[dramatic music] NARRATOR: The
ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean were
centered around one thing-- the sea. It was how they traveled,
it was how they traded, and it was where they waged war. Now, archaeologists are
revealing stunning discoveries of giant superships, massive
cargo freighters, troop carriers, and even the ancient
world's version of the Titanic. These new revelations are
causing us to go back and take a second look at the history
books and rethink everything we thought we knew
about the ancient world. There are more miles
of coastline in Greece than in the entire
United States, and in the ancient world,
it would have taken months for traders and armies
to travel by land. So as shipbuilding technologies
developed as kings and emperors became richer, the ships
of the ancient world grew in sophistication and size
to a truly unbelievable scale. Floating battle stations,
larger than a football stadium and carrying 7,000
troops, cruised their way across the high seas. Cargo tankers twice
that size carried hundreds of tons of goods from
one end of the known world to another. Protected by high-speed
attack destroyers with a devastating
concealed weapon, these were monster crafts
that pushed naval technology to the ultimate limit. But what technologies and
advances in ship design enabled the ancients to build
these extraordinary vessels and create the age
of the supership? The story of innovative
ship technology begins nearly 5,000 years ago. There was only one
effective way to travel around ancient Egypt-- the water. The main means of
transport in ancient Egypt was water, especially the Nile. You kind of start from Aswan. Just throw a piece of wood. It will go all the way
to the Mediterranean. Without the river Nile,
Egypt would not exist. Not only did it provide
an adequate flow of water, but it was the main
highway of the country. NARRATOR: One enormous
problem the Egyptians faced was how to transport the massive
blocks needed to construct the colossal monuments
that stand still today. Some of the largest
wooden boats ever made were made to transport
stone, notably obelisk, from Aswan in the south of
Egypt to the north of Egypt. NARRATOR: Here at Karnak,
the Hatshepsut obelisk still stands at 97 feet tall. It is the tallest
surviving obelisk in Egypt, but this single 350-ton monolith
was quarried some 300 miles away at Aswan and brought to
Karnak by a massive cargo ship. These boats are
hundreds of feet long. They are colossal structures. They are megastructure. They are some of the biggest
moving objects that mankind has ever created. NARRATOR: It is estimated that
this obelisk barge may have been over 311 feet long
and over 100 feet wide. Over 2,000 tons of
stone would have to have its weight
distributed over the ship. These boats would have
been made out of cedar. When loaded, the obelisk barge
would have had a displacement of an amazing 7,300 tons. To provide extra
strength, the vessel was built with several decks
with the ends of the deck beams protruding
through the hull. These Egyptian obelisk
barges were the supertankers of their day. Just imagine a fully loaded
obelisk barge being towed maybe by 20 or 30 boats fully loaded
with one, maybe two, obelisks. These are colossal structures. The people watching
from the riverbanks would have seen nothing
like this ever before. NARRATOR: Along with its fleet
that transported obelisks, the Egyptians carried cargo
throughout the ancient world. Reliefs on the walls of
a funerary temple at Dayr al-Bahri show scenes of a
large trading expedition to the land of Punt, modern
Somalia, hundreds of miles away along the Red Sea. Over 3,000 years later,
we can still make out evidence of massive stone
cargoes transported right across the large and
unpredictable Mediterranean Sea. But there are even more
amazing discoveries that have come out of ancient
Egyptian shipbuilding. On the Giza Plateau, site
of the Great Pyramids, a ship has been discovered that
has made us rewrite the history books on ship construction. It is a fantastic example
of how advanced shipbuilding techniques had become
in the ancient world. It was discovered accidentally
during a clearance excavation at the Great Pyramid
at Giza in 1954. Nobody even
thought that they're going to find a boat there,
and then one day, they found 81 blocks of stones
just put like that. So obviously, there was
something buried there. Impatiently, they went and dug
a hole, and they peer through, and they saw. NARRATOR: 81 blocks
of stone were found buried near the Great Pyramid. As archaeologists
began to dig, they found something incredible--
a complete dismantled ship superbly preserved
in its airtight tomb. They found about
