The Sixth Continent Under the Sea (Sunday Times, June 26, 1955)
From Ian Fleming
CANNES.
The first Underwater Archaeology Conference has now completed its work and the sponsors, the Club Alpin Sousmarin, are to be congratulated on its success. If Cannes—or better still Monaco, in view of the royal family’s traditional interest in submarine matters—is far-sighted, it will provide the funds and organisation to make the conference a regular international event, and to include on its agenda underwater exploring in all its branches.
Although this first conference has barely touched upon the immediate concerns of underwater archaeologists, when each speaker drew aside the curtain from his particular porthole, one looked through upon the problems of a new world.
Even International Law—the rights of the discoverer, of the salver and of the country within whose riparian limit the discovery is made. In France the whole matter is covered by a Royal Decree of 1680 and by the antiquated Laws of Colbert. These allot to the finder 10 per cent. of the value if the discovery, generally a wreck, is ashore, 33 1/3 per cent. if it is found at a depth of 15 ft., and 50 per cent. if it is found at a depth of 45 ft. There they end. There is nothing to cover the many recent discoveries at depths of over 100 ft., nor the salvage, at great cost and risk to life, of archaeological treasures which are, by another set of French laws, automatically the property of the Ministry of Fine Arts.
And who is to pay for the work —far more costly in man-hours (good visibility and calm weather are not essential to a dig at Stonehenge) and in equipment than terrestrial archaeology? Commander Cousteau’s archaeological work has been financed only to the tune of 1/30th by the French Government and he has been luckier than most.
New means of salvage were discussed—the Cousteau one-man bathyscape now being tested to destruction at depths up to 3,000 feet; fast methods of search, by holding on to a torpedo or being towed over the bottom of the sea on a skid; underwater television for the direction of excavations by archaeologists on the surface; the use of compressed air and suction pumps for clearing wrecks and sites, and stereoscopic underwater photography for measurement and reconnaissance.
Rebikoff, the pioneer of underwater colour photography, showed some fine films, including an enchanting record of a battle between a baby octopus and an adult sea anemone (and here I might mention, though it has nothing to do with the conference, that Cousteau arrives back this week from the Indian Ocean with twenty miles of underwater film for the moving picture of The Silent World for the Rank Organisation).
The uninitiated would imagine that normal salvage methods should be good enough for the archaeologists, but the experiences of many speakers made it clear that the traditional diver in a diving suit is far too clumsy and slow for this kind of light-fingered work, and I heard dire stories of the operations of the famous Italian salvage ship Artiglio on the sunken trading vessel at Al Benga. It did indeed raise 100 amphorae in a day by methods appropriate to the salvage of a sunken coal barge, but, through no fault of its owner or crew, the damage done was appalling.
The representative of the Ligurian Study Group who reported on this wreck had a sad tale to tell. The Italian Government, already active on many dry land projects, has no money to spare for its territorial waters, and the young Italian divers are interested only in shooting fish and finding treasure. Their parents and school-teachers brought them up on the contents of their local museums and they have no enthusiasm for risking their lives for mere “pottery and statues.”
The English representative of the British Sub-Aqua Club, Mr. Richard Garnett, pricked up his ears at this and gave an enthusiastic account of last year’s Sunday Times expedition to Chios and described the plans for two English expeditions to the Mediterranean this year, one to Crete and another to Cyprus. It seems likely that members of British underwater clubs with proper training and a smattering of languages will find no difficulty in loaning their services to Mediterranean clubs once things get better organised.
Mr. Garnett also mentioned a fascinating discovery at Syracuse, where the British Vice-Consul thinks he has found the remains of an Athenian battle fleet, reported sunk there by Thucycides. This site is now being examined by the Italians and the first reports are that the ships are in fact trading vessels. But the discovery is an exciting one, with much talk of amphorae being used as firebombs and the like.
Mr. Garnett also gave details of the Pudding Pan wreck-site in the Thames Estuary off Whitstable, whence, despite thick water and currents, Roman pottery has been recovered by the British Underwater Reconnaissance Group and shown, I believe, on television.
The 2,000-year-old sunken trading vessel off Marseilles and the salvage methods used on it were fully discussed and Professor Benoit of Marseilles threw out the notion that in fact two ships were sunk, one on top of the other. This he deduces from the types of pottery being recovered, of which he said his museum already contains 6,000 different examples of 65 types. He mentioned his suspicion that Sestius, the Greek merchant who shipped this and other cargoes of wine to Marseilles (by A.D. 200 the Gauls had grown their own vine-yards and killed the Greek trade) threw in free drinking goblets with each 30-litre amphora, for many of the goblets are marked with the same Greek advertising slogan (cribbed no doubt from Guinness!): “Drink Wine. It’s Good for You.”
From the trademark of Cassius, a metal-merchant of around A.D. 100, on lead anchors and on the lead counter-weights attached near the handles of oars to lighten the blades on fast galleys (mentioned by Pliny and Plutarch), whose products are also found in the Rhineland, and from the copper and tin used in the construction of sunken ships, a clear picture of the great Roman, Greek and Phoenician metal routes is being built up.
The representative from Tunisia described progress on the Mahdia wreck, on which Greek sponge-divers worked from 1907-1912 and recovered amongst other treasures, the Mahdia “Hermes.” This wreck, which lies in perpetual swell five kilometres from the coast, has, in the last twelve months, been cleared of sixty tons of marble columns, and the programme for 1955 includes deep excavation into the after-part of the 30-foot vessel, in which there has already been identified part of the arm of a gigantic marble statue. Here also might be, said the delegate, the famous “Golden Virgin” which tradition has firmly planted among the cargo.
This, with the sunken trading ship off the Ile de Levant, in the Hyères Group, which is being excavated by Commander Tailliez, and which may prove even more important than Cousteau’s wreck, completes the list of some of the underwater archaeological projects now going forward in the Mediterranean. They are perhaps enough to suggest how useful and fascinating this first conference was.
And yet they are only a corner of the problems which future generations will have to solve as they push forward their exploration of the Sixth Continent. There are greater treasures under the sea and in the sea than wrecks and sunken gold and buried cities, and they include more food and power and mineral wealth than can ever be yielded by our scratchings on the narrow land surfaces of the world. These resources will in due course be explored and harnessed, but perhaps this is the moment to salute the pioneers—all Frenchmen —Cousteau, Dumas, Diolé, Tailliez, Huot and Bombard, who, in just twenty years, have encouraged the Common Underwater Man to lose his shyness for the new element he is about to conquer.