[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Okay. Good evening everybody.
Before we start, I'd like to thank Franck Goddio and his team from the IEASM, as well as our sponsors in the Hilti Foundation,
for giving me the opportunity to talk about the work that's going on on this fantastic little boat.
As you can see, I hope from the names on the screen, this isn't my excavation.
And it's a complete team Event and I thank them all for giving me access to their work and the thoughts about this boat
to sit alongside my own on it. And I'd also like to thank all of our colleagues from the Central Department for
Underwater Antiquities and the staff at the Maritime Museum in Alexandria,
which are both part of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and who are instrumental in helping our work there.
So off we go. The image that you get from the archaeological evidence of Roman ships and
boats is predominantly associated with the amphora carrying merchant vessel.
Indeed, the visibility of the merchant ship in the archaeological record has largely overshadowed the smaller boats, the fishing boats, the tugs,
the lighters, the dredgers, the pleasure craft and other multi-purpose vessels that would have crowded ancient harbours and made them work.
Largely these would have been made in local shipyards with materials that are close at hand in tried and tested designs.
So here we have this example of this mosaic from Rimini, and we can see what would likely have been a locally made tugboat.
So that's this thing here, which is carefully shepherding a large freighter into the port.
Past this lighthouse, where
another ship, which you can see just off to the side here, is sort of patiently awaiting its turn.
It's an actual occurrence that would have been replayed countless times in the Portus Magnus of Alexandria.
Fortunately, when we're looking at small ships and boats rescue work in other large Roman harbours in recent years,
it's gone some way to redress this imbalance, particularly in places such as Ostia, Pisa and Naples and of course, in
Yenikapi in Istanbul for the Byzantine period.
Now, unsurprisingly then, if we're interested in looking for smaller boats, then it's in the sediments of harbours that we need to look.
It's here that small boats were often discarded and abandoned at the end of their working lives,
in infrequently used and often silty areas of the port. Or else they were wrecked in storm events and rapidly buried.
Or deliberately sunk and reused in harbour infrastructure.
But this isn't the picture entirely for J3, which I hope to demonstrate in the seminar,
is related more closely to the world of long distance trade and exchange than to the small world at the Portus Magnus, where it was found.
J3 is in all probability an incredibly rare example of a ship's boat.
So in terms of this mosaic that we're looking at, it's this little vessel here that's being trailed behind the larger merchant ship,
rather than the local tug boat, even though, as I hope to show you, both of them can do similar things in terms of moving boats around harbours.
Now prior to its discovery, such vessels, which are relatively commonplace in the archaeological record and also in the literature from the period,
are seldom found, simply because in the event of a shipwreck,
the ship's boats would have been used as a lifeboat, as the crew and the passengers would have abandoned the stricken vessel.
Um, which is one of the things you can see here in this passage from a shipwreck that occurred in Paul's journey to Rome.
So that's the one at the bottom that's published in Acts.
It's clear in this case that the ship's boat had been brought aboard the large vessel, perhaps because of the storm.
But there's plenty of literary evidence and also artistic evidence, like you can see here of the ship's boat being trailed behind.
And that's what you can see in the quote from Statius Above. Here,
this is a prayer to wish Maecius Celer a safe voyage aboard an Alexandrian grain ship.
And Statius in this prayer goes through a whole sequence of actions through which this vessel is made ready to set sail.
And these include the instructions that you see on the screen to "make fast the skiff that will follow behind".
Also, in the event that the ship's boat does go down with the main ship we're then
reliant upon it entering into the archaeological records. So it typically being covered by the main wreck or debris from it.
And then from maritime archaeologists to recognise the likely few disarticulated pieces
of plank as being part of something different from that of the larger merchant ship.
So overall, I think the ship's boats aren't easy to find or to recognise in the archaeological record.
J3, though, was discovered completely buried in the sediments of the Portus Magnus.
It's out in the middle of a harbour.
So it's in the Royal Harbour, as you can see here.
There were no telltale timbers sticking out from the sediments or mounds of debris, on the surface that might have hinted at its presence.
And instead, it took a new phase of geophysical survey in the eastern port by the IEASM using a new parametric shallow multibeam surveying instrument,
of which there's a picture, both of the output results from this
and also the vessel that did it.
While Franck Goddio and his team had previously done sub-bottom profiling work across the Portus Magnus,
the new equipment enabled us to get a much more detailed look into the Sediments.
In order to ground truth what it was that Franck and the team were looking at,
he decided to excavate this particular site, to look at this small boat shaped anomaly in the data,
that appeared to be around 5 m long by about 2.5 m wide.
So it's a very small boat. Now, as will become apparent from this
obviously, we found what we were looking for
in this term of this small little boat that is termed J3.
So J3 was excavated during the summer mission in the Portus Magnus in 2018.
It's currently being written up by a team from the IEASM and the University of Oxford.
And here on the screen you can see Alexander Belov and David Honore excavating the boat.
And these are the same colleagues who are also responsible for writing up its nautical architecture.
As far as progress goes, we've nearly finished the first draft of the monograph,
which will then be sent out to peer review, and we hope to have it published towards the end of 2022, ideally.
So consequently, what I'm presenting here is our initial interpretations of this little vessel.
So this is what it looks like. And as you can see from this photo mosaic, is it's remarkable level of preservation,
especially on its port side where there's a complete section of the boat from the keel, which is down here through to the guard rail up here.