651 main pieces. NARRATOR: The ship
had been taken apart to be buried with the pharaoh,
Khufu, pharaoh of Egypt and builder of the famous
Great Pyramid at Giza. It is no surprise
that a pharaoh who built such a spectacular
monument to himself would require the pinnacle in
Egyptian building technology to carry his spirit
into the next world. If the Great Pyramid was a
miracle in stone construction, the ship is a miracle
in shipbuilding. NARRATOR: The Khufu ship is
200 feet long and made entirely of carved wood held together
in a surprisingly innovative fashion. G. ALI GABALLA: The fantastic
thing about this ship is not only the fact that it
was found almost complete, but it's the way
it was constructed. NARRATOR: But what ingenious
technologies did the ancients develop using only natural
material like wood and fiber to create a watertight hull? These boats are
constructed in a strange way. They are loped together. They're not nailed
or pinned together as we would make boats today. NARRATOR: When the wood
was swollen by water, the ropes would tighten and
make the boat watertight. So if there was a fracture
between the planks of the wood, you make absolutely sure
there was no [inaudible],, no nothing that would
be fitted together, and the ship would then sink. It meant that the
boats were flexible, could be maintained easily, and
could travel up and down Egypt and beyond, and
carry huge loads. NARRATOR: But how effective
were the fiber stitches? Was this ship
perfectly watertight? To help solve this mystery, we
must journey 2,000 miles north to ancient Britain. In Dover, England, there
is an amazing discovery that sheds new light on the way
the ancients created superships like the Khufu boat. You really have to come
either to the British Isles or to Egypt to see large plank
boats at this time, which is early in the Bronze Age
through into the middle Bronze Age. NARRATOR: The Dover boat is
a 3,000-year-old British boat that is only partially recovered
and predates the Romans by 1,000 years. Over 32 feet long and
seven and a half feet wide, it is a rare and
valuable discovery. There is much we can
learn from the Dover boat about ancient shipbuilding
techniques that were used throughout the
world during the Bronze Age. The thing they share
is that they have thick sculpted planks, which are tied,
or lashed, or sewn together. Now it looks a very unlikely
technique to us today, but it clearly worked. NARRATOR: Amazingly,
like the Khufu ship, the Dover ship was assembled
without any nails, rivets, or welding. The use of stitching seems to
be a very good way of holding timbers together. It's widely seen across
the ancient world, and it looks as if it's a very
good alternative to the nuts and bolts we might use today. NARRATOR: A modern ship
is constructed by building a skeleton over which steel
plates are fixed, but how would the ancient shipbuilders
have constructed their hulls without the benefit of
flexible steel and solid ribs? Experimental archaeologist
Damian Goodburn is a specialist in the
technique of boat stitching. A Bronze Age shipbuilder
would start with a half log. They split the log out of
a tree, a suitable tree, using wedges like
this replica one here and a big mallet like this one. And having got their
rough half log, they then use tools
like this one, which is a bronze axe,
or adze, and then they'd use this for
carving the plank to shape rather than bending it to
shape as we would in more recent times. NARRATOR: With the Khufu and
Dover ships, after shipbuilders shaped the plank and carved
them to the right shapes, they then cut the
edges to the joints and lashed them together with
a super strong natural rope. In the case of the
Khufu ship, they've used some kind of plied
vegetable fiber rope. In northern Europe, they tended
to use twisted branches of yew or willow. Once the winding's done, the
next stage is to trim it, clean it, and then soak it at least
overnight to soften the fibers even more, and then we
end up with material we can use to tie
the planks together. This is the method that would
have been used on the Dover boat. The Khufu ship's
a bit different. In some ways, it's a
bit more sophisticated. The lashings are buried within
the thickness of the timber. They don't go all
the way through. It's a bit more
watertight in some ways, but I think they would also
have used some kind of beeswax in the joint, which doesn't
seem to have survived for the archaeologists to find. NARRATOR: But how successful
was this technique? Would these ancient ships
actually hold together? I'm standing next to a
replica of part of the ship now, which we built as part of
the study of the original ship. We were amazed at how
