Shipwrecks in the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology

It began in 1960. Two years earlier, Bodrum sponge diver Kemal Aras had described to American jojurnalist Peter Trhockmorton a sunken cargo of metal lying off Cape Gelidonya. Peter dived on the side in 1959. Recongnised it as the remains of a Bronze Age shipwreck , and reported it to the University of Pennsylvania, famed for its archaeological excavations. Soon afterward the university, where I was a doctoral candidate, asked me if I would learn to dive in order to direct the excavation of the wreck. I was delighted by the opportunity to return to Turkey, which I had first visited in 1953 as a university undergraduate. I did not dream that Kemal Aras's discovery would lead to the establishment of one of the world's great museums of underwater archaeology.