Yassi Ada Turkey

a Byzantine ship wreck

Each piece of wood of the ship's hull is tagged, drawn and photographed for later reconstruction

Institute of Nautical Archeology Photo

In the seventh century AD, about 626, a ship carrying general cargo struck a reef of Yassi Ada Island and sank. The ship carried nearly a thousand amphoras and was discovered by a Turkish diver named Kemal Aras. In 1958, while researching his book - The Lost Ships - American journalist Peter Throckmorton was shown the vessel.

"We found the area of the cabin-galley," Peter reported, " clearly distinguishable because of roof tiles and different types of pottery scattered in a ten-foot area. We brought up samples of every kind of pottery we found: bowls, small jars, and the two types of jars in the main cargo. We were very careful not to disturb the galley area or to dig too deep, because this was a shipwreck of a period never before investigated, the time of the beginning of the Byzantine Empire."

Diver jumping off barge anchored over the ship wreck.

Sam Low photo

In subsequent years, the wreck was excavated by a team of archeologists from The University of Pennsylvania and The Institute of Nautical Archeology under the leadership of Dr. George Bass.

I was privileged to dive on the ship in 1967 and 1968 with Dr. Bass and his team and to make a PBS film about her in 1980 called The Ancient Mariners. The following is from the film's study guide, written by Dr. Bass:

What would the map look like if Columbus had not sailed for the Indies? How would we live today if oil could not circle the globe in supertankers? People have been venturing across open water for at least thirty thousand years, and seafaring has shaped the world as we know it.The evolution of seafaring is a special interest of nautical archaeologists, who examine what is left of ancient ships, harbors, and ports. When a ship sinks, it carries within it evidence of the crew who sailed it, the trade it was plying, and the way the shipwrights worked who built it. Excavation of a sunken ship thus contributes to our knowledge of bygone civilizations - their societies, their arts, their politics, and especially their economies, for ships have played a major role in trade. It has always been cheaper to move heavy or bulky cargoes over water than over land. It cost less to ship a load of grain from one end of the Roman Empire to the other by sea than to haul it only seventy-five miles by cart.By excavating a seventh-century A.D. shipwreck off the coast of Yassi Ada, Turkey, I and many of my colleagues were able to expand our knowledge about the economics of Byzantine seafaring. Though only 10 percent of the ship’s wooden hull was preserved -the rest having been devoured by shipworms - enough was left for Frederick van Doorninck to reconstruct the ship on paper and for Richard Steffy subsequently to construct scale models. These reconstructions and the hundreds of artifacts found with the wreck-including personal possessions of the ship’s crew and the cargo of over nine hundred large amphoras or two-handled jars-have involved dozens of archaeologists and students in fifteen years of analysis in preparation for publication. Together with historical documents and knowledge about the period gained by other scientists and historians, our analysis produces a vivid picture of one ship’s life from the day its keel was first laid to its last voyage.We know that the merchant ordered his ship built small. Capable of carrying only sixty tons of cargo, it was tiny compared to the great freighters found in state merchant fleets of the past. Like many independent ship-owners, whose numbers increased in the seventh-century Byzantine Empire, the merchant could not afford a larger vessel.The seventh-century shipwrights did not, as we would today, first build a complete skeleton by adding frames to the keel, then cover the frames with planking. Neither did they follow the practice, customary in earlier centuries, of first building the hull by fastening its planks edge-to-edge with a series of mortise-and-tenon joints and then adding the frames. Seventh-century construction fell some-where between these two methods. It continued a trend, starting two or three centuries earlier, that reflected improved technology and also cut down the investment in labor and wood required to build hulls in the earlier Greco-Roman style - perhaps another indication of the modest amounts private entrepreneurs could invest in shipping.

A submersible decompression chamber is provided so that divers,

after working in 130 feet of water, can decompress in comfort at 33 feet.

The chamber also provided for an extra measure of safety.

Sam Low Photo

Even before our excavations, archaeologist’s knew from the Rhodian sea law, a seventh-century maritime code, who the various members of a contemporary crew might be - captain, helmsman, prow officer, carpenter, boatswain, sailors, and the poorly paid para-scharetes (literally, “the one by the grill”) -and each one’s legal share of the profits from a successful voyage. We know that the captain of the Yassi Ada ship was named George because a steelyard or scale uncovered during excavation is inscribed with his name. Since the scale is an item of merchant’s equipment, George may also have been the ship’s owner and a merchant-venturer as well as captain.The rest of the crew is anonymous, but we have evidence that several others were aboard. Accurate plans of the ship’s fragmentary remains show where the helmsman stood to man a pair of great steering oars. The carpenter’s tool chest, stored in a locker between the ship’s cargo hold and the galley or cooking area near the stern, carried everything (except the wood) needed to build an entirely new ship. The boatswain stored his iron foraging tools for shore parties, with a small anchor for the ship’s boat, in a locker at the very stern of the ship. The prow officer may have had charge of the eleven large iron anchors found near the ship’s prow - one pair ready for use on each side and the other seven stacked forward of the mast. (The anchors and other iron implements had actually rusted away centuries before our excavation began, but we could reconstruct them because marine concretions had formed natural molds of the once-solid objects.)The parascharetes must have been the cook or a ship’s boy, for the remains of an iron grill over a tile firebox were found in the tile-roofed galley, which was crammed with cooking and eating utensils along with a variety of pantry wares. George evidently did not lag behind the fashions of the day: Four of his bowls are the oldest precisely dated examples of Byzantine lead-glazed pottery.We can calculate with some confidence the total investment in the ship and all its stores. The Rhodian sea law indicates that the seventh-century cost of a fully outfitted ship ran about 50 solidi(gold coins) per 6 1/2 tons of capacity. On this basis the cost of building and outfitting the Yassi Ada ship would have been some 460 solidi, a substantial sum in times when a shipyard caulker might earn 18 solidi for a year’s work and less-skilled laborers might receive only 7 or 8.As the Yassi Ada ship was being prepared for her last voyage, a procession of porters would have carried aboard the cargo of nine-hundred-odd amphoras and passed them down through the hatch into the hold. Most of the storage jars were large and globular, but some were smaller and more elongated. The large jars could hold as much as forty liters of liquid, the small large jars held wine; unfortunately, the mud contents of none of the smaller amphoras were sieved at the time of excavation.The cook’s stores would have been loaded at the same time as the cargo. We know that his fresh rations included a basketful of dark, gleaming mussels: Their empty shells, carefully nested within one another, were found amid the wreckage.The captain had placed in the galley certain valuables, including a money purse or two. These held at least fifty-four copper folles(coins worth a small fraction of a solidus) and sixteen small gold pieces; the total value of the coins was just a little more than seven solidi. One sixth-century figure gives five solidi as the cost of a year’s rations for one man; in the years when our ship made its final voyage a loaf of bread cost threefolles. The money we found would have fed a crew of fifteen for a month with something left over, so it seems likely that the contents of the purse or purses were the ship’s victualing money. With port and customs taxes already paid, there would have been no need to risk more cash at sea.The seventy coins enable us today to pinpoint the date of the voyage at 625 or 626 A.D. Six of the coins were too badly preserved to allow identification. Of the remainder only two were minted earlier than the reign of the Emperor Heraclius (610 - 641 A.D.). The latest coin in the group was minted in the sixteenth year of the emperor’s reign, that is, in 625/626 A.D. We may safely assume that the ship last sailed in the same year or quite soon thereafter.

Drawing a plan of the ship using photographs taken on the sea floor

Sam Low Photo

The ship probably sailed south from the northern Aegean Sea, from the Black Sea, or perhaps from Constantinople (now Istanbul). All but one of the coins were minted north of Yassi Ada, and most of the pottery on board also came from the north. And the ship was almost certainly sailing before the prevailing meltem wind, in a southeasterly direction.The helmsman may have steered a course that would keep him as near the small, flat island of Yassi Ada as he felt was safe. Whitecaps may have camouflaged the breakers over a reef to the west of the island, so that the helmsman did not see danger. As soon as he felt the bottom hit, he must have steered for the island. But the ship foundered in deep water less than a hundred yards offshore. Planing this way and that, like a falling leaf, it silently drifted downward. It landed on an even keel, still pointing toward the island, and then listed to port. We do not know if George and his crew escaped.This story can now be told because of the advancements that have occurred in nautical archaeology over the past twenty years - not only in excavation and safety equipment and methods, but also in the training of archaeologists. To ensure that the new generation of nautical archaeologists is better prepared than were we who pioneered in the field, Michael Katzev and I formed the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, now affiliated with Texas A&M University, and we were later joined by Richard Steffy and Frederick van Doorninck. Students learn to dive and excavate; but first they train to understand and interpret their finds (sometimes while still under water) by concentrating on topics like maritime commerce and naval warfare, the theory and history of wooden ship construction, and the conservation of underwater antiquities. Early in the nineteenth century the geologist Charles Lyell estimated that “a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will in the course of ages be collected together in the bed of the ocean, than will exist at any one time on the surface of the Continents.” Much of this great treasure of knowledge is already lost forever to depths beyond our reach, to decay, or to destruction by looters. But we have only begun to examine what remains, and the coming decades should provide our best look yet at the great human accomplishment of seafaring.

Divers on the way to Yassi Ada in a local small fishing boat

Sam Low Photo

The Ancient Mariners

a film by Sam Low

for the Odyssey Series of PBS programs

Cinematographer and director, Werner Bundschuh, filming for the Ancient Mariners in Greece

The Ancient Mariners follows nautical archaeologists as they excavate three shipwrecks in the depths of the Eastern Mediterranean and as they analyze their finds in the laboratory. The three ships, dating from before 300 B.C. to 1025 A.D., tell the story of a significant change in the methods of ship construction - a change reflecting broader alterations in social, economic, and political conditions.

At Serse Liman, Turkey, George Bass, the founder of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), led an investigation of a ship that sank in 1025 A.D. As we see it before excavation begins, the wreck is barely noticeable on the seabed; but the ship's cargo, mostly broken glass, appears as the archaeologist divers remove silt with an airlift. Showing the huge collection at Bodrum, Turkey, Bass explains that the ship must have been carrying glass for eventual recycling. Fredrick Van Doominck shows the elaborate methods for preserving the fragile pieces of the ship's hull on land. Michael Katzev, also associated with INA, excavated a Greek merchant ship that sank off Kyrenia on Cypress in the fourth century, B.C. The ship carried a cargo of wine in large amphoras. Richard Steffy learns from making a model of the ship that it was built quite differently from the Serce Liman ship. This "hull-first" construction process required not only more labor but a great deal more wood. Lionel Casson tells us that the craftsmanship of the Kyrenia ship was made possible by the use of slave labor, on which Greek society then depended.

George Bass had earlier excavated another shipwreck near Yassi Ada, an island off Turkey, that helps to explain the change in ship construction. The Yassi Ada ship dates from the seventh century A.D. and its construction fell somewhere between hull-first and later frame-first methods.

Film Review

THE NEW YORK TIMES

TV: 'ANCIENT MARINERS'
By RICHARD F. SHEPARD
Published: September 29, 1981

MAN made a road out of the barrier of the sea by building ships, and this most adventurous and ancient pursuit opens the new season of ''Odyssey,'' the series that looks at history and life through the lens of anthropology. ''The Ancient Mariners,'' at 9 o'clock tonight on WNET-TV, achieves a fascination worthy of its topic in sound and picture.

The episode shows how modern scientists have recreated from wreckage found at sea bottom near Greece, Turkey and Cyprus the way ancient shipbuilders built the sturdy craft that carried cargoes. They have also learned about the crews and the civilizations the ships served.

Three antique ships are involved in this program, one from the fourth century B.C., another from A.D. 625 and the third from the 11th century. The scenes shift from underwater sites to the Nautical Archeology Institute at Texas A & M University. From blackened fragments of wood, from thousands of lumpish remains of amphora containers, entire ships and cargoes are reconstructed. Dick Steffy, a marine historian and craftsman, makes models from the evidence and tells how he learns about the thinking of the ancient shipmakers by trying to reproduce their work.

This is more than a program about ships and history; it is a most absorbing account of research process, of forensic investigation, of the scientific mind applied to the humanities. ''Odyssey'' is good at this sort of thing, and this first showing, with Michael Ambrosino as executive producer, Sam Low as producer and Werner Bundschuh as director, gets the season off to a fine start.

To purchase The Ancient Mariners please see: http://www.der.org/films/ancient-mariners.html