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North African harbours

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

From the sad story of Leptis Magna harbour to the private harbours of the Leptitan shipowners at Silin

HARBORS OF THE LIBYAN COAST
We have already spoken of those private harbors fitted out by the rich ship owners of Leptis Magna. They had to create them after that some unhappy Roman interventions had completely silted their harbor, a good mooring place that, until these unfortunate attempts, had worked very well and had helped to make of Leptis a very rich town. For all the Augustan times the trades had flourished and in Leptis wealthy and potent families of ship owners, like the Tapapius, the Caphada and so on, had enough money to spend on public buildings and magnificent monuments, as the splendid theater and as the town’s market, one of the most beautiful of the ancient times’. A marble town; “a town all white”, as Leptis is described in an ancient portolan; a town that up to the second half of the first cent. A.D. was happy and thriving.
It has always been said that the road to hell is paved by good intentions, and certainly the purposes of the Romans were the best existing. It was a pity that they didn’t work. The harbor, a natural one set in a uadi’s mouth, had functioned very well from its beginning. Handy currents swept this mooring place and kept it free from silting, while some rocks set in front of the sheet of water protected the ships from the worst waves and, however, when a gale came, all the boats were quickly hauled on the sandy beach, and everything went well.
Then, at Nero’s times, the governor of the province thought it would have been a bright idea to build a groyne to protect the ships and furnish a quiet haven for them. Thus he did it, but he didn’t realize that he had placed this masonry barrier just in front of the uadi mouth. Of course the groyne kept away the waves but it also blocked the uadi and every time that, due to some deserts rains, this African torrent “came down”, tons of red sands accumulated against the groyne. Other Roman interventions always directed to protect the harbor from the waves, as the plan to connect the outside rocks with the coast, blocked the action of the currents that for centuries had swept the mooring place keeping it open and free, and this was the coup de grâce.
The ship owners waited for some time hoping the impossible, and then they went away and created their private mooring places. This time they did it the Phoenician way, and thus, as people who knew well the sea and its problem, they choose a stretch of coast where rocky promontory were flanked by “marse”, those splendid beaches of the white sand called “Tripoli” that until the arrival of the stainless steel was sold by kilograms in the drugstore and hardware shops and used to polish the knife’s blades and other metals.
The ship owners built their residences on top of the rocky coast’s promontory and each one of them had one mooring place at each sides of it, so that one of them was always alee. The “mare’s” property was divided in two as is proved by the wall bisecting the beach between the Odeon Maritime villa and the Little Circus one that were the two most western villas. After them there were no more residences or mooring places and this for a very good reason: starting from here the coast was rocky, flat and there were no more “mares”.
Then the villa that I named the Maritime Odeon had not two landing places set at each side of the promontory, but only one: half of the “mars” on its eastern side. On the other side the coast was all flat, hard rock, but a western harbor was necessary and, to create it, his owner was obliged to excavate the rocky platform. From this work he obtained all the necessary stone to build his own residence. In the meantime the others ship owners were obliged to provide the necessary material for their residences cutting the front of their promontory. Of course after this they created their villas on the brim of these quarries. This offered them a splendid panorama and a very high view, but just until it lasted, because when the maintenance began to fail the waves excavated the bottom of the rock and soon after this the front of the villas ruined to the sea.
Thus, among all of them, the only residence that saved its facade was the Maritime Odeon. Moreover its proprietor cut in the sandstone a seaside little theater with, at its flanks, two long flights of seats, a structure done in such a way that also the fiercest waves glided gently over the steps and never damaged them.
Long after I had published all these things about the Libyan harbors, an article signed by the doctors Petriaggi and Davidde appeared on the Archeo magazine. The two affirmed that the western Maritime Odeon’s mooring place - excavated in the rock and in which the rest of a well preserved landing stage was still well evident - was not an harbor but a natural inlet exposed to the worst wind and absolutely impracticable. Both the authors of this article didn’t bother to explain why the proprietor of such a place wasted his money to build the nice landing stage in what for Petriaggi and Davidde was such a horrible spot. Only a look at it proves that the harbor could never have been a natural cove. Near 50 years of my life spent in Libya and all the years I swam along its coast authorize me to affirm that I have never seen such a cove in its rocky flat coast. Only harbors excavated in the rocks and “Marses” that formed themselves every time there was a recess in the coast.
