Archaeologists find France’s deepest shipwreck

NICE, France: Archaeologists have discovered what they say are the remains of a 16th-century merchant ship more than 2.5 kilometres underwater off southern France, the deepest such find in its section of the Mediterranean or any other French waters.

Archaeologists believe the ship was sailing from northern Italy loaded with ceramics and metal bars before it sunk. Despite a little modern household waste dotting its sunken cargo at 2,567 metres below sea level, they were excited about the potential of an archaeological site largely preserved intact.

“It´s the deepest shipwreck ever found in French territorial waters,” Arnaud Schaumasse, the head of the culture ministry´s underwater archaeology department, said late on Wednesday. An underwater drone stumbled upon the sunken ship by chance in early March in waters near Saint-Tropez in southeastern France, deputy maritime prefect Thierry de la Burgade said.

“The sonar detected something quite big, so we went back with the device´s camera, then against with an underwater robot to snap high-quality images,” he said. The drone was patrolling the seabed as part of a government project to explore and monitor France´s deep-sea resources, from minerals to deep-sea internet cables.

Archaeologist Marine Sadania said experts discovered 200 jugs with pinched spouts among the wreckage at the site they have dubbed “Camarat 4”. Some of these jugs were marked with the monogram “IHS”, the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus, or covered with plant-inspired or geometric patterns.