- 37 minutes ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Thousands of feet beneath the seven seas lies the history of the world, buried in the wreckage of lost ships.
00:19It is a realm of precious artifacts and priceless treasures, a world of ancient mysteries long beyond our grasp, until today.
00:39Now the sunken marvels of the ocean deep are up for grabs, from ancient Roman ships to Spanish galleons to luxury liners like the Titanic.
00:53I dream about golden emeralds every night, and you gotta believe it's there, and you gotta want it bad.
01:00Some people are out to plunder the past, while others, archaeologists and scientists, like the man who first found the Titanic, are out to preserve it.
01:19They are all armed with million dollar high-tech tools, and the will to spend years on the arduous search.
01:25Just running out in a boat with a metal detector, and hoping to jump over the side and pull up a beach basket of gold coins, that's stuff of fantasy in Hollywood, that really doesn't happen very often.
01:40It is a world where controversy reigns, where there are confusing laws, and no rules.
01:46Does anyone have a right to excavate shipwrecks? Should the past be protected, or should it be picked clean, for profit?
01:59It's a very big difference between doing something to fill in a missing chapter in human history, and doing it for personal greed.
02:11Explorers and archaeologists, entrepreneurs and salvagers, some will risk everything.
02:21Reputation, fortune, even their lives, to possess the treasures of the deep.
02:28The Joker's character.
02:50The Joker's character.
02:53The Joker's character.
02:55The Mediterranean Sea.
03:17On its shores grew the great civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome.
03:27And from its banks ancient people sailed beyond the safety of land in small wooden ships.
03:39For hundreds of years Roman ships controlled these waters, creating a vast empire.
03:47But the moods of the sea are harsh and unpredictable.
03:52And a Roman vessel a hundred feet long had no defenses against storm and wave and wind.
04:10Over the centuries countless ships were lost and countless sailors killed.
04:20Now the man who discovered the Titanic, Dr. Robert Ballard, is again hunting for shipwrecks.
04:27Ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.
04:33For hundreds of years scientists have looked in the ocean for our history.
04:39And for most of that time they've only been able to look a very short distance.
04:44A one or two hundred feet, which represents an insignificant amount of the ocean.
04:49And what we're trying to accomplish is something that's never been done before.
04:52And that is to try to excavate a ship of antiquity that is thousands of feet beneath the sea.
05:02To bring up ancient vessels buried a half mile down.
05:08It's never been done before and Ballard only has five short weeks to do it.
05:15You know it's ironic that we have sent robots to Mars and we've mapped the far side of Venus.
05:23In fact that we know more about the moon's surface than the ocean.
05:29To make the impossible happen, Ballard will need a floating laboratory as mission central.
05:42The Carolyn Chouest, a U.S. Navy vessel, will journey 80 miles west of Sicily into international waters,
05:49where no one has a claim on lost vessels.
05:54Ballard believes the Mediterranean is strewn with ancient wrecks.
06:10And he has long dreamed of finding one.
06:15We're sitting right now in ruins that are on the island of Sicily.
06:20To get to Rome you have to cross the Tyrrhenian Sea.
06:23To get to Carthage you have to cross the Straits of Sicily.
06:27To travel from civilization to civilization here in the Mediterranean you must cross the Mediterranean.
06:33And many of those ships didn't make it.
06:36Many of those ships went to the bottom and many of them went into the deep sea.
06:41Between ancient Carthage and Rome it's 12,000 feet deep.
06:46And no one has ever gone to the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea to look for those ships that sank, most surely sank there until now.
06:58It was a decade ago when Ballard and a team of archaeologists first surveyed an unexplored Mediterranean region called Skirky Bank.
07:10In 1988 he made a startling discovery nearly 3,000 feet down.
07:16The remains of an ancient Roman ship lying untouched for almost 20 centuries.
07:22The find confirmed for the first time ever that an ancient trade route had flourished across the open sea.
07:38From Carthage in North Africa to Rome.
07:44Now Ballard has returned to Skirky Bank where he'll attempt to excavate the ancient Roman ship.
