Diving on sunken ships has happened throughout history. Alexander the Great is reputed to have gone down in a diving bell, while Roman urinatores (free divers) apparently salvaged cargo from a wreck 20m deep off the south of France. The aqualung opened the underwater world to diving adventurers like Hans Hass and Jacques Cousteau in the 1940s. Although many ancient wrecks were found, little thought was given to their archaeological significance. It was not until 1960 that a young archaeologist, George Bass, teamed up with explorer Peter Throckmorton to investigate a Bronze Age shipwreck off Cape Gelidonya in Turkey. Bass learned to dive and showed that archaeology could be done underwater to the same standards as on land. Bass's team excavated a Bronze Age shipwreck of the 14th century BC at Uluburun off Turkey (this is the oldest known shipwreck in the world and is now preserved and on display in Bodrum Castle). Since then techniques have been refined, but the principles remain unchanged. The transformation of the ruined, dilapidated castle into a great museum of world importance was the work of vision, conviction and perseverance and, as is usual with all living organisms, time elapsed between conception and birth. The first seed was sown in 1958 by Peter Throckmorton and an early and enthusiastic convert to Throckmorton's vision of the castle as a museum, Hakki Gultekin, the director of the Izmir Museum, who brought this matter to the attention of the central government authorities in Ankara. The cause was also championed in the national press by Azra Erhad, a respected academic and the co-translator of such Classical works as the Iliad and the Odyssey into Turkish. These efforts resulted in the first grant of government funds (1959) and the placement of the castle under the jurisdiction of the Bodrum director of education, raising it from the status of an abandoned former prison. The Knights' Hall, with its graceful vaulted ceiling, became the nucleus of the museum-to-be when it became the repository of amphoras previously recovered by Turkish sponge divers as well as of the first artifacts excavated from under the sea by Captain Kemal Aras, Peter Throckmorton, Mustafa Kapkin and Honor Frost, all members of the initial explorations of coastal wrecks. These early initiatives and continued perseverance were rewarded in 1961 when the Turkish government, by official decree, created the ' Bodrum Museum ' in the castle under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture, appointing Haluk Elbe as its first director. It was during his tenure, between 1961 and 1973, that the work of restoration of the ruined castle began with repairs of the southern walls and of the knights' chapel which had been turned into a mosque by the Ottomans. This venue became the museum's first exhibit hall to be opened to the public (1963) at which time it housed the Mycenaean Collection, artifacts of the Mycenaean period excavated on the Bodrum peninsula near the village of Dirmil. During these years the Knights' Hall was also properly restored and assigned to house the Carian or Classical Collection while artifacts recovered from the sea were exhibited in an adjunct building to the west. Haluk Elbe also planted many of the trees and shrubs that today make the grounds of the castle so attractive. After the departure of Haluk Elbe in 1973 the pace of restoration of the castle and the development of the museum slowed down, with the significant exception of the English Tower which was repaired in 1975. Work was resumed and accelerated with the appointment of Oguz Alpozen to the museum directorship in 1978.....