Anglesey

[Boreades]

Of course, we'll need some links to "The Britons built the pyramids"?

[hvered]

The Egyptians are not and never have been a sea-faring nation. It seems unlikely they would be majorly concerned with boat-construction expertise.

[TisILeclerc]

The Royal Australian Navy produced a paper examining ancient Egyptian shipping and navies as part of a broader study in naval strategies.

The maritime forces operated by the Egyptian state were not challenged by any other
state’s maritime forces throughout Pharaonic times. They were in effect the major if
not the only naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Even such
potential rivals as the Syrians, Minoans or Myceneans, made up of loose coalitions of
city-states, were not capable of sustained maritime operations against the powerful
territorial state that was Egypt.

'Ancient Egyptian Sea Power and the Origin of Maritime Forces', Gregory P Gilbert.

http://www.navy.gov.au/sites/default/fi ... gyptSP.pdf

It makes for interesting reading for anyone interested in ancient ships and sailing.

[hvered]

the powerful territorial state that was Egypt.

Not being a sea-based nation, the main requirement would be boats for transport along the coast and the Nile. Is there actual evidence of sea-going craft apart from vague claims about Egypt's 'naval power' (which sounds anachronistic) since the modern Egyptian navy was established in the 1960's, with Soviet aid?

[TisILeclerc]

It is anachronistic in that it is produced for the military and forms part of a series of articles looking at ancient sea going technologies and tactics.

This is the first in the series. He does mention Egyptian sea going vessels which were used in the Med. They seem to have hugged the coastline but did cross the sea directly when coming home from illustrations given.

Here is a quote from information taken from about 2,500 BC.

Fragmentary reliefs from King Sahura’s Temple depict a fleet of seagoing ships returning
from an expedition, while the number of Syrians onboard suggests the ships had sailed the Mediterranean to Byblos or some other destination in Syria.

Sahura’s ships were over 17.5m long, 4m wide, with a draught of approximately 1m and an average plank thickness of 10cm.

The ships had either 14 or 16 oars for propulsion, six steering oars, a bipod mast for a trapezoid sail and an anchor. There were at least four ships in the fleet and each ship was crewed by approximately 20 people made up of Egyptians, Syrians and perhaps other maritime peoples.

The seagoing ship hulls were long and slender with pointed ends, which provided greater stability in relatively high seas, while the hull strength was improved by using a girdle-truss. However a girdle-truss could not provide longitudinal strength to a seagoing ship, for that purpose a hogging-truss was required.

Ancient Egyptian mariners developed a hogging-truss — a thick rope connecting the fore and aft parts of a ship to increase the vessel’s longitudinal strength — especially to overcome this problem.

As such Sahura’s seagoing boats reveal the high level of sophistication of early Egyptian ship construction techniques.

This is followed by an illustration taken from the original texts of an Egyptian ship.

[Boreades]

Later in the same article, it mentions the anti-clockwise trading routes that the ships routinely used, so that they sailed with the prevailing winds. It was (from Egypt) along the coast to Byblios (Lebanon) and Syria, then westwards to Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete, then south to Libya, before returning to Egypt. So these were sea-going ships.

[hvered]

Long-distance trade between Bronze Age Britain and the Med is taken for granted, not least because of the centrality of Cornish tin, but with Phoenician aka Veneti(an) ships as the presumptive means of transport.

I don't know if anyone has made a case for Ancient Britons ruling the waves but it would be a challenge to overcome historians' attachment to the superiority of the Middle East.

[TisILeclerc]

Some years ago I read a book that claimed the ancient British had very powerful and strong ships because they had to sail on the ocean and this tradition carried on for centuries. I've forgotten the book unfortunately.

But one thing that is easy to do is forget that shipbuilders, sailors and others who live on the coast are not the same people as those who live on the land and farm. Just as they are not the same as people who make things. There is a bit of cross over but not much.

Specialist shipbuilders would have kept their traditions alive from father to son and others in that particular community.

It's only politicians of today who see no need for us to keep these traditions alive. And in a generation or so they will be gone completely as though they had never been here.

[Mick Harper]

Not so. The sons of politicians will keep the tradition alive.

[hvered]

St Cybi's monastery on Holyhead, gifted to him by Maelgwn, the king of Gwynedd, was known as Caergybi, Cybi's fortress; it had the sea on one side and was protected on the other three sides by the walls of a former Roman fortress/ naval base.

This Cybi had an unusual method of gaining land according to a legend...

Like many Celtic saints, St. Cybi was close to wild animals. Once while hunting, the king of Gwynedd was chasing a she-goat with his hounds. Escaping them, the goat ran up to St. Cybi’s hermitage hut. The enraged king ordered the hermit to give him the goat—otherwise he would be driven out of the kingdom. The saint answered humbly that to drive him away was not in the king’s power, but in God’s power alone, and suggested he devote this goat to the Lord. Ashamed, the king agreed, and it was decided that the land that the goat was to walk around would be allotted to found a monastery by St. Cybi. The goat walked round quite a large area and by the evening returned to its master’s dwelling. The king kept his promise and the monastery was built there.

... reminiscent of Carthage's foundation myth of Dido-and-the-oxhide.