National Geographic: Lost Ships of the Mediterranean Page #3

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So it's the other guy.

Yup. That's the Queen Victoria.

That was target AA, right?

Yeah so it means it's AC.

The brightest one is

gonna be the oldest.

Well, there you are.

Anyway it was a hit.

Okay, so we don't care about this guy.

We want to drive to AC as fast as

humanly you know, just head over there.

It'll take us a while, we'll go

have coffee and celebrate.

We've got a ship, the wrong one.

But it means we know

where the right one is.

Stager:
My knees are weak.

From standing or the excitement?

And then the anchor

and then the chain.

Those apparently don't start

before 1820.

So we might have a Victorian ship,

we may not.

Who cares?

It's two hours transit to the next

most likely target - for some,

a very long two hours.

Day 7. 5 a.m. Jason

is back in action.

The Control Van is flooded with

anticipation, exhaustion, and adrenaline.

That must be it. That bright spot.

The bright spot, it's it.

That's it.

Magic.

Brightest thing on the screen.

That's gotta be the big one.

That's the mother lode.

The mother of all ships.

Eighty meters.

Remember that movie

when the alien is being tracked?

And it's coming towards you?

'The alien is approaching our cabin,

captain.' 45 meters.

And closing...

Eighteen meters... There she blows!

All right!

Look at that!

Fantastic!

There we are!

Oh, yeah.

Now we can see that

they're not Byzantine,

that's 8th Century.

That's...

It's now your problem, Larry.

It's a problem I like.

This is the first iron age ship that's

ever been found in the Mediterranean.

All right!

And it's the biggest one.

I mean, there's nothing bigger.

Look at the corks.

Are they corked?

No, no.

There's something in them.

They can't sediment that way.

But they can't sediment that way,

unless they've been excavated.

I don't think so.

You can't fill them that way.

Look at those thing, still stacked.

And cooking pots too.

We didn't see those... Oh my.

Those are absolutely

perfect 8th Century.

I was nervous that

we were gonna relocate it,

and then when I saw those amphoras,

I stopped looking at the ship

at that point,

and I'm looking at Larry, 'cause

he's the one who knows what we have.

And then when you saw that big smile

that we got the ship we wanted-

as far as I was concerned the cruise

was over.

Look at that.

It's the anchor.

The stone anchor!

More than a night to remember.

It was ecstasy.

I haven't been so happy about an

archeological discovery in years,

maybe a lifetime.

Look at that, you can see the ridges

on the high neck.

You know, when you have those kind of

moments you never forget them,

and this was mine.

For me, something that was incredibly

evocative were the two cooking pots

with, you know, maybe the last supper

in them before the ship went down.

Yeah, I do think about people

who went down.

Like a messenger from the future,

Jason sheds light on a vessel

that set sail around the time Homer

is said to have written the Odyssey...

when the Greeks began to celebrate

the Olympic games...

and a pair of twin brothers,

according to legend,

founded a city called Rome.

The archeologists need a detailed,

overall view,

but Jason's lights can't

illuminate the entire wreck.

To map the site, the robot moves over

the ship in small increments

and takes some 800 electronic

close-ups.

On-board computers help merge

these images

into a black-and-white

high-resolution 'photomosaic.'

It speaks volumes about the world's

oldest deep-sea shipwreck.

Some 300 amphoras preserve the shape

of a long-vanished hull.

About 18 meters long,

it was heading west when it sank.

A stone anchor marks the bow,

cooking pots the stern.

All this, plus the style

of the amphoras

suggests it may be

a Phoenician merchant ship,

broad in the beam,

with a curved horse-head bow.

Such ships are known from Assyrian carvings,

and from a detailed description

in the Bible, in the book of Ezekiel.

Of the Phoenicians, little tangible

has been unearthed.

They lived along the eastern shore

of the Mediterranean

from before 1200 BC

through the Roman period.

But their real domain was the sea.

The greatest maritime merchants

of the ancient world,

they traded with Pharaohs,

Greeks, and Romans,

and left traces of colonies

as far west as the Strait of Gibraltar.

Their rich purple dye was much prized,

as were their cedars of Lebanon.

It was the Phoenicians

who provided lumber and expertise

when Solomon built his temple

in Jerusalem.

Their skill at carving wood and ivory

was unrivaled.

Sadly, only shreds of

Phoenician literature survive.

But their simple alphabet

was widely adopted,

and would evolve into

the Roman alphabet we use today.

Still, it was as seafarers that the

Phoenicians most impressed the world.

A Greek historian claims

they first circumnavigated Africa.

Others believe

they even reached England.

It's as if the Phoenicians

entrusted all their secrets to the sea.

Until now.

Day 8.

The team drops a rig called

an 'elevator' to the bottom.

Later, it will raise precious cargo

to the surface.

So, there are the pots right there.

Today's goal is 'retrieval'.

With hundreds of amphoras

to choose from,

the two lone cooking pots

are top priority.

It won't be easy.

Pilot Matt Heintz is first

to test Jason's new 'hand'-

nicknamed 'Deep Spank' by the team.

You get it just like that,

and hold it like that,

so the weight's sitting on that.

Okay, we'll see if we can

nudge it under there.

And avoid the handles.

Yeah.

They're not up to

taking weight like that.

No one is quite sure

how the pot will hold up.

First time that one's been moved

in 2,700 years.

Yeah? I think it's the food's ready.

It's lost. Okay, we gotta recover

and change out.

For now, 'Deep Spank' disappoints.

It was a new modification

that didn't work.

Engineering on the fly.

It's back to an old die-hard.

Scoops in underneath

and then you close down on top.

We call it the cowcatcher. It works.

Within hours,

Jason is back on the bottom,

with a priceless cooking pot

in his 'cowcatcher.'

Now this is archeology.

Quick and beautiful.

That dog can hunt!

It's a triumph of technology

each time Jason deposits

an artifact in the elevator.

But it also means

the wreck site has been altered.

Careful records must be kept.

Archeology is a destructive science.

It's like tearing pages out of a book.

Once you've removed something,

if you haven't recorded it

you've lost it forever.

Work continues until

the elevator is full.

Then begins a slow ascent that

will bridge nearly thirty centuries.

There it is right here.

Bob, we made a mistake.

We shouldn't have put

both cooking pots in one load

since there are only two of them.

Yeah.

Is that the right place?

Is that the right place?

The center!

Okay, undo yours.

Let him just come straight up.

Take the slack off

Don't tilt it.

Just stop it when it starts to swing.

Okay, don't pull hard guys.

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