History Online - Ships

The earliest historic record of seafaring ships that can be found seem to be the Neolithic petroglyphs or rock art that are found in the Egyptian eastern dessert.

Many of these patterns have been dated to the Naqada period of Egyptian history which covers approximately the period of 4500-3100 BCE. Modern research is currently being done to obtain datable materials found in conjunction with the petroglyphs to more firmly establish the dating of when the images were made.

Current dates on many sites have been derived by comparative analysis with images found on artifacts and grave goods that are dateable by carbon fourteen analysis. However more conclusive dating of when these artifacts were created is yet to be made. Early interest in the culture that produced the petroglyphs was generated by England's archeologist Flinders Petrie in 1920. Petrie created one of the earliest archeological surveys of Egypt and did extensive work in Naqada.

While exploring Egypt Petrie was also instrumental in establishing one of the first historic chronologies to help organize the evidence of his findings. The spirit of his efforts established Petrie as a true pioneer in the science of modern archeology and Egyptology. The Eastern dessert of Egypt holds some of the earliest surviving evidence of mans seafaring activities. The pictorial record of these activities was recorded permanently for posterity in the form of beautifully rendered petroglyphs of various types of ships. These pictures made as rock art are spread throughout the Eastern Egyptian dessert on the rocks and walls of the Wadis between the Nile river valley and the coast of the Red Sea.

Many of these petroglyphs recreate images that are common to other artifacts from the Naqada and prehistoric phases of Egyptian Civilization. Grave goods from the Naqada periods reflect the same Iconography that are found in the pertoglyphs this phenomena has lead archeologists to conclude many of these images can be dated to the Naqada period of Egyptian Prehistory which runs from 4500-3100 BCE.

The Trojan War:Legend has it, that for ten long years the Greeks laid siege to the ancient city of Troy but could not take it. Then one night they sailed away leaving only a large Wooden Horse. Thinking that the Greeks had given up and returned home the Trojans took what they thought was a large idol into the city as war booty. That night ten brave men crawled out of the belly of the horse. They opened the gates of the city allowing the returning Greek soldiers to pour in and defeat the mighty city of Troy.

The Bireme was the warship used at the time of the Trojan wars. It had a broad bottom with a shallow draft. Biremes were propelled by two banks of oars and virtually skimmed over the seas. The bow had a portion that protruded out at water level. It is thought that this configuration was intended for ramming and piercing the enemy's ships hull.

This earlier configuration is close to the structure of the boats used by the Greeks to defeat the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BCE. It is clear from ancient Iconography that the evolution and changes to the configuration of these ships evolved over an extended period of time. The time between the Trojan and Persian wars being approximately 800 years.

Documentary evidence of ships exists almost from the earliest written records. The Egyptians kept very detailed and precise accounts of crews and equipment on their ships. Herodotus, the Greek historian described an Egyptian ship in the 5BC but Homer, probably writing in the 8th century BC provides the earliest description of actual shipbuilding in the ancient world. The interpretation of literary sources raises the same problems as the iconography. How reliable is th author, can we trust his description? Anachronism is a constant risk. Homer, for example, may describe the ships used by the archaic Greeks in terms of the ships of his own time. The medieval English poet Geoffrey de Winesalf who went crusading with Richard the Ist attempts to describe a Mediterranean galley in terms of the northern European galea which was familiar to him. Sometimes it is possible to test literary descriptions against real evidence. Homer describes the incident on the island of the nymph Calypso when Odysseus builds a ship to escape "Twenty trees he felled, and lopped their branches with his axe; then trimmed them in a workmanlike manner and trued them to the line. Presently Calypso brought him augers. With these he drilled through all his planks, cut to fit across each other, and fixed this flooring together by means of dowels driven through the interlocking joints". The translation and interpretation of this has always seemed bizarre to Greek scholars and as a result the rest of the passage has been doctored to give an account of the ship which seems reasonable to people familiar with modern, ie, post C16th, boat building, in which Odysseus goes on to fasten the planks to the ribs. However marine archaeology has now produced sufficient ancient ships to corroborate Homer and we now know that ancient Greek ships were not built by fastening the planks to a skeleton of ribs but by fastening the planks to each other with mortise and tenon joints pegged together with dowels and inserting the ribs into the hull afterwards. Whilst descriptions of ships are common in literature technical accounts of ships and shipbuilding had to wait for the so called scientific revolution of the C16th and C17th centuries when scholars began to study and attempt to reconstruct the ships of antiquity from the descriptions in the ancient texts. Lazarus de Baif who produced the first known treatise on naval architecture in 1536 (De Re Navali) used classical texts and iconography as his sources. By the C17th, although the number of written records had not increased significantly more illustrations were available. Studies of ancient texts were used, however, to reconstruct ships without reference to what was technically feasible.

