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This ship is the earliest known ship that incorporates “modern” ship
building techniques. She was discovered at a depth of 32 to 34 meters
(100 feet) in the bay of Serce Limani (Sparrow Harbor) on the coast of
Turkey north of Rhodes. Turkish sponge diver Mehmet Askin showed the
sight to George Bass in 1973. This was followed by the excavation of the
site between 1977 and 1979 under the direction of Bass and Frederick Van
Doorninck, Jr. The lines of the Serce Limani ship, as reconstructed by
J. Richard Steffy, show a deep, full-ended vessel, rounded in profile,
with a flat bottom, a sharp turn at the bilge, and a steep sheer. She
was probably two-masted and lateen-rigged. The Serce Limani ship may be
called the first truly modern ship because its hull was built entirely
onto a preexisting frame skeleton. By the eleventh century, the
transition in Mediterranean shipbuilding from the Greco-Roman “shell
first” to the modern “skeleton-first” construction technique was
complete.
About 20% of the hull survived, mainly the bottom and a small area of
the upper port stern. There were a lot of widely scattered fragments
representing various portions of the hull up to the deck level, and the
keelson and some ceiling planking were preserved in the after portion of
the hold. About 37 feet (11.3 meters) of the keel survived, being
composed of hardwood. The other parts, stringers and wales, were all
softwood, probably pine. A single, flat scarf was located aft of
amidships, but the foremost part of the keel curved into the stem post
without any sign of a keel-stem post scarf. Apparently there was no
false keel as no evidence of this was there. Apparently from the
evidence the garboard strake was not rabbeted or attached to the keel in
any way, but traces of pitch indicate that the keel-garboard seam was
caulked. A keelson ran the length of the ship and was attached to the
keel with iron bolts like those used on the Byzantine ship at Yassi Ada.
The sternpost was a naturally curved timber rabbeted to receive the ends
of the planking. The framing plan was complex and the spacing of the
frames irregular. In the hold, floor timbers with long arms to port
alternated with floors with long arms to starboard. V-floors and half
frames were used in the bow and stern. The hull itself was put together
by nailing planks to the frames (both iron nails and wooden treenails
were found) without any edge joining of the planks. The wales consisted
of logs that were sown in half lengthwise. The ceiling consisted of
half-round longitudinal stringers, transverse boards, and standard
longitudinal planks. The result was a strong flat floor in the hold.
The divers who worked on the site, while digging in the sand for small
items, came up with cut and bleeding hands! They soon realized that they
were coming up with an enormous amount of broken glass. This turned out
to be about three metric tons of broken glass vessels, raw glass, and
factory waste. This cargo must have been on route to a glass making
location to be melted down and re-made into various glass objects. The
glass objects appear to have been deliberately smashed before being
loaded into the hold – an obvious method of shipment if it is only the
glass you are interested in.
There is also some interest in the origin of the crew and the ship
itself. One of the eight iron anchors carried on board was stamped with
Arabic letters. A bronze bucket bore an Arabic inscription. There were
Islamic glazed bowls imitating Chinese Tang dynasty porcelain along with
complete glass vessels found in the stern of Islamic type. Conversely,
Christian symbols were found on some of the net-weights. Some amphorae
and cooking pots were found with Greek graffiti on them. Byzantine coins
were found as well as Islamic gold pieces. Pig bones were among the
animal remains found on the site. From an historical sense, this
surprising mixture of cultural artifacts suggests that commercial ties
between the Byzantine and Arab worlds in the eleventh century may have
been closer than is generally supposed.
A glass balance-pan of the Fatimid Caliph al-Zahir (1020-35) provides a
likely time frame for the wreck. Much more information and details for
those who are interested can be obtained from the web site
http://www.diveturkey.com/inaturkey/serce/hull.htm. This is a great
article by J. Richard Steffy on the hull of the ship and its
reconstruction. There are other articles by Frederick Van Doorninck, Jr.
and others. More mysteries of ship construction may be revealed as the
experts study this modest little vessel.
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