Four 19th-Century Shipwrecks Found Near Australia

News January 27, 2017

(Julia Sumerling/Silentworld Foundation)
SHARE:
Australia Kenn Reefs
(Julia Sumerling/Silentworld Foundation)

BUNDABERG, AUSTRALIA—The Australian Associated Press reports that four nineteenth-century shipwrecks have been found at Kenn Reef, located off the coast of Queensland, by a team of archaeologists from the Australian National Maritime Museum. Eight ships are known to have been wrecked in the area during the nineteenth century while traveling to and from trading ports in India and Indonesia. Anchors, fasteners, and at least six cannons have been found at the site. The next step is to try to identify the wrecks. “This will take months of careful examination of the archaeological discoveries against historical records, including ship’s logs and accounts of shipwrecks in newspapers from the period,” explained museum maritime archaeologist James Hunter. For more on underwater archaeology, go to “Discovering Terror.”

  • Features November/December 2016

    Expanding the Story

    New discoveries are overturning long-held assumptions and revealing previously ignored complexities at the desert castle of Khirbet al-Mafjar

    Read Article
    (Sara Toth Stub/Courtesy The Rockefeller Archaeological Museum)
  • Letter from Maryland November/December 2016

    Belvoir's Legacy

    The highly personal archaeology of enslavement on a tobacco plantation

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Maryland Department of Transportation, State Highway Administration)
  • Artifacts November/December 2016

    18th-Century Men's Buckle Shoe

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Dave Webb: Cambridge Archaeological Unit)
  • Digs & Discoveries November/December 2016

    Piltdown’s Lone Forger

    Read Article
    (Arthur Claude (1867–1951) / Geological Society, London, UK / Bridgeman Images)