Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm depleted druk reboarding, and I really like shipwrecks. I don't know if I mentioned this to you before. I have not. I know I mentioned it at Dragon Con and people kind of laughed because it's a weird thing to say that you really like. But they're just so interesting. I mean, there's so much to discover. They are fascinating. I mean window into the past, and things are preserved that might not be otherwise, things that definitely would not have made it if they had been above the surface this whole time. So people like me who really like shipwrecks got pretty excited back in the summer of two thousand nine when there was all this news about archaeologists finding the untouched remains of five Roman ships, and then there was a PBS show Secrets of the Dead recently profiling this expedition, So, I mean, pretty interesting stuff. Five untouched remain definitely back in two thousand nine, the lead archaeologist on this expedition, Timmy Gambon. He described the area as a graveyard of ships, which sounds very menacing, spooky. Yeah. Yeah, so it makes us wonder what is in these ships and where were they going, why did they all wreck so close together, and why did they think in the first place. These are some of the questions, some of the many questions we will be answering in today's podcast. Yep, But this whole thing started in two thousand eight, right, Yeah, the news broken two thousand nine, but the whole research project really started in two thousand eight. Yep. At that time, a group of marine archaeologists and ocean scientists that make up the Aurora Trust, they began a survey of the area around vent To Tene and the Tyrannean Sea off of Naples. Yeah, and then to TenneT is a pretty interesting island itself. I mean, it's definitely worth discussing its history a little bit before we get into the shipwrecks. But it's this volcanic tiny island and today it's a tourist spot. I sent to Bilina a picture. It looked pretty picture fu Um. It only has five permanent residents. But back in ancient Roman times it was this grand Emperor's retreat and it was called Pantataria, and it also conveniently was a pretty nice place to exile nobles and imperial family members. But we're gonna be talking about that on a later podcast, so listen up. Then, So Augustus he transformed to this island. He built a villa in a complex system of cisterns there to collect rainwater since there were no natural springs to get water from. And more importantly, he had this harbor built basically dug out of the rock instead of building out of sea walls, and somehow it all still worked. Yeah, that's pretty amazing to me. Um, But the island didn't remain this bustling, uh stop on trade routes for that long. The emperors eventually abandoned it and hermits were the only people who remained. And eventually it became a pirate's den because it was convenient enough to the mainland that you could go raid um, raid other ships, raid port towns, and then come back to your den with all your loot. And by the eighteenth century, the Bourbon kings decided that they wanted to start redeveloping the area a little bit, redeveloping then to Tenne, and partly that was to support this prison that they had built on an even tinier island that's right next to vent to Tenney Santo Stefano. And interesting, this, this whole island's history is just so weird. But this Tinier island is where Mussolini kept a lot of his political prisoners, so this has always been a good spot for exiling people you never want to hear from again. Pretty grim, sort of eerie place. So there are basically two takeaways here. Vent Atenne was remote enough to be perfect retreat for a perfect prison depending on who you are, depending on who you are and who you're dealing with. And it's also convenient enough to be a halfway point, a kind of rest stop or a layer when traveling through the often treacherous and bustling Mediterranean. Whether you're a Roman merchant or a Barbary pirate, it's a good place to stop. So due to this geographical importance and um it's proximity to all these ancient shipping lines that are of course racing back and forth across the Mediterranean, it makes sense that there would have been a few shipwrecks in the area. It would be the last port of call for more than one ship but a graveyard. I think that was a little bit of a surprise. But in two thousand eight, the Aurora Trust started to survey the seabed around vent Atenna and Santa Santo Stefano and they use their client system side skin sonars. So cool to me, and I mean it is. I just imagine it's so neat and clean on paper. But they essentially established a grid surrounding the island, like a triangular grid, and then trailed the sonar behind a boat to make sure that they got an absolutely complete picture of the sea bed. It is really cool. Yeah, they were basically creating underwater map so they could check for any abnormalities and that's what they call them, to abnormalities. So it could be anything from an ancient shipwreck or presumably just some junk on the bottom of the ocean. I guess it depends on when it's from whether you consider it junk or something worth checking out. Um. And it's a surprisingly fruitful mapping effort. I mean, I guess they thought they would find something, but um, they find quite a lot. They find piles of what looked like in four I, which are ancient Roman shipping vessels and we're going to talk a little bit