SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE—During recent exercises by the French navy aimed at monitoring the country's underwater resources, a crew detected an abnormally large feature on the seafloor near Saint-Tropez. “The sonar detected something quite big, so we went back with the device's camera, then again with an underwater robot to snap high-quality images,” said Arnaud Schaumasse, head of the French Ministry of Culture’s underwater archaeology department. The AFP reports that an investigative marine team subsequently located the site of a well-preserved shipwreck, dubbed “Camarat 4,” lying 1.5 miles beneath the surface—the deepest wreck ever recorded in French waters. Researchers believe the wreck's remnants belong to an ill-fated sixteenth-century merchant ship that had set sail from northern Italy and went down off the southern coast of France. Around 200 jugs, 100 plates, six cannons, and two cauldrons were spotted among the vessel’s cargo. Some of the jugs contained the monogram “IHS,” the first three letters of the Greek name for Jesus, and were painted with floral and geometric patterns. This led archaeologists to conclude that the ship originated from the Italian region of Liguria. To read about the luxurious cargo recovered from a seventeenth-century Dutch shipwreck, go to "An Elegant Enigma."
