Scientists hope to unravel mystery of the ‘Titanic of the ancient world’

A diver approaches an almost intact pitcher at the site of the underwater exploration near Antikythera island in Greece. Photograph: EPA

They call it the Titanic of the ancient world – a luxury liner dating from before the Roman empire. Now divers and archeologists, who have completed a third season on this famous wreck off the remote Greek island of Antikythera, hope that their latest finds can at last help settle speculation surrounding the ship, its passengers and crew.
After mapping the treacherous site, the international team hope that a small but carefully selected haul of artefacts on the huge site more than 55 metres beneath the surface can help unravel the truth about a vessel that may have been 50 metres long.

The inner workings of the Antikythera mechanism.

Antiquities rescued on this visit include an intact table jug, bronze ornamentation that was probably part of a bed, a 2-metre piece of a bronze spear, weighing more than 10kg and most probably part of a statue – perhaps of a warrior or the goddess Athena – and a bronze rigging ring with fragments of wood still attached.

A diver holds a bronze spear at the site of the Antikythera wreck. Photograph: Brett Seymour/AP

Scientists also plan to trace the origin of the lead in huge anchors and hull sheathing to help determine whether the ship was of Italian, Roman or Hellenic origin. And they want to check DNA in the ceramic jug, one of nearly 50 found by various explorations of the wreck dating back to 1900, to establish whether it was carrying grain. Grain and stone carriers were the biggest sea-going vessels more than 2,000 years ago.
Even the first finds, made by sponge divers blown off course well over a century ago, included spectacular treasures – including enormous statues, and the elaborate Antikythera mechanism, a complex early “computer”, tracking cycles of the solar system. Many of the artefacts are now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Examination of hull remains, recovered in 1976, suggest that the planks, 11cm thick even in a shrunken state, come from a ship that was 15-20% bigger than any wreck of similar age. The only wrecks that come close, according to Brendan Foley, of the Woods Hole Oceonographic Institution in Massachusetts, were the pleasure barges of the emperor Caligula discovered in Lake Nemi, Italy, in the 1920s and later destroyed in an allied bombing raid during the second world war.
“I have personally investigated 40 or 45 shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean and never seen one like this. It is full of luxury goods. It is an enormous ship, massively built and built of the highest quality material available in the first century BC,” Foley said.
Among the stories built up around the wreck is that it may have carried a young bride and her dowry on her way to her wedding. But, Foley admitted, “we have no evidence of that. It is just a nice story we tell each other. A logical conclusion [of finds so far] is these are treasures, high-value goods travelling from the eastern Mediterranean, through the Aegean, to the growing centre [of Rome] but we don’t have actual proof of that.”
Foley said his team thought the jar was part of the cargo, rather than belonging to a member of the crew. “We are excited about its recovery because it was full of sediment so we can anlyse that, and once we get the sediment out, we can run our DNA swabs and find out what it was transporting.

A diver wearing a robotic exosuit explores the site of the wreck called the Titanic of the ancient world. Photograph: Greek Ministry of Culture/EPA

“Grain ships would sail out of Rome. They were the sort of first luxury liners. The wealthy would sail out in the spring, go to Egypt, tour the antiquities. Then at the end of the season, they would get back on board the ship with hundreds and hundreds of tons of grain to take back to Rome to feed the burgeoning population.”

The Antikythera mechanism, a bronze device to tell the cycles of the stars, was recovered in 1900. Photograph: X-Tek Group/AFP

The divers will be back next May and June hoping, among other things, to find more of the famous mechanism, of which only 50-60% is thought to have been recovered so far. They also hope they will not be hit by the bad weather they suffered this year, allowing just five days underwater and little use of a new diving suit that will allow divers to stay on the sea floor for hours without decompression problems.
Theotokis Theodoulou, of the Hellenic Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, says this year’s finds were very promising. “We have a lot of work to do at this site to uncover its secrets.”

