Image copyright Philip Koch Image caption The instrument was once used by mariners to measure the altitude of the Sun during their voyages 
 
 An artefact excavated from a shipwreck off the coast of Oman has been found to be the oldest known example of a type of navigational tool. 
 
 Marine archaeologists say the object is an astrolabe, an instrument once used by mariners to measure the altitude of the Sun during their voyages. 
 
 It is believed to date from between 1495 and 1500. 
 
 The item was recovered from a Portuguese explorer which sank during a storm in the Indian Ocean in 1503. 
 
 The boat was called the Esmeralda and was part of a fleet led by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, the first person to sail directly from Europe to India. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Divers uncover 500-year-old Vasco da Gama fleet treasure 
 
 David Mearns, from Blue Water Recovery, who led the excavation and is the author of The Shipwreck Hunter, told the BBC: "It's a great privilege to find something so rare, something so historically important, something that will be studied by the archaeological community and fills in a gap." 
 
 The astrolabe was discovered by Mr Mearns in 2014, and was one of nearly 3,000 artefacts recovered during a series of dives. 
 
 The bronze disc measures 17.5cm in diameter and is less than 2mm thick. 
 
 "It was like nothing else we had seen and I immediately knew it was something very important because you could see it had these two emblems on it," said Mr Mearns. 
 
 "One I recognised immediately as a Portuguese coat of arms... and another which we later discovered was the personal emblem of Don Manuel I, the King of Portugal at the time." 
 
 The excavation team believed the object was an astrolabe, but they could not see any navigational markings on it. 
 
 However, a later analysis uncovered its hidden details. 
 
 Laser scanning work carried out by scientists at the University of Warwick revealed etches around the edge of the disc, each separated by five degrees. 
 
 Image caption The University of Warwick used laser scans to uncover etches on the astrolabe, which helped navigators work out the height of the sun 
 
 This would have allowed mariners to measure the height of the sun above the horizon at noon to determine their location so they could find their way on the high seas. 
 
 Mariners' astrolabes are relatively rare, and this is only the 108th to be confirmed catalogued. It is also the earliest known example by several decades. 
 
 Mr Mearns said: "We know it had to have been made before 1502, because that's when the ship left Lisbon and Dom Manuel didn't become King until 1495, and this astrolabe wouldn't have carried the emblem of the King unless he was King. 
 
 "I believe it's probably fair to say it dates roughly to between 1495 to 1500. Exactly what year we don't know - but it is in that narrow period." 
 
 He added: "It rolls back this history by at least 30 years - it adds to evolution, it adds to the history, and hopefully astrolabes from this period can be found." 
 
 Follow Rebecca Morelle on Twitter. ||||| Left By Explorer's Armada, Shipwreck Yields 'Earliest Known' Marine Astrolabe 
 
 By early 1503, most of Vasco da Gama's armada was returning home to Portugal after his second voyage to the Indian coast. The explorer, now roughly five years removed from discovering a direct sea route from Europe to India, left behind several ships to patrol (and pillage) the waters near modern-day Oman — but the winds eventually rose and smashed several of the remaining ships in raging storms. 
 
 Now, more than 500 years later, the sunken ruins of one of those ships have yielded a surprising discovery: the world's "earliest known" marine astrolabe, according to researchers at the University of Warwick. They say the navigation tool, which sailors would use to reckon time by gauging the position of the sun and stars, dates to between 1495 and 1500. 
 
 The instrument was one of more than 2,800 artifacts recovered from the Esmeralda, which has been under excavation since 2013. When Blue Water Recoveries first pulled it from the depths in 2014, David Mearns, the group's expedition leader, said he and his team suspected the 7-inch bronze disc could be an astrolabe. 
 
 "It was like nothing else we had seen and I immediately knew it was something very important because you could see it had these two emblems on it," he told the BBC. "One I recognised immediately as a Portuguese coat of arms... and another which we later discovered was the personal emblem of Don Manuel I, the King of Portugal at the time." 
 
 But the centuries-old instrument no longer betrayed any discernible navigational markings. Mearns and his colleagues needed some help to find them. 
 
 Enter Mark Williams, a professor at Warwick who used "pioneering analysis and 3D imaging" to reveal hidden "etches around the edge of the object, each separated by five degrees." These markings would help sailors of the day judge a celestial body's position with relation to the equator and their own position on the water — and, for researchers of today, they confirmed the identity of the mystery artifact. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption University of Warwick University of Warwick 
 
 "It was fantastic to apply our 3D scanning technology to such an exciting project and help with the identification of such a rare and fascinating item," Williams said in a statement. 
 
