The remains of a sunken British whaling ship lost for 171 years have been found off Kure Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

A team of maritime archaeologists discovered the shipwreck Wednesday during an exploratory dive, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration news release.

Using a hand-drawn map, a hand-held GPS, historical charts and notes, the archaeologists located the spot where the Gledstanes was thought to have sunk in 1837.

"After preliminary surface surveys, one dive and there it was," wrote Dee O'Regan of the National Maritime Historical Society in the team's daily mission blog.

Divers came upon a pile of iron ballast and some chain, which led them to a part of the reef where more pieces of the ship were found.

The artifacts — which include four massive anchors, cannons and cannonballs — are believed to belong to the Gledstanes, a British whaler lost to extremely rough seas.

Kelly Gleason, a maritime archaeologist with the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, described the discovery as a "thrilling experience for the team."

"For years I have been coming up to Kure Atoll in hopes of searching for this particular shipwreck but have thus far been deterred by the weather and unworkable conditions," Gleason said.

"This year, the Gledstanes was revealed to us, and we couldn't be more thrilled with the opportunity to share this wreck site and its story with the public."

The Gledstanes is the fourth whaling ship discovered in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, further evidence of the area's significance as a 19th-century whaling area.

Not much is known about the ship or the circumstances in which it went down. Surviving crewmembers sailed to Ocean Island, a small island at Kure Atoll, on the ship's small rescue boats. There, they salvaged pieces of the Gledstanes and built a 38-foot vessel they called the Deliverance.

"The story of the Gledstanes and her survivors is limited, but adds to the important legacy of shipwreck survival stories at Kure Atoll," said Hans VanTilburg, a NOAA maritime heritage coordinator.

The divers who discovered the shipwreck are participating in the 2008 Maritime Heritage Expedition, sponsored by NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries.

The month-long journey aboard the NOAA ship Hi'ialakai will also take them to French Frigate Shoals, Pearl and Hermes Atoll and Midway Atoll. The team is about halfway through its mission of searching for and documenting shipwrecks at those locations.

At Kure Atoll, the archaeologists will collect artifacts from the wreck sites of the American steamer USS Saginaw, lost in 1870, and the American whaling ship Parker, lost in 1842. Artifacts will be retrieved and stabilized at a conservation lab, according to the team's Web site.