Can a new discovery from sunny california
Reveal the real event behind
One of the greatest maritime mysteries of them all...
The parting of the red sea.
This looks like it's the smoking gun.
It's a possible root cause of what happened.
A first world war transporter disappears
Without trace in calm seas.
Are rumors of a heist by german agents true
Or is something more mysterious at play?
It was navigating through the bermuda triangle
When it was lost.
And could there be life on a ghost ship adrift
On the high seas.
These killer monster hungry cannibal rats.
It's going to look like a house of horrors.
One would have to be pretty crazy
To want to board that ship.
The underwater realm is another dimension.
It's a physically hostile place,
Where dreams of promise can sink into darkness.
I'm jeremy wade.
I'm searching the world to bring you the most iconic
And baffling underwater mysteries known to science.
Shipwrecks can't just disappear.
Or can they?
It's a dangerous, unexplored frontier
That swallows evidence...
We know more about the face of mars
Than we do our deepest oceans.
Where unknown is normal, and understanding is rare.
Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
I've witnessed strange happenings on the water
And some of them I can't explain, but nothing compares
With the biblical story of the parting of the red sea.
Is there a physical process
That could explain this miraculous event?
Could an entire sea really have withdrawn
Leaving a corridor of dry land?
Now a breakthrough from california
Could unlock one of the greatest marine mysteries of all time.
Ancient egypt over 3,000 years ago...
After centuries of enslavement,
The israelites have crossed the desert
And stand on the threshold of freedom.
Their promised land lies ahead, but behind them,
A pharaoh's troops intent on returning them to slavery.
Blocking their escape is the red sea.
Then god commands moses to hold out his staff over the waves.
The winds blew causing the waters to recede.
Flanked by two walls of water,
The israelites crossed to the other side.
And when pharaoh and his boys come and chase them down,
The seas collapse upon them and they're all dead,
And it's a clean break.
A quick getaway.
Today, many believers accept the story of the parting
Of the red sea as symbolic
Rather than a description of an actual event.
But could it really have happened?
An eye witness account from the 19th century chronicles
An incident with uncanny similarities.
British major general, sir alexander b. Tulloch
Is charting an area on the eastern nile delta.
Some scholars believe that this area
Rather than what we now call the red sea
Is where the biblical story may have taken place.
They have to abandon their work due to strong
And consistent winds, then they come back the next day
And they find that an area that was once submerged,
Is now walkable.
For tulloch, this is evidence
That the biblical parting could have taken place.
At the time no rational explanation can be found
For the event that tulloch witnessed,
But can modern insights fill the blanks?
A recent study uses a computer program
To simulate the impact of sustained overnight winds
In the coastal area where tulloch was working.
It suggests that winds of between 63 and 70 miles per hour
Lasting for 12 hours could part waters up to 6-feet deep.
Such a parting of the waves
Would require a specific underwater geography.
There would need to be a high spot
On the bottom of the red sea
For a land bridge to be created when the water receded.
Moses would have to be in the right place
Where that shallow spot was to then be able to cross it.
So in the right place at the right time,
It appears that a land bridge through the sea
Could have occurred naturally.
As intriguing as this study is, it doesn't account
For the enormous walls of water described in the biblical story.
So science must look elsewhere for answers.
A new discovery by of all things a tree ring specialist
In far away california,
May have inadvertently unlocked this age-old sea mystery.
It's a story that begins back in 1986
When egyptologist hans goedicke unveils a theory
Which could account for the walls of water
That accompanied the biblical sea parting.
His theory pivots on one of the most cataclysmic
And controversial events in ancient history...
The eruption of thera...
A colossal volcano on the greek island of santorini.
This massive eruption over 3,000 years ago,
Is one of the greatest ever recorded.
Thera erupting is like 300 atomic bombs going off.
Cliffs fall into the sea as the volcanic crater collapses
And the island implodes.
When you have a whole island being obliterated,
That release of energy has to go somewhere.
Well, it goes into the sea.
A tsunami is unleashed
And where it ends up is central to goedicke's theory...
The nile delta,
One of the likely locations for the biblical sea parting.
Could this towering wall of water be the real phenomenon
At the heart of the great bible story?
As it reaches the egyptian coast,
The tsunami draws back water from the shoreline.
