“It appears my audience is ready. They aren’t bothering you, are they?”
Henry smiled. “No, I think we are ready for the story.”
Captain Dimitrios Kondos made the decision in October, 1900. They might have been able to sail through the storm, but he thought it would be safer to stay. They chose to dive for sponges. His team used standard diving dresses; the canvas suits and copper helmets allowed them to dive deeper than without the gear.
The first diver to come across the shipwreck was Elias Stadiatos. It was his description of the scene that started the questions. He said that it looked like a giant pile of rotting corpses and horses on the seabed. There was much concern on board at that, as it wasn’t the first time he had been touched from the madness which comes with too much carbon dioxide. They didn’t believe he had found anything… until the second diver came back with the bronze arm of a statue.
Over the next two years, a treasure trove of artifacts was recovered. There were statues, a marble bull, a bronze lyre, and even a strange box with many gears.
The work at the site was not without troubles. Several divers died from decompression sickness. This put an end to the diving.
There were many people involved in the salvage of the ship, but it was the politics of the Greek Education Ministry which caused a few of the divers to talk of mutiny. Valerios Stais, an archaeologist, was well known for having found the “Antikythera Mechanism,” but what was less well known was that he felt cheated. It might have been the greatest technological discovery of the 20th century, or of any century before, and his compensation was rather paltry.
He had a brother who also excelled at diving, and was older and less honorable than Valerios. It was the brother who discovered the tube, covered in a thousand years of sea growth. It looked like a long thin rock, but he had a good eye and brought it up. He didn’t tell anyone, not even his brother, at first. Several weeks of carefully removing nature’s outer shell revealed a tube, carved of ebony, with a remarkably tight- fitting cap. A month later, he confided in Valerios, and they opened it together.
They were shocked. It contained a perfectly intact document. The brothers decided not to report the find. Valerios was curious and loved documents more than the other treasures, and felt he and his brother deserved a small bit of treasure. It was the first shady thing he had ever done. Though he felt guilty about the deception, his joy at reading the ship’s manifest helped him get over it.
The ship had been carrying a portion of the loot from the Roman General Sullas, in 89 B.C., and was en route to Italy. In addition to the loot, there were several items which were gifts for high-ranking officials back in Rome, including a wealthy businessman. The businessman, who was only listed by a number on the manifest, had commissioned a device for studying the heavens. The creator saw the value of it, and decided that if he were going to spend so much time inventing such a machine, it might be worth creating two. When it was completed, the first machine was such a brilliantly conceived device that those few who saw it joked that he must have gotten help from God. The second device was never shown to anyone but the man who had made arrangements to sell it to Augustus. The second machine was much more advanced, inspired by the first, and improved upon greatly.
When it came time to ship the items, great care was taken with their packing. Two men were hired to travel with them to make sure they arrived safely and to keep anyone from knowing about the second machine. Both items were listed on the manifest. There was a detailed paragraph explaining that the box destined for the benefactor was not to be touched by anyone aboard. The penalty for disturbing it was loss of one month’s salary. The penalty for opening the second hand-carved ebony and ivory crate, which was for Augustus, was death. The entire crew knew better than to cross the captain or get curious about the cargo.
The container for Augustus was four times the size required to hold its precious cargo. There were three other interior boxes, lined with wool, and sealed tightly to protect it on the voyage. The precision of the machine was impressive, but the engineering and craftsmanship of the boxes was truly remarkable. The outside box was heavy and thick, with modest ornamentation, just enough to be impressive without being so awe-inspiring as to invite thieves. The interior boxes were not just containers, but locks, of a sort. Each box had a secret panel, which needed to be found in order to remove the lid. Each of the three interior boxes was made by the same craftsman, and was so precise as to be air tight.
All of these details were described in the manifest. If the ship carrying Augustus’s shipment were to go down, it was believed the box would float, and thus be found and sent to Augustus. The ship did go down, but the box destined for Augustus didn’t, not at first. It did float…for a while. The outer box was not quite as air tight as had been hoped. It stayed buoyant long enough to travel another three kilometers, before it sank.