This is the definitive work on ancient shipsheds. The first half is thematic; 13 chapters explore literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence for ‘houses for ships’ from the archaic Greek to imperial Roman eras. There follows a detailed catalogue of 24 shipshed complexes, from Abdera to Thasos, miscellaneous likely and unlikely examples, and a general index. Every chapter has separate bibliography and footnotes, and there are excellent maps, reconstruction drawings and plans throughout. B. and R. contribute eight chapters and many catalogue entries with deep erudition and enthusiasm. Secondary authors K. Baika, H. Gerding and J. Pakkanen also display notable expertise. However, cover and title page inexplicably omit J.S. McKenzie, credited inside as an author (p. xvi), co-editor of the catalogue, contributor of two catalogue entries and preparer of most of the drawings and plans. Due credit is given to the Leverhulme Trust and Trireme Trust; the book is dedicated to the late J.S. Morrison and J.F. Coates, whose scholarship and construction of the replica trireme Olympias revolutionised ancient maritime studies. This book is a fitting tribute: an analysis of the context, function and historical significance of all extant shipsheds, both familiar and new, and a call to arms to find more.
B. reviews shipshed scholarship, in which Classical Piraeus is prominent, and Carthage, Syracuse and Oiniadai in western Greece. Shipsheds are covered slipways built at the water's edge, so most are poorly preserved, despite their potential importance for researching monumental architecture, naval power or civic demography. Geological research on sea level change, scuba and the trireme's construction all spurred new finds, though problems of identification, reconstruction and conservation remain. B. outlines literary and epigraphic evidence for Classical and Hellenistic sheds, from ancient vocabulary (neosoikoi, neoria, navalia) and Herodotus 3.45.4 on Polycrates' Samian sheds to Thucydides, Xenophon, Strabo and Diodorus (with inevitable bias towards Classical Athens and against the Hellenistic era). The epigraphic record is fragmentary but essential, from Athenian naval lists of 377–322 b.c. to public records from Rhodes, Corcyra and elsewhere. B. shows how rarely the literary record lines up with archaeology (e.g. at Samos or Corinth), but also how monumental shipsheds were a source of pride for Classical Greeks, lauded in speeches as emblems of civic power.
R. confronts a challenging variety of material for ‘Roman’ shipsheds with scepticism, discussing archaeological as well as literary, epigraphic and iconographic evidence. Most literary sources are poetic, anachronistic or late Republican (Vitruvius 5.12.7 deserves further study); the epigraphy is largely epitaphs. At Rome, shipsheds on the Tiber were at the Campus Martius from at least the fourth century b.c., while the Punic and Civil Wars meant sheds Mediterranean-wide were long in use. The naval stations at Misenum and Ravenna (during the pax Romana) remain unexcavated, while sheds elsewhere are elusive. Further background on the ‘strong possibility’ that navalia can be translated as ‘brickworks’ seems needed (pp. 35–6), since B. did not mention this debate; disputed shipshed imagery on coins and mosaics would have benefited from illustrations. In discussion of archaeological remains, R. distinguishes slipways and warehouses from shipsheds, but there must be more Roman shipsheds undiscovered. Pakkanen's chapter on the economics of shipshed complexes focuses on the construction of the Zea harbour shipsheds in Piraeus. While these give vital evidence for the social and economic processes, resources and manpower of a large Classical building project, some of this material is more suited to the catalogue entry, or contextualised with projects outside Athens.
