INSTITUTE OF NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY - Bodrum, Turkey |
| SERÇE LIMANI |
by J. Richard Steffy
Probably not many people got excited when the Serçe Limani vessel was launched. The tubby, lateen-rigged merchantman was neither large, attractive, nor particularly fast, so the event was about as exciting as a new delivery truck coming to town. Nearly a millennium later, however, this little freighter has become somewhat of a celebrity with appearances in newspapers magazines, television, and now, its very own museum. And why not? It is, after all, the only extant representative of eleventh-century Mediterranean maritime trade, one whose strange design and sparse cargo has posed more questions than it has answered.
How well we recreate the processes of building and handling the ship is largely dependent upon the efficiency of our recording and the ingenuity of the reconstructor. But the reconstruction is severely hampered by a subtraction process. We will not have all of the ship to study.
The Serçe
Limani vessel probably led a long and active life. It was old enough to have suffered some
rotten seams in its bottom planking, and these were cut out and replaced by new planks.
What caused the eventual demise of our little trader remains a mystery, but we do have
some knowledge of what happened next. The dispersion of sunken ships is a fascinating
study, and ours is a fairly typical example. As soon as the hull disappeared beneath the
surface, loose gear floated away and some of the rigging must have parted. It settled
gently on the seabed, listing slightly to port with its bow pressed into the seabed and
its stern perched on a large outcropping of rock.
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As time passed, shrouds and halyards let go, masts relaxed, and yards came tumbling to the deck. Nature attacked the intruder with a vengeance as shipworms, decomposition, and currents combined to assault the waterlogged timbers. First deck beams lost their grip on the sides of the hull and, eventually, the deck settled into the hold under the weight of anchors and gear. Masts, or what was left of them, toppled away; the stem released its grip on the bow planking and fell to the seabed. In the stern, too, planking began to pull free of the sternpost, especially on the starboard side, so that now there were big gaps between the sides in both ends of the ship. Without the security provided by beams and posts, the hull sides began leaning outward. It was a slow process at first, but the pace quickened as key fastenings let go, sometimes in fits and starts that projected timber fragments far from their original locations. Eventually the sides of the hull flattened onto the seabed and its bottom, which had been partially suspended by the rock outcropping, did the same thing under the weight of cargo and ballast; the stern still perched atop the rock but the keel now resembled a giant rocker. Teredo and rot continued their attack, destroying most of the bow, starboard side, and the bottom of the stern. But nature often counters her aggression with a little kindness, and now a silting process had begun to cover and protect the flattened timbers. Eventually a truce was reached; twenty percent of the hull was saved from further disintegration by a thick blanket of silt, and the rest disappeared forever. Finally all was still; the lady had died, and only broken pottery marked her solitary grave.
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Well-preserved wrecks such as the Kyrenia ship, the Wasa, or the Mary Rose, are sometimes raised and put on public display. It is an expensive, time-consuming process that is not normally extended to vessels as sparsely preserved as the Serçe Limani merchantman. In such cases, the timbers are often recorded in situ and then covered again for the disposition of future generations. In this case, however, the decision was made to raise and preserve the hull remains for a very good reason. This little ship, regardless of the extent of its survival, might supply some valuable information about the dawn of modern naval architecture and its accompanying advances in shipbuilding technology.
From the 4th century B.C. Kyrenia ship and other excavations, it was learned that wooden ships in the classical Mediterranean were built quite differently from those of the later periods of history. Planking was erected before any frames were installed, the contours of the hull being achieved by carefully shaping the planks and constraining them in various ways. Without standing frames to nail the planks against, they had to be held together along their edges with closely spaced mortise-and-tenon joints. Various parts of the framework were inserted only after the planking was completed in the areas they were to occupy. Such vessels had most of their structural integrity contained in the outer shell of planking, the internal structure of frames and longitudinal timbers often serving a secondary role. As time passed, however, internal structures became stronger and less of the hull strength was maintained by the outer planking. By the early 7th century, as determined by the excavation of the Byzantine ship at Yassi Ada, internal structures were quite advanced and the planking was obviously assuming a less important structural role. Mortise-and-tenon joints had become so small and widely spaced that they seemed insignificant, since now they merely aligned planking seams instead of securely locking them together. Probably by this time some ships were already being built with a few frames erected before the planking was installed, while other builders may have been more inclined to retain older methods. One thing was quite obvious; there was a transition underway from ancient shipbuilding methods to more modern ones. But how, precisely, did that transition take place, and what changes in mathematics, economics, technology, and other factors caused the transition or evolved from it? The Serçe Limani wreck, dated four centuries after the Yassi Ada ship and lacking any mortise-and-tenon joints at all, seemed to hold some of the answers. Clearly it was necessary to raise and preserve the timbers for a far greater scrutiny than they would provide us on the seabed. The chance to reassemble it and make it available to future scholars came with the Turkish government's offer to build a museum featuring medieval seafaring and shipboard life, in which the remains of the hull would form the central theme.
