Drain the Oceans (2018–…): Season 3, Episode 6 - The American Revolution - full transcript

Look at that.
Oh, my word.

-Good Grief.
-That is amazing.

How long is that one?

Beneath the waters
of a Virginia river,

a team of explorers
is discovering a hidden battlefield

from the war
that created the United States.

All of a sudden, these objects

are forming on the screen
that we've never seen before.

-This is incredible.
Cannons right there.

Right under the nose
of modern America,

240-year-old war ships
litter the riverbank.



We had 10 wrecks here. Just found an 11th.

What d'you find?

We're working on ships
that are the tangible evidence

of the event that led
to American Independence.

These wrecks help us
to understand the revolutionary war

in a completely new way.

The naval aspect of the America Revolution
is absolutely crucial.

It won the war.

The 13 colonies in America
rise up against the British king.

But their cause looks hopeless.

Fire.

The Patriots
are a land-based militia

and at a time when sea power counts,

it's Britain's Royal Navy
that rules the waves.



The British had command of the seas.

As long as they had such extraordinary
naval superiority,

the Americans were never
gonna be able to beat them.

So how do the merchants,
farmers, and fishermen

of the American colonies

take on the 18th century's
greatest maritime super power?

Something inexplicable happens,

a collection of colonies
managed to fight and win a war

against the most powerful country
in the world.

The struggle for America's waters

begins here in Lake Champlain, Vermont.

Can a single, barely armed boat explain

how the Rebels attempt to prevail
against impossible odds?

In the fall of 1776,

15 Patriot warships
set sail from this stronghold,

Fort Ticonderoga,

on the southern tip of the lake.

We're on hallowed ground
for American history

and the fleet on Lake Champlain should be
considered the first American Fleet.

The fleet is led by a man
who will one day betray the revolution,

Benedict Arnold.

His mission: defend these waters
against powerful British forces

gathering in the north.

Benedict Arnold, while he was here
in the Champlain Valley,

did heroic things.

Lake Champlain is so significant

because it's 120 miles long,
north and south.

Think interstate highway
at a time when you can invade on it.

Whoever controlled the lake

was gonna have the advantage in the war
moving forward.

At this critical point,

the hopes of the revolution depend
on America's first fighting fleet.

But within two months of launching,
Arnold's navy is in tatters.

Of the 15 vessels
in the American fleet

only four made it back
to Fort Ticonderoga.

What happened?

The fate of most of Arnold's fleet
is shrouded in mystery.

Now, two centuries later,

archeologist Art Cohn
is hoping to unlock secrets

hidden beneath the waters
of Lake Champlain.

Where history happens,
stuff gets left behind.

If there was a vessel
that could connect us to that story,

that would be the Holy Grail of it all.

Are there physical remains
that we can see, touch, study,

and enlighten us
about what actually happened here.

Art and his team

traced the fleet's route north
from Fort Ticonderoga

looking for remnants.

Sonar sweeps the bottom
hundreds of feet below.

Clearing the lake sector by sector.

At last they detect something promising.

Oh, yeah.

Looks like we got something
between 15 and 20 meters in size.

Yeah, that's excellent, excellent.

All right, clear two meters.

They deploy
a remotely operated vehicle

and guide it over 200 feet down
to the target.

It's amazing.

Look how intact that is.

That could be really important
for trying to identify which boat this is.

If this wreck really is
a sunken warship from the Patriot navy,

it could finally take Art inside the story
of their defeat on the lake.

But is it?

Combining Art's scan data
and underwater footage,

we can make the waters
of Lake Champlain disappear.

The mast of a ship that
hasn't seen sunlight for centuries

breaks the surface,

and draining water reveals

a giant rusted cannon
pointing forward at the bow,

resting inside a grizzled 54-foot vessel
sitting upright on the lake bed.

It's not broken,

it's not a fragment,
it's a completely intact specimen

transported to the present.

But with only one cannon,

this simple boat
doesn't look like a weapon of war.

However, as Art studies it,

he spots a row of fixtures
sticking up from the rim of the hull.

They're evidence that this ship
was once bristling

with an array of ingenious weaponry.

Eight hand forged iron brackets

indicating exactly the position
of all the swivel guns

that had been mounted there.

They are devastating
in close range, anti-boarding,

easy to aim, easy to load and fire
and so they would have been indispensable.

