In the month of February this year, in an isolated cove on the beach of Gela, whose location is appropriately not specified, by chance Mr. Giuseppe Curella, while taking a walk on the shore, noticed that a wooden structure
of a strange shape which was later understood to be perhaps referable to the structure of the keel of an ancient ship, probably a floor, although nothing prevents us from thinking that it could refer to an unimportant wooden structure. And in any case, significantly and responsibly, Mr. Curella tried to contact some competent institutions to inform them of the discovery without, however, as usual, receiving any response.
But, despite this, he also had the idea of informing the State Police of Gela of the discovery, who responsibly immediately took action and even after an inspection on the same beach recovered the wood for the appropriate investigations to be referred to the Superintendence of Sea.
The news of the discovery – passed to us by the historian prof. Nuccio Mulè – assuming that he refers to a wooden structure of an ancient ship, could be of considerable importance because it would be added to those of Franco Cassarino, a diver from Gelato who made many underwater discoveries on the seabed of Bulala with the recovery of a high number of archaeological finds including the unique one in the world of the orichalcums, but then there was the late Prof. Sebastiano Tusa who directed the Superintendence of the Sea in Sicily…
And to think that in addition to the ancient ships on the seabed of Gela there are also numerous finds of war archeology of the Americans of the Second World War relating to the Landing of 10 July 1943; landing rafts, tanks, jeeps, trucks, weapons and even the remains of around twenty American C-47 Douglas planes, hit by friendly fire in the Gulf of Gela on the night of 11 July 1943, with several inside dozens of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division.
Anything other than the Landing Museum could have been created in Gela, only if someone from the regional (but also local) institutions had taken an interest in activating funding for underwater research. A missed opportunity but still possible to be exploited tomorrow.
Whatever happens, we await news from the institutions on the discovery made by Mr. Curella, in the hope of having them (hopefully) in the next few months, regional funding and the will of politicians permitting.