So particularly on this side of the boat. And of particular interest is the transom, which is this squared off bit at the back
of the boat, and also the two rowing benches here and here,
or thwarts as they're also known, which come complete with the 3 associated thole pins against which the oars would have pivoted.
There is one here, there is one here, and this one up here. And then there's also a now missing third rowing bench here.
What you can also see in this image is the large disassembled iron anchor.
So that's this thing here.
And that's its shank and its stock there.
And the stock obviously has been disassembled from the anchor and placed neatly next to the shank.
Again, I'll return to the significance of this for its interpretation of the function of the boat and its particular or potential region of origin.
a bit later in this service seminar.
But first, though, I think it probably would be useful to give a brief insight into elements of J3's nautical architecture.
To demonstrate its method of construction and the care also with which its timbers were selected for their mechanical properties.
So we can start with the keel. I think it's at this point good to have a bit of sort of semi hardcore nautical architecture in this.
So the keel itself is made from ash and is preserved for a length of 4.4 m.
Now in this ash is a particularly act choice of wood.
It's a hard wood that also can be bent quite readily.
Um, and this is what would be needed in a small boat where there's a strong degree of curvature towards what we think is the bow.
So as you can see in this image, particularly in the section of it here, it's roughly rectangular in section.
And from the schematic diagram, you can see that the inner edges of the first line of whole planks were set flush
against the side of the keel and fastened with closely set mortise and tenon joints.
I should say here that the wood identification was done by Tina Roushannafas from the Institute of Archaeology and Alexander Belov from the IEASM.
Alex is currently out in Alexandria at the moment working on more wood samples
from this boat and lots of the others that have been excavated.
So turning now to the planking. As is common in Roman period vessels, while the keel of the boat may have been in a hard wood,
its planking was made from soft wood. In this case it's Pine, and these were thin, very thin boards.
They're about 8 mm thick, and we have 14 of them preserved on the port side, with only about six on the starboard side.
They're roughly the same width. In this part of the boats about 9 to 10 cm, and this tapers to 6 to 7 cm towards the end of the vessel.
So the planks themselves are between 3 and 4.5 m long.
And as you can see in this reconstruction, every single plank or every single strake is an individual plank.
In terms of its construction, then J3 is carvel built,
which means that the lines of the strakes are set flush against each other to create a smooth outer hull.
They're fastened using mortise and tenon joints, with the tenons being made from hornbeam,
which is a finely textured, dense hardwood that's resistant to splitting.
And you can see one of the tenons here. These are rectangular roughly 4.6 cm long, 3.3 cm wide and about 2 mm thick
on average. The tenons fitted tightly into their corresponding mortises and were secured by tapering pegs,
uh, which were also of hornbeam, and these have a sort of
average diameter of 5 mm. The pegs go through the thickness of the planking and were inserted from the outside of the hull.
The gunwale of J3 is the last of the lines of planks.
It's thicker than all the others and projects significantly outward.
Now, the purpose of this is to protect the boats from damage during berthing or as it goes alongside other boats,
but it would also have added considerably to the stiffening of the hull.
Now, unlike the softwood pine planks,
the gunwale was made of elm as it's a tough hardwood that's not prone to splitting and also has a good surface hardness,
so you could take the wear and tear that's associated with the life of a little boat like this.
But also given the shape of the boat, elm is again a good choice for the gunwale because it can be bent into shape.
Directly over the top of the gunwale is the guard rail, which was made from Cypress and Cypress, is a durable,
moderately strong wood that has a high surface hardness and could also take a really good polish.
Now these qualities make it particularly a suitable timber for guard rail.
It combines the ability to resist wear and tear again while also being potentially decorative.
The guard rail is installed directly over the top of the frames, which, like the keel, is also made of ash.
And you can see all of this, uh, going on again in this reconstruction.
In the centre of central area of the guard rail
two soul pins were inserted with another one further forward.
So you can see here, um, the schematic drawing of the insertion of thole pins.
These are made of hornbeam, which is an unusual shipbuilding timber, but it's a tough hardwood that can take a high surface polish.
And this high surface polish is quite useful because it would reduce the friction between the thole-pin and its oar.
Now, while this might be something of a marginal gain, it demonstrates the care with which the timber species were selected for J3.
Associated with the thole pins are the two remaining pine thwarts
and these are the rowing benches, as I said.
And then again, there's also the remains of a now missing third rowing bench, which is associated with the third thole-pin.
As you can also see here in this image along the line of the keel was also a mast step
which this here with the hole for the mast, which is overlaid by the the anchor.
This would obviously indicate therefore that J3 could be propelled by sail as well as oars, but there was no evidence for a mast in the excavation,
and the only rigging elements that were discovered were other size that would have been unnecessary for the rig of a small boat.
Here, though, I think it should be noted that no oars were found either,
but it's more likely that J3 was under all power at the time of its loss,
as ors would obviously have offered a greater ease of manoeuvrability in the confined spaces of a crowded harbour.
Now when wrecking these oars would have floated away during the accident or perhaps later as their binding cords rotted away,
whereas the hull itself remains pinned to the bottom of the harbour through the weight of the anchor
that it was transporting.
Also, the weight of the anchor seems to have pushed the port side of the boat deeper into the sediments,
which obviously results in the better preservation of this side of the vessel.
