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Private Notes
Kublai Khan, the grandson of the great Genghis Khan, proclaimed himself ruler of the Mongols in 1260. Under his rule, the Mongol territory grew to the largest land Empire in history stretching from the eastern shores of China and Korea to Syria in the Middle East and Romania in Europe. But just off the coast of Korea, sat the kingdom of Japan – protected from the Mongols’ grasp by less than 200 kilometres of storm-swept sea. In 1268, Kublai Khan sent envoys to the emperor and government of Japan demanding that the Japanese subjugate themselves to the Khan’s authority. The Japanese military dictatorship, the bakufu, ignored the Khan’s less than subtle request. Angrily, the Khan ordered his vassals in the newly conquered Korea to assemble a fleet for the invasion of Japan. In the fall of 1274, nine hundred ships carrying possibly 30,000 to 40,000 men set sail across the narrow straits between Korea and Japan’s Kyushu coast. Because of its proximity to the Asian mainland Kyushu is considered by many to be the birthplace of Japanese culture and the area through which mainland methods of writing, pottery making, and tea cultivation may have entered into Japan.
After attacking Japanese coastal islands, the Mongol forces landed at various points along Hakata Bay. Usually a route for trade, these waters became a highway for war. Thousands of samurai and warriors rushed to resist the invaders. After a day of savage combat, with the skies darkening and the threat of a storm imminent, the warriors retreated inland and the Mongols retired to their ships. Then suddenly the skies opened and a terrific storm erupted over the Mongol fleet. Against the sudden gales and towering waves, the vessels were defenseless. By some accounts, hundreds of ships and over thirteen thousand men were lost. The surviving invaders were forced to retreat.
But Kublai Khan would not be denied. Months later, in 1275, and then again in 1279, he sent further delegations to demand Japanese s
Deep beneath a mountain in central Germany, a team of underwater explorers dive the ruins of a secret Nazi missile factory. Join the Sea Hunters as they explore underground tunnels flooded since just after World War II, where thousands of men died constructing the Vengeance Weapons of Adolph Hitler.” Germany’s defeat in World War I was sealed with the Treaty of Versailles, which restricted the Germans by denying them an effective army, air force or artillery. Soon German generals were exploring loopholes in order to re-arm. Their search led to a small group of amateur rocketry enthusiasts in a suburb of Berlin. In 1932, the most promising of these rocketeers, 20-year-old Wernher von Braun, accepted a position with the Army’s weapons development center in Kummersdorf, near Berlin. Von Braun hoped that the army’s deep pockets would finance his dream of putting a rocket into space.
Two months after von Braun began work with the Wehrmacht, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. As the Nazis began to re-arm, rocket research began to benefit from increased funding, and eventually, would gain high priority. Hitler was focused on ballistic missiles raining upon enemy cities hundreds of kilometers away.” A large research and manufacturing complex was built amidst the forest at Peenemünde, on an island off Germany’s Baltic coast. Today, in the quiet villages nearby, there is little left to remind the visitor that this was once the home of the foremost rocket scientists in the world. The prototypes of this jet-propelled flying bomb, later designated the V1, were first tested here. Eventually manufactured in the thousands, the V1’s were launched against targets in Britain and Belgium. Hitler’s interest in the program waxed and waned, but when the Allies stepped up their bombing of German cities, he seized upon the missiles as weapons of revenge. The missiles of Peenemünde were given new names. The flying bomb would be known as Vengeance Weapon One
In February 1898, Cuba’s three-year struggle for independence from Spain and fears for American lives and property in Cuba convinced President William McKinley to send the battleship USS Maine to “show the flag”. When Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana Harbor, suspicions of Spanish treachery led to war. As troops trained and assembled to sail to Cuba, the US Navy dispatched a squadron of ships. Spain also rushed its navy to Cuban waters.
The Spanish fleet lay out of reach of the American ships inside the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, protected by 16th century forts at its narrow entrance. To keep the Spaniards bottled up, the Navy sent the collier Merrimac, under heavy Spanish fire, into the narrow channel, where the crew scuttled it. Merrimac was the first ship lost in the Spanish American War.
Ironically, the Spaniards ultimately sent their own block ship Reina Mercedes, to close off the channel and keep the Americans out. The attempt failed when the Spanish ship drifted out of the channel and sank in the shallows. Ultimately, the Spanish Admiral, forced by his superiors to steam out of the harbor, ran past a gauntlet of US Navy ships standing off and waiting for his desperate sortie.
