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Barry Clifford claims another wreck

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Barry Clifford, the man that found the pirate shipwreck Whydah, has laid claim to another wreck! This one is the China trader Semiramis, a 3 masted 14 gun sailing ship that sank between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in 1804. If you have never read about the Whydah, I highly recommend heading over to the Expedition Whydah web page, it really is some fascinating stuff!

Explorer claims sunken vessel

China trader wrecked in 1804


By Donna Goodison
Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Underwater explorer Barry Clifford, discoverer of the Whydah pirate ship that sank off Cape Cod in 1717, has his sights on another shipwreck.

The Provincetown treasure hunter is petitioning state and federal authorities to lay claim to the Semiramis - an estimated 120-foot, three-masted ship armed with 14 cannons that sank between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in 1804.

Built in the mid-1790s, the Semiramis is important from a historical standpoint because she was one of the first China traders, according to Clifford. The ship was headed to Newport, R.I., after a three-year voyage to China with a cargo - estimated to be worth $500,000 at the time - of silk, porcelain, tea and an undetermined amount of hard currency in the form of silver and possibly gold, according to research by Clifford's historian, Ken Kinkor.

"I have no idea what that would be worth today," said Clifford, who's putting together an expedition to survey the shipwreck with Falmouth-based Teledyne Benthos. "There was only supposed to be minor salvage done to the shipwreck at the time. I would suspect that much of the ship is buried under the sand and would be in very good condition."

That was Clifford's experience with the Whydah, which he located in 1984 - said to be the first pirate ship ever discovered and authenticated. His team has removed more than 100,000 artifacts from the ship, some of which are on display at the Whydah Sea Lab & Learning Center in Provincetown.

On Monday, Clifford's Vast Explorer Inc. filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Boston to gain exclusive salvage rights to the Semiramis. Clifford plans to keep any recovered artifacts as a collection for his museum, which he hopes to relocate to Newport.

You can read the full story here :
http://www.bostonher...recked_in_1804/

And you can read more about the Whydah here :
http://www.whydah.com/
 
I wonder if that's where Louis L'Amour got the name of a ship which featured quite often in many of his Jim Mayo short stories? Jim's "Semiramis" was an old tramp steamer, though, not a ship with sails.
 
Could be Stallion, it is an unusual name. I used to read L'Amour all the time when I was a kid, his westerns were simply classic!
 
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