Art also finds anchor points
on the side,

for supporting two more heavy cannon.

He's convinced
it's a warship from the Revolution.

But is it one of Benedict Arnold's?

The surviving cannon and the anchor points
for other weapons are key clues

pointing Art
towards a type of fighting ship

known to be in Arnold's fleet.

The cannon feature
that's a signature, that's,

that's a document that tells us this boat

is what we expected it to be
or hoped it would be.

Art has uncovered an oar

and sail powered Patriot gunboat
called a gundalow.

There's no question the gunboat
came from Benedict Arnold's fleet.

A veteran
from a forgotten battle

for the future of the United States.

Combining details from the wreck
with research in revolutionary archives,

Art searches for more clues.

He spots an unusual box roughly fastened
to the inside of the hull.

He's never seen anything like it
on a gun boat before.

As I really
trained my attention on it,

there was ammunition in the box,

and I had like a little explosion
go off in my brain saying,

"Eureka, this is an ammo box."

This is really cool.

And there's another
unfamiliar feature.

On one side of the ship, a large notch.

Art can't make sense of it.

And I gotta tell ya, cutting down the side
of the boat makes you more vulnerable

to, you know, waves and water
but that's what they chose to do.

As Art tries to work out
what's going on,

he recognizes something big,

the shape of the hull.

It's a type of ship design
used by colonial farmers to carry hay.

This clearly was a vessel, used to travel
the rivers and shallow marshes

cutting hay that it could bring back
to the farm.

All of these odd features
start to make sense.

The British navy had years
of development of--of discipline,

and--and protocol,

and that couldn't be a greater contrast
to what we were looking at.

The Patriot crew is freelancing,
the ammo box is an invention,

and they cut a notch because the hull
is too tall for their cannon.

They literally robbed or borrowed
as much material as they could find,

"Hey, we've got this cannon,
we've gotta make it work,

it doesn't fit in this spot,
do we raise it?

Or do we cut down the side of the boat?"

There wasn't a blueprint, and they were
kind of making it up as they went.

The Patriots are going
into battle with amateur sailors

armed with scavenged weaponry
in a modified hay barge.

Given this information,

Art digs into the balance of forces
on the lake.

He uncovers that the British deploy

a powerful fleet of more than 30 boats
onto the water of Lake Champlain.

On the 11th of October,

this dominant force
attacks Arnold's makeshift fleet

of just 15 near Valcour Island.

Art can now see that the Patriots face
a hopeless mismatch.

This battle was fought
for hours and hours and hours

where the cannoning never stopped,
they said.

Serving aboard the Valcour Island fleet

would have been the worst duty
you could've possibly had.

With 11 Patriot ships
and 60 men lost,

the US Navy's first ever battle
ends in defeat.

But the fate of Art's discovered gundalow
remains a mystery.

It lies more than two dozen miles
south of the battle.

Sitting perfectly upright
with no sign of fatal battle damage

and with most of its weapons
cleanly removed,

so what happened
to this mysterious gunboat?

Down on the shores
of Lake Champlain,

Art Cohn is trying to reconstruct

the final hours
of Arnold's sunken gunboat.

A two-year project
to rebuild the adapted hay barge

is helping him understand
what happened to it.

Welcome aboard as close a replica
as you're ever going to see.

This boat is a warship,
it's a battle ship,

it is, uh, carrying heavy guns,
that was its purpose.

Its purpose was to go to war.

Art focuses on why the wreck
of the gundalow is missing its weapons.

Just the firing of the guns and the recoil
and the energy that that produced

would have shaken these planks
just recently built

and shaken the caulking out of them
so they would be leaking,

and the more they fired,
the more they leaked.

Somehow the improvised warship
survives the battle

but is doomed nonetheless.

We believe that
they jettisoned the heavy guns

so that they could lighten the boat
to keep it from sinking

but it was leaking so bad, they knew
it had to be abandoned and let go

and it sank
perfectly straight down to the bottom

until it landed upright
with its bow cannon still in place,

searching for the enemy,
and its mast still up.

One of the few Patriot vessels
still afloat after the battle.

The gunboat finally goes down.

But there's still more to discover

and Art is helped
by an original naval inventory from 1776.

It begins with a return of the fleet
belonging to the United States of America

on Lake Champlain

under the command
of Brigadier General Arnold

dated October 22nd, 1776.