more about them later because they're pretty interesting. And a few other just abnormal blips on the c floor maybe Rex, maybe not, just things worth checking out later. And then this isn't terribly related to this episode, but they find the wreck of a famous sunken ship from World War Two. Um, but there's more work to be done, yea. The sonar isn't quite gonna cut it, So the team plans to to return to the area in the summer of two thousand nine for a closer look at things. Yeah, so they come back in two thousand nine. The two thousand eight scan head showed three potential ancient shipwrecks, and in two thousand nine they extend the range of that scan a little bit more and they find two more wrecks that they decide are definitely worth checking out with. There are the camera because sonar just lets you know there's an abnormality, it doesn't really let you know exactly what it is. So we're gonna give you a rundown a profile, if you will. Of these five ancient recks they find. Yeah, the first one is well preserved and it's from the first century a d. It's filled with cargo of Spanish amphoe from Batica. And yeah, the this is probably the best time to tell you what the and for I want to know. Um, if you've ever seen just like a statue of a pedestal with this surn type of thing on top, very well might have been a dedication to an amphora or two mphor e the plural um. And they're these ancient Roman shipping containers. And usually they're really pointy on the bottom and they look um almost like if you've ever seen handmade lace. They look kind of like Bobbin's, those big wooden bobbins to compare it to. Yeah, and so they can't stand up on their own because they're pointy. But when you line them all up in a row, you can also stack them. The points fit in exactly um between the other ones, so you can a cargo hold of a ship to make the best available use of your space. And when they all fit together like that, they kind of form just a lock like a puzzle. I'll put together. Yep. And these M four I would have held garum right, which is a type of fermented fish sauce that you could literally douse on any meal yeah, I think the Romans were pretty fond of it too, which I know, fermented fish sauce sounds like kind of something that wouldn't be very good, but I mean, if you've ever had Thai food, it's good as long as you balance it out with other things. Um. So. The second rack is also really well preserved. It also carries M. Four I. It's from the first century BC, so a bit older. And uh, these M four I carried wine from Campania. And you'll find a lot of these ships carried wine. It just gives you a little taste of how how important the trade in wine was in the Roman Empire. The third wreck is from the first century a D. And it broke into two at some point, so it may have had a more violent wreck than some of the other ships that were involved. Here. They carried more taria, which is basically the mortar part of a mortar, and pestle and Italian wine am for I from Campania. Again they've gotta have their their wine. The fourth reck is from the first century a D. And it's not quite as well preserved, but in some ways it has the most interesting cargo. So it's got those wine and four I again but it also has glass frit which I had to look up what this was UM from the Aurora Trust site, which actually I should mention this now you can find pictures of all of these wrecks at the site, should I definitely recommend. But you can use this glass to make real glass like what you would think of, or to make pigments or just all sorts of things. And the ship also carried metal bars which may have been UM destined to be part of some step at you or some kind of weapons. And then it carried these huge, incredibly heavy metal cylinders and the archaeologist still aren't quite sure what those may have been used for. The fifth reck was from a little bit later. It was from the fifth century a d. And it carried more of this fish sauce and um, and the fish slauce was in North African MP. I. Yeah, so again kind of showing how why this trading range was UM. But it would be really bad to lose your shipment of garam. I mean you might think that the wine would be the most precious shipment. We mentioned here that garam, if it was high quality, garam could go for the Roman equivalent of one dollars for two pints, so having a whole ship of it go down would be pretty bad news. Yeah. Um, So the Aurora Trust decided that the r o V pictures were nice, you know, they kind of give them a good idea of what's on there, but the human eye is better, and so they picked a few sites to send divers to, just three of them. And the issue here is that the sites are really really deep, and they're deeper than three feet and that's part of the reason why these wrecks are still preserved, because if they were shallower depths, recreational divers would have found them long ago and presumably pilfered them mess them up. Um. It's because they're out of range for most fos that they're still so pristine. Yep. Even the research divers could only spend a few minutes down there before they had to start the lengthy decompression process and come back up. So they pick their most highly trained divers to go on these expeditions, and they send them in not just to kind of look at what's there, but also to bring stuff back up whatever they can bring with them to analyze later. Yeah, hopefully get some museum specimens out of it. Um. So at the second wreck, which is