Free Republic

Apart from the Charge of the Light Brigade (the actual charge, but also the poem), the Crimean War (1853-1856) is best known as the first “modern” war, in that it was during the Crimean War when later military staples like rail, telegraphs, trenches, and rifled firearms and artillery first got tested on a major battlefield. Oh, and it also led to the development of modern professional nursing, triage, and anesthetics, but who’s counting? The 1853 Battle of Sinop is perhaps most noteworthy for the way it helped pioneer another development in military technology, although it’s also important in that it...

The ship had a cargo hold filled with ceramic jars, some -- and perhaps all -- of them filled with salt fish. It probably left from a seaport in what is now Turkey and sailed northwest through the Black Sea to the Crimea to pick up its load. Then, for unknown reasons, it sank in 275 feet of water off the present-day Bulgarian coast, coming softly to rest on a carpet of mud. Last week, archaeologists announced they had found the long-lost vessel. Sunk sometime between 490 B.C. and 280 B.C., it is the oldest wreck ever found in the...

Archaeologists have found evidence that appears to support the theory that a catastrophic flood struck the Black Sea region more than 7,000 years ago, turning the sea saline, submerging surrounding plains and possibly inspiring the flood legends of Mesopotamia and the Bible. In their first scientific report, the expedition leaders said that a sonar survey conducted in the summer of 2000 in the sea off Sinop, a city on the northern coast of Turkey, revealed the first distinct traces of the preflood shoreline, now about 500 feet under water. At one site, the sonar detected more than 30 stone blocks ...