The Drowned Places

From Ancient Greece to Port Royal, Damian Le Bas embarks on a cultural exploration of diving, investigating sunken human ruins around the world and the marine life that thrives there now

'Literary and learned. It goes deep' AMY LIPTROT
'The most compelling and evocative of underwater odysseys' KATE HUMBLE
'The most captivating book on diving that I have ever read' MENSUN BOUND

Damian Le Bas explores the meaning we find in sunken ruins around the world in this spellbinding love letter to diving.

Thousands of years ago, an island off the Straits of Gibraltar went to war with ancient Athens. The battle was lost, and an earthquake cleaved the land in two. Overnight the island sank beneath the waves - or so legend tells.

As a young boy, Damian Le Bas was captivated by the story of the lost city of Atlantis. As an adult, he dreams of diving to discover its ruins. After the death of his father, torn between his lifelong desire and the taboo his Romany culture places on the ocean, he comes by chance across a dive shop. He can't help but go in.

Under the waves, Damian enters a breathtaking world. As he masters the skills of this exhilarating sport, diving with seals in the Farne Islands, exploring submerged Roman ruins in Naples and mapping the sunken city of Port Royal in Jamaica, he is entranced anew, by wonders both man-made and natural.

Plato's writings on Atlantis were a parable about the hubris of humankind; in witnessing our effects on oceans and ocean communities, Damian finds echoes of this in the modern world.