In 1967 a Greek merchant ship which sailed during the lifetime of Alexander the Great, carrying a cargo of 400 amphorae, whose contents of almonds and olives remained intact, was found sunk off the coast of Kyrenia on the northern coast of Cyprus. It is one of the oldest shipwrecks ever found.
The ship, found by a Cypriot diver, lay at thirty meters on an unruffled, flat seabed of sand, manta rays, and eelgrass. Aided by currents, a muddy blanket had rapidly built up around the ship soon after it hit bottom and rolled over on her port side, blocking oxygen and sea life from attacking the timbers. About three quarters of the hull was thus preserved.

While ancient shipwrecks have been found all over the Mediterranean, nothing or very little of the ships themselves had survived. The Kyrenia ship was different, however. The unique circumstances that preserved it, owing to its load of amphorae under which a protective layer of sand kept a nearly complete merchant ship from destruction, have resulted in making it, to date, the finest preserved ship of the late Classical period of Greek civilization ever found.

A team of archaeologists of the Pennsylvania University Museum, having been granted government permission, under professor Michael Katzev set about the task of air-lifting away layer by layer of the muddy sand covering.
The mission consisted of scientists, technical experts and students of 12 different nationalities. It took them eight years from 1967 to 1974 to raise, preserve and restore the wreck.

Having remained underwater for 2.200 years the ship's waterlogged wood had undergone cellular breakdown, The timber had lost its strength and had the appearance of wet bread. The preservation work involved impregnation of the wood with a wax-like compound called polyethylene glycol in order to give it solidity and prevent shrinkage, a process which took from a few months for the smaller pieces to two whole years for the bigger ones.
After the ship was preserved it was then painstakingly reassembled. The ship and its cargo were then housed and put on display in a special gallery in the heart of Kyrenia castle, where it still lies today. Since 1974, however, when Turkey invaded and occupied the northern part of Cyprus, including Kyrenia, the ship has been out of bounds.

The archaeological work revealed that the vessel was an open boat, only about 15 metres long, with very short decks in the bow and stern. Under the stern deck there was a 'sail locker' which contained spare parts for the rigging, bundles of iron ingots, remnants of foods such as almonds, olives, pistachios, beans sprigs of dried herbs, grapes and figs and even a marble basin for performing sacrifices which would bring the voyagers good luck.
From the ship's cargo the itinerary of her last voyage can be retraced. She had sailed the islands of the eastern Aegean before she sank. She carried on board 400 Rhodian wine amphorae, millstones from the island of Nisyros and 10.000 almonds which had probably just been collected from Cyprus.
Most of this simple ship was open and crammed with amphorae, millstones and perhaps bolts of cloth or other perishable materials. Undoubtedly, the crew and captain ate and slept on top of the unwieldy cargo.
Little is known about the crew other than it consisted of four people, as four plates, bowls, saucers and drinking cups were found, but there were no traces of personal belongings.

At first archaeologists believed that the reason why the ship had sunk was as a result of old age. This was an old ship, about a century old, which probably went down from old age. Carbon-14 tests suggested that the trees used to build the ship were felled in about the year 389 BC, whereas the freshly-harvested almonds in the cargo gave a date of 288 BC. Thus the ship was about a century old with evidence that it had often been repaired, the last being with lead sheathing to shore up the seepage.
The great age of the ship initially led archaeologists to believe that a slight collision, or simply wave stress may have finally opened her up. However, the discovery of iron spearheads underneath the hull and embedded in the sides of the ship led to the conclusion that the ship had been attacked by pirates. The Kyrenia coast has numerous secret coves from which swift rowed pirate ships could attack merchantmen.
This would also explain the disappearance of the crew, who would probably have been removed by the pirates to be sold as slaves. Then they would have combed the ship's cargo, picking up anything of value in coins, movable cargo and crew's belongings, before axing a hole in the bilge so the ship would sink, covering up all evidence of the attack. In view of the fact that most of the ship's planking is lost just at the critical turn from the keel to the bilge where this scuttling chop would most likely have occurred. In its early years on the seabed the waterlogged ship split open under the weight of the cargo, exposing the broken bilge planks to water and marine life which attacked them until the silt built up again.

The Kyrenia shipwreck was raised, studied, preserved and restored with such fidelity that we now have a nearly complete picture of how a merchantman was built in the fourth century BC.
In 1982 the Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition, which has as one of its aims the preservation and study of various aspects of Greek maritime tradition, decided to build a replica of the Kyrenia ship in a joint project with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology of Texas.
The replica has the exact dimensions of the prototype and was built using the same methods applied by ancient shipwrights. Known as the "shell-first method", it involved the building-up of the planks first, in contrast to the technique use din modern wooden shipbuilding, where, after laying the keel, the frames are placed first. As far as is known, this was the only method used in shipbuilding up to the tenth century AD.

The original name of the ship was not preserved, so she is known affectionately as "Kyrenia". The replica was named Kyrenia II. Construction was completed in 1985 and followed the original lines of the ancient shipbuilders. The materials used were close to the original as possible. Pine was selected and for the tenors pegs of oak. Its sail measured 64 sq. m, an educated guess as to the original.
Kyrenia II was launched on 22 June 1985 and went on a trial sail before attempting to travel to the islands of the Aegean in an attempt to recreate the probable route the ancient ship made during her last voyage.
Before returning to Cyprus , the ship represented Greece in New York during the 4th of July celebrations on the centenary of the statue of Liberty and the anniversary of American Independence.