The odds of it being a document

that listed every boat, listed every rig,

and then, in a final column,
the fate of the vessel.

One ship on the list
matches his wreck.

This boat that we found
on the bottom of Lake Champlain,

this boat is the gunboat Spitfire.

Lost for over 240 years,
Art has found the Spitfire.

Part of Benedict Arnold's brave
but doomed defense of Lake Champlain.

However, the sacrifice on the lake
is not in vain.

The battle buys the Rebels
some valuable time.

Time for a ragtag militia
to grow into a formidable army.

Never had there been a fleet
large or small

that had lived to greater purpose
or died more gloriously

than the little fleet on Lake Champlain.

And over the next two years,

the colonists fight the Redcoats
to a standstill.

Each side winning battles
from the northeast to the deep south.

But on the water, the Patriots still have
little to challenge the Royal Navy.

Lake Ontario, upstate New York.

Can a spectacular wreck on the lake bottom

explain how one key American victory
was achieved

without a single shot being fired.

As the war develops,

the British use their naval superiority
to keep tight control of the Great Lakes,

launching the largest warship
ever seen on these waters.

Eighty feet long
with ports for 22 heavy cannon.

His Majesty's ship Ontario is so powerful,

Patriot forces
abandon the region completely.

The British would have certainly hoped
that that ship would have been there

to police the lake, to fly the flag
of British royal power for years.

On October 31st,
1780, Halloween,

HMS Ontario sets sail
with a detachment of 60 troops.

Heading for the town of Oswego
in New York,

but she never arrives.

How did a ship
built by competent British shipwrights

go from being afloat in the middle
of a lake to disappearing.

They find on the shore the hat
of the captain, they find the binnacle,

blankets and the compass and that's it.

Shipwreck hunter Jim Kennard
wants finally to work out what happened

and asks deep dive expert Dan Scoville
to join the search.

The lake hides all kinds of secrets,
and just being able to go look

for one of these secrets
and to discover what happened with it,

that's super exciting to me.

Dan and Jim
scour for three years

over 200 square miles of the lake,

retracing the Ontario's
intended route to Oswego

but they find nothing
but barren silt and rocks.

Eventually, the only place left to look
is one of the deepest parts of the lake.

Dan sends his ROV down
into the inky black abyss.

Over 500 feet down,
they find a single wooden longboat

and then, in the darkness beyond...

There was
a great big hull right there

and I came up the rear of the hull

and that's when I saw the windows
across the stern of the ship.

They're still in place
after 200 years on the bottom.

There's really no other ships out there
that are gonna look quite like that.

This was HMS Ontario.

And then all of a sudden, there it is,

and all of that grief
that you've been going through,

it all changes.

HMS Ontario discovered at last.

One of the best preserved
18th century warships ever found.

So who or what sank her?

The only way to find out

is to drain away the deep lake waters

and reveal
this revolutionary war masterpiece.

Two masts still stand tall.

A row of arched windows,
the officer's quarters, perfectly intact.

The entire vessel comes into view
lying on her side,

with no obvious damage.

Even the ship's bell is still in place,

the deck and cannon both untouched.

For Jim and Dan, the wreck of HMS Ontario
is almost too perfect.

You do wonder what happened.

Why isn't there a big hole,
where's the hole?

This ship, everything is there,

it's solid, it is really solid.

So what really happened?

On the Great Lakes,

Jim Kennard inspects the wreck
of HMS Ontario.

There's no clear damage.

She's nearly immaculate.

On closer inspection though,
not everything is so perfect.

At the stern,
two huge cannons have broken loose

and are jammed up against the tiller.

That's very unusual.

Those two cannons
together weighed about 2,000 pounds,

so what caused those cannons to be there?

Something violent happened here.

But there is absolutely no evidence
of battle damage.

Jim decides to check accounts
of Halloween night, 1780,

looking for something unusual.

He pulls together old diaries,

newspaper articles and ship's logs
from all over the American colonies.

But it's an analysis
by an expert meteorologist

that catches his eye.

Two and a half centuries ago,

Lake Ontario is hit by a weather bomb.

Something happened very quickly,

a back door cold front that was
from the northeast to the southwest.

It causes the temperature
to drop 30 degrees in an hour or two,

with gale force winds
of 30 or 40 miles an hour.

