and 70 kids.  This scheme not only benefits the boys, but also the local mothers, many of whom don’t have an income, and are also living with HIV.  The food is all bought locally.

Everyone helps out and contributes.  This is at the core of the ICROSS spirit; making sharing fun. As part of the events, basic needs are identified by the team and connections developed. Our long term relationship with community groups, villages and slum areas builds on trust, working together and finding practical solutions to problems.  Working through sports, drama, innovative training and competitions are useful ways of developing these long term relationships in our HIV outreach programmes.

David Leigh Delport

Photos by David Leigh Delport

UNICEF and the WHO estimate that more than 1 billion people around the world are without year-round access to safe drinking water. Each year more than 1.5 million children under the age of 5 years die as a result of waterborne disease in Africa and Asia. Solar Disinfection (SODIS) is a technique for making contaminated drinking water safe where transparent bottles are filled with contaminated water and placed in direct sunlight. The water is safe to drink after 6 hours exposure to the sun.

70% of East African Hospital visits are caused by contaminated water. Over 40,000 deaths occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old. Over a Billion people do not have access to clean water, most live in the poor world. ICROSS has a long term programme to improve water quality, prevent water borne disease and protect water sources.

The Solar Disinfection of contaminated drinking water is a low cost method of purifying water. The early research in SODIS was done by the RCSI / ICROSS research team in the mid 1990s. This important way of improving water by making it safe to drink has been scaled up and the SODIS project has been extended to South Africa , Zimbabwe, Cambodia and other countries. The aim of the SODISWATER project is to demonstrate that solar disinfection of drinking water is an effective intervention against a range of waterborne diarrheal diseases at household level and as emergency relief in the aftermath of natural or man-made disasters.

ICROSS programmes in Kenya are extending SODIS as part of a comprehensive community health strategy to reduce water borne disease. With your help we can do even more.

Please take the time to visit:

ICROSS.org

http://www.rcsi.ie/sodis/

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft successfully landed on Mars’ frigid north pole region late Sunday in a risk-fraught mission to search for signs of habitability, the US space agency said.

“Phoenix has landed,” a NASA official said as the safe touchdown was confirmed.

The Mars Phoenix Lander successfully deployed a parachute and then thrusters to brake in a tense seven minutes from 20,400 kilometers per hour (12,700 miles per hour) to manage a soft landing on its three legs.

Mission officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, were seen on television cheering and giving each other hugs and high-fives after signals sent back from the craft confirmed the arrival of the first spacecraft ever to land on the Martian arctic.

Continue reading more here.

As Indiana Jones races against time to find an ancient crystal skull in his new movie adventure, he should perhaps take a moment to check its authenticity.

New research suggests that two well-known crystal skulls, in the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, did not, after all, come from ancient Mexico. Academics now believe the British skull was made in 19th century Europe and the American one even more recently.

The British Museum bought its skull, a life-size carving from a single block of rock crystal from Tiffany and Company, New York in 1897. Its origins were unknown but there were suggestions it was of ancient Mexican origin. Human skulls worn as ornaments and displayed on racks were known to have featured in Aztec art.

The skull attracted a lot of public attention and speculation it was once thought to have healing powers. Crystal skulls have since featured in many books, articles and films, most recently in the new Steven Spielberg movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

However, there have been doubts about the authenticity of the skull since the 1930s. Now an international team has used the latest scientific techniques to examine the British Museum skull and a larger white quartz skull donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1992.

Electron microscope analysis for tool marks found both skulls were carved with rotary disc-shaped tool – a technology which the Ancient Mexicans did not have. Analysis of the quartz in the British Museum skull suggests it was quarried from Brazil or Madagascar – far outside the Ancient Mexicans’ trading links.

The team, made up of experts from Cardiff University, the British Museum, the Smithsonian and Kingston University, concluded that neither skull could have been made in Mexico before the time of Columbus. They believe the British skull was created in Europe in the 19th century, and the Smithsonian’s shortly before it was bought in Mexico City in 1960.

Professor Ian Freestone, of Cardiff University’s School of History and Archaeology, said: “It is always disappointing when an intriguing artefact like a crystal skull turns out not to be genuine. However, it is important to be precise about what is authentic and what is fake if we are properly to understand our past. Maybe Indiana Jones will have better luck in his hunt for a real crystal skull!”

Source: Cardiff University

Physorg.com

ScienceDaily (2008-04-11) — It is common for professional archaeologists and paleoanthropologists working in Africa to populate western museums with foreign artifacts by excavating and permanently removing them from history rich communities in Africa. The first museum of its kind has now been established in Mozambique and it will officially open in August. The Museu Local aims to be an interactive cultural heritage center… (read more).

Together with the ministry of health ICROSS has launched a new initiative focusing on Tuberculosis. TB is the second leading single cause of death in Africa. TB is on the rise and is closely linked to HIV AIDS. With the support of the Global fund, ICROSS is working closely with local partners as part of a nationwide strategy fighting the spread of TB. This five year project will allow us to reach new areas of Bondo in Western Kenya, and extend services and support to more patients and vulnerable communities.

This Project is coordinated by Dany Ngwiri, who has worked with ICROSS for over a decade. Danny set up the first home based care programme in Nakuru. ICROSS health teams together with Ministry of health and other health professionals start scaling up the TB programmes this month. As part of the TB strategy long term public health surveillance , TB patient follow up and TB screening will be developed together with new research and monitoring and career support programmes. This is our third Global fund grant over the past five years.

Talking to programme planners at ICROSS the Programme coordinator Danny Ngwiri said “This programme will allow us to reach more communities in remote areas, there are huge challenges and great difficulties for these patients, this programme builds on the last decade of ICROSS’ experience and allows us to extend our vital work”.

–
Dr Michael Meegan
D.Med. HC NUI FRAMI
Founder, International Director ICROSS

Taken from The Salt Lake Tribune website:

It started as insightful and articulate, especially compared to most public-comment hokum.

Georgia transplant Wesley Wyndham-Price calmly stood before the City Council, cautioning members about downtown’s derelict emergency-preparedness plan. City elders are “insouciantly” unaware of risks to City Creek Center, he warned.

Wyndham-Price even paused to joke that Georgia’s saltwater taffy is better than Utah’s. “I hope that is not an ad hominem,” he shrugged.

Then he got specific and all reason helicoptered into the ether.

City Creek needs an emergency-preparedness plan, he demanded, against zombies.

“Zombies are fierce,” he said as a crammed council chamber laughed nervously. “They are going to catch us in there.”

Wyndham-Price admitted he never has seen a zombie attack but is sure one is coming. And shoppers could be sitting ducks in a sky bridge.

No word on whether monster man is related to campy horror-flick comedian Vincent Price. Actually, it appears the April 1 speech was a well-delivered April Fools’ joke. After all, Wesley Wyndham-Price is a fictional character created for the TV series’ “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel.”

After the performance, the Avenues resident briefly plopped in the front row next to City Creek-LDS Church straight-man Dale Bills, then bolted.

Playing along, Councilman Luke Garrott declared that he would forward the zombie recommendation to the appropriate emergency committee posthaste.

But given the surge of Mormon minions anticipated at City Creek and the church’s downtown BYU campus, Wyndham-Price clearly was off target.

He probably meant zoobies, not zombies.