You have this counter intuitive situation
Where the waters are pulled back.
And they'll come in a series of waves
That almost appear like walls.
Any witnesses would have seen the sea withdraw
And walls of water form.
In effect, a parting of the sea.
For thera to be the real event behind the biblical story,
It would need to have happened at the same time
As the hebrew exodus from egypt,
Often thought to be around the early to mid-16th century b.C.
But the date of the thera eruption
Is difficult to pin down
And there has been much debate and disagreement.
Then in 2006,
Researchers hit what looks like the dating jackpot.
One of the most accurate dates for the eruption of thera
Is said to be from an olive tree
That's actually inside the ash layer itself.
This olive branch is a vital piece of evidence.
Because it's formed of organic material,
Researchers are able to test it using radio carbon dating...
The gold standard method for dating detectives.
And that's giving a time range that can bring it down
To about a 25-year window.
But the result of the analysis places the eruption
In the early 17th century b.C.,
Approximately a century before dates muted for the exodus.
This suggests that any attempts to connect the two events
Are wishful thinking.
Science is... is great, marvelous
Because it moves it forward,
But in other ways, science can, you know, ruin a mystery.
The story should end there,
But tree ring specialist
Dr. Charlotte pearson has a different theory.
There's been a discrepancy, something that didn't add up.
Dr. Pearson believes that although it was found
At the site of the eruption,
The olive branch is not an accurate indicator.
She thinks that the key to when
Thera erupted lies 7,000 miles away,
In the sunshine state of california.
If the olive branch is a red herring,
Could dr. Pearson's hunch resurrect the theory
That thera is the real event
Behind the parting of the red sea?
Scientist dr. Charlotte pearson believes that the key to dating
One of the greatest underwater explosions of all time
Lies not with an olive branch found in greece
But halfway around the globe, in california.
Dr. Pearson's research could be the breakthrough
That finally identifies the eruption of thera
With its subsequent tsunami as the real event
Behind the bible's sea-parting story.
Trees are one of the most valuable resources
For dating experts.
Since their rings form yearly, they are natural calendars.
And the bristle cone pines that grow here in california
Are extra special.
The oldest discovered so far is over 5,000 years old.
So one single individual tree starts life
Before they build the pyramids in egypt.
This longevity makes these pines ideal for radio carbon dating.
In every single tree ring,
There is a sample of carbon 14 in the year in which it formed.
You can get clues to what the climatic conditions
Were in that period of time.
Most species of tree put on rings annually, but olive trees
Are an exception, and dr. Pearson believes
That they don't provide accurate dates when radio carbon tested.
She believes that bristle cone pines
Are a much more reliable indicator, and on analysis,
Her samples reveal something hugely significant.
They show noticeably narrower growth rings
Over one specific 4-year period
Indicating a short but extreme change in climate.
So we know that year of that tree's growth was interrupted
By reduced sunlight or a lot of carbon in the air.
But to be certain that this anomaly
Could be related to thera,
Dr. Pearson needs to make sure it wasn't caused
By any localized weather event in california,
So she goes in search of the same evidence
Elsewhere in the world.
And finds it 5,000 miles away in ireland.
There are samples of irish oaks dating back thousands of years,
And the rings in these tree samples
Show exactly the same growth restrictions
Occurring in the same period.
That was the big surprise moment because what it showed us
Was that here we have two trees
In very different growth locations,
Different latitudes, different altitudes,
And yet essentially the measurements of c14
In the annual tree rings are making the same pattern.
This points to a weather event of global proportions.
And an event of this scale at this period of time
Could only be one thing...
The eruption of thera.
And when you have a huge eruption,
The ash in the atmosphere
Blocks out the sunlight and creates like a mini-ice age
Sort of situation, which causes the tree to grow really slowly.
Dr. Pearson's hunch has paid off.
These new radio carbon dating results
Placed the thera eruption in the 16th century b.C.,
Up to 100 years after the olive branch dates
With massive implications for biblical scholars.
This looks like it's the smoking gun.
It's a possible root cause of what happened.
This chance breakthrough brings the thera tsunami
Back into the same period as that muted for the exodus.
Allowing us an entrance into a scientific explanation
For what is one of the biggest mysteries of all time.
I ventured deep under the ocean in a small submarine,
And I know how vulnerable it can make you feel.
