Mahogany Ship There have been queries over the past 18 years. Some are listed with replies: Q: Shipwrecks would be in water. A: Several shipwrecks were reported high and dry in the Warrnambool sand dunes (hummocks) in the nineteenth century. Q: You are not using aerial archaeology. A: Allow one of the greatest pioneers of archaeology, Sir Leonard Woolley, to define aerial archaeology in his archaeological classic Digging Up the Past : ‘Nowadays air photographs bring to light masses of evidence invisible to one who stands upon the ground.’ That is precisely what I am doing. Reference: Woolley, L. (1930) Digging Up the Past . Penguin Books Ltd, Great Britain. (p. 28). Q: Aerial archaeology is not a valid method for finding a shipwreck buried on land. A: The confusion must result from the fact that aerial archaeology is not a suitable method for finding shipwrecks in the sea. However, the Mahogany Ship was not reported in the sea, but on land. (It would...
THE MAHOGANY SHIP The Mahogany Ship - a great Australian mystery. There are three potential buried shipwreck sites. The first is in the Gorman's Lane area, and the second requires a walk of one kilometre east of The Cutting. The third is almost two kilometres east of The Cutting. From reading everything possible about the Mahogany Ship, I believe that there were probably three shipwrecks visible in the Warrnambool hummocks in the 19th century, but since they all disappeared under sand, they have had a tendency to merge into one mystery! Site 1 is between Gorman’s Lane and The Cutting. The coordinates at the centre of the site are: 38°20’58”S, 142°21’38”E. To find the site on Google Earth, copy and paste the coordinates without a full stop at the end in the search bar. Please note: Use Google Earth – not Google Maps. Around this centre, the site is 66 metres (east/west) by 34 metres (north/south). In 2007 when I discovered the site, it was 17 metres from the bea...