How safe were ancient boats on the sea?

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The paper The warped sea of sailing: Maritime topographies of space and time for the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean discusses in extensive detail the construction of cartograms for the Levantine Basin in the Eastern Mediterranean. Extrapolating backwards carefully from the wreck of the Kyrenia discovered in 1965 (sunk in the 4th Century B.C.), and considering distinction between wind direction, current, season, and morning or afternoon sailing time, it builds a network of "time of passage" values between four sites on the Levantine Coast:

  • Ugarit in the northern Levant;
  • Byblos in the central Levant;
  • Ashkelon in the southern levant; and
  • Egypt (using a location in the western Delta).

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Note that the model used here is clearly influenced by research into pre-contact Polynesian travel in the Pacific, by attempting to recreate the mental image of the Eastern Mediterranean that might have existed in a Bronze Age navigator's mind, based on distance measured in "days sailing".

One notable finding is that in Spring, sailing direct from Egypt (Western Delta) direct to Byblos was considerably "shorter" than sailing a coastal route to the much closer Ashkelon, in that it had very favourable conditions while sailing to Ashkelon in contrast had quite unfavourable ones..

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Also noted is that, by the Late Bronze Age if not earlier, the Kyrelian Coast between Cyprus and Anatolia was one of the most pirate0infested waters in history. There would have been great incentive for captains to avoid that stretch of coast if at all possible.

None of this is direct evidence that these over sea routes were used - but they are evidence that any experienced captain would have at least known their feasibility, and have had reason to consider them.

Finally, there is an upper limit to the risk that is financially feasible. Beyond certain level, it is ear impossible to obtain sufficient experience to become competent and reduce risk. Sailing cross-see from the Western Delta to Byblos in spring of the Early Bronze Age was likely considerably safer than departing with Drake in 1577 - on a ship other than Pelican.

Much is made of the (presumed) navigational caution and inadequacies of Bronze Age mariners. However one must remember that with a single square sail, these vessels could only point about 20 degrees above a beam reach. Tacking upwind with that limited upwind capability would have been possible only in a flat sea with ideal wind conditions, and otherwise impossible.

Being caught on a lee shore in these vessels, with the wind picking up, is certain foundering, and likely death of most or all crew, if one cannot beach the vessel first. Any captain seeing the an unfavourable wind picking up would, as a last chance at survival, have simply turned out to sea and prayed.

Having once survived such a decision, perhaps even profited from it, can one really imagine that over a span of more than two thousand years no captains risked the same again if only for the adrenaline rush? Not me. The Mediterranean is a far more forgiving and much smaller than the Pacific where pre-contact Polynesians explored thousands of miles from New Zealand to Tahiti and Hawaii.

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Largely, they weren't. Quite apart from the physical dangers, the risks of getting lost while out of sight of land were just too high.

In very general terms, navigation while out of sight of land is a hard problem. Pre-neolithic societies didn't have the means to crack it at all, and not a lot of societies before the Middle Ages had much luck with it either.

The Phoenicians developed a trick of measuring the depth of the sea under them as a rough proxy for distance from shore. That worked OK for them in the Mediterranean, but obviously wouldn't work well away from the continental shelf. However, nobody before them would risk going out of sight of land even in the Mediterranean.

The Polynesians were the early masters of open-ocean navigation. They used a variety of natural observational techniques (like using bird and marine animal migration patterns and wave patterns), along with star navigation and maps.

It appears that cultures on or near the Indian Ocean were traversing it quite early, but we don't know for a fact they were going out of sight of land until the Arabs (which is post-ancient).

That's about it until the Middle Ages.

The Arabs had worked out how to use compasses, the kamal, the quadrant, detailed maps, and the Indian Ocean's directionally reliable monsoon winds to make it possible to pull the same trick over the Indian Ocean, as long as they only tried it while the monsoon winds were blowing their way (once a year, each direction).

The Vikings appear to have used a lot of the same natural navigation techniques as the Polynesians, as well as a variant of the Phoenician depth-checking trick. Its also thought they may have been employing sun navigation techniques, possibly making use of naturally-occurring polarizing crystals to allow use in cloudy daytime weather.

(Both Vikings and Polynesians seem to have hit upon opposite ends of the Americas at roughly the same time. Neither appear to have made much impact there when they did.)

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