Silentworld Foundation in Sydney, Australia | Archaeological service

Silentworld Foundation

Locality: Sydney, Australia

Address: P.O. Box 982, St. Ives, NSW 2075 Sydney, NSW, Australia

Website: http://www.silentworldfoundation.org.au

Likes: 510

Add/Update information

Reviews

Tags

• Non-profit organisation
• Archaeological service

25.01.2022 Did you know archaeological timbers need ‘health’ check-ups? As part of the conservation process, a condition assessment of the timbers (and any sediments adhering closely to them) must be undertaken prior to any desalination and chemical treatment. This is an important step as it allows conservators to record information about the condition of the item/s, and determine the most appropriate treatment applicable. Part of the assessment on the boat timbers includes analysis by ...X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to confirm, among other elements, iron and sulphur contamination. A big thank you to Prof Damian Gore from Macquarie University for joining us on site with his portable XRF equipment and working with Ian Panter (York Archaeological Trust) to collect data from some of the timbers and samples of adhering sediment, and undertaking further elemental and mineralogical analysis (XRD) on sediment. Silentworld Foundation for Sydney Metro - NSW GOV. #BarangarooBoat #conservation #brooboat #XRF #XRD #shipwreck #maritimearchaeology #timberconservation

24.01.2022 #OnThisDay 1857: Sydney residents awoke to the shocking news that the Dunbar had been wrecked due to a severe storm during the previous night. It would be several days until the sole survivor of the wreck - a member of ship's crew who was tossed on the cliffs at South Head - was found. We visited the wreck site in 2018, with the Australian National Maritime Museum, to conduct a site survey of the anchors and remaining artefact scatters (#FindsFriday). Find out more about our research on The Dunbar: www.silentworldfoundation.org.au///29/dunbar-royal-charter

23.01.2022 'They have no grave, but the cruel sea, no flowers lay at their head, a rusting hulk is their tombstone, afast on the ocean bed...we will remember them, lest we forget.' Today, we paused to remember the men of AE1, Australia's first submarine. HMAS AE1 and its crew were lost on patrol on 14 September 1914 off the Duke of York Islands, in Papua New Guinea. For over a century, they waited. For over a century, their families kept their memory alive and never lost hope that one ...day, they would be found. The wreckage of AE1 was found on the evening of 20 December 2017. In 2017 the Silentworld Foundation collaborated with the Royal Australian Navy, to co-fund an expedition to once again search for AE1 in collaboration with the Australian National Maritime Museum, @FindAE1 Ltd. and the Submarine Institute of Australia. The team partnered with Fugro, international commercial surveying services company and aboard MV Fugro Equator set out to find the men of AE1. #LestWeForget

23.01.2022 #FindsFriday It takes a team to conduct an epic expedition . We spotted several large anchors during the 2017 expedition to Kenn Reefs. You can see more happy snaps here www.silentworldfoundation.org.au/projects/kenn-reefs/ : Julia Sumerling/Silentworld Foundation. This project was undertaken in partnership with the Australian National Maritime Museum.

23.01.2022 Peekaboo, this #FindsFriday! Anyone else excited to dive into the weekend? : Julia Sumerling/Silentworld Foundation. Maritime archaeologist Irini 'Renee' Malliaros is pictured with an anchor from the wreck of the Comet, at Ashmore Reef in 2018, during the Boot Reef expedition.

22.01.2022 It is almost time for some spring cleaning! For a bit of inspiration and motivation, here is a look at a complete clean of one of the longer planks from the Barangaroo Boat. All in a day’s work for our conservator and research assistant, Heather Berry. Under the supervision of Ian Panter from York Archaeological Trust, almost all timber elements passed through Heather’s hands at the cleaning tables! She now recognises timbers not by their assigned number, but by the featur...es of their surfaces. Filmed and edited by Heather Berry/Silentworld Foundation; Sydney Metro #BarangarooBoat #SydneyMetro #brooboat #conservation #conservatorlife #shipwreck #squeakyclean

21.01.2022 #FindsFriday A spot of teamwork above and below the waves during the December 2018 Boot Reef expedition . : Julia Sumerling/Silentworld Foundation. This project was undertaken in partnership with the Australian National Maritime Museum.

19.01.2022 Ding ding! Join us for #AskACurator day 2020! We're hosting a Facebook Live Q&A about our part in the Barangaroo Boat Conservation Project. Meet the Silentworld team, as we discuss how to conserve a boat from the early 1800s and answer your questions. Come one, come all and let's talk about this brilliant boat! Going live 7:30pm, Wednesday 16 September 2020 (Sydney time).