07:54Working in close collaboration with archaeologists, Ballard hopes to uncover something nobody has ever seen before.
08:02My greatest dream is that these ships are buried and well preserved.
08:08And that their cargo is preserved.
08:10And who knows, maybe there's people that are preserved.
08:14I'm not sure I want to find people, but it would be fascinating.
08:19And we won't know until we dig them out.
08:28Could there really be the remains of ancient seafarers at the bottom of the Mediterranean?
08:34It is an extraordinary idea.
08:38And to find out, Ballard will use an extraordinary machine.
08:43The NR1, the big gun of deep diving submarines.
08:52It is capable of going all the way down to 3,000 feet and staying there for a month.
08:59Built during the clashes of the Cold War, the NR1 was a crucial weapon in the U.S. Navy's arsenal for 30 years.
09:14Designed to search the ocean depths for downed planes and lost missiles.
09:18It's the best in the world.
09:20Outfitted with lights, sensors, cameras, and a mechanical arm for digging.
09:26All of it powered by a nuclear reactor which won't need to be refueled for 20 years.
09:40Even now, its sonar equipment is still classified.
09:43So sophisticated, NR1 can find a soda can sitting on the sea floor a mile away.
09:52The NR1 is a marvel, but it's a cramped one.
09:56The 11-man crew shares one bolted-down kitchen table just big enough for two people at a time.
10:02For this mission, Ballard has added something brand new to the sub's digging arm.
10:13A powerful suction pump that would dredge the ocean bottom.
10:22Ballard believes the sea floor is sandy and soft, ready to reveal whatever secrets lie hidden underneath.
10:32What is actually down there?
10:35Will Ballard find the timbers of an ancient Roman trading ship and the bones of the men who sailed it 2,000 years ago?
10:44What is actually down there?
10:45What is actually down there?
10:54Sunken treasure.
10:56It has drawn people into the seas since the first cargo ship split apart on the first shallow reefs.
11:02Relics.
11:07Gold.
11:09Gems.
11:10Pieces of eight.
11:12It is the stuff that countless dreams and schemes are made of.
11:15Obsessed with the promise of riches, undersea treasure hunters today scour the world's oceans, crowding serious archaeologists.
11:32The king of the undersea dreamers and schemers is a stubborn rebel named Mel Fisher.
11:46In his quest for treasure, Fisher let nothing stand in his way and came to be known as a swashbuckler, a very successful swashbuckler.
11:55In 1997, family and friends joined with Fisher to mark the spot where he struck gold nearly 25 years earlier.
12:09The reason we picked today, it was rather appropriate, it's Mel Fisher's 75th birthday.
12:15Yay!
12:17Here, here.
12:22But the plaque, and let me unveil it here, take it off.
12:26You'll notice we got a picture of the Atocha.
12:29And it reads, in sincere appreciation to Mel and Dio Fisher for their extraordinary efforts in accomplishing mankind's most elusive goal.
12:42They followed their dream.
12:49In the 1960s, Mel Fisher is a man with a mad dream.
12:53Often short of money and deep in debt, he hunts the shallow waters off the Florida coast for treasure.
13:04He is determined to find the shipwreck called the Atocha,
13:08a Spanish galleon that had sunk in 1622 in a hurricane,
13:13reportedly carrying a king's ransom in silver and gold.
13:16Year after year, with the help of his wife and children, Fisher combs the Florida seas.
13:34Until 1975, when his son Dirk finds the first real evidence of the ship.
13:40Nine bronze cannons.
13:42Just a week later, while returning to the site of his triumph, Dirk Fisher's boat capsizes in the dark of night.
14:06Dirk, his wife, and another diver, die tragically.
14:13Fisher is devastated, but he vows to continue and to honor his son's memory.
14:16The Atocha seems so close.
14:17But she continues to elude Fisher, to tease him for over a decade.
14:18The Atocha seems so close.
14:19But she continues to elude Fisher, to tease him for over a decade.
14:20Then he after the first night.
