Word: vessel
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Iran's action was predictable and came right on cue last week as the tanker war in the Persian Gulf claimed two more victims. Four days after a series of Iraqi air strikes against shipping in the strategic waterway, Iranian jets rocketed the Indian supertanker Kanchenjunga, destroying the vessel's bridge. The crew was able to bring the resulting fire under control, and the 276,744- ton ship, laden with 1.4 million bbl. of Saudi crude, headed for Dubai for repairs. The following day Iranian aircraft scored two hits on the 238,959-ton Spanish tanker Aragon. Though damaged...
That something turned out to be the earliest intact shipwreck ever recovered, a fully laden cargo vessel that had gone to its silent, watery grave perhaps 3,400 years ago, about the time King Tutankhamun was on the throne in Egypt. The discovery, announced in Washington last week by the National Geographic Society, which helped sponsor Bass's expedition, is located near the town of Kas, less than 100 yards off the jagged, arid southern Turkish coastline and more than 145 ft. below the surface. The excavation began in earnest last summer...
...ship is about 65 ft. long, rigged for a single square sail. Thus far only some of the hull's planking and part of the vessel's keel, made of fir, have been unearthed from the sediment. Apparently, the ship foundered on the coast's treacherous rocks and went straight down, without splintering, thus retaining much of its cargo. Bass and his fellow archaeologists were able to date the ship from at least two clues: a delicate double-handled Greek cup, similar to those made between 1400 and 1350 B.C., and the copper ingots, with their characteristic...
...have been the lack of such sophisticated technology that prevented the vessel from being plundered by renegade treasure hunters. In the past, Bass has located ancient wrecks only to find that they had been plucked clean by tourists or black marketeers. Because of the great depth of the new find-145 to 170 ft.-Bass's divers could make only two brief 20-to 25-min. trips per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The pressure was so disorienting, he recalls, it was like "working down there on three martinis each." Five more years will...
...Mediterranean 34 centuries ago. Before the advent of marine archaeology, notes Bass, "we knew more about the safety pins and sewers of Athens than we did about the ships that made Athens great." The hull of this wreck, for example, tells much about shipbuilding techniques. Apparently the vessel was constructed by building the outer shell first, then adding ribs for reinforcement, the same method utilized 1,000 years later. Bass surmises that the wreck will disclose a great deal about the ships used in the Trojan War, though probably nothing about the face that launched them. The cache of nearly...