Career
He was also a Trustee for NUMA and was an instructor at Nova Southeastern University. The Cape Gelidonya shipwreck (c 1200 British Columbia) was discovered by Throckmorton in 1959 using information provided him by Kemal Aras, a sponge diver from Bodrum, Turkey who had first seen parts of the vessel"s cargo of bronze ingots in 1954, but who had failed to recognize that it was actually a bronze age shipwreck and thus its archaeological importance. The ship is believed to have been Syrian.
The Yassi Ada shipwreck (c 4th century AD) was discovered in a fully silted ancient Roman harbor at Yassi Ada, Turkey, by Peter Throckmorton and Honor Frost in 1958, but was not fully surveyed and excavated until 1967-1969.
The Pantano Longarini wreck (c 600-650 AD), found by Peter Throckmorton and Gerhard Kapitan at Pantano Longarini in 1965, is of Greek or Southern Italian origin. The Dokos shipwreck (c 2250-2050 British Columbia) was discovered near Hydra Island, Greece, in 1975 by Peter Throckmorton who found cargo from an obviously sunken ship at 20 meters depth.
The cargo consisted of pottery of the Cycladic type. This is possibly the oldest wreck discovered to date.
Peter also discovered the 1877 iron bark ELISSA lying off the shipbreaker"s yard in Perama, Greece.
From her lines and fittings and his experience sailing aboard a "Downeaster" as a teenager, he knew ELISSA for what she wasone of the last square-rig ships still in the trade, even if greatly modified, of smuggling cigarettes. She is now completely restored and considered one of the finest nineteenth-century tall ships still sailing.
