A 3RD CENTURY AD GALLO-ROMAN TRADING VESSEL FROM GUERNSEY
AKA
THE ST. PETER PORT WRECK OR ‘THE ASTERIX SHIP’
By Bob Dean
The St Peter Port wreck, dubbed by
the media The Asterix Ship, was
discovered in 1982 by local diver
Richard
Keen
excavated
and
and
subsequently
recovered
by
Dr
Margaret Rule (of Mary Rose fame)
and
Jason
Department
Monaghan
of
of
the
Archaeology,
Southampton University.
The process of rescue archaeology, outlined succinctly in the enclosed extract from Monaghan &
Rule’s publication A Gallo-Roman Trading Vessel from Guernsey, although of great academic interest,
is not the focus of this particular investigation, the fundamental raison d’etre of which is to assess the
technological significance of the vessel itself, particular with respect to its modus operandi in vitro.
The last phrase is worthy of elucidation. To simply engineer a model adequate to satisfy a specific
assessment criterion for module CLH292 would be to miss the opportunity to initiate a sustainable
programme of investigation into this area of ancient technology.
The proposal, therefore, is to
construct a scale replica of the original (25x6 feet instead of metres might be a feasible proposition),
systematically employing many complementary techniques (iron nails, anchor, pulley-blocks, warps,
pitch-based caulking, woollen/hide sails, bilge pump, cargo receptacles to name but a few). The
logistical problems thus created will, of course, necessitate much cogitation.
Returning to the academic argument, investigation of the original vessel prompts three key questions:
What was the method of construction/material used?
1
How did the design evolve?
For what purpose was the vessel employed?
The first question is relatively straightforward to answer. It was essentially a substantial (25x6 metres)
oaken vessel of carvel construction (butted and caulked planks) on multiple heavy ribs. Fully decked,
single-masted and double-ended, it was an impressive piece of nautical engineering.
More
problematic… and this, perhaps, is the central challenge of this project … is the technological question
of how each component was crafted, individually and into the whole.
The latter questions demand an inextricably entwined answer. This level of architectural maturity
could only have materialised at an advanced stage of the evolutionary process; the successes and
disasters of generations of seafarers contributing to the hybrid. In keeping with virtually all nautical
architecture, the vessel evolved in response to the environment in which it worked. It is, lamentably, a
tragic fact of life in maritime communities that what you see works well, because what didn’t lies at the
bottom of the sea! The Asterix Ship was therefore, by definition, a design that functioned efficiently in
its home waters. But where were its home waters?
Was it of Gallic design, working the English
Channel? Rule describes it as ‘Gallo-Roman’, suggesting its lineage incorporated a Mediterranean
element, so is it conceivable the vessel was influenced by Mediterranean practice, or actually plied the
trade routes to Iberia, or even into the Mediterranean itself. To the modern observer the hull design has
a decidedly Scandinavian flavour, but which came first? The thesis postulated here revolves around the
simple fact that the north-east Atlantic is such a hostile environment that, whilst sub-standard nautical
architecture lasted no time at all, good design was irrepressible. In simple terms, maritime man worked
out a long time ago what works, and everything else is a variation on a theme. Putting this theory to the
test, let us work backwards from the last known wooden working vessels.
2
This
is
a
diesel-powered
1940s
Fraserburgh derivative of the earlier
Scottish sailing Fifie. Wooden hulled of
larch on oak frames, double-ended,
broad-beamed,
stepped
well
fully-decked,
for’ard,
mast
shed-like
accommodation set well aft … the basic
description is identical to The Asterix
Ship, albeit with different hull dimensions. It was designed to sail to offshore fishing grounds and lie to
nets, often in choppy seas or in huge Atlantic swell. Arguably, one of the most seaworthy designs ever
produced for offshore north-west European conditions.
These are also Scottish fishing vessels,
(a Fifie and a Scaffie) the nineteenth
century sailing versions from which
the above was derived.
