Maritime archaeology is a discipline within archaeology as a whole that specifically studies human interaction with the sea, lakes and rivers through the study of associated physical remains, be they vessels, shore-side facilities, port-related structures, cargoes, human remains and submerged landscapes. A specialty within maritime archaeology is nautical archaeology, which studies ship construction and use.
The PS Lady Elgin was a wooden-hulled sidewheel steamship that sank in Lake Michigan off the fledgling town of Port Clinton, Illinois, whose geography is now divided between Highland Park and Highwood, Illinois, after she was rammed in a gale by the schooner Augusta in the early hours of September 8, 1860. The passenger manifest was lost with the collision, but the sinking of Lady Elgin resulted in the loss of about 300 lives in what was called "one of the greatest marine horrors on record". Four years after the disaster, a new rule required sailing vessels to carry running lights. The Lady Elgin disaster remains the greatest loss of life on open water in the history of the Great Lakes.
Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to before recorded history.
The koch was a special type of small one- or two-mast wooden sailing ships designed and used in Russia for transpolar voyages in ice conditions of the Arctic seas, popular among the Pomors.
A cog was a type of ship that was used during the Middle Ages, mostly for trade and transport but also in war. It first appeared in the 10th century, and was widely used from around the 12th century on. Cogs were clinker-built, generally of oak. Cogs were fitted with a single mast and a single square sail. They were used primarily for trade in north-west medieval Europe, especially by the Hanseatic League. Typical seagoing cogs were from 15 to 25 meters long, 5 to 8 meters wide, and were of 30–200 tons burthen. Cogs were rarely as large as 300 tons although a few were considerably larger, over 1,000 tons.
A fluyt is a Dutch type of sailing vessel originally designed by the shipwrights of Hoorn as a dedicated cargo vessel. Originating in the Dutch Republic in the 16th century, the vessel was designed to facilitate transoceanic delivery with the maximum of space and crew efficiency. Unlike rivals, it was not built for conversion in wartime to a warship, so it was cheaper to build and carried twice the cargo, and could be handled by a smaller crew. Construction by specialized shipyards using new tools made it half the cost of rival ships. These factors combined to sharply lower the cost of transportation for Dutch merchants, giving them a major competitive advantage. The fluyt was a significant factor in the 17th-century rise of the Dutch seaborne empire. In 1670 the Dutch merchant marine totalled 568,000 tons of shipping—about half the European total.
Lake freighters, or lakers, are bulk carrier vessels that operate on the Great Lakes of North America. These vessels are traditionally called boats, although classified as ships.
Hydrabad was an iron cargo and passenger sailing ship, built in Scotland and launched in 1865. She was owned by several successive companies, and served until being wrecked off the coast of New Zealand in 1878. There were attempts to salvage her, but they all failed, and the wreck was left to deteriorate on the shoreline.
The Quanzhou Ship (泉州湾古船), or Quanzhou wreck, was a 13th-century Chinese seagoing sailing junk that sank near the city of Quanzhou in Fujian Province, and was discovered in 1973. It remains one of the most important marine archaeology finds in China, and is an important piece of physical evidence about the shipbuilding techniques of the Song China and the international maritime trade of the period.
Cowichan was a steamship which was operated in British Columbia under the ownership of the Union Steamship Company. Cowichan sank in 1925 following a collision with another ship.
SS (RMS) Peveril (I) No. 76307 – the first vessel in the company's history to be so named – was a packet steamer which was operated by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company until she sank off Douglas following a collision with SS Monarch in 1899.
Discovered by divers from the French Navy Diving School in 1967, the archaeological investigations of the Roman wreck at Madrague de Giens constituted the first large scale, "truly scientific underwater excavation[s] carried out in France". The wreck lies at around 18 to 20 metres depth off the coast of the small fishing port of La Madrague de Giens on the Giens Peninsula, east of Toulon, on the southern Mediterranean coast of France. Sunk around 75–60 BCE, the vessel has been found to be "a large merchantman of considerable tonnage—400 tons deadweight with a displacement of around 550 tons", making it one of the largest Roman wrecks excavated, with only the wreck at Albenga, Italy exceeding it at the time of its discovery. The vessel wrecked at Madrague de Giens measured around 40 metres in length; has a "wine glass" section which would have given better ability to sail to windward; displayed extended raking of the stem and stern; and had two masts. The hull was characterised by a reverse stempost in the shape of a ram with a big cutwater which "must have given... [the] craft high-performance sailing qualities". The ship sank while transporting a large cargo of wine and black glazed pottery from Italy. It is not known why it sank.
The pinas, sometimes called "pinis" as well, is a type of schooner of the east coast of the Malay peninsula, built in the Terengganu area. This kind of vessel was built of Chengal wood by the Malays since the 19th century and roamed the South China Sea and adjacent oceans as one of the two types of traditional sailing vessels the late Malay maritime culture has developed: The bedar and the pinas.
The term bedar,, is applied to a wide variety of boats of the east coast of Malaysia that carry one or two junk sails and lack the typical transom stern of the perahu pinas. These junk rigged boats are usually built in the Terengganu area. The stern of the bedar is a classical "canu" or "pinky stern," being a typical "double ender", a bit like a modern ship's lifeboat, with a very full turn of the bilge and with markedly raked stem and stern. They came in small versions as small one-masted fishing vessels — anak bedar and were built as big as 90 feet over deck (LOD). The majority of the bedars were usually 45 to 60 feet over deck. The bedar, like all Terengganu boats, was built of Chengal wood by the Malays since the 19th century and roamed the South China Sea and adjacent oceans as a highly seaworthy traditional sailing vessel.
A Stroudwater barge was a type of barge developed for use on the Stroudwater Navigation, a canal in Gloucestershire.
The SS Lakeland was an early steel-hulled Great Lakes freighter that sank on December 3, 1924, into 205 feet (62 m) of water on Lake Michigan near Sturgeon Bay, Door County, Wisconsin, United States, after she sprang a leak. On July 7, 2015, the wreck of the Lakeland was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Rock Island Bridge was a steam cargo ship built in 1919 by Submarine Boat Company of Newark for the United States Shipping Board (USSB) as part of the wartime shipbuilding program of the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) to restore the nation's Merchant Marine. In March 1920 while on her maiden voyage the vessel collided with another steamer and subsequently had to be beached to avoid sinking. She was later abandoned and sold for scrap.
Bywell Castle was a passenger and cargo ship that was built in 1869 by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, Jarrow, County Durham. She was involved in the Princess Alice Disaster in September 1878 in which more than 600 people died. She disappeared in February 1883 whilst on a voyage from Alexandria, Egypt to Hull, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
Ancient Rome had a variety of ships that played crucial roles in its military, trade, and transportation activities. Rome was preceded in the use of the sea by other ancient, seafaring civilizations of the Mediterranean. The galley was a long, narrow, highly maneuverable ship powered by oarsmen, sometimes stacked in multiple levels such as biremes or triremes, and many of which also had sails. Initial efforts of the Romans to construct a war fleet were based on copies of Carthaginian warships. In the Punic wars in the mid-third century BCE, the Romans were at first outclassed by Carthage at sea, but by 256 BCE had drawn even and fought the wars to a stalemate. In 55 BCE Julius Caesar used warships and transport ships to invade Britain. Numerous types of transport ships were used to carry foodstuffs or other trade goods around the Mediterranean, many of which did double duty and were pressed into service as warships or troop transports in time of war.