Important evidence
but hardly a smoking gun.

Even a storm this intense shouldn't have
the power to bring down a warship

built for the open seas.

Jim goes back to inspect the wreck.

In the rigging,
he spots a small but significant clue,

the pole supporting
the smaller forward sails are stowed

but the ones for the main central mast
are not.

This likely means that the Ontario's
huge main sail is still up

when the storm suddenly hits.

The British crew
unused to American conditions

are caught off-guard and unprepared.

The crew was in the process
of getting the sails down

but it doesn't look like
they had time to finish that job

and, in turn, everything went wrong.

For the British sailors,

their vast billowing sail
triggers a disastrous sequence of events.

First, it catches a blast of wind
buffeting Ontario right over.

And the loose cannon on the top deck

are dramatic evidence
of what happens next.

That ship ended up blown over on its side,

now the cannon are hanging, just hanging
by the ropes and those ropes break.

The loose cannons
slam the tiller hard over.

Pushing that ship down into the water,
and down into the water goes its sails.

When the huge sails touch water,

they act like a parachute
and drag the Ontario under.

Now that ship's
not coming back up again,

and it slips between the waves and sinks,

and as it sits on the bottom today,
it's still on its side.

The mystery of HMS Ontario
is finally solved.

The Royal Navy has come up
against an unexpected enemy,

the unpredictable weather
of a continental land mass.

And that's not Britain's only problem.

After five years of combat,

American Resistance
and stretched supply lines

are pushing her war machine to the limit.

But the Royal Navy keeps her in the fight

landing and extracting troops
along the eastern seaboard at will.

And then here on Virginia's York River,

something extraordinary happens.

A sudden decisive change
in the balance of naval power

leaving behind an astonishing fleet
of ravaged British shipwrecks.

Maritime archeologist John Broadwater
has come to Yorktown,

the site of the last major land battle
of the American Revolution,

a battle that hinges on control
of the York River.

The American Revolution
was right here in Yorktown.

In many ways, the Siege of Yorktown

can be thought of as much
a maritime battle as it was a land battle.

In the summer of 1781,

Britain's General Cornwallis
occupies Yorktown

with 8,000 Redcoats and a fleet of ships.

There are troop ships,
there are horse carriers,

there are food carriers.

The entire British army
has just moved here by sea.

The Rebel colonists
led by George Washington

see an opportunity for a decisive battle.

They advance from New York

to surround and besiege the British
at Yorktown.

But over a dozen Royal Navy ships,
including Cornwallis's largest,

the 44-gun HMS Charon,
dominates the York River,

and there is no Patriot navy
to challenge the British fleet.

Cast off.

But now,
John Broadwater and his team

are uncovering a twist in the tail
of the American Revolution

right here under the York River,

an unprecedented massacre
of the Royal Navy.

There was
a terrible disaster here for the British

and we have the evidence out here
to prove that.

Look at that.
Oh, my word.

Good grief, that is amazing.

How long is that one?

So far John and his team
have detected 11 wrecks under these waters

and they believe they're all
from General Cornwallis's fleet of ships.

This is literally a graveyard
of British ships

on both sides of the river.

It's an incredible and unique resource
found nowhere else.

So how could a fleet
from Britain's imperious navy

be brought to its knees.

Only a careful inspection
of the scattered remains

can reveal the answer.

Three wrecks have been picked up on sonar
in the northern sector of the river.

John dives on the largest target
in the group.

John, topside, comms check.

I'm just down at the bottom.
Roger.

I can see the wood,
three ribs of the ship.

Here's something very interesting
and diagnostic.

I've found some copper.

Copper is an unusual find
on an 18th century wooden ship.

What do the surprising ruins
of the Royal Navy warship

reveal about the turning point
of the battle for Yorktown.

John Broadwater's team
on the York River

has discovered copper in the remains
of a Revolutionary-era British warship.

It's a curious find.

To unravel the mystery
of this strange sunken vessel,

it's now possible to combine
all of the available evidence

and drain the York River

and reveal the remains

of a two-century old veteran
of Cornwallis's doomed fleet.

The outline of a 140-foot beast
embedded in the silt.

Much of the old wooden vessel is missing

but the riverbed is hiding
more of the wreck's remains.

Draining the silt
reveals the underside of the hull,

exposing the remains of copper sheeting.

