The first Phoenician shipwreck to be excavated by archaeologists, the wreck at Bajo de la Campana, a submerged rock reef off Spain’s coast near Cartagena, dates to some 2,700 years ago. The ship ran aground and spilled its cargo onto the seabed, where a number of finds ended up clustered in a sea cave. Under the direction of Mark Polzer and Juan Piñedo Reyes, archaeologists recovered fragments of the hull along with a large number of ceramic and bronze artifacts, as well as pine nuts, amber, elephant tusks, and lead ore. The tusks include examples engraved with the Punic names of their owners. The Bajo de la Campana ship was likely a trader from the Eastern Mediterranean that journeyed west, at least as far as today’s Cadiz, in its quest for goods. Most were raw commodities, such as the ivory and lead ore, which the ship’s crew had acquired through trade with the indigenous people of this part of Spain. The wreck at Bajo de la Campana is still undergoing analysis by Polzer and Piñedo at Cartagena’s Museum of Underwater Archaeology but has already yielded evidence of a wide maritime trade network. The Bajo de la Campana ship demonstrates, like the earlier Cape Gelidonya and Uluburun ships, that commerce by sea linked cultures and helped build trading empires—in this case, that of the Phoenicians. In time, they dominated the Western Mediterranean, established port cities and colonies such as Cartago Nuovo (today’s Cartagena), and ultimately clashed with the growing power of Rome.

The excavation and recovery of the well-preserved remains of this late-fourth-century B.C. Greek merchant vessel off the coast of Cyprus has yielded substantial information on the construction of classical Greek boats, often seen depicted in paintings on ancient ceramics. The archaeology, led by the late Michael Katzev and now being completed by Susan Katzev, showed that sometime around 306 B.C., the ship, with a four-person crew from Rhodes, was overcome and sank in what seems to have been a pirate attack that left eight iron spear points embedded in the hull. This nearly two-thousand-year-old victim is the earliest physical evidence of piracy. After conservation and reassembly, the hull of the Kyrenia ship is now on display in the Kyrenia Crusader Castle on Cyprus. Also, a sailing replica of the ship, launched in 1985 and christened Kyrenia II, was a successful application of experimental archaeology. It has allowed archaeologists to learn much more about the form and handling abilities of these now-vanished ships.

The two oldest wrecks ever excavated, these two Bronze Age ships and their cargoes, were discovered off the coast of Turkey. Excavated in 1960 (the site was resurveyed and small additional finds uncovered in 2010), Cape Gelidonya was the first ancient shipwreck to be dug in its entirety from the seabed by archaeologists. Dating to around 1200 B.C., the vessel was most likely the possession of an itinerant metalsmith of Cypriot or Syrian origin, and the wreckage has yielded more than a ton of ingots, scrap bronze tools, weapons, and other objects, as well as metal-working tools. The artifacts convinced original excavator George Bass—known as the father of underwater archaeology—that ancient Mediterranean maritime trade had not been dominated by Mycenaean Greeks. Finds of Greek artifacts at a number of land sites had fostered that view, but Bass believed instead that Near Eastern seafarers, or “proto-Phoenicians,” were more likely to have controlled those ancient trades and seas. This hypothesis was borne out by the discovery and 1984–94 excavation of the Uluburun wreck, which dates to around 1330 B.C. Either Canaanite or Cypriot, the Uluburun ship carried a diverse cargo of raw and manufactured luxury items and commodities from at least 11 far-spread ancient cultures, ranging from the Baltic to Equatorial Africa, the Mediterranean world, and the Near East. The meticulous recovery also produced fragments from this oldest wreck’s hull. Ongoing analysis by excavator Cemal Pulak now proves Bass’ hypothesis and demonstrates a complex, sophisticated maritime trade network dominated by the proto-Phoenicians more than three millennia ago. Thanks to these two ships, we now know that the ancients were savvy seafarers who built what was for them a “global economy.” The Cape Gelidonya excavation led to the founding of both the world-class Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Turkey and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, the world’s leading scientific organization dedicated to the excavation and study of significant shipwrecks.