- chapter 40: Seafaring –
Figure 40.2 Wreck of Grand Ribaud F in the course of excavation.meters in length, with a rounded hull and slender at the ends, built according to the
archaic technique of assembling the various parts of the hull with ligatures. These
features are common techniques in the Mediterranean, but the comparison with one
of the wrecks of the Archaic period brought to light in Jules-Verne square in Marseille
(wreck 9), which certainly came out of the local shipyards and was made according to
the same artisanal tradition, together with the character of the boat, which is lighter and
faster, but a small vessel intended for coastal navigation (cabotage), or for fi shing, seem to
indicate with some likelihood a Massaliote origin for the vessel.
Likewise the hull of the Grand Ribaud F wreck, a vessel at least 20 feet long, if not
larger, and with a capacity of between 30 and 38 tons, fi nds meaningful similarities of
engineering with the archaic Greek wreck Jules-Verne 7, so that it is not possible to
establish with certainty its shipyard of origin (whether Greek or Etruscan). In addition
to Greek and Etruscan ceramics, as well as a series of bronze basins, the cargo comprised
1,000 amphorae found still stacked in at least fi ve superimposed and fi rmly linked layers,
consisting mostly of specimens of Etruscan type Py 4 from a workshop in southern
Etruria, to which were joined some “Ionic-Massaliote” examples sometimes attributed to
the Chalcidian zone of the Strait and to Ionian Sicily, and sometimes to the Locrian region.
The inscriptions present on some objects, and in particular those on an Ionian-Massaliote
amphora, now considered part of the on-board equipment and not part of the cargo
proper, and that on the base of a plain, black gloss cup, also belonging to the on-board
equipment of the ship, refer to the Latin world, to which “Manios” belonged who most
probably commanded the vessel and who had “Etruscanized” his name to Maniie, with
which he marked his personal possession of that amphora of Magna-Graecian wine. The
characteristic letterforms may be traced to the region of Tarquinia, according to Giovanni
Colonna, and that is where the merchant belonged who had marked an amphora in the
cargo with his own trademark.
If the proposed reconstruction has any chance of acceptance, it follows that the ship of
the Grand Ribaud F wreck is in all likelihood Etruscan and that, at least in the Archaic
period, the Etruscan engineering aspects must have been very similar to those known for
the shipyards of the Phocaean Greeks of the western Mediterranean if not more generally
of the Greek navy.