that one from the first century BC, the divers find these stacks of perfect and for it. I mean, it looks like the day they were loaded. And of course these don't look like shipwrecks that I mean you probably you're probably used to pictures of the Titanic or something like that, where clearly there is a ship underwater, of course, being two thousand years old, in this case more than two thousand years old. The ship is gone, all the wooden parts are gone. It's just the cargo that remains. Um. But they're able to bring up one and Phora from that wreck. And uh, if you check out the Secrets of the Dead video on this one, it's it's funny. They bring it up and put it into a little on deck pool to you know, keep it. It's been underwater for so many years. If it's up in the air, it's not going to weather well. Um. And then they use a database to help them match the shape of it to a like Emphora from the same period. It kind reminded me of C. S I or bones or something for and for because it's just blipping past all the silhouettes until finally they have a match which helps identify the age, which is the first century BC, and the contents which we're probably wine and for forensics exactly. So then the divers are able to also obtain samples from rexite number three and that one was the one that was split in half. From there they can carry off four mortaria and these are all identical. So it's like an example of Roman mass production. Yeah, everybody had to get their mortaria and France or Spain or wherever they were because it was the best Roman tool available. And from the fourth sight, the one that has that mysterious metal cargo there, unfortunately not able to bring any samples to the surface, but they take a lot of photos um. That one is deeper than the others even it's at four hundred and eighty feet UM. So that's two thousand nine, definitely accomplishing a few more goals with this project. And then in two thousand and ten, just this past summer, they went back for another look. Yeah. Again, they extend the scan range and they sent down the r o V for more Hira's images of the area, and they were focusing mainly on places that didn't get documented in two thousand nine, and they also recover another amphora. Yeah, and I think a National geographic crew may have accompanied them that year. So maybe we'll get another documentary with cool underwater photography next year. Um. But okay, we still have our our questions that we raised in the introduction, which was why is this a graveyard? Why are there so many ships here? And there are a few reasons why, and one of them is just volume. I mean, Rome is a huge global exporter and importer during this time, and that's at the on the land by all the roads they build to you know, to transport merchants and goods and the army of course, um, but there were also lots of shipping lines and it was very important for the Empire for these shipping lines to be relatively safe, as safe as they could be, so that merchants could trade goods with a certain amount of confidence. And they just criss crossed across the Mediterranean between Greece and North Africa and France and Spain. They go across the Black Sea between the Channel you know, in England and France, so I mean just everywhere you can imagine there are Roman ships trading goods, high traffic area, right, So do another reason behind this was that due to volume and markup, the Empire could afford to lose the ship or two now and then yeah, definitely, I mean it's kind of sad but true, yep, especially since some things like wine, which Rome had a lock on. I mean, we talked about all the wine that we saw, but they were the ones mainly response well for distributing this. Provinces like Spain and France that we're perfectly capable of growing their own and making their own line had to buy from Roman merchants out the mark of course, oh of course, and in some other cases items were mass produced on the cheap and exported. So yeah, if you want to do is the Romans do have to buy now you have to pay a little bit. And then, I mean the other main reason aside from volume here is location. So Ventatenne, as we mentioned, is a really great stopping point. It's very convenient and it has that nice harbor that was built by Augustus and so it makes a nice place for an outbound ship to rest for a day, to get new supplies and to take shelter from bad weather. But unfortunately, what you know, the same reasons that make it such a convenient rest stop also make it potentially very dangerous. And that's because despite that nice sloping harbor, most of the island has these very steep sea walls, high rock cliffs, And if you're in a storm and it hits when you're pretty near the island, you're not just going to be getting the waves from the wind and the storm. You're gonna be getting the waves that are bouncing off of the rock walls, and they're pitching you back and forth. So this could basically toss the ship around. And then the stacked and four eye that they found that could have shifted, and if those shift, then the ship kind of lists to one side. Yeah, the the and four I will shift, and a few that are supporting the way it'll start to break. And then suddenly you're nice interlocking puzzle that fits the hold so perfectly doesn't fit right anymore, and they all kind of lean to one side. And with a listing ship, it's pretty easy for a wave to take it down. I mean, it's notable that the majority of these wrecks look like