Searching for Wrecks in Greece
In a little dusty office hidden somewhere along the impossibly congested streets of Athens is a priceless map that shows the location of an ancient shipwreck. In the ship’s hold is rumoured to be a spectacular treasure, both historically as well as monetarily valuable. The Greek authorities zealously guard the map, for fear of opportunistic tomb raiders getting their hands on the treasure.
Sounds like the premise of a bad Hollywood action movie? Nope. This is real life.
Sunken treasure within reach
Actually, the priceless map shows the exact location of not one, but over 1,000 shipwrecks scattered along the vast Greek coastline. Unlike most of the shipwrecks previously found, the majority of these are located in deep water. In fact, the ships are so deep that their locations were only found using sophisticated electronic surveying equipment.
These ships didn’t run aground, or hit a reef and get ripped apart as is common in shallow water wrecks. They often simply floundered (took on too much water) and sank down intact. In such deep waters, strong tidal currents or waves wouldn’t have battered the shipwrecks to smithereens. Their fragile contents wouldn’t have suffered from the high oxygen content of shallow waters, but would have been preserved by the anaerobic conditions of deeper waters. At these depths, most of the wrecks are also out of reach of all but the most sophisticated diving crew — or the fortunate net of a fisherman — and so have remained virtually untouched by human hands. They are, in fact, almost perfectly preserved. The possibilities are enough to get any treasure hunter salivating with desire.
