Out of the Depths, page 5
The shipwreck in such a ship of the Apostle Paul (St Paul), traditionally dated to 60 CE, receives comparatively detailed coverage in Acts of the Apostles (27:1–44). Paul had been arrested in Palestine for his Christian missionary activities. At first he was to be tried there, but, as a Roman citizen, he claimed the right to be tried before the emperor himself in Rome. Paul was handed over to the centurion Julius, who was to escort him there together with other prisoners. At Caesarea Maritima they boarded a ship from Adramyttium and sailed north. The ship called at Sidon before sailing north, past Cyprus, to the south coast of Asia Minor. Contrary winds slowed progress, but the ship finally reached the port of Myra in Lydia. There Julius and his prisoners transferred from their first ship to a ship of Alexandria, Egypt, which was carrying grain to Italy. This ship set off westwards but still faced contrary winds. After reaching the port of Cnidus, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor, it was decided to sail south of the island of Crete in the hope of encountering better winds there.
The ship eventually reached a place known as Fair Havens on the south coast of Crete, but the crew became worried because winter was fast approaching. The ship might winter at Fair Havens, but it was eventually decided to move to the port of Phoenix further to the west on the southern coast of Crete, since it was a safer place to spend the winter. The ship put to sea, but soon afterwards it was struck by a violent storm, with winds coming from the northeast. For almost two weeks the ship was driven westwards before the storm until the crew believed they were approaching land.
The sailors dropped their sounding lead and found a depth of 20 fathoms (120 feet/36 m). A little later they did this again and found 15 fathoms (90 feet/27 m). Clearly the ship was nearing land. To prevent the vessel from being driven ashore, the sailors dropped four anchors from the stern of the ship. Then they got out the ship’s boat and said they would get into it and lay further anchors from the bow. Suspecting that the sailors were trying to desert the ship, the centurion ordered the crew to stay on board and had his soldiers cast the boat adrift. Efforts were now made to lighten the ship by dumping some of its cargo of grain into the sea.
Daylight revealed that the ship was not far from a shoreline, so its anchors were taken up and the vessel was run aground on a sandbank. The forward part of the ship remained intact, but the stern began to break up under the impact of the waves. There were said to be 276 people on the ship and all were said to have reached the shore safely, with some swimming and others coming ashore on pieces of wreckage.
Paul’s ship had been wrecked on the island of Malta. The wreck site may have been in the bay still known as St Paul’s Bay, but no remains of his ship have ever been found there. Paul spent the three winter months on Malta and then headed north in another grain ship from Alexandria that had spent the winter at the island. After calling at Syracuse and Reggio, Paul’s ship finally reached Pozzuoli on the Gulf of Naples. This was one of the principal ports where grain for Rome was landed. Paul went on to Rome by land and spent two years under house arrest there before eventually appearing before the emperor’s court. He was acquitted. According to later tradition, Paul then went on a journey to Spain to spread the Christian gospel, only to be arrested once again and returned to Rome. There Paul was martyred during a persecution of Christians.
After the western Roman empire collapsed in the second half of the fifth century CE, the empire lived on in the eastern Mediterranean, with the capital now at Constantinople. It was an increasingly Greek political entity, and historians have called this Roman remnant the Byzantine empire; it lasted until 1453. One feature retained in this surviving empire was the need to continue the grain trade to the capital, but now the principal route was from Egypt to Constantinople. Hundreds of ships were active in this trade and looked to the Byzantine navy to protect them. The main Byzantine warship was the dromon, a type of galley that included among its weapons an early form of flamethrower projecting ‘Greek fire’. Sadly no wreck of a dromon has yet been found. Indeed, until recently no wreck of any Byzantine warship had come to light.