In a running battle along 80 miles of the Cuban coast, the Spanish ships sank, often at point blank range as the US Navy’s Squadron pursued them. The Battle of Santiago, the first naval victory of the war, opened the way into Santiago. Not long after the naval victory, American troops ashore overwhelmed Spanish forces protecting the city – notably at the Battle of San Juan Hill, and ended the war.
The wrecks of the Spanish fleet lie in shallow water along the coast, - many never explored by divers. The wreck of Merrimac, cleared from the channel, may have left traces, even pieces of the ship. The Sea Hunters, working from historical accounts and using high-tech equipment, search for Merrimac, while also exploring the sunken Spanish torpedo destroyers, cruisers
On the Ulithi Atoll, South of Guam lays the wreckage of the USS Mississinewa, a fuel carrying cargo vessel. She was sunk on November 20, 1944 and carries the distinction of being the only vessel confirmed to have been sunk by a Japanese torpedo manned by a Kamikaze pilot who steered the torpedo, a “Kaiten” or “heaven Shaker” to its target and to his own death. Next to the wreckage of the Mississinewa lays a cylindrical object, which could only be the only “suicide torpedo” ever located in the field of battle. Sea Hunter James Delgado, one of the few scholars to study these unique craft, journeys to the Ulithi Atoll to determine just what lies on the bottom and what really happened to the “Mississinewa”.
In May of 1914, the German Light Cruiser “Dresden” was trapped and sunk by British destroyers. She had been at anchor at Robinson Crusoe Island, 400 miles off the coast of Santiago Chile. Many of her crew were killed and the remainder were placed in a Chilean prison. One of those captured was Wilhelm Canaris. He later escaped Chile by horseback, entered Argentina, and with the help of German sympathizers returned to Germany near the end of the war. Canaris stayed in the German Navy and rose through the ranks until he became Admiral. On New Year’s Day of 1935, Canaris was named as head of the German Abwehr, the Military Intelligence Service. He served as its chief for the next 9 years and in that time assisted with efforts to overthrow Hitler as well as provide the allies with important information on German troop movements. Eventually, Canaris was hung, at Hitler’s orders in the last two weeks of the war. Join Sea Hunter James Delgado and the Sea Hunter dive team as they dive this important WW1 wreck and trace the path of Canaris, as he escapes to become an enigmatic figure of the German Resistance.
In April of 1933, the United States Navy Rigid Airship “Akron” crashed off the coast of New Jersey. Seventy-three Navy airmen were lost in this horrifying disaster. The development of rigid airships and “blimps” ended in Europe at the end of the First World War. In the U.S. and Great Britain however, limited programs continued. The Akron was commissioned in 1929 and went into service on October 27, 1931. She was built at the U.S. Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation in Akron Ohio. The Akron was built with the capability of docking and hangaring five aircraft while in flight. This attribute makes her unique. She was a one of a kind war machine, a flying aircraft carrier that could carry fighter and bomber aircraft fully armed and fueled, directly to a target which could be either landlocked or near water. The loss of the Akron represents a fiery and tragic end in the evolution of airborne warfare.
Akron’s sister airship, the Macon, suffered a similar fate by crashing into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Ironically, the Macon was carrying the Akron’s five aircraft when it crashed.
Join James Delgado and The Sea Hunter team as they search for the remains of these two unique vessels of war and tell their fascinating history.
“What secrets may be hidden within those wrecked or stranded ships, we know not – what may be buried in the graves of our unhappy countrymen or in caches not yet discovered, we have yet to learn. The bodies and graves, which we were told of have not yet been found; the books, journals have not yet been recovered, and thus left in ignorance and darkness with so little obtained and so much yet to learn. Can it be said and is it fitting to pronounce that the fate of the expedition is ascertained.”
-Lady Jane Franklin
The Franklin Expedition is the Canadian Arctic’s greatest tragedy. The search for Franklin survivors was one of the largest and longest in naval history. Despairing at what she considered to be inaction by the British Admiralty, Lady Jane Franklin dispatched the yacht “Fox” under the command of Captain Francis Leopold McClintock, to search the Arctic for signs of her husband. He arrived in the Arctic in 1858 and began an expensive search, which greatly enlarged the available information on the fate of Franklin and his men.
Join James Delgado and “The Sea Hunters” dive team as they travel to the Canadian Arctic to retrace McClintock’s path and then search for the remains of McClintock’s vessel, the “Fox”, lost in that ice covered white wilderness.
Jim Delgado’s extensive research on the Canadian Arctic and on the search for Franklin has just been published in his newest book, “Across the Top of the World”. Work done by Jim in research along with Eco-Nova’s long established expertise in Arctic search and filming techniques, will bring this story to light and will reopen a fascinating era of British Exploration and Canadian Nation Building.
