CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ A fleet of royal ships, said to be ancient Egypt’s earliest, has been found buried miles from the Nile, a major discovery that will help penetrate the largely unknown world of Egypt’s first pharoahs. "So, the size of the boilers match exactly, the position of the boilers. Local librarian and nature enthusiast Myrtle Botts was out hiking in the Anza-Borrego desert with her husband. "It's not too mysterious that you have a lot of shipwrecks in an area like Bermuda or the Florida Keys or the Caribbean. It was early March and the desert was alive with the vibrant colors of wildflower blooms. They got off the Florida coast and encountered a tropical storm that swept up the coast," Barnette said. Egypt’s greatest ancient boat is the 4,600-year-old barge of Pharaoh Cheops, discovered in 1954 at the foot of Cheops’ Great Pyramid in Giza, west of Cairo. “As luck would have it, we found the treasure chest on day six," Dr. Noli told Fox News. It isn’t known yet exactly who owned the boats. "When I saw the research he did, I was pretty impressed," said Chuck Meide. They used simple boats to cross canals and hunt and fish among bulrushes. Experts said the boats - which are 50 to 60 feet long - are about 5,000 years old, Egypt’s earliest royal ships and among the earliest boats found anywhere. Biggest ever Roman shipwreck found in the eastern Mediterranean, the director of the Lighthouse Maritime Archaeological Maritime Program, The Titanic will be protected by a treaty between US and UK, Treasure hunters salvaged liquor from a 102-year-old WWI shipwreck, but haven't tasted a drop, which stretches from South Florida to Bermuda and down to Puerto Rico, Man discovers shipwreck while walking his dog on the beach. Barnette is a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and has identified dozens of shipwrecks and downed airplanes as an independent researcher. UFO Sighing News. "And that's exactly what happened. VIDEO! Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. The Desert Magazine covered the mystery of the desert ship for the first time in 1939, when writer Charles C. Niehuis described a strange encounter he'd had with Jim Tucker in Prescott, Arizona. Somehow this ship has been wrecked on land and far from water. It turns out, the ill-fated freighter is at the bottom of the ocean about 35 miles from St. Augustine, Florida, according to scientists, who say they've identified the ship. Barnette learned that the ship had sent a radio distress call that helped him determine that it was near St. Augustine before it disappeared. The man asked if I knew about the lost ship of the desert. Fishing boats lie spread on the dry land that was once covered by water. Evidence of at least 12 pharaohs’ monuments have been found in the area. Shipworms that had tunneled into the planks indicated the ships had weathered a long voyage of a few months, likely to the fabled southern Red Sea trading center of Punt, a place referenced in hieroglyphics on empty cargo boxes found in the caves. He spoke in a telephone interview from his Philadelphia office. The wreckage of a 500-year-old Portuguese ship filled with gold coins has been unearthed by miners in a Namibian desert. ″We never expected to find such a fleet, especially so far from the Nile,″ said David O’Connor, the expedition leader and curator of the Egyptian section at The University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. And yet the legend about a long-lost vessel has persisted for centuries. So, it resulted in a lot of a lot of shipwrecks.". The four massive deep-sea ships "defied the laws of … One of the leading experts on the desert ship is John Grasson, a self-declared ‘explorer of legends and lore’. There's no way a historic ship is buried beneath the California desert. Published: 05:38 EST, 28 May 2012 | … The boats, O’Connor said, were found eight miles from the Nile, each encased in a mud-brick coffin and gingerly placed inside a pit that ancient priests inserted pottery offerings into and covered with mud bricks and plaster. If it isn't just there to look ominous and creepy like a Ribcage Ridge, then it will very likely hold important supplies, clues or shelter from the desert environment for the heroes.. Possibly, near the northwestern end of Laguna Salada is a place called Pinto Canyon where a well known petroglyph was found. The lost Spanish Galleon stories began after the Colorado River flood of 1862. "The ship went from bad to catastrophic probably very quickly.". Trapped within a veil of thick fog, the Eduard Bohlen ran aground along Namibia ’s Skeleton Coast on September 5th, 1909. Of all the legends about lost and found, and lost again treasures in the Southwest, there is none more mystifying than the enduring tale of a large sailing vessel which lies, full of riches, somewhere in the restless sands of California’s Salton Sea basin, toward the northern end of the Sonoran Desert. "I knew my heart that it was the Cotopaxi, but trying to prove it is something different," he told CNN. Michael Barnette first dove the wreck about 15 years ago and has been trying to identify it for a while. The fact that the Lost Ship of the Desert has not been found, even in these days of treasure hunters armed with hi-tech metal detectors, only alludes to the vastness of the region in which it is hidden, a rugged and desolate triangle formed by Tecate, Palm Springs, Blythe and San Felipe. Film director Steven Spielberg named a derelict ship that appeared in the desert in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" after the Cotopaxi, and there was a viral -- and fake -- … "Those things matched up with the blueprints we had of the ship," Meide told CNN. They also took on great religious significance as the symbol of resurrection. Haldane is an expert on ancient Egyptian boats. this year. Wikipedia: The Lost Ship of the Desert is the subject of legends about ancient ships found in California's Colorado Desert. Large wooden boats sailed the Mediterranean and Red Seas, ferrying exotic goods back to the pharaohs. The Lost Viking Ship. We have a lot of shipping, but you also have a lot of hazards, like coral reefs and hurricanes and that kind of thing," Meide said. And fish among bulrushes the recent discovery, the position of the Bom Namibia! 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