rigid this system is. I mean, you can hit
the thing quite hard, and it hardly moves. And it's much more rigid
than we would have thought. NARRATOR: The Khufu ship and
Dover ship's construction technique has been proved
to be extremely effective. The ships of the Bronze Age
could travel great distances and were incredibly robust with
just stiches holding the planks together. But there were new developments
in naval technology on the horizon, innovations that
would produce some of the most effective attack
ships, troop carriers, and super-sized transports
the world has ever seen. Nowhere else than in Greece was
ancient shipbuilding reaching such heights. The ancient Greeks were,
by nature, a maritime race. The very geography
of Greece made them that way, three
peninsulas running down at the chain, thousands of
islands, tens of thousands of miles of coastline. NARRATOR: By the 9th century
BC, kings, city-states, and emperors vied for control
of the valuable lands and trade routes around the Mediterranean. Greece is a fairly
poor country in terms of agricultural products. It's not over-blessed with
natural resources of any sort, so going to sea has been
absolutely essential. And the Greeks have now moved
into an age when they're doing more and more overseas trade. NARRATOR: As their
powers grew, they would come into
conflict with each other as they tried to
control the vital trade routes across the sea. Sea warfare soon consumed
much of the ancient world. This led to amazing developments
in naval warfare technology and amazing aggressive
super-warships. The first classical
purpose-built warship we know of is the Penteconter. It's rowed by 50 men, 25 on
each side rowing on one level. NARRATOR: The Penteconter ruled
the seas for hundreds of years. However, by 500 BC,
the need for speed led to an innovation that
would change the face of naval warfare forever. Three ranks of
rowers superimposed one on top of another. This allows you to get more
force through the water while not increasing the
overall length of the boat. NARRATOR: The trireme
was the pinnacle of ancient aggressive
warfare innovation. The trireme is the cutting
edge of ancient warfare technology. These ships were fast,
extremely maneuverable. They could back water quickly. When they were
coming towards you, it must have been an
awe-inspiring sight. NARRATOR: But how fast
could the trireme go? They could probably achieve
speeds of 9 to 10 knots, which is probably about
12 miles an hour. NARRATOR: And these
fast attack destroyers carried a concealed
deadly weapon hidden just below the surface of the water. The need for speed is
to achieve ramming speed to actually punch a
hole in an enemy's hull. That, of course, is
the big development that we get with these
ramming war galleys. NARRATOR: The most
famous ram from antiquity is the Athlit ram. The bronze ram was sand
cast and shaped to attach on to the ship's prow timbers. The Athlit ram is
a huge bronze ram. It's about 1,000
pounds in weight. NARRATOR: With the trireme, sea
battles became like modern day dogfights, where strategy
and instinct made all the difference. A 5th century naval battle
was much like a Second World War dogfight, only in
two dimensions. The trireme was a single
instrument weapon system. It had one function, and that
was to get through the enemy's line to get behind them and to
put that ram into the weakest and most exposed part
of the enemy ship. NARRATOR: But the aim wasn't
to sink the enemy ship. The key to winning
an ancient naval battle wasn't annihilating your enemy. These ships are incredibly
expensive pieces of kit. You don't actually want to send
it to the bottom of the ocean. You actually want to
capture the thing. What you needed to do
was immobilize them, ram their hull,
waterlog their ship. They're dead in the water. They can be picked off later. NARRATOR: But this was
a high-risk tactic. You don't want to get
stuck in the enemy's ship. You want to hit them hard
but be pulling away as soon as you deliver that blow. NARRATOR: 2,000 years
later in modern Britain, blacksmiths are on a quest
to answer a question that has remained unanswered
for over 2,000 years. But what would be the
optimum ramming speed to inflict as much lethal
damage to the enemy without getting stuck
or risk losing your ram? To find the answer, they
will actually reconstruct an ancient battering ram. The single most expensive
part of a trireme is the ram. Quarter ton, half a ton of
bronze in the ancient world, that's an enormous
amount of value. And to think you're operating
fleets of 200 and 300 ships, you don't want have to
find any more bronze. You want to capture theirs. NARRATOR: Although this ram is
smaller than an ancient one, by using modern