14:26tied his friendaroundなんだ
14:31The Atocha seems so close,
14:33Inspiring as nu pirates
14:34The Atocha seems so close.
14:38The Atocha seems to also valuable for the world.
14:40Specifically she chooses for about a summer oblider
14:41until the firstpassen attack
14:46Then, in 1985, in 60 feet of water, he finds her, the Atocha, the mother load of all treasure
14:59ships.
15:01It's worth $400 million so far, and today, Mel Fisher is counting the riches still out
15:08there on the ocean floor.
15:10So right over here, about a quarter of a mile, there's all the king's taxes for five
15:15years.
15:17All the church collection money from all the Catholic churches in this hemisphere for
15:21five years, all the wealthy merchants, there's 28 of them on board, all their life savings
15:28for, well, for 10 or 15 years in business over here.
15:33They were going to go home and retire, and they didn't make it.
15:37So there's probably another $4.5 billion right over there.
15:40Today, aging and ailing, Mel Fisher is still bringing up treasure.
15:51These days, it's emeralds.
15:53His passion for treasure has been passed on to his youngest son, Kane Fisher.
16:00These emeralds are coming from the Atocha, and they weren't on the manifest, but we found
16:05a, uh, we found a court-martial record in the archives saying that the abril had a, uh...
16:11I got one, I got one!
16:12There it is!
16:13There it is!
16:14There it is!
16:15There it is!
16:16I got one!
16:17There it is!
16:18There it is!
16:19There it is!
16:20There it is!
16:21There it is!
16:22There it is!
16:23There it is!
16:24Yeah, that's, uh, that's about a half a carat.
16:27And that's about $6,000 a carat there.
16:32And that's about a half a carat, so that's $3,000 in this time.
16:36You just got to be real persistent and not give up no matter what.
16:43And you got to believe it's there, and you got to want it bad.
16:47If you want it bad enough, you'll get it.
16:50You just got to keep, keep looking, and don't stop no matter what.
16:54I dream about golden emeralds every night.
16:57And, uh, and you'll never know it's five feet away from where you left off.
17:02That's what keeps it exciting.
17:06Atocha puzzle still isn't solved.
17:09It's just, uh, I don't know when we're gonna figure it out.
17:12And you just keep going and going.
17:14And it seems like you never get done working a shipwreck.
17:19We've been working those wrecks for 34 years now.
17:23And, uh, still finding stuff.
17:25And it's exciting.
17:26That's what keeps you going.
17:29Today, Mel Fisher is big business and almost respectable.
17:35But a swashbuckler makes enemies.
17:39Big enemies.
17:41Charging that Fisher has seriously damaged the sea floor with his salvaging techniques,
17:46the federal government has dragged him through the courts.
17:49And Fisher's had to pay hundreds of thousands in fines.
17:52But Fisher knows how to change with the times.
17:56Conservator Sid Jones, who worked extensively with Fisher on the Atocha,
18:01acknowledges the need to protect history.
18:04In the past, treasure hunting, uh, back in the 60s or the 50s,
18:08when it was really getting started, uh, there wasn't much thought given to recording data or preserving the artifacts.
18:16Of course, there was a large emphasis on finding something of value.
18:20But we've all learned in time that every artifact that comes from these ships has value.
18:25Uh, once you understand the complete picture, uh, the items not only have a monetary value,
18:31uh, but they have a historical value as well,
18:33which didn't always exist in the early phases of treasure hunting.
18:41After finding and carefully cataloging his treasures,
18:44Fisher sells most of it off, piece by piece.
18:51Fisher believes that two billion more is just waiting to be recovered.
19:09Deep in the Mediterranean, the NR-1 is still hunting for archaeological marvels.
19:15With no luck.
19:19After three weeks of trying, the sub and its robot arm have been unable to make a dent in the ocean floor,
19:26which unexpectedly turns out to be sticky and thick, like clay.
19:30Ballard's master plan is just not working.
19:43Do the wooden hulls of the Roman vessels still exist just beyond reach?
19:47Or has time stolen them away?
19:49Ballard wonders if you'll ever find them.
19:55The deep sea is always surprising me.
19:58Every time I think I understand it, it throws me another curveball.
20:03But that's okay. That's part of it.
20:04I think it wouldn't be fun if I knew it that well.
20:11And it wasn't full of surprises.
20:17Ballard decides to change the way they use the NR-1.
20:20He sends the sub out to do what it does best, to act as a high-tech bloodhound.
20:27To roam over Skirky Bank and to explore as much as possible with its exceptional sonar senses.
20:34Sir, press mission, rig ship for deep submergence.
20:37Rig ship for deep submergence.
20:38Rig ship for deep submergence.
20:39Rig ship for deep submergence, aye, sir.
20:41Rig ship for deep submergence.
20:46Will the NR-1 discover the unknown, the unexpected?
20:50Ballard will just have to wait and see.
20:52By working to develop new underwater technology, Ballard has revolutionized deep sea archaeology.
21:09At the same time, he has inadvertently helped to blow the world of treasure hunters wide open.
21:16Now, anyone with $150,000 to spare can buy an ROV.
21:22A remotely operated search vehicle right off the shelf and set off for gold.
21:30Still, there are only a handful of successful deep sea salvagers.
21:38Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology out of Tampa, Florida is one of them.
21:42Seahawk hit the jackpot in 1989, discovering a 17th century Spanish galleon heavy with gold and jewels off the Florida coast in 1,500 feet of water.
21:56Seahawk is looking for treasure again, this time in the seas off the coast of Georgia.
22:16Michael Reardon, Seahawk's current expedition leader, sees himself as a treasure hunter with a difference.
22:22That's one of our goals, is to choose shipwrecks that are archaeologically important, as well as having a commercial cargo.
22:36So we're playing a fine line between the archaeological community and the out-and-out smash-and-grab treasure hunters, of which we're not.
22:46Reardon is after a 19th century paddle wheel steamer, which they've codenamed the Golden Eagle, to keep her identity hidden from other salvagers.
22:57Now they've narrowed the search to a mere 200 square miles.
23:06It's very difficult locating shipwrecks. With all the sophisticated equipment we have today, it's still quite a chore.
23:13Keep in mind right now, we're 433 feet above the sea floor, trying to put a small vehicle on a shipwreck.
23:20There's no road signs out here.
23:26It has taken Reardon and his colleagues years of hard work to reach this point.
23:32Now, using some of the same high-tech tools as Ballard, they are hoping to claim their fortune 500 feet down.
23:39Yeah, the vehicle's on the bottom.
23:49Roger that. I copy. The vehicle is on the bottom.
23:57According to Seahawk, the Golden Eagle, in 1865, found herself caught in a hurricane with nowhere to hide.
24:04They fought the storm for two days, all hands and passengers bailing and bucketing water out.
24:11And finally, the seas and the weather had calmed down, and it went under.
24:18She went to the bottom, carrying a belly full of gold coin, $400,000 at the time, now valued at $20 million.
24:35Six years of work coming down to a dive with a remote vehicle, and hopefully, when we get in on the site, it'll be the right wreck.
24:44We have very good sonar images of the wreck, and the dimensions are almost exactly the same as the target vessel, the codename the Golden Eagle.
24:54Got some targets off to the right.
24:56Thanks, Roger.
24:57All right.
24:58As the ROV descends into the glittering murk of the deep sea, project manager Brett Hobson discerns the ghostly outlines of the past.
25:24That's the beautiful part of these old wrecks, the old time capsules, and nobody's seen it, and we're just sleuthing through, looking for clues, and we definitely feel like a detective.
25:36So far, everything we're seeing is telling us this could be the one.
25:46You're looking straight down now, right?
25:47Yes.
25:48We can go all the way over to the other side.
25:53Okay.
25:54It's been very quiet here ever since, very dark, and our light to the first one is to illuminate it since it went down.
26:20That's a very eerie feeling.