Okay, so much for nautical architecture. What can we see?
I suppose at the stern of the vessel, next to the transom is a platform on which the helmsman would have stood.
And if we look at this image of a tugboat from the Isola Sacra in Ostia,
this could also be something. It's got three rowers like ours.
It's got a fairly squared off transom stern, you know. So does it have a sailing, a steering oar with it?
Well, we don't actually have any evidence for this.
Um, and its presence on J3 is rather conjectural or perhaps even unlikely, uh, given the small size of the platform.
So we're not necessarily dealing with something quite this large.
But when we start to discuss, uh, Roman boats with a transom and use the types of artistic evidence that you can see here
on the screen, we wander into a surprisingly acrimonious debate in the literature about which way they go.
Either pointy end first, as you can see here in this ceramic plaque or flat end first, transom first,
as you can perhaps see here in this mosaic of a fishing boat from Uttica in Tunisia.
As you can see, both of these are running boats with transom ends.
They're a type which is referred to in the literature as an horeia, thanks to this mosaic here from the,
from the frigidarium of the bath house of the House of the Muses in Althiburus.
It's a fantastic mosaic which has lots of ships being depicted on it with their names associated with it.
So as you can see here. Equally, the bundles that you can see here and this here and here.
Now, these are typically interpreted as fishing nets, which in conjunction with the mosaic, such as that from Uttica.
This has resulted in the idea that this type of small boat was used for fishing.
And it's also resulted in the idea that this type of small boat, goes transom end first,
so flat end first. While several depictions of boats with transoms in Ancient Art are associated with fishing,
there are examples that aren't, which has led to some authors broadening the definition of the horeia.
For example, this is the Torlonia relief that you can see here, and it depicts two small boats.
So we can see one here and another one over here.
These are associated with larger merchant ships, and both of the small boats have transoms.
Now, it's been argued that these are carefully and accurately depicted.
Um, and what they're showing is the ships boats can have a transom bow so that they can nose up to wharfs easily,
which is certainly the case with, well, with what seems to be, being portrayed with this particular vessel here.
Now, if we're going to be pedantic about this, I suppose the first issue is whether these boats should be called horeia.
Uh, particularly, when the ancient literature would suggest that ships boats would have been known by specific terms such as
lembus, skaphus and phaselus. And these are seen in Plautus, Caesar, Statius, and so on.
But we'll see. Now, our particular contribution to this debate, and where J3 comes in really handy,
is that it provides explicit archaeological evidence of the rowing system itself and the position of the thole-pins in the rowing benches.
So consequently, J3 demonstrates the position of three lines of rowers.
So you've got a rower here. Pulling on an oar here a rower here with an oar here and a rower here.
All of whom therefore sits with their backs towards the pointed end of the vessel.
The stroke of the oars would thus propel the boat forwards, with the fine voluted end as the bow and the transom at the stern.
So this is what's depicted on both the Rimini ship mosaic and in the plaque from the Isola Sacra.
Now, the second way into this debate comes from the digital reconstruction of this model, which is being of a ship, but sorry,
which is being undertaken by Nesreen Elgaly. Nesreen's using a powerful nautical architecture program called Orca 3D,
which is used to design and test modern ships and boats to understand their working parameters.
It's effectively a design programme. At present, though, she's having great difficulty in persuading the software that the boat should go
transom end first. And these results are also echoed in another set of computer tests for a transom end boat from Naples,
which demonstrated that it's not an ideal design for a bow, particularly in waves.
So consequently, what we would suggest is that from the surviving archaeological evidence, J3 is a transom stern boat.
And it goes, as you might expect, pointy end first.
But this doesn't mean that all boats of this type in the Mediterranean were arranged in this manner.
This, the sheer uncertainty in the iconographic record and the debate surrounding it,
means that we simply cannot present this as any sort of hard and fast rule.
It's just what it seems to suggest for J3. And equally, it's clear that if you really wanted to, you could probably row J3 in either direction.
Finally. Then, uh, before we move on from the boat and its excavation towards its interpretation, we just need to say a little more about its dating.
Now, unfortunately, we don't have high precision radiocarbon,
and instead are dating it at this moment using the ceramic evidence from the material recovered in context with the boat during its excavation.
This was undertaken by the IEASM's ceramicist Catherine Grataloup.
And it's her work here.
The ceramics which were not part of cargo or even, well, were not part of a cargo from J3 or even were on J3 at the time of its sinking.
These would have been washed into the boats during its incorporation into the harbour floor.
The ceramics, though, do come from sealed archaeological contexts associated with J3 next to the hull and in the excavations closely around it.
Um, and consequently they do provide us with a group with which we can consider a
broad date range into which the sinking and burial of the vessel should be fitted.
It should be noted, however, that the majority of the assemblages are braided and shows evidence of marine concretion
that would indicate that it wasn't rapidly buried within the seal contexts.
Now this temporal lag in becoming incorporated will obviously result in relatively mixed and potentially long lived assemblages.
The diagnostic pottery, however, dates are largely consistent,
even if they do have a relatively large date range from early Roman Alexandria and its Augustan beginnings through to about the 3rd century AD.
Given that we've seen small boats with transoms used for fishing and as tugboats, and also as ship's boats in the archaeological record.
Well, in the artistic record, I suppose what makes us believe that J3 is related to the ship's boat?
