Dive Team To Scour Danube For Queen May's Lost Belongings

All Hungarian News ^ | 5-8-2008

[blam]

Dive team to scour Danube for Queen Mary's lost belongings

By: All Hungary News
2008-05-08 09:25:00

The legend goes something like this: after the disastrous Battle of Mohács in 1526, the twenty-one-year-old Queen Mary of Hungary fled the encroaching Ottoman army on a caravan of ships headed to Vienna. But, on her way up the Danube a few ships sank along with their valuable cargo. It is said that to this day they remain hidden in the murky depths of the river. Soon, any truth to this story may soon be discovered, or disproved.

According to inforadio.hu, a team of Hungarian archaeologists are launching an underwater excavation of the Danube to find ships identified by American radar technology.

The investigation is bound to be interesting, says Attila J. Tóth, departmental leader of the Hungarian Alliance Archeology and History of Art (Magyar Régészeti és Művészettörténeti Társulat), but whether or not the remains of the submerged sunken ships actually belong to the Hapsburg Queen's caravan can only be determined with intensive scuba diving.

The team is serious in their quest, the portal reports, and plans to explore more than ten kilometers of the Danube.

So far, Hungarian divers have had successful underwater historical excavations. Previously they unearthed remains of ships, pile-dwellings and an underwater village. Perhaps the most interesting find was a fleet of 30 ships with copper vessels inside that dated to the Ottoman era in Hungary.

Exactly what treasures Queen Mary lost when her ships sunk was not reported. She was the wife of Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia, who was killed in battle, and while she arrived safely in Vienna, she never remarried nor renounced her ties to Hungary. She died in 1558 in what is now northern Spain.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[fso301]

The bottom of that river must be littered with so much debris that magnetometers will probably never stop squealing

[Tallguy]

Yeah, the Danube is only as important as the Missippi River in terms of commerce. Combine this with the fact that when a ship sinks there’s usually only an approximate ‘fix’ they’d be fantastically lucky if they actually found anything.

[Rio]

Someone call Dirk Pitt.

[PzLdr]

Mohi [1241], Mohacs [1526]. Those Hungarians don’t know ‘Mo’.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Did they ever find King John’s Crown Jewels in the Wash?

[Verginius Rufus]

If they are successful, the next project should be to try to find the gold of the Nibelungs which was thrown into the Rhine.

[PzLdr]

Attila is buried under some river there. They should dig him up. After all, he’s the guy who put the ‘Hun’ in Hungary.

[vetvetdoug]

Hungary could just ask for a few of the US members of metal detector clubs to find artifacts in the Danube. In the Tennessee River several members have discovered many Civil War artifacts including an ironclad gunboat. These members combine metal detecting with scuba diving.

[Verginius Rufus]

I don't remember where Attila was buried, but Alaric the Goth, who sacked Rome in 410, was buried in the bed of some river or creek in southern Italy--they diverted the course of the river long enough to bury him, then let the flow resume. They didn't want the Romans to be able to dig him up.

The modern Hungarians are Magyars and didn't arrive where they now live until the 890s, more than 400 years after Attila's death. They don't have any connection to the Huns (which is not to say that it's impossible that some Hunnic DNA may have survived in the general area of Hungary, mixed in with other ethnic groups). The name Hungary seems to come from Onogur, a Bulgarian or West Turkic people originally from western Siberia.

The modern Bulgarians speak a Slavic language, but the original Bulgars were of different origin--because they were just a small ruling elite they later lost their language, but the name stuck. (Similarly the French are so-called because of the Franks, a Germanic tribe, but the French language is descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the peasants the Franks ruled over.)

[SunkenCiv]

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[21twelve]

Thanks for the ping. I have a “Treasures Hunter” book with all sorts of old stories in them. Even older now as I think the book was written in the 50’s. And of course the writer of the book has done lots of research, but then will tell his “insider” information “that has never been known before” and then he gives a clue. I think this story was in the book. And from what I recall, the water is fairly shallow and the treasure has not been found yet, and “is still waiting for some lucky soul to grab it”.

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure. Sounds like an interesting book.

whether or not the remains of the submerged sunken ships actually belong to the Hapsburg Queen's caravan can only be determined with intensive scuba diving.

I wonder if they've used non-invasive methods of ruling out sites, or are just diving and hoping they find it?