DATELINE :- 4th September 2000
TURKISH WRECK
British diver locates 15th century Turkish ship
A beautifully preserved wooden ship has been found buried under centimetres of sand among islands two miles off Marmaris in Turkey.
The vessel, estimated at 15-20m long, has near-intact decking and hull planking. Items found at the site include a cannon, cannonballs, human remains and what is thought to be armour for both men and horses.
Now marine archaeologists from Turkey's Department of Museums will examine the wreck, which could be a warship or an armed trader that carried military goods. From the cannonballs, which are made of stone, the wreck was dated to between 1350 and 1435, the relatively short period over which such ammunication was used in the region.
The wreck was found after Briton David Oldale, an underwater photographer researching a diving book in Marmaris, heard of fishermen's nets repeatedly snagging an obstruction close to one of the offshore islands.
Oldale went out to the site, off the beaten diving track because of its bare sandy bottom, with Nick Gibbs, a diving instructor at Marmaris's Divers Delight Centre. On their first dive, the men hit the bullseye.
"The first thing we saw was some Greek or Roman amphorae, which actually had nothing to do with the wreck," David Oldale told Diver. "Then, looming up before us, was this ship's rib, sticking some way out of the sand. Pretty soon we'd also located an anchor, a concreted cannon and a pile of stone cannonballs and a few pieces of what looked like soldiers' armour."
Starting at the rib, the men feathered away a "mere 15mm or so" of sand to reveal horizontal deck planking that felt in good, hard condition. Then, by digging into the sand at the side of the vessel, they could feel similarly hard vertical planking that suggested an intact structure buried in the sand beneath them.
"From the exposed rib it seemed that the top deck was gone, but what we might be left with is a well-preserved hull and lower deck," said Oldale. A quick recce of the site and periodic sand-feathering established the wreck's basic outline, and the fact that the deck and hull structure appeared to have remained whole.
As the men moved about the site, the human element of the ship's loss hit them with the discovery of a skull, part-buried, and bones judged by Oldale to be from a human leg. "We also found pieces of what seemed to be soldiers' body armour, and a bit for a horse's mouth."
Intact amphorae, of a design dating to the period, were also found. What next? "I'm in touch with an attachˇ in London and have been invited to go back and dive with Turkish archaeologists when they survey the wreck," said Oldale.