they sung intact. Yeah, most of the M four I were still intact, right, Yeah, And and they're just in a in a ship shape. Sorry she used out an way that I mean they're They don't look like they were torn to pieces and broken up on the waves. They look like they just souncle all of a sudden. So it's still a bit of a mystery too. So I guess that's all we know from now on these five room and shipwrecks, although it definitely looks like we'll be finding out more in the near future, hopefully so there may be another podcast on a different aspect of this soon. Perfect Fall Up, And we actually do have another podcast coming now. As we mentioned this one is going to be more focused on Bent to Chenne in that exiled prisoner reputation that it has um But first we're gonna do some listener mail. So this email is from Hannah and she was writing in response to an episode Candice and I recorded a few weeks ago on five famous historical weddings, and Kid and I were a little skeptical of this rumor that wild horses on Cumberland Island came up to Caroline Bassette Kennedy and nibbled on her Lily of the Valley bouquet. We were just like we've both been to Cumberland, and know that those horses are very much wild. I've never seen one come up to a person and snack on. Yeah, and so, Hannah wrote, You're absolutely right in your skepticism. It's very unlikely that a wild horse would approach her, and in the off chance that it did, it certainly wouldn't chomp on her bouquet. Like fox glove, lily of the Valley contains opponents and other toxic substances. These toxins are there to discourage animals like horses from grazing on the sweet smelling plant. All part of the Lily of the valley plant are quite poisonous and should be handled with care. Wild horses may nibble on many things, but they certainly won't dine on the lily of the valley. Let's hope, for the horse of sake, that this story, while sweet, is just a rumor. So what a cute letter. It's really cute, and I I think it's good to know. I meanly the best formative for poisonous. It seems like maybe not the best flower to put in your bouquet. I don't know. I don't not if you have animals at your wedding, for having a barn yard themed wedding boyd Lily the Valley. Um So, I guess that's our advice for the day. And if you have any more I don't know stories from shipwrecks to horses, feel free to email us where at History podcast at how stuff Works. We also have a Twitter account at Miston History and a Facebook fan page. And if you want to learn a little more about underwater photography, we have an article called how underwater Photography Works. You can search for it by typing in underwater photography on our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes, m M

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm depleted druk reboarding, and I really like shipwrecks. I don't know if I mentioned this to you before. I have not. I know I mentioned it at Dragon Con and people kind of laughed because it's a weird thing to say that you really like. But they're just so interesting. I mean, there's so much to discover. They are fascinating. I mean window into the past, and things are preserved that might not be otherwise, things that definitely would not have made it if they had been above the surface this whole time. So people like me who really like shipwrecks got pretty excited back in the summer of two thousand nine when there was all this news about archaeologists finding the untouched remains of five Roman ships, and then there was a PBS show Secrets of the Dead recently profiling this expedition, So, I mean, pretty interesting stuff. Five untouched remain definitely back in two thousand nine, the lead archaeologist on this expedition, Timmy Gambon. He described the area as a graveyard of ships, which sounds very menacing, spooky. Yeah. Yeah, so it makes us wonder what is in these ships and where were they going, why did they all wreck so close together, and why did they think in the first place. These are some of the questions, some of the many questions we will be answering in today's podcast. Yep, But this whole thing started in two thousand eight, right, Yeah, the news broken two thousand nine, but the whole research project really started in two thousand eight. Yep. At that time, a group of marine archaeologists and ocean scientists that make up the Aurora Trust, they began a survey of the area around vent To Tene and the Tyrannean Sea off of Naples. Yeah, and then to TenneT is a pretty interesting island itself. I mean, it's definitely worth discussing its history a little bit before we get into the shipwrecks. But it's this volcanic tiny island and today it's a tourist spot. I sent to Bilina a picture. It looked pretty picture fu Um. It only has five permanent residents. But back in ancient Roman times it was this grand Emperor's retreat and it was called Pantataria, and it also conveniently was a pretty nice place to exile nobles and imperial family members. But we're gonna be talking about that on a later podcast, so listen up. Then, So Augustus he transformed to this island. He built a villa in a complex system of cisterns there to collect rainwater since there were no natural springs to get water from. And more importantly, he had this harbor built basically dug out of the rock instead of building out of sea walls, and somehow it all still worked. Yeah, that's pretty amazing to me. Um, But the island didn't remain this bustling, uh stop on