For this, we need to think about what a ship's boat is and does for an ancient merchant ship,
and then go back and revisit the large anchor that we found disassembled in its hull, and the types of wood species that the boat is made from.
Now, what you're looking at is perhaps one of the most famous depictions of a merchant ship from antiquity.
And it's this graffito from of the ship Europa from Pompeii, which clearly depicts at the back here, a small little boat.
Um, perhaps there is debate about this in the record, with a crew member sat in it.
We know this from the literary sources that often a crew member is stationed
in the ship's boat, and it's fixed here by a cable to the stern of the vessel.
Um, interestingly, you can see that it is perhaps being towed transom first, with the voluted bow at this end,
but also with what has been depicted here is, uh, what looks like a steering oar.
Which we don't have any evidence for with J3.
So, from the orations of Demosthenes for example, through to an epistle of
Paulinus of Nola ship's boats feature occasionally in the literature of travel.
Most particularly they appear in tales of merchants of shipwreck
and of escaping from danger, and these go across the whole long history of the classical world.
So for a merchant ship like the Europa, a small auxiliary boat was a practical necessity.
They would have been used to carry out a whole range of different tasks.
These would have included supplying the ship with food and water, perhaps during the voyage when the ship was simply calling into a port to revictual,
or when it was at anchor waiting for a space at the quayside to unload.
You could also use them for transporting passengers and crew to and from the shore, or to move the ship,
particularly when there's no wind or when it's operating in the confined conditions, such as inside a harbour.
Now it's in this latter case where,
we can see a sort of tangible link between the ways in which a ship's boats would have been used in ancient seafaring,
and the archaeological remains that we have from J3. So notably, we have a small boat with a large anchor found within the confines of a port basin.
And for me, this is sufficient to examine the possibility that J3 could have sunk while carrying out work associated with this anchor.
So while it might seem self-evident from this image, particularly the top one,
it has to be said that the anchor that J3 was carrying was not used to anchor it.
It's a plainly ship sized anchor rather than a boat sized one.
Unfortunately, however, we didn't find any evidence for small anchor during the excavations of J3,
that would have been its own anchor. But it also may well be that like lots of small ships boats documented during the age of sail,
that J3 was never equipped with one. So turning first to the anchor itself.
The morphology of the curved arms would indicate that it most closely resembles Greg Votruba's lunate anchor form,
which is part of an iron anchor typology that he developed here in Oxford for his DPhil.
The arms of the anchor, which are here, you can see it's quite heavily concreted, but from this drawing,
as you can see, they gently narrow towards what appears to be simple pointed tips.
Equally, both of the arms are different lengths.
And this would indicate that one of the original tips broke during its use at some point.
Um, they're both roughly chisel shaped as well.
Although it's heavily concreted, the shank of the anchor from J3 appears to project beyond the crown.
That's this little bit here. This is what's called the crown stub, and it's likely to have ended in a crown ring,
which would have gone around here, which is now corroded away.
The purpose of this was to attach a trip rope and a buoy that would have been tied to it,
and this buoy would have marked the position of the anchor and would have facilitated its safe removal from the seabed.
Now, the removal of an anchor with a trip buoy is often done through the use of a ship's boat.
The crew row out to the buoy, and then hold on the attached rope to remove the arm from its set.
So from the form of the arms, the stock and its fitting aperture at the top of the shank and also the crown.
We can use all of these different elements of the anchor to propose a relative date for the one for J3.
So firstly, the lunate form of the arms or the anchor, which suggests that it was from the Roman period between the Early and Middle Imperial periods.
And this can be further narrowed down due to a consideration of the rectangular form of the stock and its aperture in the shank.
So this is the rectangular form here. And this is the aperture.
This head type is in use from at least the 2nd century BC until the 5th century AD.
It's a very broad range for that particular element. But then finally, the presence of the crown stub down here, and probably the crown ring,
would suggest a date between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD.
So for our anchor, then, I think what we're likely looking at is a date from the Augustan period to the 2nd century AD.
Now, it should also be noted that similar iron anchors have also been found off Alexandria in two of the anchorages,
located about 500 m north of the entrance to the Eastern Harbour and Qaitbay Fort.
And there's another example a little further along the coast on the El-Hassan reef, which is located 500 m northeast at promontory of Cape Lochias.
Now, from a consideration of these anchors,
it's suggested that the example from J3 is most closely paralleled by those dating from the early to mid Roman imperial periods,
that is, prior to the end of the second century A.D. Now, for me at least comfortingly, this all fits well with the ceramics excavated from the boat.
When we look at on, because in the ancient world,
there's a very broad correlation between the size of the anchor and the carrying capacity of the ship on which the found.
For example, morphologically similar anchors to that from J3 have been found on Dramont E and the Lardier 4 shipwrecks.
Dramont E was suggested to have been a ship around 60 m long, 5 to 6 m wide, and carrying a cargo of about 40 tons,
and this has an anchor of about 1.65 m long um, whereas Lardier 4 was slightly smaller and had a slightly smaller anchor.
So it's that is about 1.46 m long.
So consequently, it can safely be assumed that in the ancient world, as in the age of sale, where we have much better documentation,
the the size of the anchor relates to the size of the ship.
