After reading about Brad Ingersoll’s shipwreck discovery and the teenagers who discovered the wreck off Cuba’s coast, and listening to Erik’s interview with John Chatterton, I got to thinking about how divers or maritime historians identify previously-undiscovered wrecks. It seems strange to me, because with all the cameraphones, blogs, and journalists – both citizen and professional – out there today, it’d be tough for a wreck to go down unrecorded. Think about it.
Anyway, let’s say you’ve found a wreck that (probably) went down decades ago, and you want to ID it. Well, here’s a 26-step guide to identifying your wreck. Unfortunately, it’s written for a British audience, so you might need to do some tweaking, depending on where your wreck is located. However, you can get a solid idea of what to do with your new discovery. Good luck: I hope you become rich and famous.
1. One thing is to do some history on the wreck and make sure if you go public have all your info close to right!trust no one! and let it rip! a secret discovery dose no one any good! making it public will bring all others out that will say they found it before,Like Harry Zychs "Lady Elgin" as now I have found out with my re-discovery of the "Mahoning"
I still think its cool now other divers get to diver her and hope the dive pressure will keep the looters in line,I hope~!
Brad Ingersoll
Posted at 6:35AM on Sep 26th 2005 by Brad Ingersoll