Excavating the 'perfect ship'Treasures: A robot is enabling archaeologists to explore a wooden wreck, preserved for more than a millennium at the bottom of the Black Sea.By Frank D. Roylance Sun Staff Originally published August 18, 2003 Somewhere off Turkey's Black Sea coast, in a grave a thousand feet beneath the waves, a ghostly mast stands erect in the gloom. Preserved for 1,500 years by the scarcity of oxygen in the Black Sea's depths, the wooden mast provides a tantalizing hint of the historical treasure that archaeologists have now begun to excavate.