trade routes for that long. The emperors eventually abandoned it and hermits were the only people who remained. And eventually it became a pirate's den because it was convenient enough to the mainland that you could go raid um, raid other ships, raid port towns, and then come back to your den with all your loot. And by the eighteenth century, the Bourbon kings decided that they wanted to start redeveloping the area a little bit, redeveloping then to Tenne, and partly that was to support this prison that they had built on an even tinier island that's right next to vent to Tenney Santo Stefano. And interesting, this, this whole island's history is just so weird. But this Tinier island is where Mussolini kept a lot of his political prisoners, so this has always been a good spot for exiling people you never want to hear from again. Pretty grim, sort of eerie place. So there are basically two takeaways here. Vent Atenne was remote enough to be perfect retreat for a perfect prison depending on who you are, depending on who you are and who you're dealing with. And it's also convenient enough to be a halfway point, a kind of rest stop or a layer when traveling through the often treacherous and bustling Mediterranean. Whether you're a Roman merchant or a Barbary pirate, it's a good place to stop. So due to this geographical importance and um it's proximity to all these ancient shipping lines that are of course racing back and forth across the Mediterranean, it makes sense that there would have been a few shipwrecks in the area. It would be the last port of call for more than one ship but a graveyard. I think that was a little bit of a surprise. But in two thousand eight, the Aurora Trust started to survey the seabed around vent Atenna and Santa Santo Stefano and they use their client system side skin sonars. So cool to me, and I mean it is. I just imagine it's so neat and clean on paper. But they essentially established a grid surrounding the island, like a triangular grid, and then trailed the sonar behind a boat to make sure that they got an absolutely complete picture of the sea bed. It is really cool. Yeah, they were basically creating underwater map so they could check for any abnormalities and that's what they call them, to abnormalities. So it could be anything from an ancient shipwreck or presumably just some junk on the bottom of the ocean. I guess it depends on when it's from whether you consider it junk or something worth checking out. Um. And it's a surprisingly fruitful mapping effort. I mean, I guess they thought they would find something, but um, they find quite a lot. They find piles of what looked like in four I, which are ancient Roman shipping vessels and we're going to talk a little bit more about them later because they're pretty interesting. And a few other just abnormal blips on the c floor maybe Rex, maybe not, just things worth checking out later. And then this isn't terribly related to this episode, but they find the wreck of a famous sunken ship from World War Two. Um, but there's more work to be done, yea. The sonar isn't quite gonna cut it, So the team plans to to return to the area in the summer of two thousand nine for a closer look at things. Yeah, so they come back in two thousand nine. The two thousand eight scan head showed three potential ancient shipwrecks, and in two thousand nine they extend the range of that scan a little bit more and they find two more wrecks that they decide are definitely worth checking out with. There are the camera because sonar just lets you know there's an abnormality, it doesn't really let you know exactly what it is. So we're gonna give you a rundown a profile, if you will. Of these five ancient recks they find. Yeah, the first one is well preserved and it's from the first century a d. It's filled with cargo of Spanish amphoe from Batica. And yeah, the this is probably the best time to tell you what the and for I want to know. Um, if you've ever seen just like a statue of a pedestal with this surn type of thing on top, very well might have been a dedication to an amphora or two mphor e the plural um. And they're these ancient Roman shipping containers. And usually they're really pointy on the bottom and they look um almost like if you've ever seen handmade lace. They look kind of like Bobbin's, those big wooden bobbins to compare it to. Yeah, and so they can't stand up on their own because they're pointy. But when you line them all up in a row, you can also stack them. The points fit in exactly um between the other ones, so you can a cargo hold of a ship to make the best available use of your space. And when they all fit together like that, they kind of form just a lock like a puzzle. I'll put together. Yep. And these M four I would have held garum right, which is a type of fermented fish sauce that you could literally douse on any meal yeah, I think the Romans were pretty fond of it too, which I know, fermented fish sauce sounds like kind of something that wouldn't be very good, but I mean, if you've ever had Thai food, it's good as long as you balance it out with other things. Um. So. The second rack is also really well preserved. It also carries M. Four I. It's from the first century BC, so a bit older. And uh, these M four I carried wine from Campania. And you'll find a lot of these ships carried wine. It just gives you a little taste of how how important the trade in wine was in the Roman Empire. The third wreck is from the first