19.01.2022 Happy #FindsFriday! In 2013 Silentworld Foundation and the Australian National Maritime Museum set out to find not one, but TWO shipwrecks at Ferguson Reef. Carrying the Queen’s own 50th Regiment of Foot from Sydney bound for battles in India, Fergusson, a three-masted armed vessel of 555 tonnes, wrecked in the Coral Sea in 1841. All were rescued by accompanying vessels. The reef upon which it struck is now known as Ferguson Reef.... The opium trader, Morning Star, is reported to have been lost in 1814 about 10 nautical miles inshore of Ferguson Reef. Some survivors set off in a boat to reach help those stranded were rescued by a passing vessel. Of the boat crew, only one survived a capsizing event. Read more www.silentworldfoundation.org.au/pr/fergusson-morning-star/ : Xanthe Rivett / Silentworld Foundation.

18.01.2022 It's a bountiful #FindsFriday! Throwback to October 2017, when the team visited the Pitcairn Islands. Although settled in the past by Polynesian groups, Pitcairn Island is mostly known as the final destination and new home of the mutinous members of HMS Bounty’s crew. The vessel was acquired by the Royal Navy in 1787 and refitted specifically for a mission to Tahiti to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them back to the West Indies. However, before the voyage and missio...n were complete, some of the crew mutinied they were led by the first mate, Fletcher Christian. They set the ship’s master, William Bligh, an officer of the Royal Navy, adrift on a small boat along with those of the crew that remained loyal to the captain. After some time the mutineers came to settle on Pitcairn with a number of Tahitian men and women. There they stripped the Bounty of material they might need for their new home and then burned the vessel to the waterline so that they may not be discovered. Pitcairn Island is, to this day, still inhabited by many of the crew’s direct descendants. The Silentworld team visited and assessed the condition of HMS Bounty's wreck site and other wrecks around the Pitcairn Islands. They also saw artefacts from the Bounty, held at the local museum on Pitcairn. : Julia Sumerling / Silentworld Foundation.

16.01.2022 What is your planking technique? Scanning the frame elements of the Barangaroo Boat had a few little challenges that Thomas was able to address quickly and easily. The slightly larger problem to solve came with scanning the planks. Thomas had to devise a way by which to capture the most information along with reference geometry that would help the software reconstruct what the camera was capturing. Suspending the planks with several soft plastic tubes over a ‘busy landscape’ ...proved the most effective! #barangarooboat #brooboat #3Dscanning #Ubi3D #Artec3D

14.01.2022 Happy anniversary to our talented conservator Heather Berry, who joined the team in October 2019 for the #BarangarooBoat project. Heather recently shared her experience going from divemaster to maritime conservator with Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne http://ow.ly/jZHu50C0qVn #ArchaeologyLife #SydneyMetro

14.01.2022 It's #FindsFriday and I spy ...: - 4 archaeologists - 3 iron anchors - 1 large anchor chain... This drone shot was captured during the 2017 expedition to the Pitcairn Islands. The anchors, chain and iron knees which now decorate the reef and shore are from the ship Bowden. The British vessel, Bowden, under the command of Captain Law was outbound from San Francisco and headed for Queenstown, England. On April 24th, 1893 - in heavy seas - the ship ran aground on the reef surrounding the island of Oeno. The Bowden was wrecked, though the ship was intact enough for all the crew to safely escape. Captain Law emptied the ship of much of the cargo of canned goods and beef, and left them on the island. On April 26th, the entire crew departed for Pitcairn, and arrived there the following day. : Paul Hundley/Silentworld Foundation, 2017.

13.01.2022 Hold onto your goggles! Data collected during a 2019 dive by the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Silentworld Foundation on PS Herald has been used to create a VR diving experience. So (soon) you could visit the wreck, without learning to scuba dive! Great work by Dr Hunter of ANMM, and Professor Holger Deuter and students from the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern .... #p3dr

10.01.2022 Time to get our modelling on Once the raw scans of the shipwreck timbers have been captured by the structured light scanner, they must be processed in the appropriate software (Artec Studio) to produce the final, clean 3D model of each timber. The process includes lining up scans of different sides of the object, removing the surrounding reference geometry, getting rid of any ‘noise’ and applying the texture.... This phase comes with its own challenges and we are fortunate to be learning the ropes from Thomas Van Damme who, along with his colleagues, literally wrote the book on this highly rapid, accurate and user friendly modelling technique for recording shipwreck timbers. Learn more about their work here: https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1186/s40494-020-00417-9 #BarangarooBoat #brooboat #3Dmodel #Ubi3D #Artec3D

10.01.2022 Did you know it's #AskACurator day? Excellent! We can't wait to answer your questions about the conservation of the Barangaroo Boat. See you on Facebook live tonight, at 7.30pm (Sydney time).