I almost feel like an astronaut landing on the moon.
But what if you never managed to make it back up?
This is exactly what happened to the crew of one
Of the very first submarines... The h.L. Hunley,
Which vanished in action during the american civil war.
Lost for nearly 140 years, the sub is finally found.
Now armed with new evidence,
Can science work out what happened to the hunley?
South carolina, the year 2000...
The h.L. Hunley is finally raised from the ocean floor.
It launched a successful attack.
It should have returned to base without any trouble
So the question is, "why then is it on the bottom?"
1864.
At the height of the american civil war,
Confederate submarine h.L. Hunley
Leaves base on her maiden mission.
It was built specifically to deal
With the blockade of the north against the south.
Her target is the u.S.S. Housatonic,
Which is on blockade duty
For union forces outside charleston harbor
On the south carolina coast.
Made of iron, the hunley travels just beneath the surface
And features a very rudimentary propulsion system.
This was human powered.
The crew would sit and they would hand crank to move the...
The ship around.
It's like working inside a coffin.
We're talking something which would make a smart car
Look roomy.
The h.L. Hunley is armed with a single torpedo.
Torpedoes were not the fire and forget weapons
We think of today.
It was essentially a keg of explosives
With a prong on the end that was attached by a long wooden pole.
The submarine had to drive up beside the warship
And impregnate this cask of dynamite into the side
And then light the fuse that would explode the keg.
The submarine stealthily approaches the warship
And deploys its weapon.
135 pounds of black powder explosive rips through the hull.
The housatonic sinks in less than five minutes.
It's a spectacular success for the hunley.
She's the first sub ever to sink an enemy ship.
But what happens next is a mystery.
It went out, did its job, and never came home.
All trace of the hunley is lost for almost 140 years,
But when she is finally found and raised,
She is in surprisingly good condition.
The presumption was that this would be blown to bits,
But in fact when they brought it up, it was in tact.
There was no visible damage to the hull, why did it sink?
Investigators set out to find an answer to the mystery.
After years on the seabed, the hunley is covered
With a thick layer of sediment called concretion.
Iron under water reacts with the saltwater.
The salts and the iron create corrosion product.
Basically creates a dense impermeable layer
Around the iron.
This coating has helped preserve the submarine.
But unless it's removed with extreme care,
The hunley could be damaged and vital evidence lost.
And as researchers scrape away the layers of solid sediment,
They make a shocking discovery...
The decomposed bodies of the hunley's crew.
The confederate submarine h.L. Hunley
Has been exhumed from a watery grave after 136 years.
Now can clues hidden in her hull shed new light
On why this valiant little vessel never made it home?
The remains of the hunley's crew are found,
But it's a discovery that raises yet more questions.
It appeared that all men died at their stations.
Maybe these people were unbelievably heroic,
Went down with the ship, or maybe they were dead
Before they hit the seabed.
If researchers can identify how these men died,
This may at last reveal what happened to the hunley.
The original theory about the hunley sinking
Was it was to do with a sonic blast of its own explosive.
That that took out the crew somehow.
I would not want to be sitting 30 feet from a 135-pound
Black powder explosion, especially underwater.
The pressure wave from the explosion
Is going to be traveling through the water.
It's going to hit this air tube.
That the explosion of the torpedo
Caused some kind of concussive blast
That, you know, knocked these guys out.
They wouldn't be able to operate the submarine,
And eventually it would sink.
Recent research suggest that the torpedo explosion
While only 16-feet away from the sub,
Would not have been sufficient to kill the men.
Whether they were incapacitated by concussion
Remains an open question.
With the blast theory proving inconclusive,
Investigators go in search of new evidence.
And while clearing away the last of the concretion,
They make a game-changing discovery.
There appeared to be no structural damage.
It was really only when they started to clean out the inside
And they noticed that there was a particular pipe
That had ruptured.
The hole, an inch across, is small
But potentially catastrophic.
It's in the ballast system, which pumps sea water in
And out of the vessel to manage its buoyancy.
Researchers calculate it would take only 50 to 70 gallons
Of water to flood the submarine, and just three minutes
To fill it through this tiny opening.
If you had three minutes to realize you were going to die,
Would you scramble for the exits?
Would you try to use the pump to pump it out?
Would you try to plug the hole?