26:25As the ROV makes a closer pass, they see things that don't match.
26:30Okay.
26:31Wow.
26:32Really round.
26:33And we've got some very flat-sided bulwarks here.
26:39See the big cutout going down to the keel and the rudder stanchion on the right?
26:49I don't know what else it could be.
26:52It looks just like what I hoped we would not find.
26:56No paddle wheels I know of has a propeller like that.
27:01I think we're in trouble.
27:05It's very disappointing at this moment to be sitting here with a target that we had pinned high hopes on, and now to prove that it's not the right vessel.
27:19I can't think of the right words to describe how I'm feeling right now.
27:24It's not good.
27:26It takes time and luck to find a pot of gold in a vast deep ocean, and Reardon has run out of both.
27:49Reardon abandons the ship to the sea.
27:54There's no profit to be made from the wreck, and unlike Ballard, treasure, not history, is what drives him.
28:07In the Mediterranean, the search for history does not let up.
28:12With only a few weeks left, Ballard and the NR-1 continue to hunt Skirky for new wrecks.
28:21Ballard also deploys Jason, a remotely operated search vehicle designed and built by engineers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
28:32Okay, we're just checking the data logging station now.
28:35Archaeologists have already spent many hours carefully surveying and mapping artifacts on the sea floor.
28:48Now, it's time for Jason to retrieve them.
28:51Guided by the team, the robot vehicle plunges 3,000 feet to locate fragile relics.
29:08Most are Roman amphoras.
29:11They're 2,000-year-old terracotta containers, the cargo holders of the ancient world,
29:16filled with olive oil, dried fish, or wine.
29:21..
29:38Safely cradling its fragile hull, an elevator of metal and mesh slowly traverses the half-mile separating the centuries.
29:46for the first time in 2,000 years human hands will hold the ancient artifacts.
30:09Next stop for these delicate pieces of the past is the ship's laboratory
30:13where they'll be examined by archaeologist John Olson,
30:17Expedition Archaeological Director Anna Marguerite McCann,
30:21and conservator Dennis Piatta.
30:24Olson is delighted to find the simple clay pots.
30:27Well, to find several cooking pots together adjacent to one another
30:31just as they would have been left on a kitchen bench
30:34is extraordinary at this depth, 2,600 feet.
30:39Treasure hunters would find little of value here.
30:42Yet, to archaeologist John Adams,
30:45a shipwreck is a slice of time unexpectedly preserved.
30:50When a ship sinks, it's a cross-section of society.
30:53Structure, contents, personal possessions, contextual relationships, etc.
30:58lost at a single moment in time.
31:00Nobody decides what to take away, what to leave behind when the ship sinks.
31:04it all ends up on the seabed at the same time.
31:07And ships have been described, rightly so in a way, as time capsules.
31:16As they continue to explore, Ballard and the archaeologists are excited to see things they've never seen before.
31:23Skirky is turning into more than they ever expected.
31:30Could you zoom in on that?
31:32Keep zooming.
31:36Look at that beautiful.
31:37They've identified the remains of a ship, but it's definitely not of Roman origin.
31:47Nobody knows, at first, where it's from.
31:54It's particularly interesting because it seems to be a relatively small ship,
31:58and we don't see cargo.
32:00Just ballast stones, which help steady a ship when it's not carrying cargo.
32:04Or if it's a pleasure craft, such as a small personnel yacht, or possibly a type of warship.
32:11Look at the reflection on those glasses.
32:14Keep driving straight.
32:15Don't stop.
32:20There's glass.
32:22I'm just amazed that there's glasses.
32:25Glass, lamps that brightened the darkness centuries before.
32:36And despite thousands of pounds of sea pressure, they have survived unbroken.
32:42Obviously, one of our big concerns is that these artifacts are very, very fragile.
32:47Jason weighs 3,000 pounds in air, and it's got a tremendous amount of momentum.
32:54And we want to pick them up without breaking any of them.
32:59We've never picked up glass before.
33:24Once the objects reach the surface, they help reveal the nature of the mysterious vessel.
