NANOTECHNOLOGY COULD HELP PRESERVE ANCIENT SHIPS

12 September 2018: Sorry for the short lapse; we were traveling and got really busy moving into new winter quarters. But here we are now and with, I hope, an interesting piece for your reading pleasure! 
I am sure that most of my readers - if not all - are aware of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flag ship that capsized and sank in the mid-16th century off the Isle of Wight (in the Solent). She was raised and has been preserved but her continued deterioration has been worrisome to say the least. The following describes a possible solution to her continued preservation.

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A sunken 16th-century British warship that was once the pride of King Henry VIII’s fleet is getting a high-tech touch-up — with help from microscopic magnets designed to preserve the ship’s once-waterlogged wood for generations to come.

A gel containing the magnetic nanoparticles — each about 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a sheet of paper — will be applied to sections of the Mary Rose as a way to neutralize iron atoms in the ship's wood that would otherwise form highly destructive acids.

Preliminary tests of the gel on bits of oak that had been soaked in an iron solution showed that the process was 85 percent effective at removing iron particles.

“It’s kind of a simple idea, so it’s been nice that it has really worked,” said Serena Corr, a University of Glasgow chemist and the leader of the scientific team working on the Mary Rose project. She said the scientists are now poised to test the treatment on wood samples from the Mary Rose itself; if that goes well, the gel could be applied broadly to damaged portions of the ship's hull.

The research effort is based in Portsmouth, England, where the Mary Rose and various artifacts from the shipwreck are displayed at the Mary Rose Museum.

The Mary Rose sank in 1545 off England’s southern coast during the Battle of the Solent, a skirmish with the French fleet of King Francis I. 

The ship was raised in 1982, with about 40 percent of the structure surviving. But after more than than 430 years underwater, the Mary Rose was in bad shape — its wood eaten away by marine bacteria.

When marine bacteria feed on submerged wood, they release a chemical that reacts with iron — in cannons and other metal artifacts — to form iron sulfides. As long as the wood stays submerged, the sulfides do no harm. But once a ship is raised and exposed to air, they form wood-destroying acids.

When shipwrecks are salvaged, conservators typically treat them with a synthetic resin to replace the water in the wood’s cellular structure. “This preserves the wood’s dimensions so that it doesn’t shrink and twist and break apart when it dries out,” said Kimberly Kenyon, a conservator at a laboratory in Greenville, North Carolina, that is working to recover the Queen Anne's Revenge, an 18th-century frigate thought to be the pirate Blackbeard’s flagship.

The treatment developed by Corr and her colleagues goes a step further by extracting iron particles from the wood without damaging the ship's structure.

Kenyon, who is not involved with Corr's research, said she is keen to see more results from the new treatment, adding that the magnetic nanoparticles could also be used to help preserve the Queen Anne’s Revenge. “It has certainly garnered interest from us as an alternate solution to common methods,” she said.

There are thousands of other shipwrecks around the world that could be treated with these magnetic nanoparticles, according to the American Chemical Society, and they could also be used to save other historic artifacts.

"There are many collections that could benefit from this technology," said Eleanor Schofield, head of conservation at the Mary Rose Trust, a Portsmouth-based charitable trust that is collaborating on efforts to preserve the warship. "It can be applied to any marine archaeological wood," she said, even materials such as textiles and leather.

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That is quite an accomplishment and will surely enhance maritime wreck preservation. Kudos to the University of Glasgow scientists and Serena Corr! 

Until next time - and we are keeping the folks in the Carolinas in the U.S. in our thoughts and prayers as they await the arrival of a Cat 4 hurricane. 

                               Fair Winds

                                    Old Salt

BERMUDA TRIANGLE MYSTERY SOLVED?

3 September 2017: Well, here we go again. Yet another group of scientists have "solved" the mysterious disappearances of ships and airplanes in the infamous Bermuda Triangle. Or so they say. Here's the piece originally published in Australia (one cannot get much farther away from the Bermuda Triangle than Australia ...) and you, friend, can decide for yourself if they got it right.
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British oceanographers from the University of Southampton believe the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has been busted. After an investigation lasting decades, they’ve concluded that ships are being sucked into the ocean by "rogue waves" over 30 metres in height.
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is a stretch of water between the southernmost tip of Florida, Puerto Rico, and the island of Bermuda to the north. 

The Triangle has featured in the public imagination since the early 1900s, when media first started running reports on the area's unusual tally of shipwrecks. An article in The New York Times claimed that over the past 500 years the Triangle has claimed at least 50 ships and 20 aircraft.
Dozens of theories have been offered over the years, but this latests one involving waves was first proffered in 1995, when a freak wave of 18.5 metres was measured in the North Sea by satellites. The so-called Draupner Wave was the first time scientists had recorded a "rogue wave," at a time when rogue waves were considered just as mythical as the Bermuda Triangle.
So what are rogue waves? Basically, they’re abnormally large and unexpected waves in open sea. According to a study on Freak Waves, a standard-issue large wave of around 12 metres will have a breaking pressure of 8.5 psi. Modern ships are designed to tolerate a breaking wave of 21 psi, but a rogue wave can deliver a crushing 140 psi, grossly exceeding the limits of what ships are expected to tolerate.

Dr Simon Boxall, an Oceanographer from the University of Southampton who led the new study, explained on a Channel 5 documentary The Bermuda Triangle Enigma: “there are storms to the South and North, which come together... we’ve measured waves in excess of 30 metres. The bigger the boat gets, the more damage is done.”
His team re-created the intense surges of the 30 metre waves by using indoor simulators. Then to see what such a wave would do to a large ship, they built a model of the USS Cyclops, a carrier [Cyclops was in fact a collier. ED] that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle in 1918 and claimed the lives of 309 people.
“If you can imagine a rogue waves with peaks at either end, there’s nothing below the boat, so it snaps in two. If it happens, it can sink in two to three minutes,” explained Dr Simon Boxall.
Australian celebrity scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki would seem to agree that big waves explain the so-called mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
In 2017 he wrote a book titled The Author in which he applied science to popular mysteries. He claimed there was a simple explanation for the missing planes and vessels in the Bermuda Triangle, writing of the various captains and pilots: “There was [only] one experienced guy, the rest were inexperienced. It wasn’t fine weather, there were 15 metre waves.”
Also, he noted that the Bermuda Triangle, which is one of the most heavily trafficked parts of any ocean, doesn't actually see a statistically unlikely rate of disappearances. “According to Lloyds of London and the US coast guard, the number of planes that go missing in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as anywhere in the world on a percentage basis,” Dr Karl told News.com.
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That's the supposedly "scientific" explanation.... Some folks still think: 

You can make up your own minds.....We are still undecided! But the rogue wave theory does not account for airplanes going down, regardles of the "statistical analysis".... Another theory about the whole issue is something called "hexagonal clouds" which develop sudden winds of 170 MPH creating shear and waves....seems to make more sense to us as it does account for both ships and planes. 

Until next time, (and stay out of the Bermuda Triangle!)

                            Fair Winds
                                   Old Salt