OST SHIPS: An Adventure in Undersea Archaeology

by Peter hrockmorton ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 16, 1964

(YA) ""Incurable romantic"" is a banality which can rise into legitimacy when it applies to certain men, like Don Quixote, who pursue their dream into death itself. Peter Throckmorton, in quest of the past on the sea's bottom, descends into a narcosis of virgin depths where every level tempts him deeper, down to the lost ships. Throckmorton, who discovered man's oldest known ship (from the Bronze Age), is rapidly becoming a living legend, a sort of Lindbergh of the deeps. Not that this book would tell you so; he presents himself simply as a young man with an aqualung. But he has an obsession for relics of the sea, which sends other men scrambling for the moon. What will we find on the moon? --nothing as mysterious as what the sea holds. Each dive into the antiquities of that marvelous pasture is possibly a fatal gamble. This book begins with Throckmorton's first Mediterranean dives after old Greek and Turkish pots (amphora) which are later determined to be First Century. He gains the confidence of a sponge captain who shows him wrecks no archaeologist has seen, and by this knowledge doubles the known sites in the Mediterranean. From this, in New York, plans are drawn for the first underwater archaeological excavation in history. As Throckmorton says, while dragging up the greatest heard of Bronze Age metal ever found, ""There was a quality of wonder about that wreck that never left us."" He recaptures that wonder fully here.

Pub Date: July 16, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown-A.M.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION