Six sponge divers and their crew were blown off course just before Easter holiday, 1900 in the Mediterranean between the islands of Kythera and Crete. They found calmer seas and dropped anchor in unfamiliar waters near the tiny island of Antikythera, located southeast of Kythera. Hoping to find sponges, they decided to dive but had no luck. What they did find however, was a badly decomposed, encrusted hull of a trading ship that sank around 80 B.C. – just before the Cleopatra era and Imperial Rome.

This was the…