10.01.2022 #FindsFriday: Here's a throwback to January 2009, when the team solved a 180-year-old mystery by locating the wreck site of HMCS Mermaid, which was lost on a coral reef off the Queensland coast in 1829. Discover the rest of the story: www.silentworldfoundation.org.au/projects/hmcs-mermaid/ Photography by Xanthe Rivett/Silentworld Foundation. This project was undertaken in partnership with the Australian National Maritime Museum.

09.01.2022 It be the spooky season, so are ye ready for a shipwreck tale or two? May include ghosts, bad luck and drunken captains. Join Renee Malliaros and Kieran Hosty (Australian National Maritime Museum) for chat about Matthew Flinders' HMS Porpoise and HMCS Mermaid - two shipwreck sites on the Great Barrier Reef to which the Silentworld Foundation and the Museum have undertaken collaborative expeditions.

07.01.2022 #FindsFriday An anchor from Jenny Lind, which wrecked on Kenn Reefs in the early hours of 21 Septemeber 1850. On 27 August 1850, Jenny Lind cleared Melbourne. In addition to its cargo, the vessel carried 19 officers and crew and nine passengers, including three young children. The weather was reportedly variable for the first part of the voyage, but by 19 and 20 September the sun was so obscured by cloud that celestial observations could not be taken to fix the vessel’s po...sition. Shortly after 4 am on 21 September, lookouts aboard Jenny Lind spotted ‘something black’ in the water ahead and immediately took evasive action, but were unable to prevent the barque striking the reef and going over on its beam ends. Miraculously, no lives were lost. All crew and passengers were subsequently transported to a ‘coral bank, partly covered with sand about half a mile away’ from the wreck site, where they eked out an existence for the next 37 days. Critical to their survival was a water distillation system made from copper cookware and lead piping salvaged from Jenny Lind. Designed and built by passenger Phillip Beal (a physician and former ship’s surgeon), it could reportedly convert 25 gallons (114 litres) of seawater into drinkable freshwater per day. The crew, meanwhile, salvaged timber, rigging and sails from the wreck and constructed a ‘schooner-rigged boat’ capable of carrying 22 people. On 29 October 1850, this vessel and Jenny Lind’s only surviving ship’s boat (a small cutter) set off from Kenn Reefs for Brisbane, where they safely arrived after a voyage of about three weeks. Read about the wreck here https://silentworldfoundation.org.au//Hunter_J_and_R_Malli Image: Irini Malliaros/Silentworld Foundation, 2017. This expedition was undertaken with our partners, the Australian National Maritime Museum.

07.01.2022 This ship bell is chiming for a #FindsFriday post . Dr James Hunter (Australian National Maritime Museum) spotted this copper bell during the collaborative Kenn Reefs expedition in 2017. It was laying on its side, with approximately one-half of its circumference exposed among chunks of broken limestone and coral rubble. It's over 40cm in diameter and weighs approximately 40kg. The bell was deemed a diagnostic artefact and, in accordance with the expedition's permit, was r...aised by the team after careful insitu documentation. It has since been conserved and we're currently running some scientific tests on it to determine its origin and the ship to which it once belonged. Find out more www.silentworldfoundation.org.au/projects/kenn-reefs/ : Julia Sumerling/Silentworld Foundation.

06.01.2022 Q: How do you excavate a rare boat found at the site of the new Barangaroo Station? A: Catch episode 2 of Sydney’s Super Tunnel, tonight on SBS Australia at 8:30pm.

05.01.2022 It's a special #FindsFriday this week with a throwback to 2009. During our first-ever expedition, the team* located the wreck of Phillip Parker King's HMCS Mermaid on Flora Reef, south of Cairns. Mermaid sunk in June 1829, under the command of Captain Samuel Nolbrow, while sailing from Sydney with despatches and cargo. BUT in 1820 Mermaid and King also made a unique mark on a remote section of Australia's Kimberley coast... *The team included the Australian National Maritime Museum, Museum of Tropical Queensland and JCU: James Cook University, Australia, with assistance from students of Bega High School (NSW), the Australian Antarctic Division, Oceania Maritime and the 'Spoilsport' team.