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Team may have Captain Kidd's ship
Associated Press
Published December 14, 2007
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A U.S. underwater archaeology team announced Thursday it has likely discovered the shattered remnants of a ship once captained by the notorious buccaneer William Kidd off a tiny Dominican Republic island. The barnacled cannons and anchors found stacked beneath just 10 feet of crystalline coastal waters off Catalina Island are believed to be the wreckage of the Quedagh Merchant, a ship abandoned by the Scottish privateer in 1699, Indiana University researchers say. "When I first looked down and saw it, I couldn't believe everybody missed it for 300 years," said Charles Beeker, a scuba-diving archaeologist who teaches at Indiana University. "I've been on thousands of wrecks, and this is one of the first where it's been untouched by looters." Beeker said the wreckage has been aggressively sought by treasure hunters, including a group with a permit from the Dominican government to scour Catalina for remnants of the ship, which historians believe was scavenged of treasure and burned shortly after Kidd abandoned it. The Dominican government has licensed the U.S. university to study the wreckage and convert the sea floorinto an underwater preserve, where it will be accessible to divers and snorkelers. "We believe this is a living museum," said Beeker. "The treasure in this case is the wreck itself."
[Last modified December 14, 2007, 01:15:05]
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