The Howell Automobile Torpedo of 1889 was the first self-propelled torpedo in United States Navy service. Only fifty were built and until recently, only one was known to have survived. Then in late April, Navy dolphins located a lost Howell torpedo off the coast of Coronado, California. The dolphins were being trained to retrieve objects underwater and to tag mines. Their Navy trainers were perplexed when two dolphins identified an object in an area where they had not placed any targets. As reported by the LA Times:
A dolphin is then ordered to dive and search. If it finds something, it is trained to surface and touch the front of the boat with its snout. If it has found nothing, it touches the back of the boat.
When a dolphin named Ten surfaced from a shallow-water dive last month and touched the front of the boat, Navy specialists were nonplused. “It went positive in a place we didn’t expect,” said Mike Rothe, who heads the marine mammal program.
A week later, a dolphin named Spetz did the same thing in the same area. This time, the dolphin was ordered to take a marker to the object.
Navy divers and then explosive-ordnance technicians examined the object, which was in two pieces, and determined that the years had rendered it inert. On one piece was the stamp “USN No. 24.”
For the last 30 years, New York has welcomed ships and crews from the US Navy and Coast Guard to the harbor around the Memorial Day weekend during a celebration of 
All the reporting on this story talks about a “ghost ship” for sale by auction in Newburyport, MA. 
Joan Druett
Two bottles of whisky salvaged from the wreck of the cargo ship 
Wired Magazine
Correction: The original post listed the wrong date for the anticipated launching of the Charles W. Morgan. The correct date is July 21, 2013.
