"The ocean is desert with its life underground'
That lyric came to me when I watched this:
Ah, but I'm such a sucker for all things Titanic -- sort of the way Chip loves Egyptology. I even have a google alert set to "Titanic."
The notion of draining the Atlantic to get at a shipwreck is absurd fantasy. But something like that happened once.
Benito Mussolini had an entire lake, Lago di Nemi, drained to reveal an ancient Roman shipwreck:
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| Emperor Caligula's Pleasure Craft? [note how small the men standing in the foreground are] |
The lake wasn't really hard to drain. It is a crater lake, inside an extinct cinder cone volcano and all they needed to do was to tunnel an outlet on one side of the cone and drain the water to the surrounding lower elevation. Researchers found two largely intact wooden ships. The remains were carefully removed from the lakebed and reconstructed on higher ground. Unfortunately, everything went up in flames in WW II when an errant American bomb set them afire. More history per Wiki: link
Given what we know of Emperor Caligula's depravities, it's hard to fathom what actually happened onboard this ship:
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| Original |
11 comments:
What happens in Lago di Nemi stays in Lago di Nemi.
The Romans were incredible wastrels. These ships were deliberately sunk after Caligula was done in. Same with Nero's Golden House , it was covered with earth and public baths built over it. It was estimated to occupy between 100 to 300 acres.
Your delusions of me, of me especially not channeled Buckley, laugh induce.
Ha.
When he finally married a reformed hooker, a woman who knew how to handle men, Little Boots (his nickname) finally had some peace in his soul and a little happiness in his life.
Too bad it was too late.
ampersand said...
The Romans were incredible wastrels. These ships were deliberately sunk after Caligula was done in. Same with Nero's Golden House
No, they believed that bad emperors were not to be encouraged, so all memory was bulldozed. In Nero's case, it was suspected he started the fire so he could snap up all that prime real estate dirt cheap.
Guildofcannonballs said...
Your delusions of me, of me especially not channeled Buckley, laugh induce.
Ha.
I got a kick out of chirbitizing your unBuckley rants in my WFB/Foster Brooks voice. Good times, good times.
To think that if I had been born in the Roman Era I might have been condemned to a short miserable life at an oar of the Emperor's pleasure craft. And yet my contemporaries - well, many of them - take being born in America for granted.
That lake was very small. I don't think you could get in a chorus of "Row, Row, Row your boat" before you hit the other shore.
ric think Edward G Robinson. You would have been wearing black socks with your sandals.
Great post as usual Chip.
Nice canopy on that lake! It felt good to be out of the rain.
I wonder if they can drain the ocean of shit and bile in DC in like fashion.
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