And it can also be safely assumed that an anchor of a size found on J3 would normally not be recovered
from a small boat. So the approximate size of the vessel, we can hopefully get at that,
by plotting the dimensions of the anchor on Votruba's distribution graph of well preserved iron anchors from shipwrecks of known sizes,
which is what you can see here on the screen.
Um, this uses a combination of the total length of the anchor in centimetres, plotted against the cross to arm end length,
which for J3 is 276 cm and 87 cm for the unbroken arm of the anchor.
So what this kind of indicates is when you plot all of this out, it comes to about there,
and would indicate that it would have come from a ship around 20 to 25 m long, with a carrying capacity of maybe 60 to 100 tons, something like that.
These are roughly the dimensions of kind of standard sized freighter, I think, from the regular period.
We can now turn to the issue of where the small boat came from.
And in the introduction to this seminar, I suggested that the majority of small boats would be made in local shipyards,
which could suggest that J3 was a native Alexandrian vessel.
Its interpretation as a ship's boat, however, brings this into question and raises the possibility that it was made somewhere else.
So how can we resolve this now?
An initial way in could be with the anchor again.
The idea that morphologically similar anchors to that found in J3, and um, where they're distributed,
and this is simply because the research into ancient anchors
has demonstrated that there are clear regional patterns to the distribution of different anchor types,
and as we might expect, different regions at different times construct topologically different types of anchor.
On the screen here, you can see the distribution of other examples of lunate anchors which have a clear western Mediterranean distribution.
Now added to this should also be the the other similar anchors found
in the anchorages of Alexandria, which were published after Greg Votruba created this map for his DPhil.
So consequently, this not only provides us with a possible home region for the production of this anchor,
but also a potential trade route between the western Mediterranean and Alexandria.
J3 sank carrying an anchor probably made in the western Mediterranean then.
But what about J3 itself? Where do we think it was made?
It could, for example, have been made in Alexandria and used not as a ship's boat, but as a general purpose working vessel within the harbour.
We can get some way towards identifying its production region, however, through an examination of the wood species with which it was made.
Now, what's notable from the outset is that the small boat wasn't constructed in native Egyptian woods.
Therefore, it could easily be suggested that this could imply that it wasn't of Egyptian origin.
But this is far from certain, given its discovery in Alexandria.
Coupled with the long standing and well-developed timber economy of Egypt that would have been centred on the Portus Magnus in the Ptolemaic period.
Alexandria sat at the centre of an eastern Mediterranean empire, in which timber for its warships was a vital strategic resource.
The importance of securing territory with heavily forested hinterlands continue to be an
important part of Ptolemaic foreign policy through to the final years of the dynasty,
with Strabo noting that Antony assigned the cities of Syedra and Hamaxia in Cilicia to Cleopatra VII,
due to them being, I quote, "capable of furnishing materials for the construction of her fleet".
So consequently, within this we can start to build up a picture of regional timber supply in the Ptolemaic period.
And a similar picture comes from the wider Mediterranean during the Roman period, with Theophrastus, for example,
stating that timber imports into Greece came from Macedon, from Pontus, and the river Rhyndakos.
It's also been suggested archaeologically from the analogical and design,
the logical studies undertaken in the harbour sediments, and the ship timbers from various sites along the training coast.
So when taken together, this evidence implies that the trade in timber was undertaken on a local basis.
If there were good suppliers nearby and regionally when they were not,
what is generally uneconomical to import from distance unless it was an exotic
or prized species that's needed to make statements of wealth and luxury.
Now, given this pattern, it's notable and not entirely unexpected that there are also similar patterns that are
observable regionally in the use of wood in shipbuilding around the Mediterranean,
while timber resources around the region are generally similar.
Look, if we look here.
In the map. Oh, let's just go back in this map of forest species.
What's more, sort of local differences can be seen that are that can be sort of teased out from the evidence.
And these local sources are essentially that the reflect choices that are made,
based upon the availability of resources, based upon shipbuilding traditions and how these change with time.
So consequently, it's possible that,
this kind of observation could be used to suggest the provenance for J3 to a particular construction region based upon its range of timbers,
the extent to which they were used, which is where this image comes in.
So while J3 is built in the very typical Roman style of using hardwoods for the keel and frames and soft woods for the planking,
the combination of timbers used is significant.
Firstly, there's the use of Cypress for the cap-rail and the beams at the stern platform of the boat, and it's notable that it's,
been suggested in the literature that this timber isn't used for shipbuilding in the eastern Mediterranean until the late Roman or Byzantine period.
It's also conspicuously absent in, as a ship, timber in the wrecks from southern France.
So consequently the use of Cypress in J3 would perhaps point towards an origin somewhere in the Tyrrhenian sea region,
where it's seen in ships and boats from Naples, Pisa and Ostia.
The second element that links the construction of J3 to this coastline is its
extensive use of ash as timber for the keel and for the frames in the vessel,
as well as for its transom. Ash was not a preferred material for the construction of the axial structure in general,
and is rare from ships originating from the eastern Mediterranean.
Similarly, the wrecks from the south of France. Ash is utilised in a similar way to that in the East Mediterranean.
It's not used consistently as a main shipbuilding timber, but it's in the vessels of the Mediterranean coast, where ash is used more consistently.
Um, and it's used in ships from Pisa, from Naples and from Ostia.
