Reddit reviews Beneath the Seven Seas

I'm hoping to do a PhD in nautical archaeology at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M under George Bass and the research team down there. I have a bad undergrad GPA, so what I've done is pulled the syllabi for their entire undergrad and grad programs in NautArch and already done all the (listed) reading as well as collected the entire life works of Howard Chapelle and studied those plans as well. Chapelle was the most prolific of the naval architects tasked with measuring and drawing the historic ships for the WPA during the Depression as mentioned above. The skiff design I linked was one of the designs Chapelle collected. I figure that if I show up at the Institute with an 1880s skiff built with 1880s technology, a good GRE score, work experience in contract archaeology, a bunch of other extracurricular experience from my undergrad days, a solid letter of recommendation from my undergrad professor, recreational, advanced, rescue, and various technical SCUBA diving certifications, several languages, experience crewing traditional sailing ships, and having already done all the reading for their grad program, maybe they'll let me in with my shitty 2.95 GPA that was the result of my not caring about college for two years before I changed my major. Maybe. They only have like a 12% acceptance rate and I'm competing with a bunch of perfect students.

Anyway, if you want to know more, a good, easy reading book with lots of color photos is Beneath the Seven Seas: Adventures with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, edited by George Bass. It's mostly focused on the Med and Greco-Roman/Persian/Byzantine wrecks as that's the place that's had the most work done, since that's where George Bass basically invented the discipline. It has a decent amount of information and is a fun read.

If you want to know more about ancient ship construction than you know about your own genitals, pick up Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks by J. Richard Steffy. It has a complete illustrated glossary in the back so you won't get lost, but to say it's information dense is an understatement on the level of saying that a neutron star is a bit dense.