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Reconstructions are only as good as the information upon which they are based, and for ships that means a lot of information. Artifactual data, site plans, excavation remains, and hundreds of site photographs were assembled and studied. By the end of 1978, most of the wood had been transferred from the site to freshwater storage tanks in the castle in Bodrum, where a preliminary study of the hull remains began. For two months we studied and initially recorded key hull members-those frames, planks, keel pieces, and other timbers which we felt best described the surviving areas. From this initial examination we could make a very basic assessment of hull construction and the condition and extent of its remains, enabling us to plan research, conservation, and the design of the new museum.
This information was taken back to our headquarters at Texas A&M so that research could begin there while Sheila Matthews began the thankless task of making full-size drawings of each surface of every fragment of wood in the tanks in Bodrum. While the drawings were being made, Don Frey made black and white photographs of the same surfaces.
In Texas, the laboratory reconstruction began almost as soon as the wood recording in Turkey. The design of the vessel was unlike any we had seen before, the distribution of surviving hull remains seemed curious at the time, and the amount of cargo was a complete surprise. Ships are usually found with full or nearly full holds, but this wreck did not seem to have enough cargo and ballast to maintain stability. And so, as is frequently the case, we turned to models for the solutions to our problems.
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Models are used as research vehicles in the ship laboratory. By dealing with the object in three dimensions, or by actually repeating a construction process in three dimensions, we usually learn much more than we could by graphic or computer-assisted reconstruction processes. In this case it was decided to begin with a model of the site itself in the hope that some of the questions about cargo and hull distribution could be answered. The result was a 1:10 scale model of the shipwreck as it was found on the seabed, with which we could study, even reenact, hull dispersion and relate the cargo to the original hull structure. Such a model was extremely successful; we now knew enough to proceed with the actual reconstruction
As Sheila's drawings and Don's photographs arrived in College Station, they were converted to descriptive catalogs and 1:10 scale drawings. From this information 547 key plank and frame fragments were reproduced in wood to the same scale, with all broken and eroded edges, nail locations, and other details accurately duplicated. These were used to build a fragment model, an assembly which permits us to convert the fragments from their seabed state into a three-dimensional orientation. Using the site diorama, wood drawings and catalogs, and a complex reconstruction process which is now taught to nautical archaeology students at Texas A&M. The model also supplied valuable information for the reassembly of the original hull fragments which was to follow.
From the fragment model it was possible to develop a set of hull lines and structural drawings which, along with the information we learned from the study of the ship, were published in various scholarly and popular mediums.
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By now it was 1981 and the hull remains had begun their treatment process in baths of polyethylene glycol in Bodrum. Until that process was completed, hull research could not proceed any further. That does not mean that all was quiet in the ship lab, however, since we always have several projects underway simultaneously.
During the summer of 1984, the first Serçe Limani wood was removed from the conservation tanks and cured by reducing its temperature slowly over a long period of time. Later that year the new museum building was completed in Bodrum. Now a more thorough recording and research program could begin, as well as the reassembly of the hull remains. The initial examination of the hull was based on a study of wood fragments which could only be examined on a limited basis because of their extremely fragile, waterlogged state. Some of them were entirely concreted and could not be recorded at all.
Once treated and cleaned, however, these fragments were quite stable and could be examined for hours at a time without fear of further deterioration. They could be measured more carefully for curvatures, assembled with adjoining pieces, and studied under oblique light for tool marks and additional fastenings. Consequently, all fragments were examined again. Nails which were missed the first time, details which could not be seen in the waterlogged state, and dimensional changes due to the conservation process were added to the catalogs. In some cases, new drawings were made to better illustrate details. Wood catalogs and drawings must address every possible subject, since we are looking for information about tools, technology, economics, human disciplines, and many other features in addition to the vessel's construction.