33:31It comes from the 16th or 17th century, 1,500 years later than the Roman ships, when Arab traders sailed these waters.
33:42They are not gold or studded with emeralds, yet for Ballard, a delicate glass object is the real treasure.
34:07They are evidence that Skirky Bank may have been a crossroads for many countries and civilizations.
34:18What has surprised me the most is that we thought this was one event, that this was a fleet of ships, a group of ships that sank together.
34:29And it's not at all.
34:31We have ships spanning over 1,500 years of history, if not more.
34:41I am just amazed.
34:42I thought that there would be a ship here and then way far away another ship, and yet in this particular area of 20 square miles, 4 miles by 5 miles, we have found now 6 ships.
34:58This area is sort of like a graveyard.
35:08Ballard is no stranger to undersea graveyards.
35:13He is the man who discovered one of the most famous burial grounds in history.
35:27The Titanic.
35:28The Titanic.
35:29The largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built.
35:34Called a floating palace, the Titanic sails April 10th, 1912 on her maiden voyage.
35:42She is believed to be unsinkable until her tragic rendezvous in the North Atlantic.
35:57Side swiping an iceberg, the great ship sinks in less than three hours.
36:031,523 people, two-thirds of all those aboard, die in the icy waters.
36:12For decades, explorers are obsessed with finding the final resting place of the great liner.
36:27But no one is more intent on the hunt than Robert Ballard, who spends 13 years looking.
36:34Finally, in 1985, Ballard and French explorer Jean-Louis Michel discovered the remains of the ruined giant over 12,000 feet down.
36:46Ballard always treated the grand wreck as a site to be explored, but he did it with respect.
37:03To him, it was a shrine for the dead to remain untouched, intact.
37:31Ballard and the crew even held a memorial service for those who died in the tragedy.
37:44When I found the Titanic, certainly I became emotionally attached to it.
37:50And Jean-Louis Michel, who was co-discovering the Titanic with me, was equally moved.
37:56And I can remember both of us saying, well, we'll never let this ship be spoiled or desecrated.
38:05Ballard discovered the Titanic, but he never claimed ownership of her under the laws of the sea.
38:11Inadvertently, he was opening a Pandora's box.
38:18Once the location of the Titanic became public knowledge, it was a target for salvagers.
38:231994, Ballard's worst fears come true.
38:40A new expedition, led by Connecticut businessman George Tulloch, probes the rotting remains of the Titanic.
38:49Tulloch spends tens of millions of dollars to send down robot vehicles and bring up jewelry, eyeglasses, furnishings, anything within reach from the devastated liner.
39:04Once Tulloch retrieved the objects, he legally claimed the Titanic for his own.
39:22Ballard never thought this day would come.
39:25I don't think in my wildest imagination did I think that they would go out and salvage it.
39:32I mean, I was convinced they wouldn't.
39:35And it just caught me by surprise. I was really shocked.
39:40And there was nothing I could do about it.
39:45Because since I didn't claim it, I mean, I didn't even cross my mind to claim it.
39:5085 years ago this month, the luxury ship, the Titanic, sank on its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic.
40:00Tomorrow, mid-Southerners and people from all across the world will be able to see the treasures that that disaster left behind.
40:07Like Ballard, George Tulloch expresses deep reverence for the Titanic's dead.
40:12But he argues that people will better understand the tragedy if they can see the artifacts firsthand.
40:18I think Titanic is by itself capable of saying it is, it is incomparable in terms of tragic suffering for that moment in time.
40:35And I think that the objects from that moment deserve to stay with us.
40:41No way.
40:43All right.
40:44All right.
40:45So, are we.
40:46We asked about the climate.
40:47The bitter flu is dying.
40:50No way.
40:52No way.
40:53No way.
40:56No way.
40:57No way.
40:58No, I don't do it.
41:01There is nothing to do.
41:04It is a sea 태urgence.
41:06It is a beachville.
41:09Tulloch says his company will never sell the artifacts,
41:23never sell off the possessions of the dead.