materials and machinery, we can recreate the devastating
impact and destructive force of the Athlit ram. The ram would actually
be on the waterline. So you're aiming to
create a hole on or just under the waterline, hence it's
got a trident shape to maximize the damage vertically. NARRATOR: But how much
damage can the ram do? To test this, builder's must
first construct the prow of an attack ship. The Transport
Research Laboratory in Wokingham, Britain is
Europe's number one crash test research facility. Any sort of tests we can do
here are incredibly accurate, and we'll be able to sort of
measure the injury predictions, at least from dummies,
in very precise ways. Today, we're using a half
scale replica of the Athlit ram. The Athlit ram itself
weighed one ton and would have taken 30 or
40 strong Greeks to get up onto the bow of the ship. Today, we're using
a forklift truck, but this is the 21st century. NARRATOR: The ram is attached
to a crash test trolley giving a combined
weight of over two tons. Here is a half-sized
replica of the Athlit ram, the most important piece of
galley equipment that's ever been found. What we're going to
be able to do today is see just what it looks like
when a ram like this smashes into the side of a ship. And how much power do you need? How fast do you have to
go with a ramming vessel to achieve the desired effect? It's structurally sound
because the timber runs right through to
the front as if it was part of the keel of a boat. It would run from front to back
obviously to take the shock. NARRATOR: But how
much impact damage are the historians expecting? This is a unique opportunity. This hasn't been done
before, and we simply don't know what the
results are going to be. NARRATOR: The forces
at work in the test are equal to a car hitting
a wall at 30 miles per hour. Every piece of
equipment, including the high-speed cameras
used to record the impact, must be placed in exactly
the correct position. For the first time in history,
we will record that experience and discover the optimum damage
speed for an ancient battering ram. The battering ram was the elite
attack weapon of the superships of the ancient world. It's not designed to
pierce the side of the ship. It's designed to punch very
hard into the side of the ship and break the ship,
break the fabric, open the ship up,
allow water in. NARRATOR: For the first time,
ancient historians and crash technicians are about to test
a battering ram in Europe's high-tech transport
crash test laboratory. About to run the test. Everyone, clear the
front of the vehicle. I'm about to engage clutch. NARRATOR: What will be the
optimum ramming test that causes maximum damage to
the enemy with least risk to the attacker? With the two-ton ram
in place, the hangar is cleared of personnel. [music playing] Wow. NARRATOR: The first
test at just five knots has smashed through
the ship's hull, enough to leave a warship
waterlogged and out of commission. From reading the texts,
we would have expected the ramming speed
to be rather higher and would have suggested you'd
need more impetus to actually knock a hole in the
side of the ship. NARRATOR: The first run is a
success at only five knots. But if we increase the speed,
can we create more damage to the enemy hull without
risking the most valuable part of an ancient ship,
the ram itself? The next test is going to
be just over seven knots, significantly faster,
more momentum on the ram. Will that be enough
to really knock a hole in the side of the
ship, a complete kill? All right, everyone happy? We're about to run the test. NARRATOR: At seven
knots, the ram punctures through over two feet
of the side of the ship opening a two-foot wide
gash in its hull. We've just seen the ram
go straight through the side of the toughest
part of the ship. The ram wasn't
going at full speed. It was just over seven knots. The ship could have
gone at 10 knots. It doesn't need to
be at full speed to knock a hole in the
side of the ship that's going to leave it waterlogged,
unable to operate effectively. A ship with a hole in this
size is finished as a fighting platform. Its battle is over, and as
long as the ramming galley can withdraw, it can carry on. It can go and do the
same somewhere else. This time, the ram went
in just over two feet. That's probably too far. The sort of thing that
would have happened in the heat of battle
would have been quite difficult to get out. We had to get a lot
of mechanical power to pull that out, and the
whole fabric of the target buckled and bent. The whole thing was
screeching and wailing as we pulled it out. I've been teaching naval
history for a long time, and I've never seen a galley ram
