Qualla: Phoenician shipwrecks of Mazarrón

Phoenician shipwrecks of Mazarrón: Introduction

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nanosanchez, Public domain. La Playa de la Isla is known for calm water, which is precisely why two Phoenician ships lie beneath it. Sometime in the late seventh century BC, a rare storm caught them close to shore, drove them under, and buried them in sand before their crews could salvage the cargo. The sand that stranded that cargo also sealed it. For roughly 2,600 years the wrecks lay undisturbed off Mazarrón, on the coast of Spain's Region of Murcia, until the construction of a marina in 1988 shifted the currents and the sea began to peel back its cover, exposing ancient timber that should not have survived at all.

Image: Nanosanchez | Public domain

Phoenician shipwrecks of Mazarrón: The Sand That Kept Its Secret

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nanosanchez Derivative work MagentaGreen, Public domain. Archaeologists surveying the seabed near the Isla del Puerto in 1988 found what the new marina had uncovered: waterlogged wooden structures, protected for millennia beneath a layer of dead Posidonia oceanica, the Mediterranean tapeweed whose matted fibers had shielded them from d...

Image: Nanosanchez Derivative work MagentaGreen | Public domain

Phoenician shipwrecks of Mazarrón: Sewn and Pegged

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nanosanchez, Public domain. What makes these ships remarkable is how they were held together. Mazarrón I combined two very different techniques in a single hull. Some planks were joined with pegged mortise-and-tenon joints, a hallmark of Phoenician carpentry, while others were literally stitched, laced with...

Image: Nanosanchez | Public domain

Phoenician shipwrecks of Mazarrón: The Most Complete Ship of Its Age

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit santiago lopez-pastor from España, CC BY-SA 2.0. If Mazarrón I was a fragment, Mazarrón II was a miracle. Discovered in 1994, it survived nearly whole from bow to stern, roughly eight meters of hull, the most complete ancient ship yet recovered anywhere. Its fig-wood frames were sewn together with plant fiber; its pine planking...

Image: santiago lopez-pastor from España | CC BY-SA 2.0

Phoenician shipwrecks of Mazarrón: A Cargo of Silver and Everyday Life

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nanosanchez This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications: Farbe optimiert. The original can be viewed here: MazarronIIg.jpg: . Modifications made by Chumwa., Public domain. The ships carried wealth in a heavy, unglamorous form: litharge, the lead-rich blocks used to refine silver, of which 2,820 kilograms were recovered from Mazarrón II alone. Around the cargo lay the debris of ordinary life at sea, more than 7,300 Phoenician pottery fragments, a si...

Image: Nanosanchez This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications: Farbe optimiert. The original can be viewed here: MazarronIIg.jpg: . Modifications made by Chumwa. | Public domain