So while ash is an unusual choice of wood for the keel of J3, it's entirely understandable given its mechanical properties,
um, and notably its surface hardness and its high elasticity.
In combination with its use in the Frames,
this would have allowed the creation of a strong axial structure for the vessel, with the necessary bends to create the shape of a small boat.
All together that the evidence points towards the interpretation of J3 as a boat made somewhere on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea,
which sank carrying a large anchor that was also likely made in the region.
This would suggest that J3 was indeed a ship's boat,
and its evidence that would seem to fit with the picture that we get from Papyrus Bingen 77, for example,
which records the arrival of a ship on the Ostia-Alexandria route.
This large vessel would have returned to Italy, taking grain and luxuries from the east to the heart of the Roman Empire.
J3 most likely reached the Portus Magnus either aboard or towed behind one of these trading vessels.
And based on the size of the anchor, and assuming that the anchor that we have is the main one from the ship,
it's possible that the ship that it arrived on was not one of the largest super
freighters of the Alexandrian grain fleet that we hear about in the literature,
but instead,
J3's mothership was an average sized trading vessel of a form that would have been very familiar in the larger Mediterranean mercantile harbours.
But what if it's a loss? Can we say anything more about that?
Now, it's perhaps significance for the overall interpretation of J3 to note the uneven lengths of the arms of the anchor,
which would suggest that at least the port tip had broken at some point in antiquity.
Now, this may well have required the removal, uh, from its vessel for repairs and may perhaps form a reason for its final location on J3.
We can imagine a scenario where the anchor broke while the boat crew were trying
to remove it from its sets in the rocky anchorages of Alexandria's Portus Magnus.
This would have resulted in the need for repairs on land and its final voyage neatly disassembled and stowed in J3 when disaster struck,
as it was rowed across the harbour in the shadow Anirhodos Island.
Whatever accident befell it, the weight of the anchor shifted to the port side of the vessel, dooming it,
but then pressed this side of the boat into the soft harbour clays, so preserving it for us.
Now, finally, J3 also says something about the changes that are taking place in the Royal harbour of Antirhodos in the Roman period.
And we visited this island several times during the course of this seminar series.
So we know that Strabo,
who visited the city provides us with an eyewitness account and contained within
this is his description of the island of Antirhodos as the private property of kings,
which is both the royal palace and a small harbour. Now it's here in these waters the J3 was discovered,
so consequently the small boat can be set alongside other finds from the excavations in the harbour basin,
and together they allow us to say a little more about the development of this region of the Portus Magnus,
and its transition from a harbour associated with the Ptolemaic royal palace into part of the great commercial infrastructure in the Portus Magnus.
A second shipwreck was also excavated by the IEASM in the Royal Harbour.
This was the remains of a large commercial freighter dating from around the 1st century to the beginning of the 2nd century AD.
This one was roughly 31 m in length, 11 m wide.
It had a cargo capacity of around 250 to 260 tons, so much larger than the boats that would have used the anchor from J3.
The entrepreneurship, therefore, would have been one of the large vessels in the port.
Now,
the wood used in its construction included a piece of native Egyptian timber and other species that could have been sourced in the eastern Mediterranean.
Couple with this are the construction details that are regionally specific and indicate that this was perhaps an Egyptian vessel,
or certainly one that was from the East Mediterranean and repaired in Egypt.
Let's go back. So together
Antirhodos wreck demonstrates that the former Royal Harbour had
undergone something of a transformation in the years of the early Roman Empire,
and it was being used as a commercial harbour for ships coming from Italy and the local vessels.
And we can see a similar pattern of regional and longer distance seafaring in the remains
of complete and broken amphora that abounded in the excavations of these shipwrecks.
These range from Cnidian amphora dating from the the 2nd half of the 1st century BC,
with the majority of the evidence coming from from 2nd into the 4th century AD,
with imports from the Aegean, Asia minor, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.
So notably, given the origin and date of J3,
there's also evidence for italic imports in the form of mortaria and finewares dating from the mid 1st to the 3rd century AD.
Intriguingly, the excavation of J3 also brought to light these elements over here.
These parts of pulley blocks and a sheave.
Now, these are of a size that wouldn't have been compatible with the rig of a small boat like J3.
Well, they could have been lost in accidents from other large commercial sailing ships.
We should also bear in mind that an Africana 2A amphora would have had a capacity of about 68-litres and would have weighed around 82, 83 kg in total,
which would have made it very difficult to handle by a single stevedore without some sort of hoist or crane.
So there's evidence for the expansion of the quayside during the first decades of Roman control.
And this would have provided larger expanses of wharfage where the ships could tie up to.
Perhaps as part of these redevelopments, we may also envisage the construction of cranes and other lifting devices to aid in the
unloading and loading of ships that would have crowded the quayside at this time.
J3 then is but a small but I'd say highly illustrative symptom of the wider changes affecting the Portus Magnus in the Roman period.
Which, Franck will talk about in his large lecture on the entire harbour area at the end of this term.
What it does is it speaks of long distance commercial contact between Italy and Alexandria and its fine spot in the former Royal Port,
talks about the increasing dominance of commerce that's also seen in the extensive developments on the western side of the port at this time.
The significance of the discovery of a small ship's boat also needs to be reiterated at the beginning of the seminar.
I talked about the overwhelming disparity in the archaeological record towards large trading ships and the lack of smaller craft.
