Treasure Lost at Sea Diving to the World's Great Shipwrecks

IntroductionFrom time immemorial, mariners have sailed the perilous seas. Archaeological evidence discovered on mainland Greece reveals that man had vessels capable of making open sea voyages in the Aegean more than 9,000 years ago. In the South Pacific, using outrigger canoes, the Neolithic Polynesians made impressive voyages as far north as Hawaii and as far south as New Zealand.The sailors of past times were an intrepid fraternity, setting forth on uncharted seas for distant lands. Journeys by sea were measured in months or years. and the risks were great. Ten percent of all ships that embarked on long voyages were lost.Since men first traveled on the seas, ships have sunk, carrying with them varied cargoes, maritime objects, weapons, implements and personal items. All over the globe, relics of civilizations that have long since vanished beckon from watery tombs. Like the artifacts that archaeologists patiently unearth on land, those found on underwater sites provide clues, often beautiful and sometimes poignant, for vividly reconstructing the past. Unlike many land sites, where the vestiges of the earliest cultures are covered by or mixed with those of succeeding eras, an ancient shipwreck is a historical time capsule.Most ships sank quickly, mortally wounded in storms or wrecked on hidden reefs or submerged rocks. Some wrecks were partially salvaged by contemporary or later salvors, especially ships laden with valuable cargo that had gone down in shallow water. Until recently, however, many of the most fascinating wrecks lay beyond our reach. Early salvors were limited to "fishing" a wreck with grappling devices, or by free diving or using rudimentary diving bells.The identity of the first divers is shrouded in the mists of antiquity. As early as 4500 B.C., however, brave and skillful divers were reaching depths in excess of 100 feet (30 m), on a lungful of air, to retrieve such treasures as red coral and mother-of-pearl shells.Tradition credits Alexander the Great with the first descent in a sealed waterproof container. This event reportedly took place in 332 B.C., off the island stronghold of Tyre, during his epic conquest of the world. A thirteenth-century French illustration shows the young Macedonian inside a candle-lit glass barrel. He is surrounded by numerous species of marine life and observed by a huge whale. Unfortunately, we have no idea what Alexander's contraption was really like.The diving bell was actually invented before Alexander's time. Writing in 360 B.C., Aristotle noted its use by Greek sponge gatherers: "In order that these fishers of sponges may be supplied with a facility of respiration, a kettle is let down to them, not full of water, but air which constantly assists the submerged men. It is forcibly kept uptight in its descent, in order that it may be sent down at an equal level all around to prevent the air from escaping and the water from entering."The Renaissance provides the next account of a diving bell. In 1531 salvors employed a bell in Lake Nemi, near Rome, in an attempt to locate two of the Emperor Caligula's pleasure galleys, which were said to have sunk laden with gold. The barrel-shaped bell, invented by the Italian physicist Guglielmo de Lorena, covered the diver's head and torso. It was raised and lowered by ropes, and a diver could walk about on the lake bed for nearly an hour before his air supply was exhausted.In 1538 two Greeks designed a diving bell and demonstrated it at the Spanish court in Toledo before Emperor Charles V and 10,000 spectators. Larger than de Lorena's, this bell was spacious enough to accommodate both inventors, who sat on a plank bench. To the astonishment of the king and the crowd, the candles the Greeks had taken down with them were still burning when they surfaced.Marx, Robert F. is the author of 'Treasure Lost at Sea Diving to the World's Great Shipwrecks', published 2004 under ISBN 9781552978726 and ISBN 1552978729.