Ships are among any culture’s most technologically complex artifacts. Even today, one can argue that NASA’s space shuttles—space “ships”—represent the most complex type of artifact humanity has ever created. Virtually everything ever made or used by humans was at one time or another carried onboard a ship, including the pyramids (stone by stone, of course). And because ships often sank in ways that made them inaccessible to human and natural destruction—landing in deep water or rapidly buried by a protective cover of sediment—some of them have survived, allowing nautical archaeologists to excavate and study them.
The excavation of a shipwreck, however, is a complex, time-consuming and expensive proposition. While every wreck can contribute to our knowledge of the past, not every wreck site is of equal importance. Some shipwrecks are better preserved than others. Many ships that came to grief in shallow, unprotected waters exist now simply as scattered remains. Archaeologically and historically speaking, these wrecks are of little value, although they may contain some significant artifacts. Other wrecks survive only partially or come from periods and cultures for which we already have many examples, making the expense and effort of excavating, removing and conserving them unrealistic. Nevertheless, such “contributory” vessels can be exceptionally valuable in teaching us about the evolution of ship construction.1 Some wrecks, however, are of paramount importance because they are unique. These are ships that belong to a period or a culture for which no well-preserved shipwrecks have been previously found or studied. These truly represent the “holy grails” of nautical archaeology and are worthy of complete excavation, conservation, publication and exhibition—a process often measured in decades.
My own personal wish list of unique wrecks now includes ships of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Sea Peoples (including Philistine) cultures, as well as the hull of a Classical-period trireme (an oared ship with three banks of rowers on each side).
Think of it this way: The excavation of a unique vessel contributes 100 percent new knowledge. One example of this is the Kinneret Boat (sometimes called the “Jesus Boat”) that I excavated for the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums (now the Israel Antiquities Authority) in 1986. This vessel was the first—and to date, the only—ancient hull to be found and excavated in the Sea of Galilee. It added immeasurably to our knowledge of boats and seafaring on the Kinneret (as the Sea of Galilee is called in Hebrew), which form the background to Jesus’ ministry. Although the excavation was done quickly, the conservation took over a decade. The boat as conserved is now exhibited in the Yigal Allon Museum at Kibbutz Ginosar on the shores of the Kinneret.
Many moons ago, when I took my first tentative steps in nautical archaeology, the idea of finding or studying shipwrecks lying below diving depths was, quite literally, a dream. Today it is a reality.
In 1976 oceanographer Willard Bascom made a fascinating argument that shipwrecks of historical and archaeological significance survive in the depths of the Mediterranean and the Black Seas.2 Moreover, he maintained, there may well be many of them.
Bascom studied the records of the maritime insurers of Lloyds of London for ship losses during the mid-19th century. From these documents he extracted fascinating statistics regarding how, where, why and in what quantities ships met their demise.
Of the sunken ships he studied, about 80 percent sank near coastal obstructions. An additional 10 percent wrecked in open water. The remaining 10 percent disappeared without a trace. The ships in this category were often sighted heading into bad weather. The likelihood is that these, too, succumbed and sank in open water. In other words, about one-fifth (20 percent) sank in open—which for the most part means “deep”—waters. This is probably just as true in ancient times as in Bascom’s time.
In antiquity, sailing was a seasonal activity, limited to the period from spring to fall. During that time in the eastern Mediterranean, the wind blows primarily from the northwest. That means ships could easily sail downwind from, say, Italy or Greece to Egypt. Making the return trip back from Egypt was an entirely different story. Throughout antiquity, seafarers returning from Egypt sailed (or rowed) in a counterclockwise route, often making use of land and sea breezes. They had to pass along ancient Israel’s coastline, making this route arguably one of the most traveled in antiquity.
There is a modern myth that ancient seafarers hugged the coast for safety. In fact, as any sailor will tell you, the last place a ship wants to be in a storm is near a rapidly approaching lee shore. On Paul’s perilous sea journey to Rome, the crew spoke 080of abandoning ship only when soundings revealed that the bottom was rapidly coming up (Acts 27:27–29).
I am convinced that somewhere out there, below the deep blue waters off Israel’s Mediterranean coast, the hulls and the cargoes of lost ships mark the route of an ancient maritime superhighway. I hope to look for them one day.
Ships are among any culture’s most technologically complex artifacts. Even today, one can argue that NASA’s space shuttles—space “ships”—represent the most complex type of artifact humanity has ever created. Virtually everything ever made or used by humans was at one time or another carried onboard a ship, including the pyramids (stone by stone, of course). And because ships often sank in ways that made them inaccessible to human and natural destruction—landing in deep water or rapidly buried by a protective cover of sediment—some of them have survived, allowing nautical archaeologists to excavate and study them. The excavation of a […]
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