Thus, as Gesner and his team sifted their way downward, layer by layer, deck by deck, determining where all the items recovered were at the time of the disaster, a wonderful portrait of Pandora and its crew began to emerge. The focus was the captain's storeroom, from which sand was carefully removed. The first feature the team came upon was shelving built by the ship's carpenter and containing some of Captain Edwards' creamware dinner service, blue and white bowls as well as wine glasses and tumblers. On the floor stood rows of ceramic jars, many still corked and packed in sawdust. The other shows Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders.
Intriguing items surface each season.
Among the 489 objects recovered during the 1996 expedition was a clump encased in marine growth. It confirmed the suspected location of First Lieutenant John Larkin's cabin, and the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, England, subsequently described the stamp as the first of its kind found from the eighteenth century. Among the artifacts recovered from the wreck were more than 100 jars of spruce essence used to brew a scurvy preventative. Work on any sunken vessel is fraught with problems, but those Pandora presents are particularly difficult. For a start, the site is a long way from nowhere, making the operation a logistical nightmare and extremely expensive.