374 GEOffREY KRON
39 Wallinga 1964 : 28; Casson 1971 : 173–4. The explosive period of innovation in warship
technology in the Hellenistic period should provide ample confirmation. See, for example,
Casson 1971 : 97–135, 137–40.
40 Vélissaropoulos 1980 : 63 cites Launey 1933 = IG XII, 348 for the Thasos harbor regulation
barring use of first harbor for ships of less than 3,000 talents, or 78 tons, if we are correct to
use the Euboean standard, and bars the use of the second for those of less than 5,000 talents
or 130 tons. For the same observation see Casson 1971 : 171, note 22. For an analysis of the
archaeological remains of the harbor, see Archontidou-Argyri, Simossi, Empereur 1989.
41 Casson 1971 : 171 with note 22.
42 Vélissaropoulos 1980 : 63, note 46.
43 For the relatively common use of this term by other authors, see Casson 1971 : 172, note 25.
44 Wallinga 1964 : 28.
45 Casson 1971 : 171–3.
46 Casson 1971 : 184–9; Boetto 2008 : 120–1. Particularly notable is Papyrus Bingen 77, noting
a grain ship returning from Ostia to Alexandria and loaded with between 525 and 700 tons
of grain.
47 See Ath. 5.206d-209b; Casson 1971 : 191–9; Castagnino Berlinghieri 2010 ; Meijer and
Sleeswyk 1996 ; Turfa and Steinmayer 1999.
48 Casson 1971 : 186 argues, very implausibly, that the grain measures in Moschion’s description
are modii rather than medimnoi, thereby significantly underestimating the ship’s cargo. For a
convincing case against Casson’s reading, see Duncan-Jones 1977 ; Turfa and Steinmayer 1999.
49 See Turfa and Steinmayer ( 1999 ): 106, table 1.
50 For the biases in our record, note Parker 1992 : 6–7, particularly his statement that of 1,000
wrecks recorded by Greece’s department of Underwater Antiquities, only 80 were known
to him. One need only compare the maps in Parker 1992 : 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 11 from the
Western Mediterranean with the map 13, showing wrecks from the Aegean, overwhelm-
ingly clustered around SW Turkey, an important trade hub to be sure, but also a popular
hunting ground for the INA’s busy marine archaeologists, to see how little we know of
Classical Greek wrecks. See also the cautionary remarks of Parker 2008 ; Wilson 2009. We
should also be aware of the serious problem of damage from trawling and the looting of
wrecks, which progressively degrades the evidence. See Parker 1992 : 354–5, 365–6, 395, 432,- Recent attempts to find methods of surveying deep-water wrecks have confirmed that
Greco-Roman ships did not simply sail along coastal routes. See McCann and Oleson 2004 ;
Sakellariou et al. 2007; Weitemeyer and Dohler 2009. Nevertheless, the shipwrecks most
likely to be discovered are overwhelmingly found in shallow coastal waters and far more
likely, therefore, to be small ships sailing (but not tramping: see Parker 1992 : 21) along the
coasts.
51 See, for example, Casson 1971 : 189–90 and Wilson 2011 : 212–17.
52 Hadjidaki 1996 ; Turfa and Steinmayer 1999 : 105.
53 Hadjidaki 1996 : 558.
54 As noted by Casson 1971 : 172, note 23.
55 Casson 1971 : 189 notes ratio of length to beam of most modern, and ancient, merchant ships
normally ranges from 3:1 to 4:1.
56 Boetto 2008 : 121 citing Pomey and Tchernia 1978.
57 De Vries and van der Woude 1997 : 404. Smaller coastal ships would typically range from
forty to eighty tons, and likely represented the vast majority.
58 Lane 1964 : 231. Such ships represented a minority of the Venetian fleet, particularly in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As Scheidel 2011 : 34 notes, citing Lane 1934 : 102, in 1423,
3,000 of the 3,300 ships in a Venetian census of shipping were of less than 100 tons, and only
around 1% were above 240 tons.
59 In 1787, the 1,427 ships built in the British Empire averaged only 82.7 tons burden (97 tons
for the 940 ships built in England). By 1818, these figures had risen modestly to 97.5 and 120
tons, respectively. See Mitchell and Deane 1962 : 220 (Transport 2 A).