41:26But his company will profit handsomely from the traveling exhibition.
41:32I think the blessing we have is that the court says that it's ours,
41:37the company that I'm the president of,
41:39and we don't feel that it's ours.
41:41We feel that we're the guardian of it.
41:44Tulloch's historian Charles Haas does not want to deny ordinary people
41:49an opportunity to experience the past.
41:52One only has to look at the museums of the world
41:55to see that part of the archaeological process
41:58is recovering artifacts from the ocean floor.
42:02There are ample demonstrations of Mediterranean vessels
42:05of all kinds of shapes having their contents brought up,
42:09and placed in museums for people to enjoy.
42:11I think it's certainly preferable to have the Titanic's artifacts
42:15guaranteed to be placed before the public and teach them
42:19and to allow them to sit on the ocean floor
42:21where they'll be ravaged by time and the elements down there
42:24and accessible, really, by only a very few people.
42:29But to archaeologist John Adams,
42:31there is no scientific reason for Tulloch's excavation of the Titanic.
42:37We know a lot about the Titanic.
42:39We know the names of the people on board.
42:41We know its itinerary.
42:43So the question the potential archaeological researcher would ask is
42:47if you actually go and investigate that wreck archaeologically,
42:49in other words, pull up pieces of the material remains,
42:52what is he going to tell you that you don't know already?
42:55Now, this is further muddied by the fact that
42:59there are still people alive whose relatives died on the ship.
43:04Is there any difference between exhibiting a teacup from the Titanic
43:18and bringing up an ancient drinking glass from the Mediterranean floor?
43:24Tulloch doesn't think so.
43:26One of the people that would criticize is in the Mediterranean,
43:30sucking up the clay containers from Roman and Greek shipping vessels.
43:41There's something about Titanic that makes people a bit crazy
43:46if they feel that it's theirs.
43:51For Ballard, there is an enormous difference
43:54between an archaeological expedition and salvage for profit.
43:58Every object that's recovered is recovered
44:02because an archaeologist, an expert, says, I want that.
44:06You know, sometimes they would say,
44:07see that broken jar, pick it up.
44:10Well, how about the unbroken one?
44:12No, actually the broken jar has more scientific value.
44:16Bring it up.
44:17So we bring it up.
44:19And so it's a very big difference
44:21between doing something to fill in a missing chapter in human history
44:27and doing it for personal greed.
44:38Nearly a decade after discovering the Titanic,
44:41Ballard dove on another grand wreck,
44:44the British luxury liner Lusitania.
44:46High-tech treasure hunters had stripped as much of the broken vessel possible,
45:06looking to sell off the remains.
45:07The salvagers even brought up three of the boat's propellers.
45:19One propeller made it to a maritime museum.
45:23The second was believed to be melted down
45:27and recast as a very expensive set of golf clubs.
45:31The last one met an even gloomier fate.
45:38I can remember going out,
45:41trying to find the propeller of the Lusitania
45:45and finding it in this junkyard
45:49and just sitting there amongst all this other junk.
45:53And I can remember when we were diving on the Lusitania
45:58to have that empty shaft,
46:00something was missing.
46:01Its propeller was missing.
46:05And if the propeller was in a museum,
46:08if it was serving some purpose,
46:11I could understand that.
46:12But to find it in a junkyard,
46:15waiting to be sold for scrap,
46:18you have to wonder,
46:20why did you do this?
46:22What was going through your brain?
46:24And it had to have been just a lark.
46:28And that's...
46:30it's really sad.
46:43Ballard's Mediterranean expedition
46:46is down to a precious handful of days.
46:49And now, the NR1 finally pays off.
46:54The sub uncovers two new sites,
46:57including the oldest they've found,
47:00containing a Roman wreck from the first century B.C.
47:11The evidence is now inescapable.
47:13Skirky Bank has been a major intersection
47:17throughout Mediterranean history.
47:21Ballard is anxious to find more,
47:24but the seas suddenly turn dark and angry.
