Shipwreck found in Black Sea is 'world's oldest intact'

[E. Q. Taft]

A Greek merchant ship dating back more than 2,400 years has been found lying on its side off the Bulgarian coast.

The 23m (75ft) wreck, found in the Black Sea by an Anglo-Bulgarian team, is being hailed as officially the world's oldest known intact shipwreck.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europ...0pD5arQsDRLyEo

[dfresh]

That is an amazing find. The things they are finding in the anoxic areas of the Black Sea are really incredible.

[Richard W]

Yes, they are.

The BBC article doesn't make this mistake but yesterday's Guardian had (what was presented as) a video of the wreck with its intact mast, and part of the description in its article seemed to be drawn from the video, but although the video was apparently of another extremely well-preserved wooden wreck in the Black Sea with an intact, vertical mast, it wasn't the ship they were talking about in the article.

You could tell because the ship in the article is apparently 2,000 metres down, whereas the ship in the video had several scuba divers examining it. 2,000 metres is far too deep for scuba. It means there must be quite a few similar wrecks down there, though, even if not quite as old as this one.

[UEL]

Indeed. One article I read yesterday said the expedition was studying the hydrological effects of flooding or some thing like that. But in their mapping the bottom of the sea, they came across over 40 old ships on the bottom.

They had a minor list of some of them, and it spans the ages.

I am going to be spending a lot of time looking at the images as they are released. Bottom of the sea and outer space. I can't get enough of the photos.