If you’ve ever had fantasies of acting out those first few scenes in The Little Mermaid – you know, these ones:
Then prepare for your dreams to come true, because scientists have just discovered four 19th century shipwrecks off the Queensland coast.
Australian National Maritime Museum archaeologists found the vessels at Kenn Reef, 500km off the coast of central Queensland. One of the wreck explorers, Dr James Hunter of Flinders University, told the Courier Mail that the search party had discovered over a dozen iron anchors, a bunch of copper-alloy fasteners, and at least six cannons.
Cool.
The team – which also discovered 1829 government schooner the Mermaid in 2009 – were searching for the wrecks of the brig Bona Vista, which disappeared in 1828, and the barque Jenny Lind, which vanished in 1850.
Dr Hunter said that identifying the wrecks they’ve begun to explore won’t be an easy task.
“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.“
Eight ships are known to have been wrecked during the 1800s in the same area off Bundaberg, which was known to be a dangerous stretch of coastline.
Source: Courier Mail.
Image: Julia Sumerling / Silentworld Foundation via Australian National Maritime Museum / Instagram.
