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"The ocean is desert with its life underground'

That lyric came to me when I watched this:

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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:

Emperor Caligula's Pleasure Craft?
[note how small the men standing in the foreground are]

The whole incredible story is here. I've been to Lago di Nemi. At the time, I was unaware of the wrecks. I was attracted to the lake's history and the myths surrounding the lake as related by George Frazer in The Golden Bough.

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:

Original

Hail Britannic! 2.0

Shipwrecked 'Titanic 2' Could Become Divers' Paradise Theme Park
A Greek diving club owner says it is his dream to set up the commercial venture

The story is about the wreck of RMS Titanic's younger sister ship, HMHS Britannic.

Five years ago, I wrote a post about Britannic on my old blog (see after the jump). That post now has over 17,000 page views and is my second most-cited post. I like to think it's because I pointed out some similarities between Jacques Cousteau's documentary about Britannic and James Cameron's movie script for Titanic for the first time. But really, I think it was just people clicking on the gorgeous graphic which I cannot now even attribute correctly.

In any case, you can now re-watch Cousteau's original documentary here.

Confederate Artifacts of National Importance

Link in case the video doesn't play

The CSS Hunley is not in the news, but Confederate relics are. I've been to Charleston exactly once--about 20 years ago before the wreck was raised. If I were to go back (and chances are that I will), I'll go straight away to the museum which houses the wreck.

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Althouse can't stand this song -- "the endless singsong melody;" Meade recently called it a "dirge."

I like the song. I think Lightfoot was trying to mimic the feel of being on a ship at sea.

That video is well done, too -- lots of historical footage.  Plus how can you not choke up a little at 3 minutes, 53 seconds when the camera shows a photo of the captain's family holding his photo?  How insensitive can some people be?