Viking Ship Found in Manhoe Bay ?

Google Earth will only let you go as far back as 2002 in that area, but the 2002 image really does show how quickly that island is eroding. It also shows a rock pile that looks quite a bit different, but I'm not sure what to make of that.

FK, what is your 59 foot figure based on? Is it just kind of an average? Existing examples vary quite a bit in length, both longer and shorter than 59 feet.
 

Finderkeeper,did you investigate more what was under the stones at Hobson island?

We did dig at the site but the goverment took everything we found. We measured the stones in the shape of a ship and we came up with the same measurement we got on Google Earth 59'. This site is now gone. But we did have the time to show the stones in the shape of a ship before it went under water.
 

When was this? I'll agree with your measured length for 2004 and perhaps later, but the 2002 image is over 90 feet long and had a less defined shape.
 

When was this? I'll agree with your measured length for 2004 and perhaps later, but the 2002 image is over 90 feet long and had a less defined shape.
I have attached a link that shows the pile of stones in 2007 below. To the right of the big bolder I call Hobson Rock you can see the pile of stones from 2007, The stones where there. The image in 2002 could of been taken at a time when the sun is lower that could cast a shadow. I am not sure at what time the 2002 was taken but no matter what the stones are shown in this picture and on Google Earth and we where on site 3 times. So no matter what anyone says we know what we saw. No need to prove it to the world , not everyone will agree to every thing.

( check out this link below to view the pile of stones in 2007 ) Photo Gallery - Hobson's
Island
http://www.mahoneislands.ns.ca/gallery/?g=30


  • f147.jpg
    Hobson's Island, summer 2007
    Photo by Dale Rafuse Photo Gallery - Hobson's Island
 

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I think that the second link is broken.

I'm not disagreeing with what you saw, particularly if you have pictures of it. What you saw in 2007 is what you saw in 2007. What I'm saying is that what was there in 2002 looked very different than what was there in 2004, and you mentioned the significance of the 2004 Google Earth image. Fire up Google Earth and compare the two images yourself. Not only is the size quite a bit different, but so is the shape. I don't believe that this was a trick of the light.
 

It would be better if you checked them yourself in Google Earth, but I did a quick screen cap and crop to show you what I mean. Let's see if I can get these to post. I used the Ruler tool on both. Despite the significant difference in sizes between the two, I did not alter the zoom, just the time. (The Ruler should confirm this, as it functions independantly of zoom.)

hobson2002.jpghobson2004.jpg
 

Yes. It certainly WAS much longer in 2002. And less defined as you say. Interesting.

Finder keeper what did the government take from you? What did you find?
 

Hobson Island was over 30' high in 1970 with a light house on it and some buildings. It has been washing away. What you see could be sand and clay still on the island and thats why its longer. The entire island looks bigger so again I think its clay and sand over the pile of stones. In the picture we posted it shows a shape of a ship but that has washed away to. The shape of a ship was only good for a few years. I did not take the picture , Google Earth did so I have to guess why its bigger and thats what I come up with. We did find artifacts under the pile of stones. They are on our web site at www.FindersKeepersUSA.com and I have posted them on this site long ago. No research was done on them. I offered to buy them back for $1,000 but the goverment would not sell them. I don't know if they had anything to do with a ship. but I wanted to have them checked out. The gov. said it was pins from the walls built to hold the water back . Who knows. We have moved on and don't care now. At New Ross we found man made cut key stones and I call them the Hope Stones and this time I have them, but will send them back to a Museum or Historical when we return but they will not be hidden away like before. Pleses under stand it cost me $5,000 to $10,000 each time we travel to Nova Scotia to do research. No one gives me money and we do not accept funds. I am doing this to see for my self and figure out what happen on Oak Island and in New Ross. On the top of the big bolder on Hobson Island is a carving in the shape of Hobson Island. Other big stones next to the bolder have carvings on them in the shape of other Islands but because they are smaller they erode faster. The big bolder is 8' to 10' high and erosen is less. O ya there is a V carving on the side of the bolder and it points to Oak Island. When we have more solid finds we will post and tell our story.

Link abouth the Hobson Island http://books.google.com/books?id=Vm...=onepage&q=hobson island, Nova Scotia&f=false
 

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How did someone carve the shape of Hobson Island (circa 2004) even remotely accurately a century ago, let alone earlier than that? It could not have been done even two years earlier with the rate the island was eroding at.
 

