[wildbill]

“you could hardly call it a shipwreck.”

No kidding. It gives me goosebumps. It looks like someone sailed it gently into the sand. I keep getting an image of an old Norseman sailing her into the deeps, calling “Odin, Odin” as she sank beneath the waves.

Thanks for finding and posting this.

[SunkenCiv]

I agree!

Apropos to this story, a reprise -- the late Willard Bascom was a mentor / idol of Robert Ballard. I saw this book at the library the other day, along with a couple of others (of course), and grabbed it. 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."

Deep Water, Ancient Ships: The Treasure Vault of the Mediterranean by Willard Bascom