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Year
1994 
No.334
| Underwater
Archeology in Turkey Only a small
fraction of shipwrecks lying on Turkey’s seabed have been discovered,
and a very little number of those discovered have been excavated
so far. The rest are waiting for us to find with all their secrets
yet to be revealed. Ancient wooden ships, navigating from coast
to coast without the help of a compass often crashed into the
rocks while trying to take refuge in small bays from storms, and
sank into the blue; the cargo would get loose and possibly threw
the ship off balance, causing the ship to take on water and sink
in a matter of minutes. The reasons for these wrecks are potentially
various, perhaps even from fires on board that resulted from the
sea battles they engaged in… |
| Anatolia,
being considered the cradle of human civilization, is a region one
can come across in any history or archeology book. The fact that
it’s been a backdrop for trade and wars throughout history explains
why there are so many shipwrecks from different civilizations lying
at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Archeologist Prof. George
Bass, from Texas A&M University, believes that even with the
rate of one shipwreck per year since the ancient times there should
be at least 3000 shipwrecks in our seas. Even this rough calculation
gives us some idea about the potential of our seas as archeological
sites in terms of shipwrecks. |
 |
Wooden shipwrecks
differ from steel ones in that there is usually nothing left behind
from the ship’s parts such as the keel, masts, frames or strakes
but their cargos (amphorae, bricks etc) and anchors.
This is an important point that should be considered in discovering
shipwrecks. A wooden ship that has crashed into the rocks sinks
down with its starboard or port side first, and sits on the bottom
with its cargo heaped onto the heavy side and gradually spreads.
In time, the upper part of the ship, exposed more to the external
conditions, disappears; the bottom part of the ship gets buried
under the silt. Years later, only the amphorae and anchors would
be visible. |
| Turkey is
rich in steel shipwrecks as well. Hundreds of warships that sank
during the battles in Dardanelles in World War I have been sitting
at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara and Aegean Sea ever since. Steel
shipwrecks are not usually broken up and scattered like the wooden
ones; they tell us more about the day they sank although they do
corrode over a long period of time. ODTU SAT-BAG (Middle East Technical
University Underwater Society- Underwater Archeology Group) has
done research on steel shipwrecks as well as wooden ones. To name
a few of them: shipwrecks from the Ottoman-Russian war off the coasts
of Sinop in 1853, Seferihisar and Lake Van surveys, Cilicia surface
survey that’s been ongoing for two years, steel shipwrecks that
have been discovered around Antalya coasts, and research on the
airplane wreck off Kas.
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