Seafaring stories

Seafaring in the bronze age

By around 1500 BC, the Mycenaeans had inherited both ship building technology and the knowledge of commercial routes from their Minoan predecessors. Shortly afterwards, by about 1400 BC, the Mycenaeans improved upon the Minoan design by creating, a new style of boat (the galley) which was equipped with oars as well as a sail. This design gave the ships more flexibility, and they could sail in a variety of weather conditions.

These ships were up to 35m in length, with a crew of up to 100 people (in the case of the 50-oar ship), and was capable of reaching a maximum speed of 15km/h when rowed and 25km/h when under sail .

Early explorers

Himilco was a Carthaginian explorer who lived in the 6 th century BC, the period of Carthaginian domination in the Mediterranean. He is the first historically documented explorer to traverse the west coast of Europe, reaching as far as Britain and Ireland, with the aim of discovering trade routes for metals.

Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek explorer, prominent astronomer and navigator, carried out an exploratory trip backed by the state, with the dual aim of cutting into the Phoenicians’s monopolization of mineral trade routes and satisfying his scientific curiosity. Pytheas traveled to the Baltic and reached the northern tip of the British islands. He then proceeded to an island named “Thoule” north of Britain in the frozen sea.

The Brendan Voyage

About 900 AD, the Irish monk Brendan (one of twelve Irish Apostles) is reported to have made a seven-year round trip across the Atlantic, traveling from Ireland to America and back.

In 1976, the British explorer Tim Severin , convinced that Brendan's journey was real, set out to recreate it using a model of the boat presumably used by Brendan: A currach made from an 11m-long oak, tied with straps of an overall length of 3,000m, wrapped with the skin of 49 oxen, and sealed with fat.

Between May 1976 and June 1977, Severin and his crew traveled 7,200km from Ireland to Newfoundland, with stops in the Hebrides and Iceland. Their actual total sailing time was about five months.

Their route is almost identical to that of Odysseus's journey and that of the travellers in Sulla's narrative of travelling from Great Britain to the “great mainland”.

The voyages of the Vikings

In the summer of 1998, American pilot Hodding Carter with twelve men attempted to recreate the 2,400km journey from Greenland to Newfoundland that the Viking explorer Leif Erikson had made in 1000 AD.

The trip lasted about three months (with many intermediate stops). The 32m-long boat was an exact copy of a Viking knarr ship, made out of 300 oak trees and using 7,000 iron nails. Its maximum speed was 15-20 knots.

The circumnavigation of Africa

Herodotus , the ancient Greek historian, mentions a voyage around the African continent which took place at about 600 BC. In Melpomene , the fourth book of his well-known work History, the Phoenicians are said to have circumnavigated Africa at the request of the Egyptian King Neoch II. This narrative had been rejected by Ptolemy as “impossible”, so it has remained “in the shade”.

In 2008, a team led by Philip Beale of Britain began building a replica of a Phoenician ship using traditional methods and materials, with the aim of replicating the trip described by Herodotus. The ship was built on Arwad island, Syria, by Khalid Hammoud. The design of the vessel was based on the remains of a wreck of a Phoenician boat found on the coast of Marseilles, as well as drawings on ancient ceramic wares depicting vessels. The boat was 20m long, capable of a maximum speed of 10 knots, and had a crew of sixteen (16) people. It was named Phoenicia. Starting from the Syrian coast in 2008, the Phoenicia covered a total of 32,000 km in two years .

The sections of the journey to Faial and from there to Gibraltar are almost identical as the routes that were presumably used by Odysseus and Telemachus based on ocean currents.

The crossing of the Atlantic

In 2019 a team led again by Philip Beale sailing with the Phoenicia, took the trip from Tunis to Tenerife and then to the Dominican Republic (in 39 days) and finally to Florida .

This trip matches exactly the presumed trip of the Argonauts in the search of the golden fleece .