century a D. And it broke into two at some point, so it may have had a more violent wreck than some of the other ships that were involved. Here. They carried more taria, which is basically the mortar part of a mortar, and pestle and Italian wine am for I from Campania. Again they've gotta have their their wine. The fourth reck is from the first century a D. And it's not quite as well preserved, but in some ways it has the most interesting cargo. So it's got those wine and four I again but it also has glass frit which I had to look up what this was UM from the Aurora Trust site, which actually I should mention this now you can find pictures of all of these wrecks at the site, should I definitely recommend. But you can use this glass to make real glass like what you would think of, or to make pigments or just all sorts of things. And the ship also carried metal bars which may have been UM destined to be part of some step at you or some kind of weapons. And then it carried these huge, incredibly heavy metal cylinders and the archaeologist still aren't quite sure what those may have been used for. The fifth reck was from a little bit later. It was from the fifth century a d. And it carried more of this fish sauce and um, and the fish slauce was in North African MP. I. Yeah, so again kind of showing how why this trading range was UM. But it would be really bad to lose your shipment of garam. I mean you might think that the wine would be the most precious shipment. We mentioned here that garam, if it was high quality, garam could go for the Roman equivalent of one dollars for two pints, so having a whole ship of it go down would be pretty bad news. Yeah. Um, So the Aurora Trust decided that the r o V pictures were nice, you know, they kind of give them a good idea of what's on there, but the human eye is better, and so they picked a few sites to send divers to, just three of them. And the issue here is that the sites are really really deep, and they're deeper than three feet and that's part of the reason why these wrecks are still preserved, because if they were shallower depths, recreational divers would have found them long ago and presumably pilfered them mess them up. Um. It's because they're out of range for most fos that they're still so pristine. Yep. Even the research divers could only spend a few minutes down there before they had to start the lengthy decompression process and come back up. So they pick their most highly trained divers to go on these expeditions, and they send them in not just to kind of look at what's there, but also to bring stuff back up whatever they can bring with them to analyze later. Yeah, hopefully get some museum specimens out of it. Um. So at the second wreck, which is that one from the first century BC, the divers find these stacks of perfect and for it. I mean, it looks like the day they were loaded. And of course these don't look like shipwrecks that I mean you probably you're probably used to pictures of the Titanic or something like that, where clearly there is a ship underwater, of course, being two thousand years old, in this case more than two thousand years old. The ship is gone, all the wooden parts are gone. It's just the cargo that remains. Um. But they're able to bring up one and Phora from that wreck. And uh, if you check out the Secrets of the Dead video on this one, it's it's funny. They bring it up and put it into a little on deck pool to you know, keep it. It's been underwater for so many years. If it's up in the air, it's not going to weather well. Um. And then they use a database to help them match the shape of it to a like Emphora from the same period. It kind reminded me of C. S I or bones or something for and for because it's just blipping past all the silhouettes until finally they have a match which helps identify the age, which is the first century BC, and the contents which we're probably wine and for forensics exactly. So then the divers are able to also obtain samples from rexite number three and that one was the one that was split in half. From there they can carry off four mortaria and these are all identical. So it's like an example of Roman mass production. Yeah, everybody had to get their mortaria and France or Spain or wherever they were because it was the best Roman tool available. And from the fourth sight, the one that has that mysterious metal cargo there, unfortunately not able to bring any samples to the surface, but they take a lot of photos um. That one is deeper than the others even it's at four hundred and eighty feet UM. So that's two thousand nine, definitely accomplishing a few more goals with this project. And then in two thousand and ten, just this past summer, they went back for another look. Yeah. Again, they extend the scan range and they sent down the r o V for more Hira's images of the area, and they were focusing mainly on places that didn't get documented in two thousand nine, and they also recover another amphora. Yeah, and I think a National geographic crew may have accompanied them that year. So maybe we'll get another documentary with cool underwater photography next year. Um. But okay, we still have our our questions that we raised in the introduction, which was why is this a graveyard? Why are there so many ships here? And there are a few reasons why, and one of them is just volume. I mean, Rome is a huge global exporter and importer during this time, and that's at the on the land by all the roads