Again the
basic hull description holds true.
3
Of the same vintage was the workhorse of the
east coast of England, the unkindly named
Thames Barge.
Although obviously more
suited to coastal than trans-ocean passages,
these were seaworthy in experienced hands and
quite capable of conducting trade along the
North Sea and English Channel coasts.
Lacking the double-ended hull of the Scottish
fishing boats, the Thames Barge was less
capable of
typical of deep water but, having a flatter bottom,
withstanding the following seas
was capable of navigating shallow water and
drying out if necessary, a major advantage in the many tidal estuaries of the region.
A trading vessel of similar age
struck a compromise between the
sea-worthiness of the Fifie and
the cargo appetite of the Thames
Barge.
The Galway Hooker,
albeit heavily keeled, adhered to
the Asterix model with regard to
above-water hull shape and mast
positioning.
local
Again essentially
coasters,
these
vessels
could, and did, ply the trade
routes to Wales, Cornwall and
Britanny
4
Turning
the
clock
back
a
millennium, the Gokstad Ship, a
Viking
karv
(dual
purpose
trader/raider), at 23x5.5 metres,
was almost exactly the same size
as The Asterix Ship. Despite its
lines being more exaggerated,
this vessel shared the flat hull of
both the Thames barge and The Asterix Ship. Its cross-section (left, above) would be almost identical
to that of The Asterix Ship (minus the vestigial keel, deck and higher gunwhale).
However, for indisputable visual
similarity we must look to the
heavy Viking trader, the knarr.
Shown right is Vidfamne, a
replica knarr bearing strikingly
similar lines to The Asterix Ship.
At this juncture one must return to the earlier premise of The Asterix Ship itself being a mature design.
Its descendants have been illustrated; but what of its forebears? Believed, via C 14 dating, to be an
animal of the 2nd/3rd century AD itself, it was most unlikely to have been a recent hybrid, a claim often
made for the Viking hafskips (ocean-going ships) of the 9th and 10th centuries AD (quite erroneously;
5
the hafskips were simply stages along an evolutionary path dating back to the Asterix Ship and probably
long before).
The Asterix Ship was, almost certainly, based directly on the pre-Roman Venetic ships, vessels Julius
Caesar described thus:
‘The Gauls’ [Veneti] ships were made with much flatter bottoms [than Roman ships] to help
them ride shallow water caused by shoals or ebb tides. Exceptionally high bows and sterns
fitted them for use in heavy seas and violent gales, and the hulls were made entirely of oak, to
enable them to stand any amount of shock and rough usage. The cross-timbers, which consisted
of beams a foot wide, were fastened with iron bolts as thick as a man’s thumb. The anchors
were secured with chains instead of ropes. They used sails of raw hides or thin leather, either
because they had no flax and were ignorant of its use, or more probably because they thought
that ordinary sails would not stand the violent storms and squalls of the Atlantic and were not
suitable for such heavy vessels … adapted for sailing such treacherous and stormy waters. We
could not injure them by ramming because they were so solidly built, and their height made it
difficult to reach them with missiles or board them with grappling irons. Moreover, when it
began to blow hard and they were running before the wind, they weathered the storm more
easily; they could bring in to shallow water with greater safety, and when left aground by the
tide had nothing to fear from reefs or pointed rocks.’
What Caesar described was surely a type of heavy-duty knarr, a vessel that had helped the Veneti
become the masters of a maritime trading sphere that certainly embraced Armorica and Dumnonia
(Devon and Cornwall) and probably also the English Channel coasts, Wales, Ireland and Galicia. 1.
Fleets of Asterix Ships might well have been common sights at ports such as Hengistbury Head,
Morlaix and Cork.