J3 consequently reminds us of the vital role that such small vessels would have played in harbours all around the Roman world as fishing boats,
as tug boats, as lighters and other general hovercraft, as well as being towed behind larger trading ships in the way that brought J3 to Egypt shores.
A hint of this can be seen in the quotes from Synesius of Cyrene that's on the screen,
and his description of a bustling harbour scape full of ships and boats of all sizes together.
They helped to make Roman Alexandria, as Strabo saw it, the greatest emporium in the whole world.
Thank you very much.
(Andrew Wilson) Thank you, Damian. That was wonderfully clear,
remarkably, detailed and insightful view into
what a small boat like that can tell us about the working lives of harbours and the ships that are attached to it.
I've got loads of loads of questions, but how heavy is that anchor?
It was, what, 2.76 m Long iron with its stock
that's going to weigh quite a bit, isn't it? (Damian Robinson) Yeah. That's one of the things that we want to calculate.
Um, at the moment it's still underwater. So we've never lifted it.
Um, so we need to do that to, to do it properly.
But I've tried to do some rough calculations based upon, you know, the weight of iron and the amount there is.
Um, but at the moment, I'm not entirely confident about my abilities with maths in this area.
So I'm going with "relatively heavy". (Andrew Wilson) Okay.
I mean, I'm wondering really whether anchors like that and larger
big ships actually themselves needed a pulley or some kind of mechanical device to help raise them.
Um, and, you know, could you have raised it from the small boat,
or did you have to raise it from the large boat and then transfer it down into the small boat, as it were?
(Damian Robinson) I mean, for in the the way that we can get at this is from the, the literature from the Age of Sail,
which is much more detailed what was later in the Roman literature and,
and their the kind of the use of how the use of anchors is uh, is quite nicely set out.
So one of the ways that you can have a capstan that raises the anchor, um,
and I certainly think, um, some of the, you know, the larger Roman merchant ships,
this is what's happening, whereas on your medium sized vessels
with anchors that aren't necessarily as heavy, that's where the ship's boat comes in.
So you anchor it, and then the ship's boat rolls out and you can pull it onto the ship's boat and then sail back.
Uh, equally, you can use the anchor to move the ship's boat around the harbour.
So, you can put the anchor into the boat. The boat goes to where you want to do it,
and then you throw the anchor overboard and the ship drags itself towards the anchor, and then you repeat the process.
Um, so there's a whole series of things that small boats can do with anchors, imports and I think
we don't necessarily think about that too much when we're thinking about Roman Harbour's.
(Andrew Wilson) I mean, I found your general argument that it's probably western Mediterranean
that was quite persuasive. But with the distribution of the anchors, those lunate anchors, your sample size is not terribly large.
And to what extent is that an investigation or publication bias
that most of them are Italy and so on? (Damian Robinson) I think there is a certain amount of that's going on within it.
Um, obviously the greater areas of investigation have a great concentration of anchors.
So it is all it's a result of the kind of the shipwreck distribution map
as well as you have lots of the problems that are inherent with with that coming up in in this.
What I would say is that Greg Votruba's study of the anchors,
you know, he looked at 1,500 published anchors from the, you know, as many of them as he could.
And they do actually show quite regional, distinct regional distribution patterns,
um, across all of these different ones and also temporal patterns as well.
So I do think there is something going on there that is purely beyond, you know, that's where we find everything.
(Andrew Wilson) I'll throw the interrogation open to the floor.
I'm sure people have questions that do raise your electronic zoom hand.
But if people are still thinking of questions.
I just wanted to follow up with, I mean,
You showed us that this is probably the type that appears on the Althiburus mosaic as a horeia.
Um, is it helpful to use the ancient names, or does that lead us down various avenues of presupposition?
Rather like names of rooms in Roman houses?
(Damian Robinson) To a certain extent it does.
There's a whole literature on whether you should call this horeia or not.
Um, and the alternative names for it.
And there are authors out there with surprisingly vitriolic opinions about the whole thing.
Um, so I use the term with a great deal of, with many caveats, I suppose.
You know, as far as I'm concerned, it's just a small boat, whether we call it a skyphus or a hoereia.
Yeah. It's a small boat.
(Andrew Wilson) Questions. Still no electronic hands that I can see.
But tell me if I've missed something. What are the similar things that we know?
I mean, are there excavated comparanda?
Or is this the first one? I mean, you showed us lots of iconography about these things, but have we got other excavated ships?
(Damian Robinson) The number of ships boats that we have is incredibly small.
Simply because of the difficulty of finding them.
You know that they turn into a lifeboat.
So consequently, from the archaeological records, you know, there's hints of a couple,
It's in harbours where you get much more evidence of small boats being discovered.
And Giulia Boetto has amassed an extensive set of material to look at these small boats in Roman harbours.
And they, you know, there's a whole series of different functions
that they do, but in terms of a small ships boat, you know, I don't think that there are that many out there.
Giulia might tell me I'm wrong at this point, but,
there was a question in the chat. Oh, there is Giulia.
(Andrew Wilson) Yeah. Are you going to tell him he's wrong?
(Giulia Boetto) Hello to everybody. Yes, I have some questions,
So thank you very much for this presentation is very interesting.
And I completely agree with you about the different type of shape and that we cannot speak only,
about transom bow because there are many different type.
