Museum praises submarine robot's shipwreck hunting

Portsmouth -

The head of a US museum has thanked a Hampshire robot firm for filming a shipwreck.

Nearly 100 years after three-masted schooner Hattie Wells sank in Lake Michigan, USA, marine archaeologists have filmed the wreck's remains.

But to do so they had to hire a strange helper - an underwater robot built by Saab SeaEye in Brunel Way, Segensworth.

The robots are called ROVs, or Remotely Operated Vehicles, and are mainly used by the oil and gas industry.

Now Dr Mark Gleason, chief marine scientist at the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum, said they are perfect for the job.

He said: 'We demonstrated, through a real project, the usefulness of this type of ROV in documenting shipwrecks in the Great Lakes.'

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