SOUNDINGS

No. 01 · Roman-era merchant ship

Antikythera wreck

Lost c. 70–60 BC · Aegean Sea · 45–55 m

An ancient cargo ship that broke up under the cliffs of a small Greek island, carrying bronze and marble statues and the gearwork computer now called the Antikythera mechanism.

Flag
Unknown
Built
Unknown
Length
perhaps 40–50 m (estimated from the wreck site)
Aboard
Unknown
Lives lost
Unknown
Survived
Unknown
Position
35°53.4′ N, 23°18.5′ E
Lies at
45–55 m, rock and boulders
ANTIKYTHERACRETE23°E23.5°E36°N010 nautical milesAntikythera wreck45–55 mN
Off the north-east cliffs of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete.
Fragments of the Antikythera mechanism on display, National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Fragments of the Antikythera mechanism on display, National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Joyofmuseums, 2018 · CC BY-SA 4.0

No one wrote down the loss of this ship. Coins and pottery from the wreck place it around 70–60 BC, probably heading west towards Italy with treasures from the eastern Aegean. She was found by accident two thousand years later, and one corroded lump from her cargo turned out to be the most complex machine known from the ancient world.

Cause. Unknown. She probably struck the cliffs of Antikythera, most likely in a storm.

The ship drawn above is a merchantman of the period, not a portrait: nothing of her shape survives.

Plate · elevation, starboard side

The ship

AB

Load waterline

A The goose-neck stern, the deckhouse and a steering oar
B The bow with its painted eye, and the small raked foremast

Elevation, starboard side

The last hours

Ship and depth drawn to the same scale.

  1. c. 70–60 BC

    Loaded in the east

    Her cargo of bronze and marble statues, glassware, fine pottery and coins points to ports such as Pergamon and Ephesus. Where she actually loaded is inferred, not recorded.

  2. c. 70–60 BC

    Under the cliffs

    She sank close under the island's north-east cliffs. No account of the wreck survives; the people aboard are known only from bones found on the seabed.

  3. Spring 1900

    Sponge divers

    Divers from Symi under Captain Dimitrios Kontos, sheltering from a storm, went down for sponges. Elias Stadiatis came up from about 45 m saying the seabed was full of statues.

  4. 1900–1901

    The first excavation

    With navy support the divers raised statues, among them the bronze Antikythera Youth. Work stopped after one diver died and two were paralysed by decompression sickness.

  5. 17 May 1902

    A gear in the bronze

    In the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Valerios Stais noticed a gear wheel in a corroded lump: the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient astronomical calculator.

1Amphorae spilled down the slope2A corroded bronze lump, as it might have lain3Boulders fallen from the cliffs
  1. Amphorae spilled down the slope
  2. A corroded bronze lump, as it might have lain
  3. Boulders fallen from the cliffs

Elevation, starboard side, as found.R rock and boulders · 45–55 m

As found

Where she lies

No hull stands above the seabed. The cargo lies scattered down a steep rocky slope, and what remains of her timbers is buried under sediment and boulders. Divers and robots of a Greek-led project with Woods Hole have worked the site since 2012, recovering further finds and, in 2016, part of a human skeleton.

Found

Found by chance in spring 1900 by sponge divers from Symi under Captain Dimitrios Kontos.

Today

A protected archaeological site under the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities. The finds, the mechanism among them, are in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

Sources