But the crew are still at their stations,
So the leak is unlikely to be the only factor.
Perhaps concussion did play a part
And the men were unconscious when the sub flooded.
Maybe it's a combination where they couldn't react,
And it was sinking at the same time.
The thing about catastrophic accidents
Is generally there's never one thing.
It's generally a series of things.
The ruptured pipe may bring us closer to the truth,
But as research continues, this iconic underwater vessel
Could still have further secrets to reveal.
The last time anyone hears from the first world war
Transporter u.S.S. Cyclops,
She's heading towards the bermuda triangle.
But is the vanished ship just another victim of this
Notorious tract of ocean or are there war time games afoot?
Now new developments in the understanding
Of deep water waves could explain what happened
And solve a raft of other maritime disappearances.
March 1918...
Under the stewardship of captain george w. Worley,
The u.S. Navy transport ship cyclops
Is preparing to set sail.
She's loaded with 11,000 tons of manganese
For use in wartime ammunitions
And has 309 passengers and crew on board
When she leaves brazil bound for baltimore.
Nine days into the voyage,
The cyclops sends a routine message
Stating that all is well.
It's the last that is heard from her.
The cyclops disappears without a trace.
That is the very last communication from the cyclops
And the last anyone heard from those 309 people on board.
Nothing associated with it has ever been found.
Not a life ring.
Not a note in a bottle.
There was nothing.
What's mysterious about the s.S. Cyclops
Is that she shouldn't have disappeared.
She is this ultra-modern ship for the time.
She's supposed to be able to make this journey quite easily.
Of course when she disappears, she is in the bermuda triangle,
And that's always interesting.
But for once, this notorious area of ocean
In the north caribbean is not the prime suspect.
The finger of suspicion instead falls on the ship's captain.
It turns out that george w. Worley was in fact christened
Johan frederick wichmann and born in germany.
With the world at war,
His allegiances become the subject of intense speculation.
Some said he was a, you know, german sympathizer.
So the theory is, is that it was some sort of wartime heist.
That the captain and potential german agents
Tried to abscond with the cyclops.
If true, this ranks among
The most audacious wartime missions ever.
If not, an innocent man has been wrongly accused.
So what really happened?
Fast forward over 75 years to the seas off norway
Where a seemingly unrelated incident
Is about to unleash a chain of scientific discoveries
Which could hold the answer.
Among a barrage of 25-foot storm waves,
An oil rig fitted with lasers records
One that measures a massive 85-feet high.
For years scientists have speculated
About the existence of these gigantic rogue waves.
Now finally, there is proof.
Rogue waves are built up by environmental conditions,
Which involve various speed of winds.
Storms create ocean swells,
Which in specific circumstances,
Can combine to form these mid-ocean monsters.
Similar to sound waves,
Ocean waves can travel at different speeds
And pile up in a process known as constructive interference.
Sitting between the atlantic and the caribbean
Where storm systems can converge,
The bermuda triangle is particularly prone
To these 100-foot giants.
However, at the time of the cyclops' disappearance,
There were no reports of storms.
A fact confirmed by her final message.
"weather's fair. All is well."
But new understanding of underwater wave behavior
Suggests something truly extraordinary.
Rogue waves can also form in calm seas.
The unexplained disappearance of the first world war
Transport ship u.S.S. Cyclops gives rise to rumors
Of a brazen heist by her german-born captain.
But could new developments in the understanding of rogue waves
Exonerate him and solve other maritime mysteries
In the bermuda triangle?
Rogue waves are these unusually large waves
That can occur amongst a sequence of storm waves
Or even in calmer conditions.
Recent research has shown that these maritime monsters can form
When normal waves encounter strong currents
Moving in the opposite direction.
With the warm atlantic gulf stream flowing right through it,
The bermuda triangle is particularly prone.
But could a freak wave out gun the navy
And take out a transporter of this size?
In 2018, british oceanographers set out to answer
This very question.
The team builds a scale model of the cyclops
And recreates surges using indoor wave simulators.
Their experiments yield a counter intuitive result.
The bigger the ship, the greater the chance of capsize.
To maximize chances of survival,
The captain would have to literally ride the waves,
Steering directly towards them.
Where a ship of that type is most vulnerable is on its sides.
And with no notice of the approaching killer wave,
It could have been too late to reposition a ship of this size.