they build to you know, to transport merchants and goods and the army of course, um, but there were also lots of shipping lines and it was very important for the Empire for these shipping lines to be relatively safe, as safe as they could be, so that merchants could trade goods with a certain amount of confidence. And they just criss crossed across the Mediterranean between Greece and North Africa and France and Spain. They go across the Black Sea between the Channel you know, in England and France, so I mean just everywhere you can imagine there are Roman ships trading goods, high traffic area, right, So do another reason behind this was that due to volume and markup, the Empire could afford to lose the ship or two now and then yeah, definitely, I mean it's kind of sad but true, yep, especially since some things like wine, which Rome had a lock on. I mean, we talked about all the wine that we saw, but they were the ones mainly response well for distributing this. Provinces like Spain and France that we're perfectly capable of growing their own and making their own line had to buy from Roman merchants out the mark of course, oh of course, and in some other cases items were mass produced on the cheap and exported. So yeah, if you want to do is the Romans do have to buy now you have to pay a little bit. And then, I mean the other main reason aside from volume here is location. So Ventatenne, as we mentioned, is a really great stopping point. It's very convenient and it has that nice harbor that was built by Augustus and so it makes a nice place for an outbound ship to rest for a day, to get new supplies and to take shelter from bad weather. But unfortunately, what you know, the same reasons that make it such a convenient rest stop also make it potentially very dangerous. And that's because despite that nice sloping harbor, most of the island has these very steep sea walls, high rock cliffs, And if you're in a storm and it hits when you're pretty near the island, you're not just going to be getting the waves from the wind and the storm. You're gonna be getting the waves that are bouncing off of the rock walls, and they're pitching you back and forth. So this could basically toss the ship around. And then the stacked and four eye that they found that could have shifted, and if those shift, then the ship kind of lists to one side. Yeah, the the and four I will shift, and a few that are supporting the way it'll start to break. And then suddenly you're nice interlocking puzzle that fits the hold so perfectly doesn't fit right anymore, and they all kind of lean to one side. And with a listing ship, it's pretty easy for a wave to take it down. I mean, it's notable that the majority of these wrecks look like they sung intact. Yeah, most of the M four I were still intact, right, Yeah, And and they're just in a in a ship shape. Sorry she used out an way that I mean they're They don't look like they were torn to pieces and broken up on the waves. They look like they just souncle all of a sudden. So it's still a bit of a mystery too. So I guess that's all we know from now on these five room and shipwrecks, although it definitely looks like we'll be finding out more in the near future, hopefully so there may be another podcast on a different aspect of this soon. Perfect Fall Up, And we actually do have another podcast coming now. As we mentioned this one is going to be more focused on Bent to Chenne in that exiled prisoner reputation that it has um But first we're gonna do some listener mail. So this email is from Hannah and she was writing in response to an episode Candice and I recorded a few weeks ago on five famous historical weddings, and Kid and I were a little skeptical of this rumor that wild horses on Cumberland Island came up to Caroline Bassette Kennedy and nibbled on her Lily of the Valley bouquet. We were just like we've both been to Cumberland, and know that those horses are very much wild. I've never seen one come up to a person and snack on. Yeah, and so, Hannah wrote, You're absolutely right in your skepticism. It's very unlikely that a wild horse would approach her, and in the off chance that it did, it certainly wouldn't chomp on her bouquet. Like fox glove, lily of the Valley contains opponents and other toxic substances. These toxins are there to discourage animals like horses from grazing on the sweet smelling plant. All part of the Lily of the valley plant are quite poisonous and should be handled with care. Wild horses may nibble on many things, but they certainly won't dine on the lily of the valley. Let's hope, for the horse of sake, that this story, while sweet, is just a rumor. So what a cute letter. It's really cute, and I I think it's good to know. I meanly the best formative for poisonous. It seems like maybe not the best flower to put in your bouquet. I don't know. I don't not if you have animals at your wedding, for having a barn yard themed wedding boyd Lily the Valley. Um So, I guess that's our advice for the day. And if you have any more I don't know stories from shipwrecks to horses, feel free to email us where at History podcast at how stuff Works. We also have a Twitter account at Miston History and a Facebook fan page. And if you want to learn a little more about underwater photography, we have an article called how underwater Photography Works. You can search for it by typing in underwater photography on our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes, m M