In 2004, during the digging of a new railway tunnel in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey, in the suburb of Yenikapi, the remains of the Harbour of Theodosius were unearthed. It had flourished as a major harbour for Constantinople between the fourth and eleventh centuries CE before becoming silted up and then built over. Among the remains of more than thirty Byzantine ships found on the site by archaeologists were six Byzantine warships dating from the ninth to the tenth century CE. They were not dromons but small galleys used as scouts and dispatch vessels. They probably sank in the harbour during a violent storm around 1,000 years ago and were not salvaged. Silt and mud soon covered them, keeping out light and air and thus aiding their preservation. Removed from the site with all the other wrecks discovered, the warships are undergoing conservation and research.
Finds of the wrecks of Byzantine merchant ships are more common, and a particularly interesting one was discovered on the southwest coast of Turkey at Yassi Ada. Although the ship, at just over 69 feet (21 m) long, could carry some 60 tons of cargo, its hull, at a slim 4:1 length-to-width ratio and a maximum breadth well aft of midships, was primarily designed for speed. The hull showed an interesting transitional stage between Greco-Roman shell-first construction and the later frame-first construction. The lower part of this ship, up to the waterline, was built in shell-first style, but with smaller, wider-spaced mortise-and-tenon joints that were not pegged. Above the waterline the planking was simply nailed to frames or ribs within the ship. The ship probably had two masts, but with triangular lateen sails rather than square ones.
The ship had been well equipped and despite its small size carried eleven iron anchors. At the stern the remains of an elaborate galley (kitchen) were found. A large tile firebox with an adjustable iron grill occupied the port half of the galley floor. A superstructure rising above deck level to give access and interior light to the galley was roofed with tiles. Galley wares included cooking pots, cauldrons, a copper baking pan, jars, pitchers, jugs and five settings of fine tableware.
A storage locker in the galley’s forward wall contained the ship’s valuables: sixteen gold and fifty copper coins, three steelyards and a set of balance pan weights, sixteen unused lamps, a carpenter’s chest of tools and a bronze censer surmounted by a cross. The latest copper coin was minted in the year 625/626 CE, so the shipwreck probably took place shortly after that date. An inscription on the largest steel-yard gives the name and title of its owner: ‘Georgios priest sea captain’.
Georgios’s ship was carrying around nine hundred amphoras. Some seven hundred of these were globular jars stacked three deep in the hold; the rest were cylindrical jars placed horizontally between the necks of the top layer. Most probably contained wine. At first it was believed that the lost ship was a coastal trader involved in the wine trade, but the presence of a priest-captain, the elaborate galley (kitchen) and much Christian graffiti on the outside of the amphoras pointed to a different role. The ship probably belonged to the Byzantine Orthodox Church and had been designed for speed and the feeding of passengers so that it might transport churchmen as well as cargo, with the latter likely to have been derived from Church estates. The ship was lost towards the end of a long war between the Byzantine and Persian empires (602–628 ce). At one point the Byzantines had been in such desperate straits that the emperor called on the Church to support his army with money and supplies. The Church did this and eventually the Byzantines defeated the Persians. It is possible that this Church-owned vessel was lost while carrying a cargo of wine to supply the Byzantine army during the conflict.
Although they were victorious against the Persians, the Byzantines faced a new and more dangerous enemy a little later in the seventh century CE. Out of Arabia came armies committed to the new religion of Islam. Within a few years they had driven the Byzantines out of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. Although they were originally land warriors, the Muslim Arabs soon took to the sea and were able to send fleets and armies to besiege Constantinople on several occasions, although without success. By the late tenth century CE the Byzantines had recovered enough to start pushing back into Syria. On the land frontiers Christians and Muslims often clashed even when major wars were not taking place. However, maritime commerce was still possible between the two sides, as revealed by the wreck of a ship lost early in the eleventh century CE, probably around 1025.
When excavation of the shipwreck at Serce Limani on the south coast of Turkey began in 1977 much broken Islamic glass was found, as well as some whole Islamic glassware. The initial assumption of maritime archaeologists was that this was a Muslim vessel and that the broken glass was caused by the shipwreck. However, the later discovery of pork bones and items with Christian markings cast doubt on the original assumption. This was a Byzantine ship, not a Muslim one. Attempts to glue together the broken Islamic glass were largely fruitless and it was eventually accepted that most of the broken glass was scrap being sent for reuse in a Christian glassworks. Literary sources showed that at various times scrap glass had been sent from Muslim ports to Christian Venice. The broken glass in this cargo was probably on its way to a glassworks in Constantinople. Broken or not, this was the largest collection of medieval Islamic glass ever found.