 "Usually we are working on engineering-related challenges, so to be able to take our expertise and transfer that to something totally different and so historically significant was a really interesting opportunity." 
 
 For Mearns, the confirmation marked an important milestone for a project that dates back nearly two decades. The shipwreck Esmeralda was discovered off the coast of Oman in 1998, and Blue Water Recoveries has been collaborating with the country's Ministry of Heritage and Culture on its excavation for roughly four years. 
 
 And though it's believed astrolabes were in use long before the end of the 15th century, the BBC reports this one is only the 108th confirmed and cataloged — and the oldest one "by several decades." 
 
 "It's a great privilege to find something so rare, something so historically important," Mearns said, "something that will be studied by the archaeological community and fills in a gap." ||||| Details on earliest known marine navigation tool revealed by scanning technology at WMG, University of Warwick 
 
 Late fifteenth-century astrolabe - used by mariners to measure the altitude of the sun – recovered from Portuguese explorer ship which sank in 1503 
 
 - used by mariners to measure the altitude of the sun – recovered from Portuguese explorer ship which sank in 1503 Pioneering scanning analysis and 3D imaging revealed invisible navigational markings, proving the identity of the object 
 
 Details of the earliest known marine navigation tool, discovered in a shipwreck, have been revealed thanks to state-of-the-art scanning technology at WMG, University of Warwick. 
 
 Professor Mark Williams from WMG was tasked with scanning the artefact – an astrolabe from the late fifteenth century, used by mariners to measure the altitude of the sun during voyages – which was excavated in 2014 by Blue Water Recovery. 
 
 When the team found the object, no markings were visible – they believed it was an astrolabe, but they could not see any navigational markings on it. 
 
 They then approached Professor Williams, who conducts pioneering scanning analyses in his laboratory at WMG, to reveal the artefact’s invisible details. 
 
 The scans showed etches around the edge of the object, each separated by five degrees – proving that it is an astrolabe. 
 
 These markings would have allowed mariners to measure the height of the sun above the horizon at noon to determine their location so they could find their way on the high seas. 
 
 
 
 
 
 The technology was able to accurately scan the item to within 0.1mm and reproduce a high-resolution 3D model. 
 
 Professor Mark Williams commented: 
 
 “It was fantastic to apply our 3D scanning technology to such an exciting project and help with the identification of such a rare and fascinating item. 
 
 “Usually we are working on engineering-related challenges, so to be able to take our expertise and transfer that to something totally different and so historically significant was a really interesting opportunity.” 
 
 The astrolabe is a bronze disc, which measures 17.5cm in diameter, and is engraved with the Portuguese coat of arms and the personal emblem of Don Manuel I, the King of Portugal from 1495-1521. 
 
 It is believed to date from between 1495 and 1500, and was recovered from the wreck of a Portuguese explorer ship which sank during a storm in the Indian Ocean in 1503. 
 
 The boat was called the Esmeralda and was part of a fleet led by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, the first person to sail directly from Europe to India. 
 
 David Mearns, from Blue Water Recovery, who led the excavation, commented: 
 
 "It's a great privilege to find something so rare, something so historically important, something that will be studied by the archaeological community and fills in a gap. 
 
 “It was like nothing else we had seen […] it adds to the history, and hopefully astrolabes from this period can be found." 
 
 To read the BBC article about this, click here. 
 
 To hear about this on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, click here (listen from 2:24:26) 
 
 ﻿Image 1: Scan of the astrolabe artefact - credit University of Warwick (click for high res) 
 
 Image 2: Scan of the astrolabe artefact, revealing the etches - credit University of Warwick (click for high res) 
 
 Image 3: Scanning the artefact in the laboratory at WMG - credit University of Warwick (click for high res) 
 
 24 October 2017 ||||| Buccaneers aboard the flagship of notorious 18th-century pirate Blackbeard apparently enjoyed a rollicking read, according to an unlikely discovery in a cannon chamber. 
 
 A handful of paper scraps recovered from the wreck of Queen Anne's Revenge have been identified as fragments of the 1712 book A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711, by Captain Edward Cooke. 
 
 The discovery was announced Thursday during a presentation by conservators from the Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR) Conservation Lab at the annual meeting of the Society of Historical Archaeology held in New Orleans. 
 
 Queen Anne's Revenge went aground outside of what is now Beaufort, North Carolina, in 1718, and Blackbeard was killed while battling British naval forces in the Pamlico Sound a few months later. The wreck of the pirate's flagship was found by private salvagers in 1996 and excavation by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources began a year later. 
 