go through the side of a ship before. And until today,
nobody else had either. This hasn't been
done for 2,000 years. NARRATOR: But if the ramming
galleys of the ancient world were the attack
destroyers of their day, did the ancient Greek
and Roman fleets also contain the equivalent of our
modern day aircraft carriers? The Ark Royal is the
flagship of the British Navy. With a crew numbering
in the hundreds and a size that wouldn't even
fit into the world's largest football stadiums,
the aircraft carrier is a supership of
the modern world. [inaudible] NARRATOR: But could the ancients
have built their own superships on such a massive scale? With the help of
his naval innovations, Alexander had conquered
majority of the known world, including Egypt. NARRATOR: By 330
BC, the known world was governed by a single
emperor, Alexander the Great. When he died, Alexander left
his empire to his generals, and perhaps the
most famous of these were the Ptolemys of
Alexandria in Egypt. It was in Egypt
that his successors, the Ptolemaic
Dynasty, took things to a ridiculously new
level in warship design. Ships just became bigger,
and bigger, and bigger. NARRATOR: Rulers were
jostling for wealth and power. There are now three
great powers in the Eastern Mediterranean, the
successors of Alexander in Egypt, in Syria,
and in Greece. They've broken up
the Persian Empire. They've conquered Egypt. They've got their hands on
enormous amounts of money, and they want to
see who's top dog. NARRATOR: Today,
archaeologists have uncovered remarkable evidence
of super-warships, the ancient world's version
of the aircraft carrier. It's a different kind
of fighting ship, fighting over the sea, on the
sea, over the land, staging invasions like an
aircraft carrier today. NARRATOR: In 130 BC,
Demetrius the Besieger built warships so massive
that they actually carried enormous
fully-functioning siege towers. Divided into stories and
filled with 200 armed men, the siege towers stood a mighty
150 feet high and almost 70 feet wide. It contained a phalanx of long
range catapults and ballistae. Ladders were installed to move
from one story to another. The front side, which
was exposed to attack, was rendered fireproof by being
covered with animal skins. And modern
aircraft carrier like this has guns firing
4,500 rounds a minute. An ancient large ship would
also have its own firepower on board with catapults which
would fire boulders, javelins, arrows, grappling irons. NARRATOR: But leading the
race by several lengths was a battle station bigger
than any other ship ever built. Now this thing so big
that probably nothing would be seen like it again
until the modern industrial age. NARRATOR: This supership
was simply called The 40. ALAN LLOYD: Which was
an enormous vessel, and the size must have been
something like 400 feet long. And it weighed
about 4,000 tons. This was an absolutely
colossal vessel. It's said to have been
rowed by 4,000 men. It's bigger than
several football fields. The size and scope of it must
have been like a modern sports stadium. NARRATOR: To keep this
massive weight afloat, the ship used a
revolutionary design. Innovations that gave
The 40 the capacity to have such a large
number of people on board is essentially the fact
that it was two ships. It was a catamaran. It had two hulls, and this
enabled a large deck on top. At least, that is the
most likely interpretation of the evidence that we have. NARRATOR: The 40 was 50
feet wide and 400 feet long with room for 4,000 rowers. This seems a huge number, and
scholars have tried to work out how you could actually fit that
number of rowers on the ship. One most plausible
explanation is that we're talking about quite a
large number of rowers per oar. I think some of them must
have been pushers and others pullers. NARRATOR: It is believed
that there would be three ranks of oars
with a team of men all pulling on the same one. You just need one skilled man
at the end of the oar directing everybody else. That means seven
muscles, one brain. NARRATOR: This was pushing
the power of oar technology to its ultimate limit. 40 oarsman per team
multiplied by 100 teams make a grand total of 4,000 men. The equipment of a vessel like
The 40 would be largely made up of projectile throwing weapons
so stone-throwing catapults, bolt-throwing
catapults, ballistae. And because you have
a very big open deck, it looks like a modern
assault carrier. So it looks like a fortress. It moves nearly as
slowly as a fortress, and it's got a lot of men on it. It's a very different
kind of weapon. If you were thinking
of a modern parallel, you'd be looking at the
biggest aircraft carriers that the Navy can
put into the field. This would have been the
