Kyrenia Liberty ready to take on "cargo"

The story of how one modest cargo vessel, lost at sea 2,300 years ago, fired imaginations and stimulated 40 years of archaeological research continues to inspire further study and speculation.

 

For more than two thousand years, an ancient sailing ship lay undisturbed on the bottom of the Mediterranean within a few kilometers of the Cypriot town of Kyrenia (Girne in Turkish).  Thanks to a Cypriot sponge diver who first saw the wreck, and the ingenuity and innovation of an international team of underwater archaeologists and other specialists, the ship was discovered, excavated, raised and conserved in one of the most impressive feats of underwater rescue and preservation in the history of the discipline.

 

Two members of the original team, Americans Susan Katzev and Helena Wylde Swiny, told the story during a fascinating workshop on Cyprus and Underwater Archaeology in Nicosia earlier this year.  This workshop, organized and sponsored by the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI), was partially funded by a Public Diplomacy grant from the U.S. Embassy.

 

Loading the ship the traditional way, by hand

The history of the Kyrenia, as the ship is now called, began in the 4^th century, BCE, according to analyses of timber and the study of coins, pottery and other evidence found in the wreck.  While the reason for its sinking will never be known, the story of its discovery and preservation as told in the film, With Captain, Sailors Three: The Ancient Ship of Kyrenia, and subsequent lectures by Swiny, Katzev and other workshop participants, is riveting. 

 

After the discovery by Cypriot sponge diver Andreas Cariolou in 1965, he showed it to Michael and Susan Katzev in 1967.  Their team would finally spend another two years recovering the ship and its cargo.  Some of this team and their academic descendants are still at work, classifying and documenting the find.

 

The discovery of the Kyrenia launched a mini golden age of innovation in the techniques of underwater archaeology.  Cradles, lifting balloons, grid frames, underwater schematic drawing, stereo photography and stereo plotting instruments, magic wands and the underwater “telephone booth” were either invented for underwater archaeology or significantly improved during the Kyrenia “dig”. 

 

After the ship and contents were raised to dry land, preservation became the first urgent task.  While the ship was protected by a fresh-water bath, further research on preservation led to the choice of a submerged polyethylene glycol treatment for the ship’s timbers, nails and other wooden elements.  Descriptions of these discoveries, and the ongoing work on the find, made up the heart of the workshop.

 

Helena Wylde Swiny and Susan Katzev tell the story of the discovery, excavations and conservation of the Ancient Ship of Kyrenia

One puzzle that has yet to be solved is the exact arrangement of the cargo in the ship.  Scientists first and foremost, Swiny and Katzev did not let a visit to the island pass without doing research.  Traveling to the nearby port of Limassol, workshop participants in tow, the American researchers showed off the latest replica of the original ship, Kyrenia Liberty.  The visit of Katzev and Swiny with the workshop participants led to an exciting experiment in cargo loading.  Using copies (commissioned from a local pottery company) of some of the hundreds of Rhodian  amphoras that they had found miraculously intact resting inside the ship’s hull at the bottom of the Mediterranean, Captain Glafkos Cariolou, son of the wreck’s finder, and his crew experimented with different methods of loading and stabilizing the pottery containers in the cargo hold of the Kyrenia Liberty.

 

Meanwhile the Liberty lives on. Kyrenia Liberty will sail from Cyprus to Greece this spring with a crew made up of Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots and members of the Latin, Maronite and Armenian Cypriot communities in honor of the Olympic Games in Athens.  If you’d like to visit the original ship, beautifully displayed with samples of her original cargo, you’ll find her in the Kyrenia Castle, Kyrenia, Cyprus.