47:29Well, we just found the best ancient ship
47:32we've ever discovered,
47:33and we can't get to it.
47:35We've got to get in the water.
47:36We can't get in the water.
47:37They're telling us we've got a storm that's coming
47:39that's going to be Sea State 5.
47:42This is our second major storm on this trip.
47:45We lost 32 hours to the last storm.
47:48How many hours are we going to lose to this one?
47:52You know, I want to get down.
47:54I can't get to it.
47:57But there is one way to get beneath the waves.
48:00Ballard decides to send down the NR-1 during the storm.
48:08Once under the surface,
48:09the sub will be free of the weather,
48:11free to continue exploring.
48:16On board is archaeologist John Adams,
48:19eager to see the new find close up.
48:21Unlike most deep-diving subs,
48:26the NR-1 actually has three windows on its underside.
48:34For Adams, they are portals to the tragedies of the past.
48:39When you're diving,
48:40you can't get half a mile down like we are now.
48:43And it's easy to lose sight of the people.
48:47I suppose they're the last moments for them on board this vessel
48:51before it sank
48:52must have been the climax of a crisis
48:57that might have actually been going on for several hours
48:59as the well-organised machine that the ship is
49:02gradually breaks down and down it goes.
49:08So it's quite an awe-inspiring sight.
49:12In this graveyard of lost vessels,
49:23the NR-1 explores the very last site.
49:30The new ship is another Roman trading vessel
49:34dating from the first century A.D.
49:37and a cargo rarely seen by scientists.
49:42An orderly pile of large cut stones and two pillars
49:47carefully lock pieces like giant toy blocks
49:51still waiting after 2,000 years for hands to assemble them.
49:56Perhaps they were prefabricated pieces of an ancient building
50:03carved out of an Egyptian quarry destined for Roman shores.
50:08It will take months, even years,
50:10before the archaeologists know the answers,
50:13if ever they do.
50:14As always, Ballard is concerned about protecting the sites for posterity.
50:28When we discovered the Titanic,
50:30we did not file a claim of ownership.
50:34And I was later told that had we done that,
50:38had we recovered one little object,
50:40we could have claimed it,
50:42and in so doing,
50:44help protect it.
50:47By bringing up the Skirky artifacts,
50:50Ballard establishes his right
50:51to claim the sites in court,
50:54if ever it becomes necessary.
50:57Oh, this is very heavy, Kathy.
50:59Very heavy.
51:01For now, Ballard will place the artifacts
51:03recovered at Skirky Bank
51:05in the Sea Research Foundation,
51:07where they will be preserved
51:08according to the highest archaeological standards.
51:12That's one.
51:13That's one.
51:15It's the one you were sort of curious about.
51:17Together, Ballard and the scientists
51:19have proven that the new world
51:21of deep sea archaeology
51:23can work wonders.
51:25I feel very good.
51:27I feel that this, you know,
51:29really is a historic expedition.
51:31This is the first major
51:33deep sea archaeological expedition.
51:35An incredible team of people
51:37from incredibly diverse backgrounds
51:40working together for the first time
51:43to try to do something
51:44that had never been done before.
51:46I think we have shown
51:48that the deep sea
51:49is a repository of human history
51:52on a scale we just never comprehended before.
51:55But are the archaeological glories
52:04of the deep sea
52:05at risk from salvagers
52:06and treasure hunters?
52:09Yes, Ballard believes,
52:11until they learn to respect the past.
52:13I have no fundamental problem
52:16with treasure hunters
52:18if they don't destroy history
52:21in the process.
52:22And I don't think it's our right
52:24to destroy history.
52:26It's our right to find it
52:27and document it,
52:28but not our right to destroy it.
52:31As long as there are marvels
52:38in the seas,
52:39people will pursue them.
52:41Some will be treasure hunters
52:42dreaming of gold and gems.
52:46And some will be scientists
52:48dreaming of the astonishing discovery
52:51that next awaits them.
53:01I don't think it's our right to find it.
53:31Transcription by CastingWords
Be the first to comment