centerpiece of a battle array. It would have been an almost
immobile platform around which lots of fighting
would have revolved. NARRATOR: Although legend says
it wasn't used for battle, its sheer size was
specifically designed to dwarf the surrounding ships. It is, of course,
possibly more for show than for practical use. It's hard to imagine how long
it would have taken 4,000 rowers to get on and off the thing. By the time they were
all on, most of them were probably be needing
to eat or leave again. NARRATOR: But could there have
been another motive to build such an enormous battleship? Clearly, this was
Ptolemy IV using the ship as a means of showing his power,
his wealth, and his splendor to the opposition. NARRATOR: What drove the
ancient rulers, such as Ptolemy, to build such
enormous superships? These people are not
simply projecting the power of their countries. They're projecting the power
and splendor of themselves as rulers. NARRATOR: As astounding
as this battleship is, incredibly, there is evidence
in the writings of the ancients of an even more impressive ship,
a ship that combined both trade and fighting ability into the
largest all-purpose supership the ancient world had ever
seen, the ancient world's very own Titanic. By the third century BC, the
high seas of the ancient world were teeming with superships
of all description from massive super-warships
carrying 4,000 troops to lethal fast-attacking
ramming destroyers. But there was one ship
that really deserves the title of super. One ship brought together
all the techniques in advanced shipbuilding,
massive cargo-carrying, and elite naval
warfare equipment. It was the ancient
world's very own Titanic. It was designed by perhaps
the most famous inventor of the ancient world himself-- Archimedes. The ship was named
after his own hometown, a Greek colony on the island
of Sicily called Syracuse. There is a story about this
ship, the Syracuse, built over in Sicily at Syracuse, which
would have to be something like Ptolemy's 40. It would have to
be a very big ship. NARRATOR: But how huge
could the ancients have built their
largest supership? Syracusia was a very
remarkable ship indeed. All the detail that one
would want isn't there. But on the basis
of modern research, we can say that it was in
the region of 200 feet long, and it would appear to have
had a cargo capacity somewhere between 1,700 and 2,000 tons. NARRATOR: As well as
a massive cargo hold, there were cabins for 142
first-class passengers as well as accommodation
for servants and crew. The upper deck had space for
400 soldiers of the honor guard. Like the modern world's
luxury liner, the Titanic, first-class passengers aboard
the Syracusia had access to an array of rooms
to suit every need-- a library and a reading room
for peace and tranquility, promenades lined with
flower beds, and a chapel dedicated to Aphrodite, and even
a luxurious fully-equipped bath for those requiring
the height of luxury. It needed enough timber
for 40 battleships. NARRATOR: But how could such a
giant of a ship actually move? When one speaks of the
Syracusia as a sailing vessel, it was that. It wasn't designed as a galley. It wasn't designed to
be propelled by oars. It did, in fact, have
three huge masts. NARRATOR: All ships must
continually pump water from their bilges. How could such a massive vessel
keep its bilges from flooding? This is where
Archimedes came in again. In order to get the water
out, an Archimedes screw was inserted in the structure
so that you simply turned a handle, and up came the water. NARRATOR: Legend has it that
Hiero, the King of Syracuse, wanted Archimedes to
demonstrate his Archimedes screw and challenged him to launch
the Syracusia, a 4,000 ton supership using
his very technique and proving his
machine to the world. Although it is unknown
whether this was a success, the theory went on to become
the founding principle of every machine in history. Not only was the
Syracusia a luxury liner, it was also a massive cargo
ship capable of transporting over 2,000 tons. This was a supership
with a priceless cargo, and with the ancient seas a
dangerous place, one thing it would need more than
anything else was protection. As soon as you've
got trading vessels, you have essentially warships. They're not much different
from trading vessels, but they contained armed men
who want to take away the goods from the trading ships. NARRATOR: The Mediterranean
Sea was full of pirates. The line between piracy
and organized warfare is a very ambiguous one
in the early Greek world. NARRATOR: The Syracusia
could not possibly outrun any other
ship, so how would she defend herself
against attackers? It's a cross between
a merchant ship, a kind of luxury
