Twenty-five hundred years ago a trading ship ran aground on the shore of what is now Israel. The crew disembarked and evidently never returned to the vessel, which was soon covered by the Nubian sands that sweep northward along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The wreck lay undisturbed until 1984, when it was discovered by chance under six feet of water 250 feet offshore from Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael (literally, Michael’s Anchorage). The site is 20 miles south of the city of Haifa.
The remains of the ship and its cargo are now displayed in a specially built facility that is part of the University of Haifa’s Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum of Archaeology and is located on Mount Carmel, overlooking the Bay of Haifa.
The Ma’agen Michael Ancient Ship Museum is also closely associated with the university’s Institute for Maritime Studies and is dedicated to Professor Emile Linder, who pioneered undersea archeology in Israel and directed the program for the recovery and preservation of the ship.
The museum’s centerpiece is the 45- foot reassembled remains of the ancient vessel’s hull, which includes about 70% of the ship’s timbers and her keel and garboard, mast step for a single square sail, and some forty ribs. Some of the timbers from above the waterline are missing; presumably they decayed because they were exposed to oxygen that diffused through the sand that covered the ship. At present, the hull is supported by an adjustable jig that was used in the reassembly. It will soon be replaced by a permanent support.
The museum also features objects recovered from the trading ship, and maps, photographs, and diagrams recounting the vessel’s discovery and the subsequent recovery and preservation work. The artifacts include 70 ceramic vessels, copper nails, and a small amount of lead and organic items. Among the latter are the handles of carpenter tools and the woven basket that held them, some rope, and an unusual, single-armed oak anchor. The principle cargo appears to have been 12.5 tons of blue schist, a common building material.
Nearly 20 years passed between the discovery of the wreck and its public display. Each stage of the salvage, preservation, and reassembly process was fraught with technical difficulties, and at least one step—the stabilization of the wood—could not be rushed. The excavated remains of the Ma’agan Michael ship were disassembled at her wreck site. Centuries of immersion in water had turned its timbers into a weak spongy mass that rapidly disintegrated when exposed to air. Consolidating the wood took eight years. Dr. Yaacov Kahanov, who led the preservation and reassembly work, and his co-workers first soaked the timbers in water and then in polyethylene glycol, which replaced the water in the pores of the wood and polymerized. The resulting material retains the shape of the original timbers and is strong enough to be handled.
The ship had a wineglass profile and was built hull first, the method universally used by ancient Mediterranean shipwrights. Adjacent strakes were connected by mortise and tenon joints that were locked with tapered wooden pegs. There were thousands of joints, spaced at three-inch intervals along the length of the strakes. At the bow and stem, the planks were laced together using hemp rope and secured with pine resin. After the planking had been completed, ribs were fitted into the hull and secured with copper nails. The joints between the strakes were not caulked, nor was lead cladding used. The boatbuilders relied on the swelling of the pine timbers to seal the vessel.
The recovery, preservation, and reassembly were fully documented, and an extensive research program complemented the work. The results have been collected in an impressive two-volume work published in 2003, The Ma’agan Michael Ship, edited by Eve Black, Israel Exploration Society, and the University of Haifa. In summarizing the work, Kahanov and Linder conclude that the ship reflects the lively commerce of biblical times and the shipbuilding technology of the eastern Mediterranean. Both the technology and the trading culture are described in detail in the Old Testament and the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus.
Yaacov Kahanov now serves as curator of the Ma’agan Michael museum and directs its research programs about ancient shipbuilding. Having reassembled the original, he plans to build a seagoing replica of the ship using the same materials and methods as the ancients.
The Ma’agan Michael Ancient Ship Museum is located on the campus of the University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel, and is open Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Admission is free.