From the C18th classical literary descriptions of ships could be reinforced by iconographic evidence, however, rudimentary from archaeological excavation so reconstructions could be made which approximated more or less to the originals. At this point the literary and iconographic sources coincided. Nineteenth century scholars were especially interested in the rowing systems of ancient galleys, particularly those which were described in literature but which they could not find any iconographic or archaeological evidence. For example the C3BC greek king Ptolemy Philopator was known to have built a vessel described as a 40 which was assumed to mean 40 banks of oars. Interpreting this taxed nautical scholarship to the limit. How could 40 banks be fitted into the known pattern of classical rowing, or any rowing system for that matter? One C19th scholar offered this as a possibility . More recent scholarship suggests that Ptolemy's 40 was probably a catamaran.

The early wooden boats were flat bottomed and square ended but as techniques of handling timber improved they developed more rounded hull forms which maintained the sickle shape of the reed raft. Iconographic evidence shows that such boats could be fitted with bipod masts which were probably copied from reed boats where single masts were not feasible. The bipod mast spread the load across the gunwhale of the boat and was equally applicable to shell built wooden boats which did not had substantial keels into which a single mast could be stepped. Alternatively the use of a 'bipod' mast may be indicative of a method of building which does not provide a strong central keel to which a mast step could be attached.

These early Egyptian wooden ships are unusual in the history of wooden boatbuilding because they do not appear to have developed from the dug out and, as a result, they do not have a proper keel. The method of construction is illustrated in reliefs of the second millenium which show Egyptian shipbuilders at work and, much later, from the Greek historian Herodotus who described in the 5th century construction methods which probably in use 1500 years earlier.

'from this acacia tree they cut planks 3 feet long, which they put together like courses of brick, building up the hull as follows: they joined these three foot lengths together with long close set dowels; when they have built up the hull in this fashion they stretch crossbeams over them. They use no ribs, and they caulk the seams from the inside, using papyrus'.

Archaeological evidence which substantiates Herodotus comes from the discovery in 1893 of two virtually intact river boats buried around the pyramid of Sesostris III at Dashur which can be dated to the beginning of the second millenium, at between 1878-1842 and the more recent recovery of ships timbers from the pyramid of Sesostris I at el-Lisht. Each of the Dahshur boats was approximately 33 feet overall length and 7.5 feet midships beam, with a depth amidships of 2.75 feet. They were made of short lengths of wood joined together with dowels and small butterfly clamps. There is no proper keel but there is a central plank made up of sections of timber also joined with dovetailed butterfly clamps around which the rest of hull is assembled. There are no frames or any other methods of supporting the shell of the boats internally, but there are thwarts running across the boats at gunwhale level which would provide some lateral rigidity as well as supporting decking at the stem and stern. The use of dowels, mortise and tenon joints and wooden clamps to produce a rigid carvel shell is not unique to Egypt and occurs in various forms in other ancient mediterranean craft. What is special about the method in Egypt is that the shell is not built round a strong central keel which would provide longitudinal rigidity. Because of this Egyptian shipwrights were obliged to find other methods to minimise the risk in larger boats that the back would break due to hogging.