That question I will let for the so called experts to figure out. I just find artifacts and hope the goverment does its job. I just tell what I think and hope it gets the experts on board. In this case the goverment worked to slow and all is gone but I tried to do what was right. There was a lot more found on the island but no sence talking about it now. The big question is how did the metal objects make it under the pile of stones???? any thing on the island and around the island to hold back the tide is gone back into the ocean and washed away. So how did the metal make its way 1' to 2' under the stones. I had many questions like you have but there is no way to answer them NOW. I will not make the same mistake in New Ross. We have a lot of proof of a castle at this site. Ya Joan Hopes info sounds crazzy but if you went to this site you would see things that would mess up your mind to. Things happen on site every day. The neighbors still see things. We have seen things we will not talk about yet. If we did we would sound just like Joan Hope. Joan had a high IQ and she knew if she put some of her stories on the web people would make fun of her BUT she still did. WHY. Because the things she saw did happen . I am sure things happen on Oak Island to. No Big Foots or UFO but there is some kind of energy or power or something in this area doing this. May be some day we will know. This is part of what we do besides hunting for treasure. I have many questions like everyone but who can answer the weard things that happen. So we will continue our trips back to New Ross until we get answers. Thank You
 

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A few weeks ago, I dug a penny out of my lawn while trying out a new metal detector. I was quite impressed; I was in that hole nearly to my elbow before I recovered the penny, which is a feat with the mineralized soil around here. What was perhaps more astonishing was that it was a penny from the late eighties. How did it get down there? There was no evidence of a prior hole. All of the other coins on my lawn have been at 3 or 4 inches, or more commonly stuck in the root tangle just underneath the surface, but that one modern penny was way the hell down there. I may never know how it got there, but I do know that strange things can happen.

Even stranger things happen when the ocean is involved. I would not be surprised if those items wound up under the rocks due to wave action. I wouldn't even be surprised to learn that they'd come from an entirely different island.

If a ship had been buried there though, why cover it with rocks to weigh it down? It would have been under at least 20 feet of soil. I'd think that this would do a perfectly acceptable job of holding something down. And why leave a cryptic mark on a stone at that depth? What possible purpose would that serve?

You already know how I feel about Hope's stories and what's at New Ross; there's no need for me to rehash that. I also know her IQ, as it's pointed out on nearly every page on the Library of Hope website. (Not to be snarky, but I will add that such a desperate appeal to authority is not normally required in the presence of solid evidence. A credible argument will stand or fall on its own merit, regardless of the qualifications of the person presenting it.) I've read that between the heavy machinery and lack of maintenance over the years, there's very little to see at the site these days. Is this true?
 

A few weeks ago, I dug a penny out of my lawn while trying out a new metal detector. I was quite impressed; I was in that hole nearly to my elbow before I recovered the penny, which is a feat with the mineralized soil around here. What was perhaps more astonishing was that it was a penny from the late eighties. How did it get down there? There was no evidence of a prior hole. All of the other coins on my lawn have been at 3 or 4 inches, or more commonly stuck in the root tangle just underneath the surface, but that one modern penny was way the hell down there. I may never know how it got there, but I do know that strange things can happen.

Even stranger things happen when the ocean is involved. I would not be surprised if those items wound up under the rocks due to wave action. I wouldn't even be surprised to learn that they'd come from an entirely different island.

If a ship had been buried there though, why cover it with rocks to weigh it down? It would have been under at least 20 feet of soil. I'd think that this would do a perfectly acceptable job of holding something down. And why leave a cryptic mark on a stone at that depth? What possible purpose would that serve?

You already know how I feel about Hope's stories and what's at New Ross; there's no need for me to rehash that. I also know her IQ, as it's pointed out on nearly every page on the Library of Hope website. (Not to be snarky, but I will add that such a desperate appeal to authority is not normally required in the presence of solid evidence. A credible argument will stand or fall on its own merit, regardless of the qualifications of the person presenting it.) I've read that between the heavy machinery and lack of maintenance over the years, there's very little to see at the site these days. Is this true?
Let it go. Those who believe won't be swayed by anything you post and those who don't believe don't need additional evidence.
 

A few weeks ago, I dug a penny out of my lawn while trying out a new metal detector. I was quite impressed; I was in that hole nearly to my elbow before I recovered the penny, which is a feat with the mineralized soil around here. What was perhaps more astonishing was that it was a penny from the late eighties. How did it get down there? There was no evidence of a prior hole. All of the other coins on my lawn have been at 3 or 4 inches, or more commonly stuck in the root tangle just underneath the surface, but that one modern penny was way the hell down there. I may never know how it got there, but I do know that strange things can happen.

Even stranger things happen when the ocean is involved. I would not be surprised if those items wound up under the rocks due to wave action. I wouldn't even be surprised to learn that they'd come from an entirely different island.

If a ship had been buried there though, why cover it with rocks to weigh it down? It would have been under at least 20 feet of soil. I'd think that this would do a perfectly acceptable job of holding something down. And why leave a cryptic mark on a stone at that depth? What possible purpose would that serve?

You already know how I feel about Hope's stories and what's at New Ross; there's no need for me to rehash that. I also know her IQ, as it's pointed out on nearly every page on the Library of Hope website. (Not to be snarky, but I will add that such a desperate appeal to authority is not normally required in the presence of solid evidence. A credible argument will stand or fall on its own merit, regardless of the qualifications of the person presenting it.) I've read that between the heavy machinery and lack of maintenance over the years, there's very little to see at the site these days. Is this true?

