Shipwrecks One thing which there doesn’t seem to be a lack of is shipwrecks. Some shipwrecks date back thousands of years, and it seems to be a miracle they are preserved. The less salt and oxygen in the water the more chance a sunk ship will be preserved. There are places where the salt content in the water is low even if it is not a fresh water lake or river. These are places such as the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland, where the salt content is very low. If a part of the ocean is very low on oxygen this will also contribute to preserving a ship. While we find the remains of ancient wooden ships, the chances of future races finding the remains of metal ones are a lot less. The oldest shipwreck at the time of the writing of this article is the Dokos shipwreck. The shipwreck is said to date back to somewhere around 2700 to 2200 B.C. It seems incredible any trace of a ship from this time period would remain. The wreck is not very deep and sits about 30 meters underwater off the coast of southern Greece near Dokos Island, hence the name. The shipwreck has been well searched and some of what was found was Cycladic pottery, which is the pottery of that time period. There were a lot of clay pots which led the archaeologists to assume they were manufactured in an ancient factory for trade. There were cups, jugs, kitchenware, urns and other clay objects, and even more interesting is the fact the pottery wheel had not been invented yet. While the age of the next shipwreck cannot compare with that of the Dokos shipwreck, it is the oldest one yet found in Lake Erie, in the United States. It dates to 1829 when the ship left Put-in-Bay in Ohio, but it never made it to its destination. Some of the Great Lakes storms can be quite furious, and many ships have been lost on them. The problem is there were found to be a couple of hundred ships which the wreck could have been, but this was finally narrowed down to three in April, 2018. The most promising ship being the schooner named Lake Serpent. It was carrying limestone among other things. The bodies of the captain and crew had washed up along the shore in Lorain County near Cleveland, sometime after it sank. When it was first detected it seemed to be very insignificant and not much attention was paid to it. A local museum is excited because they hope finding the ship will reveal more about the design of these ships. What I am going to say may sound very hard to believe, but it is estimated there are somewhere around three million shipwrecks around the world, and we keep adding to this number. It is said if all the governments of the world wanted to dig up all the shipwrecks, it would take over four hundred years, if it could be accomplished at all. One interesting shipwreck which was discovered was found off the coast of Devon, England. When I say that most people probably think it was from somewhere around 1200 A.D. to colonial times, that date is far from accurate. The wreck has been dated as being from between 1200 to 900 B.C. There is not enough of the ship left to figure out where it came from, but there are plenty of artifacts such as copper and tin ingots, weapons and jewelry. What makes archaeologists happy about this find is it proves a trade route existed between the British Isles and Europe at the time. One very famous shipwreck was the S.S. Central America. It was a ship from the United States which sank in 1857. Probably a lot of ships were lost in those days, but this one was special. Its nickname was the ship of gold. It was a 280-foot-long sidewheel steamer, and sailed the route between Central America and the east coast of the United States. When the ship sank there were 420 passengers and crew aboard along with 30,000 pounds of gold. This contributed to an infamous panic which struck the U.S. when the gold disappeared. The gold had come from the California gold rush. The ship was struck by a hurricane. Since the ship has been discovered many of its gold coins and bars have come on the market for sale. Shipwrecks are not always found in the water. This seems like a strange statement, but it is a true one. Take the wreck of the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese ship from 1533. It was found buried under the desert in Africa. Miners are said to have found the shipwreck in the Namibian desert. The ship itself was thought to have sunk, because it had too much cargo aboard when severe weather struck it. Bones from the occupants were found aboard. The ship contained over twenty-two tons of gold ingots, along with swords, gold coins and cannons. There were even elephant tusks aboard. It was truly a treasure ship. It makes one wonder how many other ships are now buried under the ground. The Egyptian government announced last year three shipwrecks had been found. These ships were not Egyptian ships, but Roman ones. The shipwrecks were full of ancient artifacts. Gold coins were found which dated back to the first emperor of Rome, Augustus Caesar Octavian. A beautiful piece of crystal which had a head carved onto it was found. Pottery and wood were also found. The shipwrecks were found off the coast of Alexandria in the Abu Qir Bay. Alexandria had been the city where all the great Greek minds went to conduct their experiments, create their inventions, and ponder the meaning of life. Since I mentioned Roman shipwrecks I have to talk about the biggest Roman shipwreck of all. It is known as the “round ship”, and was built for the Roman Emperor Caligula. When work started on the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Fiumicino, Italy, the shipwreck was discovered. It stunned the archaeologists because of its size and complexity. It had a beam of 66 feet and was about 340 feet long. It had six decks and displaced 7,400 tons. The crew would have consisted of between 600 and 900 sailors. This ship was bigger than many modern ones. Salvaging shipwrecks is a very tricky business as some companies have found out. If a military ship sinks and is recovered, no matter how long it was sunk, it still belongs to the country which owned it and so does its cargo. This is not true for commercial ships. It is quite possible a salvage company can spend years acquiring a shipwreck only to lose it to a country, and in some cases receive a fee which is so small it doesn’t pay for the time spent recovering the ship.
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