cruiser, and a warship, or at least has lots of
material on it to defend it. NARRATOR: The Syracusia was
heavily armed and defended by Marines stationed in eight
deck towers who could protect the ship from the bronze
tops of the three masts or from a raised fighting deck. The ship was even fitted with
an enormous catapult based on an Archimedes design. This amazing catapult
was capable of hurling an 18-foot dart or a
180-pounds stone 600 feet, a massive device which
would shock and deter any potential enemy. Today, we can understand the
impact of the catapult from studies made in Xanten in
Germany of a handheld version of the catapult. The
catapult is a rare, one-of-a-kind discovery. At first, it was an item
covered with sand and grit. We didn't know what it was. We were very cautious, and
we made computer screenings, X-rays, then we
got an idea what it may be because you can imagine
that we were very happy. We didn't know that such a
small catapult weapon exists in early Roman times because
it dates from the middle of the first century. NARRATOR: But how
was it deployed? The front structure
has given clues as to the strength and
range of the catapult. Two strong anchor points allow
for massive fiber twists. Archaeologists at Xanten
have created a replica. I think it was held this way
because it's not too difficult because it's just seven
or eight kilograms. It is like a gun. NARRATOR: But how
effective was it? I think it was a weapon
for short distances. It's a unique weapon. Maybe it's a weapon which was
used on ships or on the walls of the legionary fortresses. NARRATOR: Mounted
with a weapon 50 times the size of the Xanten
crossbow, the Syracusia must have been an awe-inspiring
site, the largest supership of a fleet of
superships that ruled the seas of the ancient world. The ancient world
took the technology they had to its limits. They built the biggest. They built the most impressive. They built the most powerful,
and what they were doing in the 2nd century BC wasn't
surpassed for another 2,000 years. NARRATOR: But is there physical
evidence for the existence of superships that sail
the seas 2,000 years ago? To search for this, there
is only one place to look. There, underwater,
archaeologists have uncovered an amazing
discovery, an untouched look at a Roman supership. In the ancient world, the
reason for having a strong navy was to protect your foreign
colonies, allies, and trading routes. At the height of
the Roman Empire, priceless treasures and millions
of tons of stone cargoes were sailing around
the Mediterranean. Now recent archaeological
discoveries show us that the ships used
to carry these super cargoes across the seas
were truly massive. Off the coast of Turkey,
there is a unique and amazing shipwreck of a Roman supership. This ship is largely
indicative of numerous other marble transports
probably taking place on a daily or weekly basis
around the Mediterranean. NARRATOR: These giant ships
were purpose-built cargo tankers used to carry giant
marble slabs from quarries throughout the empire. We know that the ancients
referred to these ships as [inaudible], stone ships. These were
purpose-built vessels. NARRATOR: The Roman Empire
was in a constant state of construction. Colossal monuments, such as
the Colosseum, Trajan's column, and thousands of temples
were springing up across the known world. But hauling the building
materials was a challenge. Granite and stone from quarries
from the farthest corners of the empire were needed across
the sea in vast quantities. Imagine 40 of these ships
traveling from [inaudible] Island to some Greek city,
some Roman city just to make a single temple. NARRATOR: And this massive job
called for massive specialist ships. The ship that we're
excavating at Kizilburun is certainly on the larger
side of these big superships. NARRATOR: It is estimated that
this barge was transporting dozens of cut stone drums and
blocks before it went down presumably in a storm. Eight column drums, which
weigh six or seven tons each, topped by a column capital,
which weighs about six tons, and then we have
a secondary cargo of blocks, which all together
probably weigh about two tons. So we're looking at a cargo of
70, maybe even 75 tons burden. NARRATOR: The
wreck at Kizilburun is one of the biggest transport
vessels known to archaeology. It is also one of the most
complete finds, a treasure chest of information for
the archaeologists working on it today. What's most exciting
about this shipwreck is the fact that the stone cargo
is almost completely intact. NARRATOR: The ship lies on the
seabed at a dangerous 150 feet below the surface. Was it fully loaded? Was it overloaded? We don't know. NARRATOR: The ship and
