National Geographic: Treasures of the Deep Page #3

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Yeah. The vehicle is on the bottom.

Roger that, I copy.

The vehicle is on the bottom.

According to Seahawk,

the Golden Eagle, in 1865,

found herself caught in a hurricane

with nowhere to hide.

They fought the storm for two days

all hands and passengers bailing

and bucketing water out.

And finally,

the seas and the weather calmed down,

and it went under.

She went to the bottom,

carrying a bellyful of

gold coins $400,000 at the time,

now valued at 20 million.

Six years of work coming down to a dive

with a remote vehicle and, hopefully,

when we get in on the site,

it'll be the right wreck.

We have a very good sonar images

of the wreck,

and dimensions are almost exact

the same with target vessel

a code name Gold Eagle.

...get the target at the right.

As the ROV descends into

the glittery murk of the deep sea,

project manager Brett Hobson discerns

the ghostly outlines of the past.

That's the beautiful part

of these old wrecks.

They're little time capsules

and nobody's seen it.

And we're just sleuthing

through trying looking for clues.

And it you definitely feel like

a detective.

So far, everything we have seen

is a, telling us it could be the one.

Looking straight down, now, right?

Yes.

We've got the way over there

near the site, OK?

It's very quiet here

and the scenes is very dark.

The light, the first one illuminated

when we went down.

It's a very weird feeling.

As the ROV makes a closer pass,

they see things that don't match.

Round.

Really round.

Well, we've got some very

flat-sided bulwarks here.

See the big cutout going down to

the keel, and the on the right?

I don't know what else it could be.

It looks just like what

I had hoped we would not find.

No paddle wheels I know of

has a propeller like that.

I think we're in trouble.

It's very disappointing at this moment

to be sitting here

with a target that we have pinned high

hopes on and now have proved that it,

it's not the right vessel.

But can't think of the right words

to describe how I'm feeling right now.

It's not good.

It takes time and luck to find

a pot of gold in a vast, deep ocean.

And Reardon has run out of both.

Reardon abandons the ship to the sea.

There's no profit to be made

from the wreck

and unlike Ballard, treasure,

not history, is what drives him.

In the Mediterranean,

the search for history does not let up

With only a few weeks left,

Ballard and the NR-1 continue

to hunt Skerki for new wrecks.

Ballard also deploys Jason,

a remotely-operated search vehicle,

designed and built by engineers from

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Archeologists have already spent

many hours carefully surveying

and mapping artifacts on the seafloor.

Now it's time for Jason to retrieve them.

Guided by the team,

the robot vehicle plunges 3,000 feet

to locate fragile relics.

Most are roman amphoras.

They're 2,000-year-old

terra-cotta containers,

the cargo holders of the ancient world,

filled with olive oil, dried fish,

or wine.

Safely cradling its fragile haul,

an elevator of metal and mesh

slowly traverses the half mile

separating the centuries.

For the first time in 2,000 years,

human hands will hold

the ancient artifacts.

Next stop for these delicate pieces

of the past is the ship's laboratory,

where they'll be examined

by archeologist John Oleson,

expedition archeological director

Anna Marguerite McCann,

and conservator Dennis Piechota.

Oleson is delighted to

find the simple clay pots.

Well, to find

several cooking pots together,

adjacent to one another,

just as they would have been left

on a kitchen bench,

is extraordinary

at this depth 2,600 feet.

Treasure hunters would find little

of value here.

Yet to archeologist Jon Adams,

a shipwreck is a slice of time

unexpectedly preserved.

So when a ship sinks it is,

it's a cross section of society

structure, contents,

personal possessions,

contextual relationships, etcetera

lost at a single moment in time.

Nobody decides what to take away,

what to leave behind when a ship sinks

It all ends up on the seabed

at the same time.

And ships have been described,

rightly so in a way, as time capsules.

As they continue to explore,

Ballard and the archeologists

are excited to see things

they've never seen before.

Skerki is turning

into more than they ever expected.

Could you zoom in on that?

Keep zooming.

Isn't that beautiful.

They've identified the remains of a ship,

but it's definitely not Roman origin.

Nobody knows, at first, where it's from

It's particularly interesting,

because it seems to be

a relatively small ship,

and we don't see cargo,

just ballast stones,

which help steady a ship

when it's not carrying cargo,

or if it's a pleasure craft,

such as a small personal yacht,

or possibly a type of warship.

Look at the reflection on those glasses.

Keep driving straight. Don't stop.

It's glasses.

I'm just amazed that there's glasses.

Glass. Lamps that brightened

the darkness centuries before.

And despite thousands of pounds

of sea pressure,

they have survived unbroken.

Obviously one of our big concerns is

that these artifacts are very,

very fragile.

Jason weighs 3,000 pounds in air

and he's got a tremendous amount

of momentum.

And we want to pick them up

without breaking any of them.

We've never picked up glass before.

Once the objects reach the surface,

they help reveal the nature

of the mysterious vessel.

It comes from the 16th century

or 17th century,

when Arab traders sailed these waters.

Look at this.

Could someone hold that open?

Look at that.

Isn't that amazing?

They are not gold or studded

with emeralds.

Yet for Ballard, a delicate

glass object is the real treasure.

They are evidence that Skerki Bank

may have been a crossroads

for many countries and civilizations.

What has surprised me the most is

that we thought this was one event,

that this was a fleet of ships,

a group of ships

that sank together, and it's not at all.

We have ships spanning over

one thousand five hundred years

of history,

if not more.

I am just amazed.

I thought that there would be

a ship here and then,

way far away, another ship.

And yet, in this particular area,

miles we have found, now, six ships.

This area is it's sort

of like a graveyard.

Ballard is no stranger

to undersea graveyards.

He is the man

who discovered one of the most famous

burial grounds in history.

The Titanic.

The largest,

most luxurious ocean liner ever built.

Called a "Floating Palace,"

the Titanic sails April 10, 1912

on her maiden voyage.

She is believed to be unsinkable

until her tragic rendezvous

in the North Atlantic.

Sideswiping an iceberg,

the great ship sinks

in less than three hours:

of all those aboard,

die in the icy waters.

For decades explorers are obsessed

with finding the final resting place

of the great liner.

But no one is more intent on the hunt

than Robert Ballard,

who spends 13 years looking.

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