Writing in the first century AD, Strabo claimed this economic regime was dominated by Phoenicians
engaged in the tin trade, a rather fanciful claim but one intriguingly supported by the discovery of a
contemporary barbary ape skull and numerous North African coin in a horde excavated at Navan Fort
in County Armagh, although it should be remembered cultural intercourse rarely directly links
participants at the geographical extremes. Pytheas, whose 4th century BC sea-faring forays into the
6
Celtic Atlantic were once thought to have been fantasy but are now widely accepted as fact, mentioned
in his book On the Ocean that the tin trade between Britain and the continent. was well known almost
half a millennium before Strabo.
Archaeological evidence linking the Atlantic Celts (and their predecessors) beyond the Iron Age is
simply vast and, in all reason, quite beyond dispute. This embodies both culture spread in the sense of
population dynamics and also dissemination of ideas throughout a sphere of influence, but it also
indicates trade … maritime trade … between those integrated communities. A spectacular example is
provided by Professor Barry Cunliffe, whose description of the third century BC trade in gold lunulae
(high status adornments with quite distinct similarities) from Ireland to Cornwall, Guernsey and
Armorica (and a complementary trade in gold neck-rings from Iberia to Armorica) surely proves the
existence of an Atlantic trading regime.
To stretch this hypothesis to its logical conclusion, the preponderance and common characteristics of
Neolithic burial sites and fortified settlements in the pre-Celtic Atlantic fringes strongly suggests that
maritime contact between the component societies may have been commonplace in the third
millennium BC.
By way of concluding this energetic delve into the social anthropology of maritime western Europe , it
should be emphasised that the vehicle (literally) by which such intercourse was conducted had to be a
hybrid vessel capable of carrying an economically viable payload, withstanding the rigours of the
north-east Atlantic continental shelf, traversing estuarine shoals, settling on rock-strewn beaches and,
certainly along the Armorican coast, manoeuvring in some of the most dangerous waters on the planet.
The Asterix Ship was such a beast. How old the design actually was is a matter of some conjecture but,
when it burned to a hulk in St Peter Port in the third century AD, it certainly wasn’t a revolutionary
design.
So what exactly can be ascertained from the archaeology?
Monaghan and Rule’s painstaking
excavation of the predictably incomplete vessel allows not only a quite accurate reconstruction to be
7
engineered but also lends itself to an incremental demonstration of the essential principles.
As with the archetypal ‘modern’ wooden vessel, it appears the ancients started with a one-piece keel.
They did not, however, attempt to build up ribs on a deep vertical keel but employed a flat keel-plank.
The waterline length of such vessels was determined by the size of the tree used for the backbone
(Figure 1), hence an oaken vessel would have to rely on a keel of a maximum approaching 16 metres;
the Asterix Ship had a keel-plank of 15 x 0.4 x 0.1 metres .
Figure 1
A 90 degree curved stempost and complementary, marginally smaller, sternpost were also one-piece
components which, when attached to the keel-plank, delineated the longitudinal hull section. (Figures
2, 3 and 4). In practice, the method of attachment detailed in Figure 5 was more plausible.
Figure 2
8
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
To this were attached 40 banana-shaped floor-bearers (again of oak, Quercus sp., the only wood used in
the hull) of varying sizes, the largest (central) approximately 8 x 0.5 x 0.125 metres (Figure 6).
Figure 6
9
The central floor-bearers were relatively uniform (Figure 7) but, where the prow and stern hull curves
demanded, they were exaggerated accordingly (Figure 8). A central notch located these transverse
sections on the spinal keel-board, the small escallops on the underside effectively allowing invasive
seawater to drain into the bilge through baffles without dangerous surging when wave-riding.
Figure 7
Figure 8
10
Brass pump fittings were found in the wreck (Figure 9), suggesting perhaps a sophisticated Ktesibianstyle bilge pump.
Figure 9
These timbers represented the extant elements of the Asterix Ship, but Rule and Monaghan were
convinced that, between the floor-bearers (which, needless to say, bore the cargo deck) and extending
up from them were the ribs, each having an elbow to accommodate a deck beam. These, in turn,
supported a full deck, probably with the aid of strategic bulkheads, thereby creating a cargo hold of
200 cubic metres plus within a substantial vessel, conceivably of trans-ocean potential (Figure 10).
