Sinking of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes
The Battle of Cape Santa Maria was one of the most controversial naval engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The attack on a Spanish treasure fleet on October 5, 1804 by a British squadron, without a declaration of war, was considered to be an act of piracy by the Spanish and justified as a “necessity of war” by the British. In addition to the international controversy, there were extended legal arguments over whether prize money was due to the British officers and and crews from the £900,000 (equivalent to £62,923,000 today) in gold and silver captured in the battle.
The Battle of Cape Santa Maria, or perhaps more properly, a battle over the battle, re-erupted in 2007 when Odyssey Marine Exploration secretly salvaged $500m (£308m) worth of gold and silver coins from the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish frigate which blew up and sank during the engagement.
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If a single fact can explain why an armada of high tech naval ships from around the world has failed to control, much less to eradicate, gangs of Somali pirates operating from hijacked fishing trawlers and open boats, this is it. 
The first documented European to land on Australia was the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon aboard the Duyfken in March 1606. Duyfken was also one of the first Dutch ships to got directly to the East Indies to load spices. The Dutch would long dominate the trade with the Spice Islands and ruled the Dutch East indies, now Indonesia, for centuries.
Pity the poor taxpayer. The headline was short and simple – 
It is easy to focus of the plight of the 34 dead or missing from the Costa Concordia. Regrettably, these casualties have not been the only recent deaths on the water. The past week has been particularly brutal with ship and boat sinkings in the Black Sea, off the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea and Dongting Lake in China. A quick run-down of one grim week’s loss of life:
The photos look Photoshopped. A man wearing a dark suit stands on the exposed articulated keel of the Open 60 racing sail boat, Hugo Boss, as she sails along heeled over on her starboard gunnel. The photo and several similar showed up in ads for Hugo Boss men’s wear. But they have to be fake right? The owner of the boat and the model for the shoot, Alex Thomspon says, no. He repeated his “keel walking” but this time on video to show the world exactly how it is done.
The 
These are busy days in ocean rowing. As the 
The search for the missing in the submerged portions of the Costa Concordia 
The Portland, ME based,