Among the other Islamic items found in the shipwreck were some gold coins, with the latest probably minted in 1024/1025 CE, thus helping to establish when the ship was lost. The vessel was 51¹∕₅ feet (15.6 m) long and its breadth was a third of that. The ship was of modern construction: that is, the skeleton frame of the ship had been built first and the planks of the hull were nailed onto it later. The ship probably had two masts, with two triangular lateen sails, and a steering oar at the stern. The hull had a flat bottom that would allow the vessel to enter shallow rivers. There were some nine iron anchors on the ship.
Iron dissolves over time underwater, unless buried in mud or silt, but before this happens rock concretions can form around iron objects and an empty space in the shape of the lost object will remain. Archaeologists have found a way to inject liquid epoxy into such empty moulds. Once it has hardened, a copy of the lost iron object will have been created. Using this method, a whole collection of iron Byzantine tools and other items from this ship have been re-created. Also found was the largest collection of Byzantine weapons from any archaeological site. Eleven sets of weapons were found, each containing one thrusting spear and four or five javelins (throwing spears), some still wrapped in a burlap-like fabric. An iron sword with a wooden sheath and a bronze hilt, ornately decorated with a plumed bird, probably belonged to the ship’s captain.
Because plans were made showing the position of every artefact found on the wreck site, it was possible to determine the social stratification of those on board. The most prominent people, officers and merchants, lived at the ship’s stern, eating pork, goat (and possibly mutton) and fish, along with almonds, various fruits and olives. To pass the time they played chess. Also in the stern were the gold and copper coins, jewellery, weighing devices and sets of pan balance weights, iron padlocks with keys and most of the weapons and tools. A less grand living space for merchants was found in the bow of the ship. The common sailors, however, lived amidships, unarmed, not sharing the pork and possibly not the fruit, and playing the less intellectual game of backgammon.
Many of the amphoras found in the ship had Greek names written on them, but others had what appeared to be Slavic names. Some of the amphoras had been made at kilns run by a colony of Hellenized Bulgarians on the Sea of Marmara, not far from Constantinople. It is possible that the ship and its crew came from this colony.
The Serce Limani wreck is eloquent testimony to the fact that whatever clashes were taking place between Byzantine and Muslim warriors on the land frontier between their two civilizations, in the world of maritime trade the two sides were still able to cooperate and do business. This Byzantine ship had probably picked up its cargo of glass, both intact and broken, at a Muslim port in Syria or Palestine and was taking it back to Constantinople. However, it ran into a storm and took shelter at Serce Limani. An anchor was put down but the storm continued, the anchor broke and the vessel was driven onto the rocks. Before the eleventh century CE was over, a different kind of storm would burst over the eastern Mediterranean with the arrival of the first crusaders from western Europe. Their arrival would have profound effects on both the Byzantines and the Muslims.
2
Asian Shipwrecks before 1500
Wang was in despair. The fierce winds and mountainous seas were driving his ship and the rest of the fleet towards the shore. The anchors would not hold much longer. Wang, the commander of one hundred Chinese soldiers now in the service of the new Mongol emperor of China, Khubilai Khan, had resisted attacks by Japanese samurai warriors, but there was no way to defeat the fury of the typhoon now raging around him. The Mongol invasion of Japan in 1281 was coming to a disastrous end. Soon most of the ships of the Mongol fleet would be smashed to pieces on the rocky Japanese coast and Wang would find a watery grave.
The lost soldier would lie undisturbed at the bottom of Imari Bay for more than seven centuries. Only in 2002 would maritime archaeologists find his remains. They were able to do so because of the spread of maritime archaeology in Asia since the 1970s. Yet that discipline is still at an early stage in this region and so far relatively few ancient shipwrecks have been found when compared to those that have been discovered in an area like the Mediterranean Sea.
