Lake Neuchatel Wreck
About
This Roman transport sank near the mouth of the Thielle Canal on Lake Neuchatel sometime between 20 and 50 CE, likely supplying legions on the Rhine frontier. Drone photography spotted the site in 2024, and divers raised some 600 intact objects: Spanish olive oil amphorae, gladius swords, and a dismantled wagon with its wheels. Archaeologists nicknamed it the Eagles' Wreck.
What happened here
A merchantman goes down with everything aboard and the sea keeps most of it. Cargo is usually amphorae — wine, oil, fish sauce — stacked in layers in sand, or roof tiles, or marble in the round, or ingots stamped with the smelter's name. Timbers survive where the mud or the cargo covers them, and the hull shows how it was built: planks edge-joined with mortise and tenon before the frames go in, a way of building that is slow, strong and about to be abandoned. Personal things come up too — a cooking pot, a lamp, coins that date the last voyage to within a few years. Most losses happen in autumn, close inshore, on a coast the crew knew.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →