In early March, while the French Navy was conducting deep-sea training exercises off Ramatuelle in southeastern France, the sonar of an underwater drone detected something unusual more than 2,500 meters below the surface. The crew decided to send down an "eye" – a camera – to investigate further. The first images of the Camarat 4 appeared on-screen: a wreck measuring 30 meters long and seven meters wide. It was provisionally named after the nearest geographic point. At first, only the vessel's outline could be distinguished.
The Navy then notified the Department of Underwater and Submarine Archaeological Research (DRASSM), the branch of the French Culture Ministry responsible for underwater archeology. They confirmed the news: It was a 16th-century shipwreck, the deepest ever recorded in French waters. An exceptional discovery.
The wreck of the merchant ship now joins those of the Lomellina, a Genoese nave that sank in 1516, and the Sainte-Dorothéa, a Danish ship lost in 1693 – other major discoveries made along this heavily traveled historical maritime route.
"This is a genuine time capsule," said Marine Sadania, the DRASSM archaeologist responsible for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA) region in the south of France, at a press conference on June 11. "It feels as if time stopped on this ship." The ultra-high-definition footage taken by the Navy's remotely operated robots revealed an anchor, artillery pieces, several hundred ceramic pitchers and iron bars – likely intended for export. Yellow plates remained neatly stacked on the sand. But the photos also show a glove, beer cans, plastic bottles, handcuffs, fishing nets, and yogurt pots.
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