Ballard was sent to look for traces of Ryan and Pitman's Black Sea flood, and found this ship instead.
Ancient Wooden Ship Emerges Intact From Geographic's Black Sea Expedition
by Mary Jeanne Jacobsen and Barbara Moffet
Ballard's website
The discovery in September of the well-preserved ship confirms scientists' belief that the oxygen-deprived waters of the Black Sea below 656 feet (200 meters) provide an ideal environment for preserving ancient wooden vessels, making that sea a treasure-house for archaeologists. Shipwrecks in most other bodies of water usually are robbed of their wooden parts quickly by wood-boring organisms.
The late Willard Bascom was a mentor / idol of Robert Ballard. I saw this book at the library one day a few years ago, and as I read the prologue I realized who this guy was -- the prologue was quoted in a story about
Ballard's finding of a Byzantine vessel in the anoxic (?) depths of the Black Sea. "It sits upright on the bottom, lightly covered by the sea dust of 2,500 years," he wrote. "The wave-smashed deckhouse and splintered bulwarks tell of the violence of its last struggle with the sea. A stub of a mast still remains."
