World’s Oldest Intact Shipwreck Found

The ship was surveyed and digitally mapped by two remote underwater vehicles
Photo: Black Sea MAP/EEF Expeditions

In an earlier post, I wrote about Ireland’s 450 log boats including examples from Lough Gara on the Co. Sligo/Roscommon border and Lough Corrib, Co. Galway. They were an everyday means of conveyance as well as acting as ferries to cross unbridged rivers. A logboat discovered on the foreshore of Greyabbey Bay, Strangford Lough (Co. Down) points to the existence of seafaring logboats in the Neolithic period.

Recently, the oldest Intact Shipwreck in the World has been found in the depths of the Black Sea. It is a Greek merchant ship which met its fate on the Black Sea floor 2,400 years ago. The vessel, measuring 23 m (75ft.) still has its rudder, rowing benches, and the contents of the hold. The wreck was discovered more than 80 km (49.1 miles) off the Bulgarian city of Burgas.

Following three years of highly-advanced technological mapping of the Black Sea floor, an international team of scientists, led by experts from the University of Southampton, have confirmed that a shipwreck has been radiocarbon dated back to 400BC.

The Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP) team is under the leadership of the University of Southampton and Professor Jon Adams, Professor Lyudmil Vagalinsky of the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Dr. Kalin Dimitrov of the Centre of Underwater Archaeology in Sozopol, Bulgaria.

“A ship, surviving intact, from the Classical world, lying in over 2km of water, is something I would never have believed possible,” said University of Southampton Professor Jon Adams, the Black Sea MAP’s principal investigator. “This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.”

Map of Black Sea
             Photo: Flickr

Using the latest technology, the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (Black Sea MAP) surveyed over 2000 square kilometres of seabed. During the life of the project over 60 shipwrecks, including a 17th century Cossack raiding fleet, Roman trading vessels and the complete ship from the Greek Classical period, were recorded.

The ship lies at a depth of over 2 kilometres where the water is anoxic (oxygen free), which can preserve organic material for thousands of years.  A small piece of the vessel has been carbon dated and has now been confirmed as the oldest intact shipwreck known to mankind.

The international team of maritime archaeologists, scientists and marine surveyors has been on a three-year mission to explore the depths of the Black Sea to investigate the impact of prehistoric sea-level changes. The researchers were astonished to find the merchant vessel closely resembled in design a ship that decorated ancient Greek wine vases.

Lying more than 2,000m below the surface, it is also beyond the reach of modern divers. The vessel was one of many trading between the Mediterranean and Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast. The team used two underwater robotic explorers to map out a 3-D image of the ship and took a sample to carbon-date its age.

The Anglo-Bulgarian team believe the Black Sea wreck dates back to the Fourth Century BC, perhaps 100 years after the Siren Vase was painted
Photo: Werner Forman/Getty Images

The vessel is similar in style to that depicted by the so-called Siren Painter on the Siren Vase in the British Museum. Dating back to around 480 BC, the vase shows Odysseus strapped to the mast as his ship sails past three mythical sea nymphs whose tune was thought to drive sailors to their deaths.

The Black Sea has only a narrow connection to the Mediterranean Sea, so it drains poorly. It is fed by freshwater from the surrounding land, which floats on top of the saltier water closer to the bottom. This salty layer is extremely low in oxygen, which keeps wood-eating microbes away from shipwrecks on the seafloor.

The main goal of the Black Sea MAP is to understand changes that have occurred since the last ice age, when the sea was much lower. The area has been a hub of civilization, making the shipwrecks at the bottom important archaeological sites, revealing who used the sea for commerce and how they built their vessels.

Like the ancient Irish logboats, these vessels plied the Black Sea with their cargo, eventually, becoming valuable time capsules of a long-forgotten marine past.

For further information please see:
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ancient-shipwrecks-0010525
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45951132
https://www.livescience.com/63899-oldest-intact-shipwreck-found.html
http://letterfromballinloughane.blogspot.com/2016/05/irish-logboats.html

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2018/10/oldest-intact-shipwreck-found.page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_REwdeweg4