Figure 10
The hull planking incorporated oaken strakes almost as thick as the keel-plank, the necessary curvature
assisted by the inclusion of alternate stealers, tapering strakes one quarter the width of the main strakes
(Figure 11).
11
Figure 11
All these external timbers were butted to one another (carvel construction), fixed with clenched thick
iron nails 0.2 metres in length and caulked with a composite sealant of moss and pitch of distilled pine
sap (Figure 12).
Figure 12
Moss plug in stealer
No mast was found, but it was probably a 20 metre pine trunk, stepped through the deck into the keel
approximately 1/3rd of the way from prow to stern. No standing or running rigging was found but,
again relying upon contemporary sources (as well as Caesar’s description of the Venetic ships), hemp
warps and leather sails were possibilities.
In conclusion, it cannot be over-stated that The Asterix Ship was indeed a most sophisticated vessel, the
end-product of an evolutionary design process surely dating back many centuries. And yet an enigma
12
remains; no means of steering was found. Rule and Monaghan’s reconstructive artist suggested a port
quarter-mounted oar-like rudder akin to the Viking steerboard, but the karvs and knarrs had positive
keels upon which such a rudder could act; The Asterix Ship did not. Without this feature, and although
impressively seaworthy otherwise (absolutely essential in her horrendous home waters) she would have
displayed canoe-like hydrodynamics, necessitating a massive rudder. Perhaps buried in the seabed
somewhere near the entrance to St Peter Port harbour lies the answer!
13
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Christensen, A E (1986) ‘Viking: A Gokstad ship replica from 1893’ in Crumlin Pedersen, O &
Vinner, M (eds) Sailing into the Past, 68-77 . Roskilde
Cunliffe, B (2002) The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, London
Cunliffe, B (2001) Facing the Ocean; the Atlantic and its Peoples, Oxford
Green, D (1994) ‘North Atlantic Shipbuilding’, Current Archaeology 140, 326
Hawke, C F C (1977) Pytheas: Europe and the Greek Explorers, Oxford
http://www.archaeology.org/404.html (accessed 25/03/04)
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba63/feat2.shtml (accessed 20/04/04)
http://www.2rgzm.de/navis/ships/ships030/Guernseyship.htm (accessed 27/02/04)
http://www.cma.soton.ac.uk/HistShip/shlect55.htm (accessed 25/03/04)
http://www.cma.soton.ac.uk/HistShip/flrf161.htm (accessed 25/03/04)
http://www.cma.soton.ac.uk/HistShip/flrf119.htm (accessed 25/03/04)
http://www.college.hmco.con/history/readrerscomp/ships/html (accessed 09/03/04)
http://www.munarchaeology.com (accessed 11/03/04)
http://www.tradboat2.co.uk/thamesbarge.htm (accessed 11/03/04)
Humphrey, J W, Oleson, J P, Sherwood, A N (1998) Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook
London
Macready, S & Thompson, F H (1984) Cross-Channel Trade between Gaul and Britain in the preRoman Iron Age. London
Monaghan, J, Rule, M (1993) A Gallo-Roman Trading Vessel from Guernsey – The Excavation and
Recovery of a Third Century shipwreck (Guernsey Museums and Galleries).
Musty, J (1994) ‘Barbary Ape Skull from the Navan Fort, Co. Armagh’ Current Archaeology
140, 326
Penhallurick, R (1994) ‘Phoenicians in Cornwall?’ CurrentArchaeology 163, 268 ff.
Radice, B (ed) (1982) Caesar; The Conquest of Gaul, V London
Rafferty, B (2001) Atlas of the Celts London
14
Ancient Sources
Caesar (mid-1st C. BC) De Bello Gallico, V
Pytheas (4th C. BC) On The Ocean
15
16