R. describes ships which used the sheds, outlining the development of warship (and hence shipshed) construction from private to public, ever larger and then, under Rome, smaller again. Shed length, width and gradient, when they survive, indicate what sort of ship was housed there; single ships could be served by slipways, but fleets needed shipshed complexes. Drawing on the work of Coates, this is an excellent introduction to the history of ancient warships, and how the physical needs of rowers dictated ship and thus shipshed dimensions. R. next discusses shipshed use: storing, launching and hauling out. LSJ misleadingly translates holkos as a ‘machine for hauling ships on land,’ while, as R. clearly demonstrates, the more usual translation is a place for hauling out ships, or slipway. Ancient ships were generally launched bow-first, and hauled out stern-first (the only detailed account of a launch is Argonautica 1.367–93). Shipsheds with covered slipways evolved from the use of natural beaches, with preferred gradients of 1:12–1:6 (4.8–9.4 degrees). R. covers the dangers of launching and hauling out, and the evidence for use of wooden sleepers (groundways), rollers and props to support the ship. Capstans or windlasses appear in Horace and Vitruvius, but may not have been commonly used; an inscription from Piraeus (IG I3 153.6–9) regulates at least 120 men for launching and 140 for hauling out a ship. B.'s chapter on ramps and substructures covers much of the same ground as R., tracing slipway and shipshed use from beach to architectural complex, and discussing evidence for storage of spars and oars, repair work and other uses of shipsheds. Gerding provides a corresponding chapter on roofs and superstructures, making the best of scant and poorly preserved literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence. The needed length, width and sloping floors of shipsheds mean restoring sloping (or more rarely stepped) roofs supported by piers or columns.
Baika rounds out the thematic section with chapters on the topographical context of shipsheds, from urban naval dockyards to fortified harbours and ‘small scale and rock-cut naval bases’. Her key points are that shipsheds are publicly-built and owned complexes, often fortified landwards, ‘closed’ seawards, but located in civic contexts adjacent to the agora near merchant shipping. Walls, gates and broad streets separated urban naval arsenals from civic space; naval bases like Sounion or the rock-cut slipways opposite Rhodes could store one or two ships at strategic outposts. Finally, B. and R. summarise the historical development of shipsheds from Archaic Samos and Corinth to Classical Athens and Hellenistic Rhodes and Carthage. Roman shipsheds remain elusive and there are questions on continuity of use or construction under the Empire. But shipsheds have the potential to answer many broader historical questions: about demography (how many rowers could a polis muster?), civic topography, or the actual width and (less often) length of ancient ships.
Three debates deserved more in-depth or coordinated discussion. First, were ladders, cradles or trolleys used to move ships in or out of sheds? R. emphasises that sliding the ship on its own keel seems most common from the evidence, but perhaps he is too firmly against the use of these devices (pp. 113–16). Baika (p. 245 n. 55) seems to support the use of ancient cradles. Next, to what extent were ships other than warships stored out of water in sheds? B. argues that for the Classical and Hellenistic era ‘by implication or by context the ships housed in the sheds (neosoikoi or neoria) are all warships’, and that Xenophon, Vect. 3.1 on safe winter accommodation for shipping in Athens is too vague (p. 17). Yet Baika refers to the close coexistence of naval and commercial harbour use (pp. 188–202), not only at Kantharos in Piraeus (and Zea?, p. 459), but also at Carthage, Rhodes or Miletus. Surely there was construction or use of sheds for merchant shipping out of reach of shipworm and under cover, especially in winter, even if not paid for by the polis or identified archaeologically. A related debate concerns how urban waterfront space was maximised, and whether ‘double’ shipsheds (Diodoros 14.42.45) were built wider, longer or even outside of Syracuse (or Plato, Critias 116b's Atlantis). R. outlines the long history of this debate in his Piraeus Catalogue entry (pp. 454–9), arguing that storing ships side-by-side was usual, with double-length sheds ‘implausible’. This conflicts with the Zea Harbour Project and B. Lovén (who completed his 2010 Ph.D. under R. and Pakkanen). But the Athenian naval records IG II2 1627–31 say 372 shipsheds were built and repaired in Piraeus annually (196 in Zea), so these must be accommodated somehow. Comparison with other sites and with medieval practices might be fruitful. R. cites shipsheds of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries (p. 38 n. 81) in the context of iconography, but the book could have benefited from more parallels with the extensive literary and archaeological evidence for medieval Mediterranean shipshed construction and use.
Overall, however, this is a monumental contribution to scholarship of Mediterranean shipsheds, which should figure much more prominently in our understanding of ancient Greek (and Roman) architecture, port construction and civic pride.
