Drain the Oceans

New discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum reveal the identities and final moments of those trapped during the eruption of a volcano 2,000 years ago.

The Amber Room is one of the world’s most valuable lost art treasures. Stolen by the Nazis and kept in a castle on the Baltic coast, it vanished in the brutal last months of the war. Today the new discovery of a shipwreck holding a large secret cargo leads explorers to the heart of the mystery, and reveals a forgotten tragedy of 1945: the largest sea evacuation in history, dwarfing Dunkirk in size.

The attack on Pearl Harbor took the US fleet by surprise and went down in history books. But draining the islands of Hawaii using the latest scanning techniques not only reveals the advanced technology of secret Japanese subs and fighter planes that enabled the enemy to sink US battleships, but that the battle itself started far earlier and was far wider ranging than anyone ever knew before.

Archaeologists on land and sea reveal secrets of the infamous Alamo siege.

In the 9th century the Maya civilisation began to disappear. This ‘collapse’ is hotly debated. New discoveries offer a different view. In Mexico the discovery of the lost Kingdom of Sak Tz’i reveals that the Maya did not entirely disappear, and at the city of Chichen Itza a ritual human sacrifice in an underwater cave shows that even through environmental disaster the city thrived.

The investigation of a mysterious plane wreck in the tranquil waters of the Caribbean and the discovery of secret tunnels along the US border with Mexico reveal the incredible lengths cartels go to in a bid to ensure narcotics find a way to cities and towns across the world. Hidden from sight on land and at sea, we learn first-hand the ways in which the cartels operate and the routes.