I'd like to see some good photos. I know the site is supposedly all covered up now, but I'd really like to see some hard evidence. I'd like to see this "sword tip" found and other such things, do some analysis and see how when and where the iron was made. it would be thrilling if it was true, but as an archaeologist I need EVIDENCE. and as for her IQ, that means little. I've supposedly got an IQ of over 180 and readily admit that 90 percent of the time I'm as befuddled as everyone else! :D

your point about ocean-wave action is well founded. the dense metal would tend to migrate down under such motion, especially in a sandy environment where liquefaction undoubtedly takes place on a regular basis.
 

Or just show the sword fragment to someone who knows something about swords. It was a bit of an esoteric area of expertise in the seventies, but there were people who could have identified it at the time. Oakeshott comes immediately to mind. I don't believe that he would have charged for this service, other than return postage. (Gentleman that he was, he would have returned the fragment after analyzing it; it would not have disappeared.) Had someone of that caliber taken a look at the sword tip, I would not be discussing this point.

It didn't look like a Viking sword to me, but I'm not an expert, it was a bad picture, and the corrosion was extensive and could have changed the shape. So basically, I can't say anything at all about it. Mrs. Hope was probably not qualified to do so either, but she at least examined it in person. I don't know. This could have been handled better, but the pre-internet world was a very different place, particularly if you lived in the @ss end of nowhere like she did. She probably didn't know that there were people that specialized in this sort of thing. As a teenager on the rez in the nineties, I wouldn't have done any better. I can't really fault her for this.
 

Blades travel. Some here from far away. Where is reference to burying "ships" out side of smaller craft in funerary capacity?
 

European swords can provide clues about a dig site, but they can also provide traps.

Oakeschott's typology broke them down into basic families and sub-families which can be roughly tied to regions and periods, but those are not rules. As releventchair noted, blades travel. If a sailor leaves a sword at a site, that sword could have conceivably come from nearly anywhere. Without additional evidence (such as other artifacts), the presence of that sword means nothing by itself.

The grip, guard, and pommel can tell us more, but again, they can also fool us. It was not uncommon at all for an older blade to be married to newer grip components or vice versa. Sometimes it was merely an expedient way to repair a broken weapon; at other times, it was done to "freshen up" an old weapon with more fashionable components. Those components can also be roughly tied to regions and dates, but not always; like some of the blade designs, some of those patterns went in and out of style over the centuries.

Sometimes very old weapons were recovered and pressed into service long after they'd went out of style. The sagas mention individuals breaking into burial sites to recover famous weapons. Additionally, our current understanding of which people used which weapons over what period of time are based on incomplete records. We have not dug up every sword buried out there, but even if we did, we would still be working from an incomplete record - not every sword wound up in a back yard or a river. This is why I dislike the term "Viking sword." The Vikings did not use only one style of sword, the styles that they used evolved over time, and they were not the only Europeans using those styles of swords at those particular times. The term actually covers the evolution from the Roman spatha all the way up to the Oakeschott Type XII, the so-called "knightly sword" that most people imagine when they think of a knight - and possibly after, depending on who you ask. This was quite a transition, lasting around 800 years or so, and resulted in a number of different designs along the way - the Migration Period swords, the Type X, etc.

Unfortunately, all we have in this case is a poor photograph of a chunk of rusty metal that may or may not have been from a sword, which corrosion may or may not have significantly changed the shape of. Assuming that it is a sword tip, the tip itself appears too pointy to be from the Migration Period, which hints at when it was made (but not when it was placed there!). Mrs. Hope tells us a bit about it: "...and he handed me a heavy object about 5 inches long, made of iron. When I'd cleaned it I could see that it was part of an ancient iron sword: the channel for the blood to run out was there." The mention of the fuller also hints at when it was made and would have been appropriate for a "Viking sword" from about 700 AD on. It's tempting to lock in on the fact that the fuller came to within 5" of the tip (this suggests a sword from the High Middle Ages or earlier), but this tip may not be from a sword - it may be from a large knife or a bayonet, in which case it could have ended up the ground only a couple of years earlier. That's assuming that it was in fact a fuller.

This does provide a good example of what I was talking about earlier, though...intelligent people can still be wrong, particularly if they're straying out of their lane. That "channel" is known as a fuller and is a feature that lightens a weapon without compromising its rigidity; it has nothing at all to do with blood. If it was indeed from a "Viking sword," it almost certainly wasn't made of iron. A sword guy could have told her that, had she asked. This is why it's important to have an expert look at something before jumping to conclusions.
 

Dave, I agree, the so called blood channel / groove was for lightening / strengthening purposes.

The method of the pirates in taking a ship was to form a line from one side to the other, then move forward hacking away. No swordsman, no matter how good, stood a chance against this. As far as I can find out most pirate swords were basically a cutlass form or Machetes.

But then ballistics, internal and external are my fort, not cold, bloody steel. , although I did take up sabre fencing before setting out on my road of life. ,--- adventure.

Don Jose de La Mancha
 

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