But these are not the only extraordinary things that we find in their paper. Going on doctor Petriaggi state that in the western Maritime Odeon’s harbor he found a depth of only two meters and thus he declared that the place could never have served as a mooring place for Roman merchant ships. An amazing statement by his part as, being him the director of the Naval Museum of Fiumicino in which Ostia merchant ships are shown, he should have well known them and anyway he had them always under his eyes.
As Petriaggi and also Davidde seem not to know much about tonnage and draw, we must now discuss them. Of course I knew quite a lot of things about them, and had this kind of knowledge first by my birth in a family that from the XV century owned tonnare; second, by having always spent lots of time with our seamen and third (what is more), having married a navy officer,
I agree that doctor Petriaggi doesn’t have my pedigree and my familiarity with sea problems, but if I suddenly found myself at the head of any kind of Museum, before pontificating, I would certainly try to learn whatever there was to know about it and, at least, I would read the sources.
Of course it is from these sources that we know a lot about ancient times’ merchant ships. Their tonnage was calculated in amphorae, and from the ancient writers we know that a 2000 amphorae ship, which corresponds to a modern 120 tons one, was then considered very large (CICERO,). Apart of this we also know that even when fully charged such a boat could never reach a 2 m draw. Moreover the ancient merchant ships were much smaller. Livy speaks of 300 amphorae ones (18 tons) and the “oneraria” cited by Tacitus have the same tonnage. A normal Roman very large merchant ship could have a maximum tonnage of 1000 amphorae (60 tons); besides it was wide and flat and I highly doubt that, when full charged, it could draw more than 1.30-1.50 m. By the way I always swam in the Maritime Odeon villa and, for me, its depth is not two meters but three.
Then doctor Petriaggi speaks of winds that, for him, would have made impracticable the western Maritime Odeon villa’s harbor and cite the North-Eastern one as the wind that more agitate the Libyan sea. Evidently he doesn’t look at the map of the western harbor that by the great rocky bar signed A on the map is the best protected place from this wind. For all the other winds he does not seem to take in account the Phoenician custom to have at the two sides of the promontory two mooring places and move the boats from one to the other when it was the case. If there could have been anything disturbing in one of the two sides, the ships would go to the other and, in the case of a bad gale they were hauled on the beach.
However taking now in account the winds of the Libyan coast and its moorings, the South and the South-Western winds were no problems for any kind of them because they came from the coast and with them the sea was calm for at least 4 miles out of it. If ever there was the north-eastern wind - just the “Grecale” cited by doctor Petriaggi as the most dangerous for ships in the western harbor - there as we have seen the boats were protected by the rocky bar. The only place where ships could not stay when the wind came from north east was the “marsa”.
A rocky bar set as a protection against the north eastern wind, a breeze that usually began to blow after midday, existed in all the moorings that the owners were obliged to create cutting them in the rocky coast. I found it also in a harbor by me well known because it existed in Sidi Billal, my Libyan property and I always swam there or started my swims from it. Here on the high of a rocky platform there was a villa that I found, but never excavated. The lack of “marse” in the area and its distance from other natural mooring places forced the villa’s owner to excavate his own harbor and I must also say that he did a very good job of it. A long rocky bar, today partially destroyed but still in view and well functional, protected the sheet of water from the north-eastern wind as did the one in the Odeon Marittimo harbor.
On the other side, well in view, there were the ruins of a lighthouse and, always on this side; a two meters wide canal had been excavated. Its banks were straight and perpendicular to the coast. Here the boats were brought under the high platform and in case of a bad gale lifted on the rocky platform by mean of cranes. The same was done in winter time when these small coaster merchant boats were kept up and covered till the return of the fine sailing weather.
Now I have only another question to put to Doctors Petriaggi and Davidde: I could avoid that I was struck by the following phrase that they wrote just at the end of their article:
“The wide and sure mouth of the river offered instead a natural haven for the ships, an efficacious communication’s way and a precious fresh water stock indispensable both for the seamen and the area residents”
But are those two archaeologists sure to have been in Libya? Except for two uadis one of which is the Uadi Ramla that has some low puddles toward its mouth, in all the 50 years of the life hat I spent in Libya, I never saw there a river with water: only uidian dryer than a cuttle-fish bone; and - as all of us who lived in Trpolitania knew well - except for those two or three days during which, in consequence of some terrible tempest in the Sahara’s interior, the uidian “came down”, there was never a drop of water in their beds. I would however appreciate if the authors of the article could help my guilty ignorance indicating to me which are the principal Libyan rivers that offers to the ships “an efficacious communication’s way”. The same ships I presume that, always for the director of the naval museum of Fiumicino and for his assistant, could not moor in the Odeon Marittimo harbor because “this was only two meters deep”.


Bibliography
Scientific popularization
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Porti della costa libica in Archeo 2002