It had a huge super structure, and it's very likely
That it was essentially knocked over.
Does this new understanding of rogue waves
And their potential effects on large vessels
Solve the mystery of the cyclops?
Even though you have the latest technology to see how a ship
Is behaving within a tank,
You can't be 100% sure what happened to the ship.
Or did german agents pull off one of the most brazen heists
In maritime history?
I personally think it's not in the bermuda triangle.
I think that they may actually have been
Trying to take it to germany.
Until the wreck is found, the mystery lives on.
Since I first set sail as a teenager,
Technology has dramatically
Improved our ability to track vessels at sea.
Satellites have revolutionized the science of surveillance.
But on occasion, even large boats can drop off the grid.
These ghost ships are potential hazards
And anything else on the water have to be found.
Russian cruise ship,
The lyubov orlova has been carrying passengers
On arctic cruises for more than 20 years.
But in 2010, her travels grind to a halt.
She's impounded in newfoundland, canada,
And eventually sold for scrap,
But her final journey is anything but plain sailing.
It's being taken to the dominican republic
To be scrapped, and the tug isn't up to the job.
Very soon after leaving harbor,
The lyubov snaps its tow and comes loose and floats off
On its own with no power,
No crew, and essentially becomes a ghost ship.
The orlova is adrift in some of the world's busiest
Shipping lanes.
She joins a global phantom fleet.
They are floating metallic icebergs,
Which can cause tremendous trouble
By wandering into sea lanes.
The race is on to find her.
Seven days later on the other side of the atlantic,
The irish coast guard is put on alert.
The orlova may be heading their way.
The coast guard is part of a new international project
Called sea sigma.
Their mission... to harness the power of emerging technology
In the fight against maritime crime.
First, satellites identify anything that looks like a ship.
This is cross referenced with data
From the worldwide automatic identification system
Or a.I.S., which tracks the position of all active vessels.
As the orlova is no longer emitting an a.I.S. Signal,
When a so-called dark vessel is identified
Matching her footprint, it looks like they've found her.
But when the coast guard gets to the search area,
The orlova is no where to be seen.
Even with the best technology,
Accurately predicting the position of a drifting craft
In open ocean can be next to impossible.
But the irish coast guard aren't the only people
Looking for the orlova.
It might be a ghost ship,
But this is a gold mine for salvagers.
Under maritime law, it's finders keepers.
Anyone salvaging an abandoned vessel is entitled to a reward
Based on the value of the ship and its contents.
But salvagers in pursuit of the orlova can't find her either.
It's becoming an international game of cat and mouse,
And before long, another type of rodent hits the headlines.
One of the stories going around about the ship is that
Should anyone find it and go on it,
It's going to be full of rats.
Speculation mounts as to how an army of rats
Might sustain themselves adrift at sea.
They'll chew insulation on wires, but sooner or later,
There will be no food supply.
And then once that runs out,
Perhaps they're eating one another.
The rat rumors run wild.
These killer, monster, hungry, cannibal rats.
It's going to look like a house of horrors.
One would have to be pretty crazy
To want to board that ship.
But is there any truth to these rat tales?
It's possible that this is a story that's going around
To try to prevent people from trying to find the ship.
A fog of mystery surrounds the ghost ship, orlova.
But suddenly, the game's back on.
Coast guards are alerted to a distress signal
700 nautical miles off the west coast of ireland.
The signal is traced to an electronic device
Called an e.P.I.R.B.
Assigned to one of the orlova's six lifeboats
But e.P.I.R.B.S only activate
Once lifeboats have been launched.
Is there life on the ghost ship after all?
The ghost ship, orlova, is at large on the high seas,
But now the coast guard has been alerted by a distress signal.
Could someone or something still be on board?
The coast guard can't take any chances,
So they scramble a plane for an aerial search.
But once again, there's no sign of the missing ship.
Getting this signal from the lifeboats themselves
Could be a couple of things.
Either somehow they fell off the ship itself
And the ship is still floating,
Or it could have actually been the ship sinking
And that these lifeboats at that point ended up in the water.
Experts have speculated that it has in fact sank.
Others have speculated that it's somewhere up off greenland.
So ultimately, we may never know.
For now, only the orlova and her rumored cargo of ravenous rats
Know the truth,
And this ghost ship continues to haunt the high seas.
