A Roman shipwreck in an excellent state of preservation has been excavated from the seabed of Barbir Bay, Croatia. The boat dates to the 1st-2nd century and is about 12.5 meters (40 feet) long. Many features of the ship’s upper works have survived, a rare find in ancient shipwrecks.
Underwater archaeologists from the International Centre for Underwater Archaeology in Zadar encountered the first remains of the shipwreck while investigating a Roman-era harbor in 2021.
“We came across a piece of timber with an iron nail, which suggested there might be something more significant nearby. The following year we expanded the search area and realised it was a Roman shipwreck. After four and a half years of research, this final season has allowed us to uncover the entire ship,” Mladen Pešić, director of the International Centre for Underwater Archaeology in Zadar, told HRT.
Hundreds of olive pits were found on the wreck, evidence that the ship was used to transport olives, probably from a local agricultural estate near the harbor.
“This is a very precise and stable type of ship construction, capable of carrying heavy loads and sailing medium to long distances. Such vessels were essential for life along our coast and islands two thousand years ago,” explained Anton Divić, owner of the Croatian underwater archaeology company NavArchos.
The ship cannot be removed due to the cost and danger of damage, so it will be covered with geotextile and then reburied with the sand that protected it before it was excavated. Archaeologists have thoroughly documented its structure and contacts and taken thousands of overlapping photographs from which to create photogrammetric models. The detail data will also be used to reconstruct a 1:10 model of the ship to demonstrate what it looked like when it was intact. The model will give researchers new information about how such vessels were built and navigated in antiquity.
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