part of its hull is buried. Only its cargo is visible. Investigation is a
hazardous process. The wreck lies between
45 and 48 meters. It has, for centuries, been
out of the grasp of treasure hunters, or sport
divers, or salvers. But on the other hand, it
makes our job difficult because we're limited
to the amount of time that we can spend on the bottom. Hey, Ken. You got shackles? NARRATOR: Today, Deborah and
her team will dive to the seabed and, for the first
time, attempt to raise a portion of the ship's cargo,
a cargo that has not been seen for nearly 2,000 years. It takes the team time
to sink to the bottom. Due to lack of oxygen
below the surface, the team must take
extra care on the seabed to avoid nitrogen
bubbles forming in the blood, a condition
causing nitrogen psychosis that can kill divers. And to make things more
complicated, the blocks they are attempting to raise
weigh several tons. Individual blocks are
raised using compressed air. The team must work
fast at these depths. After only 15 minutes
on the seabed, an alarm sounds
to tell the divers they must come to the surface
or risk serious injury. Once at the surface,
the utmost care must be taken to load the
blocks onto the dive craft. These pieces of marble have
not seen the light of day for over two millennia. The blocks were loaded
in a specific arrangement to minimize space and
support the weight. How could the Romans have loaded
them onto the ship in such a precise way? I imagine that these
drums must have been loaded into the hold of the
ship using a crane, but there was an incredible
amount of precision involved because they are literally
only centimeters apart. NARRATOR: How the
ancients managed to load the cargo
with such precision is still a mystery today. We're talking about 70 tons of
blocks laid within centimeters of one another. It took all of our resources
and all of our patience just to move two of
them off the seabed. It's given us a profound
appreciation for Roman technology and what
the Romans really were able to do on a daily basis. NARRATOR: Another mystery is
how exactly the ship could have managed to support
the enormous weight. This ship was
probably double-planked. I think it would have to be to
sustain this kind of burden, so that means two layers
of wooden planking probably sheathed with lead
on the exterior. NARRATOR: It is not known what
this stone carrier would have looked like in its
full glory, so first to solve this mystery,
the ship's cargo must be lifted off. But there's another
surprise in store. Having successfully
lifted the marble blocks, Debbie and her team discover
something even more stunning. I had anticipated
taking the drums off and there would be the hull. We were surprised to find that
there are artifacts, ceramics, and even more marble
blocks under the drums. This is a much bigger ship
than we were even prepared for. NARRATOR: The extra layer
of cargo contained hundreds of amphorae. Debbie and her crew realized
that this ship was much larger than originally thought. The amphorae allow the
archaeologist a bonus insight into the bulk goods that the
ancients were transporting and how far they traveled. Very often, we find grapeseeds
or grape pits, which tell us that the jars were
transporting wine, but there's also the possibility
of other organic commodities like shells, or nuts, even meat. We're finding out what
they carried around, but what we have to remember is
that amphoraes were reused so that they're made in
one place and shipped across the Mediterranean. This was probably made in
Italy and may have been shipped to northern Greece, and there
it might have been refilled with something else. NARRATOR: From its contents,
it is determined that this ship was transporting construction
materials and food supplies from the heart
of the Roman Empire to northern Greece. The results show an amazing web
of sea voyages crisscrossing the open water. Superships traveled to all
corners of the known world. Without advanced
shipbuilding technologies, the Romans would not have been
able to transport the building materials around the
Mediterranean that enabled them to build the massive and
impressive monuments that still stand today. But does the sea hold other
secrets yet to be discovered? Shipwrecks are very hard
to find and very rare. Are there even bigger
superships out there waiting to be discovered? We've only really begun, I
think, to scratch the surface. NARRATOR: As underwater
surveying and diving techniques become more advanced and we
widen our search into deeper and deeper water, more
wrecks will be discovered, more mysteries will be solved,
and the sea will give up more of her secrets
about the superships of the ancient world.