 The fragments were embedded in a wet mass of textile scraps removed from a breech-loading cannon chamber during its cleaning and conservation in 2016, according to QAR Lab conservator Erik Farrell. The wad, blackened with gunpowder residue, may have served as a gasket for the wooden tampion, a plug that protected the cannon muzzle from the elements. 
 
 Sixteen paper fragments, none larger than a U.S. quarter, were eventually identified, and seven of the fragments had legible text. As conservators gently pried the fragments of paper apart, they noticed that the text on successive layers was running in the same direction, leading them to suspect that they had the remains of several pages from the same book. 
 
 Eventually, they could make out words including "south" and fathom," which suggested the fragments may have come from some sort of maritime or navigational text. But there was a particular word that led to the book's ultimate identification, says QAR Lab conservator Kimberly Kenyon. 
 
 View Images A paper fragment, cleaned and dried after removal from the cannon chamber, reveals text. Photograph courtesy N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources 
 
 "There was one really key word that stood out: 'Hilo.' It was very distinctive and italicized, which might indicate a place name," Kenyon tells National Geographic. 
 
 "It really was luck." 
 
 Armed with the distinctive clue, QAR Lab conservators reached out to Johanna Green, a specialist in the history of printed text at the University of Glasgow. While the researchers ruled out accounts of Hilo, Hawaii, which didn't appear in European literature until after James Cook's expedition of 1778, Green pointed out earlier English-language mentions of the Spanish settlement of Ilo on the Peruvian coast. 
 
 The earliest accounts came from English sailors involved in attacking Ilo during Pacific voyages. Stories about the plunder of Spanish holdings were popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, says Kenyon. "The English audiences were eating this up." 
 
 When these printed accounts didn't match with the book fragments from Queen Anne's Revenge, the researchers looked to other stories of Pacific voyages that referenced the plunder of Ilo and eventually determined that their bits of paper came from pages 177, 178, and 183-188 of the 1712 first edition of Captain Edward Cooke's A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711. 
 
 Cooke's book describes his experiences on an expedition made by two ships, Duke and Dutchess, led by Captain Woodes Rogers. Rogers also published an account of the voyage, and both books describe the rescue of Alexander Selkirk from an island on which he had been marooned for four years. That rescue became the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. 
 
 Shipwreck From Explorer Vasco da Gama's Fleet Discovered After 18 years of research, excavations and archaeological analysis, National Geographic grantee David Mearns has successfully discovered one of Vasco da Gama's ships lost at sea in 1503 off the coast of present-day Oman. 
 
 Historical accounts show that at least some members of a pirate crew were often literate. Officers would have needed to read navigational charts, Kenyon observes. She also points to accounts of buccaneers pilfering books from seized ships, and even a mention of Blackbeard's diary, which was stolen after his death. 
 
 The team of QAR Lab conservators is working with specialist paper conservators and scientists from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Division of Archives and Records, along with the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, to conserve the very fragile paper fragments, and a display about the find is being planned as part of the department’s Blackbeard 300th anniversary events during 2018. 
 
 The remains of A Voyage to the South Sea take their place among other notable artifacts from the wreck of Queen Anne's Revenge, including the ship's bell, an ornamental sword, and even the remains of a delicate pocket watch. With some 100,000 of the 400,000 artifacts raised from the wreck so far still awaiting conservation, Kenyon is confident that more remarkable discoveries from Blackbeard's ship are yet to come from the QAR Lab. ||||| A mine worker discovered sparkling artifacts in the soil which was the ship wreck dated between 1525 and 1538. Courtesy: CNN 
 
 IT IS every archaeologist’s dream — the discovery of a missing ship which disappeared more than 500 years ago with a treasure chest of gold on-board. 
 
 Not only did the discovery of the resting place of TheBom Jesus solve one of the biggest maritime mysteries, but for chief archeologist Dieter Noli, it was a history-changing find. 
 
 The South African-based scientist told news.com.au he knew when he received a call revealing an usual find along the African desert coastline it would be for something special. 
 
 But not even he knew at the time how big that find would be. 
 
 A ship which had disappeared on its way to India laden with gold in 1533 had vanished, its fate and that of her crew unknown. 
 
 Fast forward 500 years and that mystery was closer to being solved when a group of miners hunting diamonds off the Namibian dessert stumbled across some strange objects. 
 
 The discovery and what it uncovered continues to captivate with talks now in place for the site to be opened up into a museum featuring what remains of the shipwreck that had been buried under the sand for half a millennia. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY 
 
 When miners stumbled across some unusual finds in their hunt for diamonds in April 2008, they knew they had found metal, wood and pipes. 
 
 Unsure of what they were dealing with, the company they worked for, Namdeb Diamond Corporation, called in Dr Noli who instantly knew it was a shipwreck. 
 
