A diver wearing a robotic Exosuit near Antikythera. (EPA/Greek Ministry of Culture)

The quote by Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was pure marketing genius.  He said that the Antikythera wreck is “the Titanic of the ancient world.”  The Titanic is, after all, the rock star of ship wrecks. No doubt what Foley meant was that the Antikythera wreck was very important historically not unlike the Titanic.  Of course, that is not what the media has interpreted the quote to mean.

UPI is referring to the wrecked ship as a “sort of luxury ocean liner.”  The Guardian called it ” a luxury liner dating from before the Roman empire.”  Because the site is also the source of the Antikythera mechanism, an astronomic calculator of mind-boggling complexity, often referred to as the “world’s oldest computer,”  one news source is referring to the wreck as the “Computerized Titanic,” which conjures up a whole new set of images.

It is safe to say that the Antikythera wreck, dating from the 1st century BCE, was not of a ship that we would associate with a luxury passenger liner of the Titanic variety. Liner service, which is to say regularly scheduled operations, didn’t start in the West until around 1818.  And while the ship that sank off the island of Antikythera was very large for her time, over 150′, she was so heavily laden with luxury goods that it seems unlikely that she would be carrying large numbers of passengers, which one would expect with a ship called a “luxury liner.”  The Antikythera ship could probably be best described as treasure ship, though I will admit that the phrase does not have the zing that calling her “the Titanic of the ancient world” indeed has.

In September, we posted about a robotic Exosuit being used to research the shipwreck. Click here to read more.