The Bermuda National Museum is conducting salvage operations of the naval warship Warwick that was hit by a hurricane in October 1619 and driven into the rocky shore of the Bermuda.

According to maritime-executive.com, in 1969 Mendel Peterson, a famous Bermuda shipwreck hunter, located the remains of the warship and found that a good part of the hull remained preserved under a pile of ballast stone.

Fifty years later, a new group of scientists started working on this project under the supervision of the island’s National Museum. The museum group was able to recover an amount of significant artifacts from the wreck. The group was joined by some renowned experts in the field of marine archaeology.

The Warwick lies at a depth of 15 to 30 feet in a protected harbor. Researchers have commences the excavation, recording and examination of the seventy feet of the preserved hull structure.

They have recovered a cannon, navigational tools, rudder hardware, parts of barrels, and fragments of ceramic containers.

The researchers are using a JW Fishers Pulse 8X underwater metal detector, which has benefitted the search discovering artifacts buried up to 3 feet below the seabed. And also cannon buried as deep as 6 feet below the seabed was discovered using this technology.

The African Slave Wrecks Project is using the same technology. This project has a primary objective of locating and documenting the wreck sites of ships that carried slaves.

Subsea World News Staff , July 26, 2012; Image: jwfishers