Sure. I can tell you what happened, from my own participation.
I first started working in Brazil in the early 70's. Met a diver on a harbor blasting job there, and we became friends and kept in touch over the years. In the 80's I was the product manager for an underwater tracking and navigation system, a sidescan sonar system, etc. My friend Marco had his own company in Brazil ( Geomap S.A. Rua Mexico, Rio) I signed them up as our sales reps for Brazil. I made a lot of trips down there.
On one of these trips, Marco and I were down at the yacht club in Rio looking for a place for lunch. I was amazed to look across the restaurant and see someone I knew, Dr. Harold Edgerton, of MIT. I had worked for Doc Edgerton's company (EG&G) for over ten years, and knew Doc. Of course I went over and said hello, and was surprised to run into him in a restaurant in Rio. Doc was with this guy who I did not know, but introduced him as Bob Marx. Former editor of Argosy magazine, and world renowned treasure hunter.. Marco and I joined them for lunch.
Doc and Bob Marx started explaining that there had been Roman amphora found on a wooden wreck offshore Rio. Very close, actually. Marx had convinced Doc to bring down one of his sub-bottom profilers to try to map the wreck. I was pretty amazed to hear about roman amphora in Rio, myself. But at that point had no reason to disbelieve it. Marx was going on and on about what an incredible find this would be, etc etc. I remember him being pretty full of himself, and we all stayed well into the afternoon, drinking and talking. Hydroacoustics, sonar, USBL tracking, ROVs etc. was my career for almost 40 years. I was ( and still am) very interested in finding things under the ocean.
During this entire lunch conversation Marco was pretty quiet. After we left Doc and Marx, we went back to my hotel, where Marco dropped me off. Later that evening he picked me up and we went to dinner. He told me he was not aware that I was friends with Doc. Within the world oceanographic and seafloor mapping community, Doc was a legend. Marco was in awe to have met him. Marco also knew Marx from earlier days when he was a diver in Brazil. I don't know the details of their earlier history.
Marco told me at dinner that while he could cheerfully watch Marx make an ass of himself, he did not feel right keeping his mouth shut about the amphorae if Doc Edgerton's reputation was involved. Then he told me this story.
Back when Marco was in college, he and some of his diving buddies came up with an idea to make a few bucks. One of them had a friend, or relative, ( I forget which) who had a shop in Rio that sold antiques, and old nautical stuff was popular. Brass portholes, binnacles, you know the shop type. Marco and his friends decided to have some pottery items made, and put them in the ocean to "age" them so that they would look antique. Grow a few barnacles, etc. They took a photograph from an encyclopedia, and went to a pottery place up in the hills above Rio where one of them knew the potter. They had him make up a number of copies of this pottery in the photograph, which happened to be a Roman amphora.
They then took the freshly made amphora out to an old wooden fishing boat wreck that they lobster dove on out of Rio, and they put them in the wreck. Marco said they never intended to claim these pots were roman, they just wanted them to look like old pots from the sea. They just happened to pick an amphora photo for the model.
Now, how Marx found out about these showing up on the antique market in Rio , I haven't any recollection of whether or not he told me about it. But he was now down there with Doc Edgerton and his SBP to find and document this wreck.
Marco and I called the hotel where Doc and Marx were staying, to ask if we could stop by. It was fairly late, but we knew they were planning to hire a boat the next morning and we wanted to let Doc know the amphora were not genuine before he went to all that trouble. Doc invited us over for a drink.
Well, when we got there, Doc and Marx were sharing a hotel suite, and Marx was already sacked out in his room. Doc, Marco and I sat up talking about all this. Doc laughed about it, and said he had run into an identical situation in the Med, where divers had "salted" a wreck site with modern pottery fakes. Marco explained that this was not his intention, they had just been college kids looking for an easy way to use diving to make a few easy bucks. About midnight, Marx woke up (probably from us talking in the next room) and came out. He was naked, by the way. The guy was a real piece of work. Anyhow, he threw on a robe and sat down, and right there Marco explained it all again to Marx. He told him, in front of me and Doc, exactly how the amphora got onto that wreck. He and his diving buddies had not gone back for all of them, we found out, and they had left several on the fishing boat wreck to age longer. Marco did not know if any of his buddies had been back, but suspected that some other diver had found the wreck, and the remaining fake amphora, and that was where all this started. He had put the jars on the wreck somewhere around 1970, and this Marx thing would have been around '83 or '84...so I am sure any amphora left on the wreck for 14 years would have looked authentic at first glance. But Marx was told they were fakes. He was pretty pissed off about it, but really, who could he be upset with? The next day Marco and I went about our business ( We were meeting with Petrobras about using underwater navigation systems to place drilling templates) and then I went on to other places.
Months later, when I was next in Rio, I asked Marco what had happened with the Marx/amphora thing. He told me Marx had hung around Rio long after that, making a nuisance of himself, until the government kicked him out of the country.
Now, as to whether or not the Brasilian government might have dumped dredge spoils over the area of that wreck, it's possible. It wasn't far offshore. They would know the wreck was modern, with no historical significance. Of course you are right, in that if it was a Roman wreck the government would have been trumpeting the news to the world, and it would be in a museum by now, and history re-written. Didn't happen, did it.
So, I was pretty surprised to read that someone reported that Marx had found a Roman wreck....because I know for a fact that it was not authentic, was not roman, and that Marx well knew that it wasnt. If he had gotten to the point of having one of these amphora dated, he would have confirmed that it was made from Brasilian clay around 1970.
But I admit, blaming the Brasilian government for obsuring his find of a lifetime makes a pretty good excuse for having no evidence....
