Yesterday, the Japan times announced that a Japanese-Turkish research team has discovered a British-minted gold coin and a Japanese silver coin from a Turkish warship that sank 120 years ago off Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture. The Project that had been started since 4 January 2007 is a salvaging project with contributions from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) in Bodrum, Yapı Kredi Retirement Partnership and the Turkish Foundation of Nautical Archaeology. One of their objective was to find the wreckage of Ertuğrul and completely float her to the surface. It is intended to exhibit her in the museum next to the Ertuğrul Monument in Kushimoto. U.S. and Japanese nautical archaeologists and historians join the excavation team.
Kyodo Photo: A £1 British coin and ¥1 silver coin"Still there should be lots of gold coins" inside the ship Ertugrul, said Tufan Turanli, who heads the underwater archaeological team. The gold coin, dated 1856, measures 2.2 cm in diameter and weighs 8 grams. Both coins was retrieved at a depth of 12 meters. The team, which launched a three-year survey in 2008, has already discovered about 5,800 items from the wreck.
on 28 January 2008, the same team leads by Tufan Turanlı, director of INA, reached on the ammunition store section of the wreck in a dive within the second phase of the underwater excavation project. Three cannon balls, each 40 kg (88 lb), of the ship's Krupp naval guns, tens of bullets and pieces of naval mines were recovered and safely brought to the Port of Kushimoto, where explosive experts of local police, Japanese Army and Navy examined them. The artifacts were later taken to Ertuğrul Research Institute for conservation. Tufanlı recalled that two Winchester rifles recovered earlier are on exhibition in the museum.
Photo by www.sof.or.jp: The Ertuğrul at anchor in the Bosporus Straits
Ertuğrul, launched in 1863, was a sailing frigate of the Ottoman Navy. While returning from a goodwill voyage from Japan in 1890, she encountered a typhoon off the coast of Wakayama Prefecture, subsequently drifted into a reef and sank. The maritime accident resulted in the loss of 533 sailors, including Admiral Ali Osman Pasha. Only sixty-nine sailors and officers survived and returned home later aboard two Japanese corvettes. In February 1891, a cemetery was established for the 150 sailors recovered dead at the calamity, and a memorial next to it was built near the lighthouse in the town of Kushimoto, Wakayama. In 1974, a "Turkish Museum" was established, in which a scale model of the ship, photographs and statues of the sailors are on exhibition. The event is being commemorated every five years on the day of the tragic accident in Kushimoto with the participation of high-level officials from Turkey and Japan.
Source: Search.japantimes.co.jp, Wikipedia.
