■jT^^I 









Ingots like the one shown here, about 

 three feet long and in the shape of an ox 

 hide, were used by eastern Mediterranean 

 peoples during the Bronze Age. Many 

 were found in the wreck at Bodrum. 



In the spring of 1959 I heard a rumor which I just could not 

 believe. The story was that a wreck had been found by an American 

 on the Turkish coast, and it was dated about 1500 b.c. Certainly, a 

 wreck might have been found — but not so early. To everyone's 

 surprise, it was true. This incredible discovery has pushed the time 

 barrier back more than a thousand years past the date of the oldest 

 wrecks mentioned so far. 



In 1958, Peter Throckmorton and Mustafa Kapkin boarded a 

 sponge boat belonging to Kamal Aras to begin their search for 

 ancient wrecks. After two hours' sail from Bodrum they came to 

 the island of Yassi in the Chuka channel, and around the reef that 

 rises near the island they found no less than sixteen classical wrecks 

 before the season ended! Each ship had the same story to tell: 

 each had been spUt open by the rocks and lay buried beneath its 

 encrusted cargo. At the end of the season another diver told them 

 of a cargo of bronze. The more he talked, the more keenly Throck- 

 morton and Kapkin Listened. From the diver's detailed description 

 they began to realize the possible age of the wreck and immediately 

 drew up plans to return and examine the site the following year. 



In 1959 they set sail with John Codran in the Liuk Vigilant, a 

 seventy-foot steel ketch, to search for the wreck off Cape Gelidonya. 

 The search dragged on day after day under a merciless sun and 

 their seemingly endless work brought on a state of general depres- 

 sion. Just after deciding to give up the next day, they found the 

 wreck by accident. It lay shimmering below them in ninety feet of 

 water on the side of a ridge that joined two islands. On either side 

 the ridge sloped sharply to the bottom to a depth of 1 5 o feet. 



On reaching the cargo they found that it consisted mainly of 

 copper ingots in the shape of oxhides. There were also bronze axes, 

 picks, spear points, and some crude pottery. The ingots were similar 

 to those shown in Egyptian paintings of about 1500 b.c. Copper 

 was exported from Cyprus in this form, samples having been found 

 in Mycenae and Sardinia on sites dating between 1600 B.C. and 

 1200 B.C. 



The following year another team returned to the site, this time 

 under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, and set up a 

 camp near Cape Gelidonya. Their finds included more ingots, ivory 

 scarabs, haematite weights, delicate knife blades, plowshares, and 

 ax heads. As the work went on, bits of wood and shreds of rope 

 began to turn up among the ingots. In early August they lifted 

 away a huge mass of concreted copper, and there below were dark 

 timbers of the ancient ship. It was a piece of the hull about a yard 

 square, complete with dowels and fragments of broken ribs. 



The precious lump of soggy wood, encrusted with shattered 

 splinters, folded bits of metal, and other debris, was prized from 

 the bedrock after three weeks of chiseling. The wreck has been 

 dated at about 1300 b.c, presumably on the basis of the cargo, and 

 this puts it in the period of Mycenaean or early Phoenician naviga- 

 tion. Here, at last, is tangible proof that the ships of the great 

 seagoing nations were built with ribs, while the ships of Egypt 

 were still fragile and frameless. 



Even in such a young country as Australia divers have success- 

 fully found part of their history beneath the sea. Hugh Edwards 

 has described a series of expeditions sponsored by Australian news- 

 papers to investigate wrecks around Rottnest Island, near Perth, 



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