For medieval sailors, the portolan charts
Revolutionized navigation on the high seas.
In an age when the world is still considered to be flat,
These astonishingly detailed maritime maps
Are light years ahead of their time.
But how they were made
And used has defied explanation for centuries.
Can a new discovery
Finally crack this ancient maritime code?
Before the early medieval period,
Using a chart to sail to a place you had never been,
Was a dangerous endeavor.
Early charts were very imprecise from a navigational standpoint.
You really only were able to navigate headland to headland,
And you would touch the coast along the way
To get anywhere you had to go.
Then, as if from nowhere a new kind of chart
Appears with new levels of accuracy
That reduce reliance on visual landmarks
And help to open up new routes.
It was as if the map maker
Could look down upon the area from space.
In a world with untold wealth waiting to be discovered,
Navigation is power.
These were highly secretive.
They were talked about in hushed tones.
Captains traded for them.
People probably gave up their lives to deliver them
And to protect them.
On the surface, the portolan charts look like
A tangled mess of geometric lines
Spreading out from seemingly random points in all directions.
These rhumb lines are 16 lines emanating from a central point,
And these lines are all over the portolans.
But how these lines were created and how the charts were used
Seven centuries ago is shrouded in secrecy...
A closely guarded medieval puzzle waiting to be solved.
Now a blue sky breakthrough in of all things
The geometry of spot patterns on butterfly wings
Could provide the key
To unlock the mystery of these ancient charts.
The portolan charts marked a giant leap forward
In medieval navigation,
But how they were created remains a mystery.
We don't have written records in terms of how to use one,
What the lines represent in relation to one another.
I think we've lost a lot of the information.
But in 2018, there's a breakthrough.
Renowned mathematician and butterfly enthusiast,
John hessler makes a radical connection
Between the portolan charts
And a seemingly unrelated natural phenomenon.
Hessler has tracked the... The differences in the spots
On butterfly wings across the alps
In a method called morphometrics.
Hessler, a chemical engineer by trade
Is also a passionate amateur lepidopterist,
And he's studying the evolutionary relationships
Among the many butterfly species found in the french alps.
Using mapping software,
He tracks butterflies from different areas
And deploys a technique called morphometrics,
A scientific method of analyzing form to assess the relationships
Between the placement of the spots on the butterfly's wings.
Now hessler wonders whether a similar method
Might help decode the secrets of the portolan charts.
But instead of different points on butterfly wings,
This time he's looking at different points
On geographical maps such as headlands and ports.
So using that, he's trying to reverse engineer
How the mathematicians and the navigators and the...
The surveyors were able to kind of create these maps.
Hessler is looking for patterns in the differences
Between the portolan charts and other maps.
He took about 100 points from the portolan maps
And made comparisons to our modern maps.
He uses algorithms within computerized mapping software
To make these comparisons,
So we have a very good mathematical way
Of distinguishing accuracy from inaccuracy.
Patterns could reveal the portolan's geometric structure
And finally tell us how they were made
And what he finds is fascinating.
After analyzing 22 ancient charts,
All of which appear vastly different to the naked eye,
He works out that they bear one remarkable similarity...
They are all offset by almost exactly the same amount,
8.5 degrees from true north.
The really significant thing is the difference of 8.5 degrees.
It's the difference between true north and magnetic north.
So they were all orientated unto magnetic north.
And this makes sense
Because at the time the charts were compiled,
Compasses are the new medieval must have.
It's only when the magnetic compasses
Start to come into wider use,
You have the information coming through
That you can use to make these maps.
Hessler has cracked the code figuring out
Not only how the charts came to be,
But also why they're so accurate.
The portolan map makers were more,
More advanced than we thought they were
In terms of putting that map together.
The best map makers actually are able to compile data
From all kinds of places.
The map makers are using the log books
And the records of many, many different sailors
And what they're putting down as their compass positions
To try and draw these maps.
These maps were the product of large data analysis themselves.
It turns out that these medieval map makers were harvesting
Big data 800 years before silicon valley.
There's no secret like a trade secret.
So the mystery of exactly who these map makers were remains.
But for now, our butterfly enthusiast helps us chart
A course that takes us a little closer to the truth.
Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk) www.opensubtitles.org