And now with this escalation, like this one. But, uh, there's also now we, we really understand that there are a lot of things that we don't know,
a lot of shape and types that are completely unknown.
And this is a perfect example. So, it's about horeia.
This big discussion, now we have to go forward.
And of course, we have now this example of stern transom.
And we have another example in Naples, because in Naples we found two ships.
One is the Napoli C. Sorry.
And this one, I think is a transom bow.
But okay is in discuss about this and the second one is Naples G
is a transom stern.
And we have to look at the transom and how this is within the general structure of the ship and
and not just to say what to look on to these elements.
We have to look to the general Show perfectly. I have so many things,
in Naples C, for example, which is a big, is not so big but easy sailing.
We were thinking that this is really a transom bow.
Um, of course the, the, the quality of sailing quality is not, uh, not, uh, extraordinary.
But this was a ship used locally in the bay.
It is not to have perfect performance for sailing and we show that if you put your cargo in the stern part,
in the curved part, okay, that we think, you can navigate not so bad.
And then we have also the thing that the performance for antiquity are not really the same as we think today.
And it is a small boat, a local coaster, locally and in the arbour too.
And as a very, very long life it was used Maybe around 100 years and there's a lot of repairs.
So it was fitted well for working.
And in one moment of his life it they take out the mast and it was just a pontoon and
just pulled towed by other ships and used for, we don't know for what, but some working elements.
So, this is one of the, the consideration that I have.
And I would like just to ask you, your transom is a vertical, is fitted vertically in teh ship?
(Damain Robinson) Yes, I think so. (Giulia Boetto) Yes, and this is not so big is not so thick.
Is like a plank, is done by one, one piece or more than one?
(Damain Robinson) I think one piece, I think.
And all of the planking is actually really quite fine, I suppose.
(Giulia Boetto) Well, yeah, in Toulon, we have two ships with the transom,
in that case, again, is a transom bow.
But it is a huge piece and is more in respect of the ship because it's very large and this is put in high in the,
in the when you reconstruct the shape is not at the level of the floating set.
Water level is a little bit higher. So it's a different shape, completely different type of boat.
But it's interesting. So thank you very much.
(Damain Robinson) Thank you, Giulia. (Andrew Wilson) We've got a question in the chat from Hadley Sharman, asking how the team preserved the ship in situ.
And then we've got a question from David Blackman. Let's take Hadley's question first.
Did you simply cover it back up again or what? (Damian Robinson) Yeah, it's just been reburied.
You know, carefully, obviously, but reburied.
If we obviously want to go back to it, then we know where it is.
(Andrew Wilson) So a question from David Blackman.
(David Blackman) I guess I'm invisible.
(Andrew Wilson) No it's okay it's I can make you visible.
It's okay.
(David Blackman) It was good that Giulia was there, because I was going to say I thought Naples was really
the only other site that we have.
That was good to hear from her.
I don't know if you've recent comments from Greg Votruba on the anchor?
(Damian Robinson) I passed everything about the anchor by Greg (David Blackman) Right, the transom bow,
I find this difficult. If everybody's pointing out that this seems a very odd thing way around why would,
is there any evidence that of the transom being the front end?
(Damian Robinson) There is for certain ships yes,
or certain boats, simply because, you know, as Giulia was saying, one of them from Naples seems to have a transom bow,
and it is so that it can get right up sort of nose on first for the dockside, to help in unloading it.
And so I absolutely think that there are both boats and ships with transom bows and transom sterns.
And you know, that's just how they were built.
(David Blackman) Yes, clearly the transom enables the ship to come right flush to the quayside,
but you could have if it was much more difficult to row
with the transom at the front, you could always swing it around as you came into the quaiside.
(Damian Robinson) Well, the ones from Naples are seem to be specifically designed like that, but that's because they're quite large vessels themselves.
So I mean, they are just for transporting ships around, they're sort of like lighters as well.
So it is a specific design feature on some of them.
(David Blackman) Interesting.
(Damian Robinsonn) Thank you David. (Andrew Wilson) Further questions.
Yes, it might be Franck hiding behind the acronym IEASM.
Please. Unmute yourself and speak.
It is Franck. (Franck Goddio) Yes. Hello.
(Damian Robinson) Good evening. Franck. (Franck Goddio) Thank you for your excellent presentation.
I think we can also say that as the Island of Antirhodos has been struck by an earthquake around 50 AD,
we could refine, of course, the datation of that shipwreck
as most probably such a service boat I would say a tender, such a tender,
would have not been allowed in the Royal port
for a freighter before that date, of course.
(Damian Robinson) Yeah, I absolutely think so.
So I think that it's the interesting thing is that it helps us to talk about it in the terms of the transition of the harbour,
um, from being the Royal Port to being this kind of commercial port, well, part of the bigger emporium, isn't it?
(Franck Goddio) Yes. And that the small port which used to be a Royal port has a very narrow entrance and,
and the facility we not for such very big freighters, as mentioned in the fleet going to Ostia, of course.
(Damian Robinson) So within that, that it is the necessity of having the small boats to as either, as tugboats to, to move them into place or
I also wanted to talk to you about warping the ships around the harbour as well at some point.
Uh, so. Yeah.
(Andrew Wilson) Damien, thank you again for a really clear, fascinating and insightful talk.
(Damian Robinson) Thank you very much. And thank you very much to everybody else for watching.