 Dr Noli, the chief archeologist of the southern Africa Institute of Maritime Archaeological Research, said the coastline was notorious for storms so finding a shipwreck was hardly surprising. 
 
 However, it was a week into the excavation that a treasure chest laden with gold was found, with the coins indicating it had come from a Portuguese ship which had disappeared in 1533. 
 
 “It adds new meaning to the concept of the ship having being loaded with gold,” Dr Noli said. 
 
 Further investigation revealed the discovery of bronze bowls, and long metal poles later found to be canons. 
 
 Dr Noli’s team also found a musket which he estimated to be at least 500 years old and bits of metal revealed a shipwreck was buried in the sand. 
 
 The miners who were now working on the site also found compasses, swords, astrological tools, canons and even a time capsule. 
 
 Silver coins were found. 
 
 Dr Noli then contacted Bruno Werz, a marine archeologist who told CNN it was a dream come true to work on a ship from just after the age of exploration. 
 
 He also said it was crucially important from world heritage perspective to find a shipwreck which contained material from three continents. 
 
 “You can’t describe the feeling of seeing this material and realising how important it is,” he told the broadcaster in an earlier interview. 
 
 He also said the large amounts of copper at the site helped preserve a lot of the objects, its weight preventing a lot of it from washing away. 
 
 However the ship was “extremely badly battered” by the sea, with little of the original structure of left. 
 
 GOLDEN FIND 
 
 A week into the dig, the team found gold coins. a lot of them. 
 
 The centuries old coins were in mint condition which Dr Noli believes is down to the ship breaking on rocks, tipping over and the chest with coins inside being buried under the superstructure. 
 
 It was these very coins which gave Dr Noli and his team a massive clue. 
 
 Within 45 minutes of finding the first gold coin, they had unearthed around 11kg of the treasure, Dr Noli told CNN. 
 
 Dated between 1525-38 and in perfect condition, it meant the ship would have had to have set sail during that time. 
 
 It also served as proof that the find was the oldest ever shipwreck found in sub-Saharan Africa. 
 
 WHAT ELSE WAS FOUND 
 
 Thousands of Portuguese and Spanish gold coins, Portuguese silver coins, bronze cannons, tonnes of copper ingots, more than 50 elephant tusks, as well as navigational instruments were uncovered. 
 
 Dr Noli said more than 2000 gold coins were found in addition to five anchors, three navigational dividers and part of a ship’s compass. 
 
 Pewter tableware, copper cooking utensils, swords and muskets were also found. 
 
 Only a small part of the structural remains of the ship was uncovered. 
 
 Some 5438 artefacts of cultural, scientific and intrinsic value were discovered in total. 
 
 THE DIAMOND HUNTING AREA 
 
 The Namibian coastline, some 18km north of the Orange River mouth, is renowned for its high number of storms and treacherous seas. 
 
 The area where the ship was found was called Sperrgebiet, or “forbidden territory,” after the hundreds of German prospectors who ventured to the region in search for diamonds. 
 
 Diamond company DeBeers and the Namibian government still run a joint operation in the area, according to CNN and the area remains largely out of sight. 
 
 The remains of the shipwreck remain protected by mining security with limited numbers allowed onto the site. 
 
 An idea for a museum has been floated but it remains to be seen whether it will occur.
– The world's earliest known navigational tool used by Vasco da Gama's fleet was discovered in a shipwreck off the Oman coast, NPR reports. Called a marine astrolabe, it's believed to date from 1495 to 1500. Unlike the Game of Thrones intro astrolabe, sailors used this one to figure out where they were on the high seas. It was found in the wreck of the Esmeralda, part of the Portuguese explorer's armada. Da Gama, who discovered the first sea route from Europe to India, was returning home from his second trip there when he left some ships in the Indian Ocean to "disrupt maritime trade," meaning pillage. Several of the ships sank during a fierce storm in 1503. The Esmeralda was discovered in 1998. Since excavations began in 2014, University of Warwick researchers have recovered 2,800 artifacts, the jewel of the cache being the astrolabe, a bronze disc measuring 7 inches in diameter. Emblems depict the Portuguese coat of arms and the personal stamp of King Dom Manuel I. "It was like nothing else we had seen, and I immediately knew it was something very important because you could see it had these two emblems on it," team leader David Mearns of Blue Water Recoveries tells the BBC. "It's a great privilege to find something so rare, something so historically important." At first, the team wasn't 100% sure it was an astrolabe, but laser scans revealed navigational marks around the edges every 5 degrees, which sailors would have used to calculate their location by measuring the sun's position above the horizon at noon. (A ship that sank in 1BC may hold priceless treasures.)