Theotokis Theodoulou wears a revolutionary new deep sea diving suit to explore the ancient shipwreck. Photograph: Alex Deciccio/AFP/Getty Images

The Guardian 

Titanic Sunk During Average Iceberg Year

 

Built in Northern Ireland in 1909, the "RMS Titanic" was also known as the "unsinkable ship," because it had a double-bottom hull divided into 16 compartments that were presumed to be watertight. The 882.5-foot-long (268.9 meters) craft sank in April 1912 after it struck an iceberg off southern Newfoundland, and now rests on the ocean floor at a depth of 12,460 feet (3.7 kilometers).
Credit: NOAA | Institute for Exploration | University of Rhode Island

 

By Becky Oskin, Senior Writer

Old Coast Guard records are throwing cold water on a long-standing explanation for the loss of the Titanic: the suggestion that the fateful journey took place in waters bristling with icebergs, making 1912 an unlucky year to sail the North Atlantic.
Instead, more than a century of Atlantic iceberg counts reveals 1912 was an average year for dangerous floating ice. The findings also contradict a popular notion that the Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier on Greenland's west coast birthed the Titanic's deadly 'berg. Instead, a computer model suggests that one of the glaciers at Greenland's southern tip released the iceberg that hit the Titanic on April 14, 1912, drowning more than 1,500 people in the frigid ocean.
"I think the question of whether this was an unusual year has been laid to rest," said Grant Bigg, an environmental scientist at the University of Sheffield and lead study author, adding, "1912 is not an exceptional year."
After a glancing collision with an estimated 325-foot (100 meters) wide iceberg on April 14 of that year, the Titanic broke into two pieces and sank. In the decades since, the tragedy has acquired a vast history and mythology as people seek to account for the loss of the "unsinkable" ship on its maiden voyage.
For example, many Titanic theorists have said that 1912 was an exceptional iceberg year. Explanations for the purported abundance of icebergs have ranged from a warm 1912 winter, to sunspots, to high tides from a 1912 'supermoon,' which could have dislodged icebergs.
But the new findings contradict these earlier theories. "This really refutes the arguments that have been around about things like high tides or sunspots generating excessive numbers of icebergs in that year," Bigg told Live Science. [Video: How the Titanic Sank]
The research was published today (April 10) in the journal Weather.
Floating floes
The new results come from a broader examination of Greenland icebergs by Bigg and study co-author David Wilton, also from the University of Sheffield. The researchers are tracking icebergs over time to test Greenland's response to climate change and the contribution to sea level rise from icebergs. They are studying data collected by the U.S. Coast Guard's International Ice Patrol extending back to 1900.
According to Bigg, 1912 was a high ice year, but not exceptional compared with the surrounding decades.
In 1912, data shows that 1,038 icebergs moved south from Arctic waters, and crossed the 48th parallel. The Coast Guard records show a slightly higher number of 1,041 icebergs crossed south of 48 degrees north in 1909. Between 1901 and 1920, five years saw at least 700 icebergs drift below 48 degrees north, where they could menace ships.
Bigg said the broader study indicates climate change has increased the risk of icebergs for ships sailing near Greenland in recent decades. Between 1991 and 2000, five years saw more icebergs below the 48th parallel than in 1912. "The values are now twice as high as the largest values from earlier in the century," Bigg said. "Greenland's contribution to sea level rise is increasing."

A purported photo of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
Credit: U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office

View full size image

Birth of a tragedy
Bigg and Wilton also created a computer model to plot the likely path of icebergs discharged from Greenland's glaciers. The model showed that the deadly 1912 iceberg probably originated from southern Greenland in late summer or early autumn of 1911. This 'berg likely sailed directly southwest toward southern Labrador and Newfoundland, rather than heading north up the Greenland coast into Baffin Bay and circling around via the Labrador Current, as other models have suggested, Bigg said.
The iceberg was originally 1,640 feet (500 m) wide and 985 feet (300 m) high, the model indicates. By April, the floating chunk was just 325-foot (100 meters) wide.
"It still looked large to the people on the ship, but it had melted quite a bit," Bigg said.
http://www.livescience.com/44754-titanic-1912-iceberg-theory-challenged.html