Hundreds of Roman shipwrecks have been found in the Mediterranean, but Roman maritime interests were not restricted to that sea. Sailing from Egyptian ports on the Red Sea, Roman ships also ventured into the Indian Ocean, particularly in the first two centuries CE. The Romans had a strong demand for goods from India and China. Some came via the overland ‘silk road’ through Central Asia, but others arrived via the maritime silk route through the Indian Ocean. Sadly, almost no shipwrecks from this period have yet been found. An exception is what is claimed to be the oldest shipwreck so far discovered in the Indian Ocean. The remains of this lost ship were found off Godavaya on the southern coast of Sri Lanka in 2003 and several archaeological expeditions have visited the site since 2008. The vessel was carrying a cargo of raw materials, including iron ingots and glass ingots, as well as finished stone querns (benches) and ceramic bowls. Unfortunately, little of the ship itself is left, but the artefacts suggest the wreck dates to either the last two centuries BCE or the first century CE.
Chinese goods going by sea originally reached the Romans via Indian intermediaries. Indeed in the early centuries CE, Chinese maritime developments mostly took place on internal waterways – rivers, lakes and canals – rather than on the oceans. Most Chinese overseas trade at this time was carried by foreign vessels, chiefly Arab, Indian and Southeast Asian ones. When the wreck of one of these vessels was found in Indonesian waters in 1998, it was a major find for maritime archaeologists and all those interested in the history of China under the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce).
The silk road from China through Central Asia to the West was an important trade route, but while pack animals such as camels could carry consignments of silk with little fear of damage, they could not carry large quantities of Chinese ceramics safely. These bulk exports could only go by sea and the wreck discovered in 1998 contained the largest hoard of Tang dynasty ceramics ever found.
The ship had sunk around 830 CE near the island of Belitung in Indonesia. It was 56 feet (17 m) underwater, and the hull was 58 feet (18 m) long and 21 feet (6.4 m) wide. Although it was carrying a Chinese cargo, the ship itself was an Arab dhow, probably built in Yemen or Oman. Made of African and Indian timber, the ship’s hull planks were sewn together with strong coconut-fibre rope, a feature of many Indian Ocean ships. The vessel was thought to be on its way from a south China port, probably Guangzhou, bound for a port in the Persian Gulf, possibly Basra. This would have been one of the longest sea voyages undertaken up to that time.
Apart from about 10 tons of lead ingots, which served as ballast but could later be sold, most of the ship’s cargo was made up of Chinese ceramics: some 60,000 pieces in all, many of them intact. Most were bowls turned out by kilns at Changsha, south of the River Yangtze in central China, but there were also hundreds of mass-produced inkpots, spice jars and ewers. One of the bowls bore a Chinese date that corresponds to the year 826 CE, which fits in with the date ranges suggested by Chinese coins found in the wreck and radiocarbon dating of the ship’s timbers, and a sample of star anise, a spice native to China and Vietnam. When shipped the Changsha bowls were nested and wrapped in straw or packed in large storage jars from Vietnam. In addition to the mass-market cargo, the Belitung ship also contained numerous pieces of silverware, some etched with gold, and the largest gold cup of Tang origin ever known, as well as more refined ceramics from Zhejiang province in China.
That an Arab dhow sank in Southeast Asian waters carrying a Chinese cargo around 830 CE shows that at that time a wide-ranging international trade existed in Asian waters. There must also have been cultural interchange between regions, as the Changsha bowls are decorated with motifs which demonstrate that their Chinese makers had a good understanding of their intended markets. Most of the bowls bear geometric designs or inscriptions from the Quran rendered in red or green, and were obviously intended for Muslim customers in the Abbasid caliphate, which then dominated the Middle East. Green-splashed bowls were popular in Persia, while those adorned with lotus symbols were intended for Buddhist customers. The blue used on the Zhejiang ware was made from cobalt and in the ninth century the Chinese had to import this from Persia.
Changsha bowls from the Belitung shipwreck displayed at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2011.