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As soon as the recording was underway, work began on the reassembly of fragments. After about two-thirds of the fragments had been properly assembled with temporary attachments, permanent fastening began. In most cases the pieces have been attached to each other with thin, flexible stainless steel rods to permit movement of the hull in the event of serious humidity changes or vibration. In a few cases, treated dowels, toothpicks, or other appropriate fastenings have been used. None of the original fastenings could be reused.
Now most of the remains have been erected, and the wooden scaffolding is being replaced with more aesthetic permanent steel supports. The keel was placed one meter above the floor to permit interested visitors to study the bottom of the hull. Fred Hocker, a nautical archaeology student with previous training in ship wrightery, spent his past two summers constructing a three-meter-long sectional replica of the starboard side from the middle of the ship afterward. Few hull remains survived in this area. The replica, which was built in a separate area of the castle, has now been installed in its proper place within the reassembly and will eventually be loaded with original cargo and ballast as described elsewhere in this newsletter. Unlike the Kyrenia ship and other well-preserved reconstructions, the Serçe Limani hull remains are not intended to illustrate the complexity or extent of the original construction. Instead, they will serve as a three-dimensional source of information for generations of scholars interested in this form of transitional shipbuilding and, along with cargo and artifactual material, will emphasize to all visitors the importance of archaeological research.
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The Serçe Limani vessel has added considerably to our knowledge of medieval ship design, construction, and operation. It is most certainly an early example of modern forms of naval architecture, where simple geometric projections and ratios are used to predetermine the rising of the bottom and narrowing of the hull sides. We have detected a unit of measurement, perhaps representing the length of the shipwright's palm or some other favorite dimension, which he might have converted to formal use by marking that unit, and increments or multiples of it, on whatever he used as a measuring device. The frames were spaced in multiples of this unit, and timbers and planks were rough cut to increments of it.
The shipwright began his task by selecting dozens of trees whose larger branches angled away from the trunks in just the right direction. These formed the knees-naturally grown angles-which described the sharp curvatures at the ends of the keel, the turn of the bilge, and the supports for the juncture of major timbers. The keel was made of elm from three pieces of wood, which were joined together with flat scarfs. The ends of the keel curved sharply into the stem and sternpost, the latter curving gracefully back into the hull. When the keel and posts had been properly set, a pair of midship frames were completely assembled and erected. Afore and abaft of these frames our builders located and erected eight floor timbers, the lower portion of the frames which crossed the bottom of the hull and curved upward for a short distance into one side of the hull or the other. These floor timbers were alternated, one with its knee, or sharply-curving end, on the port side and the next curving to starboard. That seems to be all the frames erected before planking was begun although, as the planking proceeded, temporary braces (called cleats) were erected to control the hull shape. The locations, heights, and angles of these cleats seem to have been selected by a predetermined measurement, although we have yet to prove exactly how that measurement was derived. After four planks described and secured the bottom of the hull, our builders erected a single, broad side plank, after which some additional frames were installed in much of the rest of the hull. Only after the side planking and framing was completed did they install the rest of the planking between the bottom and broad side strakes. A pair of heavy wales, nearly four times as thick as the planking, clamped the hull at and above the waterline, curving into the stem and stern with exceptional steepness.
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The vessel was about 50 feet long,15 feet broad, and carried between 30 and 35 tons of cargo when full loaded. There is evidence that the ship was propelled by two lateen sails, a favorite medieval Mediterranean rig. It had an exceptionally full hold and flat bottom, and its bottom curved into the sides so sharply that the hold was almost rectangular. The small keel and heavy keelson are among the many features that suggest this vessel was designed to navigate shoal harbors, and perhaps river channels, as well as to perform deepwater service. Literary evidence from the tenth and eleventh centuries hints at craft such as this-small, handy little traders which could accompany larger vessels and relay their cargoes into shallow harbors or, when appropriate, operate independently. Research continues on some of these subjects and, hopefully, many more answers will eventually be surrendered by this mysterious little ship.
