Novy Svet Survey

On a snowy Christmas night that seems long ago to me now, I stamped the snow from my shoes and placed my hand on the brass knocker of the worn, oaken door of my hostel. Rapping briskly, I passed into a low room filled with warmth, lamplight and laughter. It was 2004, and I had been out for my customary evening walk, though my footprints that night led through Geneva, Switzerland, and not the wooded paths of my Alma Mater, Gustavus Adolphus College. I was studying in Rome for the year, and during the Christmas holidays I was determined to see as much of the Old World as I could.

In the international milieu of young travelers at our inn that night, there was one other American, a young woman whom I had met on the train from Avignon the previous night. Each pleased to meet a fellow countryman, we decided to cook a Christmas dinner for all who wished; and to our delight, some twenty new comrades joined in, filling the kitchen with a half dozen languages, a dozen dishes of international Christmas cuisine and a roomful of smiles.

Much later, some of us could not sleep and decided to watch a film. We chose “Master and Commander, the Far Side of the World”, which I had never seen.

This seemingly random and mundane series of events is indelibly burned into my memory, for a single phrase that I heard that night changed my life forever. It came during the speech that Captain J. Aubrey (expertly portrayed by Russell Crowe) gave before the final battle of the film – and what he said is this: “England is under threat of invasion, and though we be on the far side of the world this ship is our home. This ship is England”.

At the moment it struck me for the sense of greatness and patriotism that it inspired, but it hung with me as a heroic phrase, and wouldn’t leave my mind. Later that Spring, when I was about to tour Sicily with the wonderful 2005 professors and staff of ICCS, or the “Centro”, including my mentor and now dear friend Dr. Eric Dugdale and our wonderful host Franco Scariglia, I found myself on the shores of the Straits of Messina, in the quaint town of Reggio Calabria. Touring the museum there, I was astounded by the poise and grandeur of the Riace Bronzes, and my senses of academic and physical adventure peaked and were joined in the idea that such incredible evidence of history could be found beneath the waves.

As I looked on, Aubrey’s words returned to my mind, and I came to a sudden sense of intimacy with the crew of whatever vessel either went down with those bronzes or threw them overboard in an effort to save their ship. I was transported in my mind’s eye to a heaving deck, a ripping gale, a band of men fighting for their lives with the glory of antiquity tossing in the midst, quite possibly the glory of that crew’s homeland.

A ship can be many things: A means to profit, a weapon of war, an escape into obscurity or a tool for science. Captain Jack Sparrow of Hollywood fame stated that what a ship really is is freedom. Though that might well be true for a pirate, in many cases I have come to believe, inspired by Captain Aubrey, that what a ship really is is a home. The value we place on shipwrecks as time capsules, as sites with incredible associative correlations, is indicative of this; they are little worlds of their own, whether they be at anchor in port or alone on the wine-dark sea.

Ships and shipwrecks are representatives of, pieces of, indeed in a way are the countries, empires and rulers they represent, from Bonaparte to Balaclava, from the British Empire to my own passion, the Empire of Rome. And this, in the end, is what captured my interest and my heart, the vision I had of Roman legionaries leaping onto a pier on a misty evening in a foreign land, the Proconsul or Quaestor on board re-checking his orders, the fleet at anchor gently riding the waves; and though far out of site of Ostia or Portus, of Italy, perhaps of any Roman province, Rome was there as surely as the Rostra in the Forum, in the timbers of the ships and the hearts of the men they carried.

Inspired by the stories I felt lost ships could tell, I bent my steps northward at the end of that wonderful year abroad, in pursuit of Nautical Archeology. I spent the summer studying at the underwater archeological field school hosted by CUA on the Bay of Novy Svet, Crimea, Ukraine. Incidentally, the old beat-up table where I wrote my first field report seven years ago is the same I write you from tonight, inspired more than ever to help reveal the adventurous stories sites like the Novy Svet Shipwreck can reveal.

The last few days have been wracked by 30 km/h winds and increasingly high waves, making diving a no-go. They’ve been spent putting the season’s research together, finishing up field photographs and getting material ready for transport. They have also included several trips to the dive-shop where we tie up our diving platform and Zodiacs, which kept coming loose and which we eventually carried (over a ridiculous terrain of shifting rocks and boulders through really powerful, waist-high surf) to a more sheltered location some hundred yards away. The same sea that holds beauty, mystery and adventure for us should never be underestimated; and today the thundering, two meter high breakers that are crashing up and down the coast and flinging spray 20 meters into the air provided another insight into the darkening winter moods of this ancient anchorage, and the possible reasons for the fate of the ship whose story we seek.

So as I write to you for the last time tonight from the far side of the world, I close with thanks to all those who made this expedition possible and a success, and my heartfelt wishes for all our family, friends and colleagues at home to stay safe, and those still in the field Godspeed and safe journeys home.

It is my pleasure to have been and to remain yours sincerely,

John Arthur Albertson

INA Novy Svet Project Director
M.A. Student
Nautical Archeology Program
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University