01-17-2010, 01:06 PM
I would second the possibility that a disabled Roman-era ship could drift to Brazil on the Atlantic current. The same happened to numerous Japanese ships in the Pacific. They would be disabled off the coast of Japan and drift with the current to make landfall on the North American coast. If the ship was, for example, hauling rice the crew could survive the long (1-2 year) journey. They knew how to distill fresh water from seawater as well. There are a number of well-documented cases...in fact, when Matthew Perry first went to Japan, it was partly on the pretext of repatriating some of these wrecked sailors. Check out Katherine Plummer 1984, The Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors, ISBN: 978-4897880235.
