The largest group of Byzantine shipwrecks ever found emerged over the last several years from the mud of a now-landfilled harbor on the edge of Istanbul. Excavation for a massive subway station that commenced in 2004 exposed—in what had once been the port of the emperor Theodosius—harbor walls, 34 ships, and successive layers of human habitation, buildings, and other structures, covering a several-thousand-year period from the late Neolithic to the late Ottoman. Wooden combs, amphorae laden with cargo, and the skeletons of camels transported from Africa to haul stone during harbor construction are just some of the millions of artifacts uncovered. The wrecks range in age from the fourth century B.C. to the eleventh century A.D. and represent different types of Byzantine merchant vessels, fishing boats, and naval craft, many in excellent condition. Several vessels represent types never before documented, including four rowed warships known as galea. The excavation, by Istanbul University and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology has ended, for the most part, but the task of analyzing, conserving, and reassembling the Yenikapı vessels will take decades. Texas A&M University’s Cemal Pulak, who oversaw the recovery of five vessels, considers Yenikapı to be the single most important site yet found for understanding Byzantine ships. Before Yenikapı, archaeologists’ detailed knowledge of Byzantine craft was limited to a handful of discrete sites. One of those is the eleventh-century Serce Limani wreck off the Turkish coast. Though its hull was fragmented, Serce Limani contained a unique cargo: close to a million fragments of glass that, through painstaking lab work, now offer an unprecedented view of medieval Islamic glasswork.

Like Khubilai Khan’s great invasion fleets of the thirteenth century, the Spanish Armada sent by King Phillip II against England in 1588 is legendary not only for its size and power, but also for its defeat and near-annihilation by courageous English sea dogs and the notorious storms along the rock-fanged British coast that lashed the Armada as it fled. Drawn from a variety of ports and sources, the 130-ship, 30,000-man Armada was to invade England, oust Queen Elizabeth I from her throne, and restore a Catholic monarchy, while also ending the Dutch revolt against Spanish authority. The ships included galleons and galleasses, and merchant ships requisitioned from the Baltic and Mediterranean. With some 2,500 guns, the fleet was seemingly unstoppable. Brave and decisive action by English captains is credited with halting it. The English employed tactics such as launching fire ships, vessels set ablaze and sent to crash into and scatter the anchored Armada. The English also had superior rates and accuracy of gunfire. The Armada, driven north, attempted to flee to Spain by circumnavigating the British Isles. As a commemorative medal struck by a victorious Queen Elizabeth noted, “God breathed,” and winter storms lashed the Armada, sending a third of the ships and two-thirds of their mariners and soldiers to watery graves on the shores of Scotland and Ireland. Initially rediscovered by divers eager to find some of the wealth of drowned Spanish noblemen, the Armada wrecks became the subject of decades of archaeological work by Scotland’s Colin C.M. Martin and others. Wrecks such as El Gran Grifon, San Juan de Sicilia, Girona, Santa Maria de la Rosa, and La Trinidad Valencera have yielded evidence of life on board, as well as of the particulars of the ships themselves. Martin’s work has brilliantly shown that poor preparations and haste likely helped doom the Armada, much like the Khan’s invasion fleet. Navigational instruments with mathematical errors along with poorly prepared and badly cast cannons show a lack of care in preparation. The math errors suggest to Martin that Spain’s rigid religious views, which led to the expulsion or forcible “conversion” of Muslim and Jewish citizens after 1492, likely drove off Spain’s most educated, math- and science-literate population. Meanwhile, the two-wheeled, overly long Spanish gun carriages had to be manhandled out of the gun ports, while crews frantically tried to match cannonballs, which, though cast for specific guns, had been tossed indiscriminately into piles. The English had smaller, more easily maneuvered, four-wheeled gun carriages, and uniform-sized guns with shot that fit all their weapons. Archaeology provided the explanation as to why English rapid-fire gunnery was answered slowly, sometimes at a snail’s pace, by Spanish ships with more cannons but no means to use them effectively.

Two massive, well-preserved warships from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the basis of extensive archaeological projects. The recovery and display of these two impressive survivors from the age of the galleon and the rise of sea power offer an unmatched view of ships as a means of national expansion and domination. Each wreck was filled with weapons, provisions, personal effects, and navigational instruments, as well as preserved clothing and the skeletal remains of their crews. Built in 1509–10 and lost when it capsized while going into battle in 1545, Mary Rose was the pride of English King Henry VIII’s fleet. After excavation on the seabed, which revealed the intact starboard side with four deck levels holding 22,000 artifacts, Mary Rose’s hull was raised to the surface for treatment and display in Portsmouth. The hull’s timbers show how the ship, originally built as a floating fortress for archers and short-range fighting, was modified to accommodate new technology: cannons. Those changes made the ship top-heavy, especially when loaded with supplies and men, leading to its demise. Like Mary Rose, Vasa also capsized. It went to the bottom of Stockholm Harbor on its maiden voyage in 1628. Built to carry 64 cannons and a fighting force, the massive and ornately decorated Vasa was the pride of Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus as he built his nation into a global power. Rediscovered intact and buried in mud—preserved by the cold, brackish waters of the Baltic, which are hostile to wood-devouring marine organisms—Vasa was raised in 1961. Excavation of the seabed and the interior of the ship yielded approximately 25,000 artifacts, including some 700 sculptural pieces that were once attached to the hull. The finds document not only the fitting out and armament of the ship, but also the personal possessions of its crew, from the well-off to the poor, and the skeletal remains of men and women, some still wearing shoes and clothing. After decades of conservation and reassembly, Vasa sits in a custom-built museum in Stockholm. To this day, it remains the world’s largest archaeologically recovered ship.