That's awesome.

The wreck has a fast
and hydrodynamic copper bottom.

John knows it's rare and cutting edge
at the time of the Revolution.

Copper sheathing
was a technological advance

that put Britain so far ahead
of the other navies,

that's really significant.

When John looks
into General Cornwallis's fleet,

there is only one ship as big as his wreck
fitted with a copper bottom.

It's a major clue that points
to the mighty 44-gun HMS Charon,

the primary vessel controlling
the York River, for Cornwallis.

This clearly had to be Charon,
positive ID.

It's an incredible find,
but also puzzling.

The Americans have nothing that
can match such a powerful warship

so why does so little of her remain?

HMS Charon
was very important to Cornwallis,

she was as the largest ship
that he had at his disposal,

very powerful and formidable

and put him in charge
of the sea around him.

John hopes
there could be clues to the ship's fate

in artifacts recovered from the wreck.

-Here's one piece.
-Oh, yeah.

These are nice examples
of Charon's copper sheathing.

You can see this piece
is still attached to the wooden hull.

Then John spots a piece
of copper that looks highly unusual.

It's gotta be melted copper
that used to be

a piece of nice sheathing
melted into a glob.

Look at all the little holes and bubbles,
it must have just started to boil almost.

To get copper to melt,

well, it's over
a 1,000 degrees Centigrade,

it's almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Melted copper
can mean only one thing.

A fierce fire onboard HMS Charon.

Cornwallis's prized ship
goes down in an inferno.

This must have just been
a horribly intense fire,

the frustration
that the British must have felt

at losing their largest warship
to a tragedy like this.

But what can possibly
have caused

this kind of blaze out on the river?

Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff
has taken up the investigation.

And she thinks it's highly unlikely that
the Patriot militia had the fire power

to take General Cornwallis's flagship
down in a blaze of flames.

The best way to think about
these 18th century ships of the line

is to think about them as tanks.

They are built to last
and withstand a lot.

I think the American shot
trying to pick at the Charon

wasn't going to be very effective.

To take on the HMS Charon,

Maya thinks
the Patriots must have had help.

A powerful ally,
now joining the fight against the British.

France.

On August 30th, 1781,
the French Navy blockades the York River.

General Cornwallis and his ships
are now trapped at Yorktown.

Yorktown is the moment
that brought France into the war

on the American side.

My enemy's enemy is my friend
kind of alliance.

What did the French have
that could possibly have destroyed

the key British ship HMS Charon?

When Maya looks into it,

she discovers the French send
ground forces to join the siege

placing artillery
on the banks of the river.

The French have
very up-to-date technology

to help the American-French war effort.

And when she analyzes
their gunnery,

she discovers they have
a very special weapon

in their arsenal.

Portable furnaces

that can heat cannonballs
until they're red hot.

The French have this kind of artillery,
it was called Greek fire.

But could simply heating
some cannonballs

really be enough to destroy
a top-of-the-line warship?

Maya visits a forge
to test the French technology.

A red hot cannonball, let's see
what that does to a piece of wood.

It's obviously gonna burn
and it started burning immediately,

but it's taking it a while.

Let's try it out on some sail
and see what happens.

It does work.

Wow, that's also spreading
incredibly fast.

When it hit sail, it really ignited.

Maya is now convinced

that if French hot shot
hit the sails of HMS Charon,

it would have sparked an instant inferno.

Timbers would have been burning,
the spars would have been burning,

the rigging would have been burning,

by the time it would have sunk,
it would have been in terrible shape.

It totally makes sense why the Charon

would have ended up
at the bottom of the water.

The results of the hot shot demo
are impressive

but Maya digs for further evidence
that might confirm her theory.

She finds a passage in an old diary.

So this a first person account
of what happened on the night

that the HMS Charon went down
by an eye witness.

"A red hot shell from the French battery
set fire to the Charon,

a British 44-gun ship en-wrapped
in a torrent of fire,

which spreading with vivid brightness
among the combustible rigging."

It's really
an extraordinarily vivid description

of the effectiveness
of this French hot shot.

It's now certain
the melted copper sheathing on HMS Charon

is evidence of an unexpected assault
by French hot shot artillery.

Could this revelation explain
the graveyard of British wrecks

John Broadwater has discovered
in the York River.

The team dives
the sunken group near the Charon.

Diver up!

What'd you find?

Look at that. You got it?
-What we got here?

Yeah, looks like a piece of charred wood.

Another good clue.

Could this be evidence
of another victim of French fire?

This is close to the Charon,

it's only a few hundred yards
away from the Charon.

It's got evidence of burning.

Hot shot clearly scythes
into Cornwallis's trapped fleet.

This grouping of shipwrecks
at Yorktown would not be there

had it not been for the the French.

With every wreck we investigate,

we add one more piece to the puzzle

of how they relate
to American Independence.

But the war's not over yet.

What does this wreck
free from any battle damage,

reveal about Britain's
last desperate plans

to win the Battle of Yorktown.

In the York River, Virginia,

British ships
have been scattered and sunk.

But these are not the only ships
downed in the battle.

Just outside General Cornwallis's position
at Yorktown

by the southern bank of the river,

a row of sunken vessels
sits in an eerily straight line,

and assessing his underwater footage,

maritime archeologist John Broadwater

is struck by the excellent condition
of one of the wrecks.

It was so well preserved,
it immediately caught our attention.

That's very unusual.

Parts of decks, bulk heading,
uh, so many features.

Why is this pristine ship
at the heart of a dense cluster of wrecks?

By stitching the murky
underwater footage together,

we can now reveal this wreck
as never before.

The stumps of two masts break the surface.

A wooden vessel 74 feet long,
with a deep hull.

What was this ship?

Inside the hold, engraved on the cask,
two mysterious letters.

John digs back through the logs
of the British fleet at Yorktown.

He discovers the engravings
are the letters J-Y,

and they tally with a ship captain's name.

And this was Joseph Young Husband
and his ship was called The Betsy.

It's an incredible discovery.

The Betsy
is a valuable military supply ship.

But why has she sunk
with barely a scratch?

On the drained wreck,

John finds something strange
in the bottom of her hull.

All of a sudden,
there's this rectangular opening

that looks like
it's actually been chiseled out,

just this one little block,
it's really strange.

There's only one thing this could be.

This is definitely what sank The Betsy.

The purposely cut opening
is a scuttle hole

that allowed water to flood the hull.

But why would General Cornwallis

deliberately sink
his own valuable supply ship?

John uncovers an 18th century painting
of the Siege of Yorktown

that he believes holds vital clues.

Washington and his Generals
by Charles Wilson Peel.

You can see the generals lined up here

but look how much larger the painting is
and how much more it takes in,

and some of the detail is,
is, much more interesting.

Over here we have the edge
of the York River

and the Yorktown shoreline,
and if we look closely, what do we see?

We see masts and yards of sunken ships.

Comparing the setting
of the painting

with a map of the York River

reveals a stunning correlation.

This is a whole row of ships
right along the beach

just as we found
in our archeological evidence,

and very likely one of these is The Betsy.

But it's seeing her masts

jutting out of the water
with the other ships

that is a real revelation for John.

The ship's masts and the yards

clearly present a solid barrier
that would prevent these French ships

out in the distance from launching troops
and small boats and making attack

on the shoreward side
of Cornwallis's position.

That really brings out why it was there,

how effective the sinking line was

against the French amphibious assault.

The glorious fighting ships
of the Royal Navy

reduced to the role of a sunken barricade

like so much scrap.

Now the hole that we found in Betsy,
that hole makes perfect sense.

Scuttle the ship, blockade the French,
protect your position.

The wreck of Betsy
provides the final chapter

for the graveyard of British wrecks.

The Royal Navy
once so dominant in these waters,

is now simply cannon fodder

in General Cornwallis's
desperate last stand.

John: It's a whole evolving picture
of increasing desperation,

increasing loss of resources
until the final end.

After two weeks under siege
and with no way to escape by sea,

Cornwallis runs desperately low
on food and ammunition.

On October 19th, 1781, he surrenders.

Everything finally works
for Washington

just the way he hopes it will.

British troops come out,

they play The World Turned Upside Down

because that's exactly
what it was for them.

Yorktown proves to be
a decisive victory for the Patriots.

Two years later, in 1783,

the signing of a peace treaty
ends the war.

America has won her independence,

and the United States is born.

A nation forged by the sacrifice
of the ships and men

revealed in the incredible evidence

deep beneath her now peaceful waters.