HISTORY OF ANCIENT SHIP CONSTRUCTION

Buoyed raft

• Multiple numbers of

  inflatable materials were

  soon assembled to support

  greater weight

• In Mesopotamia, natives put together inflated skins

Coracles

• A watercraft that has a stretched
  animal skin over a frame—a
  form of skin boat.

• Are generally saucer-
  or bowl-shaped but sometimes
  are square or oblong and are
  intended for use of one to three
  people.

curragh/currach

• People of western Ireland, having
  little wood available, created
  watercrafts made of animal skin
  stretched over boat-shaped frames,
  which were sometimes large enough
  to carry as many as twenty people.

umiak

• A double-ended boat of the Inuit people is
  covered with sealskin or walrus' hide, around
  thirty feet long and five to six feet wide, and
  driven by a dozen rowers or a large square sail.

pot rafts

• a raft made out of big pots as a buoy

reed boats and rafts

• Bundled reeds that were assembled with each other until it becomes a single unit that can carry several people or cargo

bark canoes

• are lightweight, flexible watercraft made from the outer bark of large trees.

dugout canoes

• started simply with a hollowed half-cylinder, its ends plugged with clay. From this they graduated to shaping the trunk, more or less proficiently; where trees of good size were available

• the great Maori war canoes.

UBAID PERIOD

• The bundled reed boats were coated or caulked with

  bitumen on the exterior, especially of the vessels from

  Magan and Dilmun, which were also referred to by

  cunelform texts (Hnalhen, 2020).

bitumen

• is a naturally occurring substance that is

  similar to modern asphalt - black, olly, viscous, and tar-

  Ilke (Huebner, 2016).

ma, magur

• The generic Sumerian
  term for a boat was
  while the term _ was
  often used to denote the
  sacred or ceremonial
  boats of the gods and
  kings.

Sargon

• The king of Kish, triumphed in

  thirty-four battles over the cities up to the

  edge of the sea and destroyed their walls.

  He made the ships from Meluhha, the ships

  from Magan, and the ships from Dilmun tie

  up alongside the quay of Akkad

Hammurabi

• Took the Babylonian throne

  during circa 1790 BC, is known to have

  united the disparate kingdoms of his time

  into a Babylonian Empire, and pronounced

  his law code throughout the empire.

234

If a shipbuilder build a boat of sixty gur
for a man, he shall pay him a fee of two
shekels in money-

235

If a shipbuilder build a boat for some

one, and do not make it tight, if during that

same year that boat is sent away and suffers

injury, the shipbuilder shall take the boat

apart and put it together tight at his own

expense. The tight boat he shall give to the

boat owner.

275

If any one hire a ferryboat, he shall

pay three gerahs in money per day.

276

If he hire a freight-boat, he shall pay

two and one-half gerahs per day.

277

If any one hire a ship of sixty gur, he

shall pay one-sixth of a shekel in money

as its hire per day.

236

If a man rent his boat to a sailor, and the

sailor is careless, and the boat is wrecked or goes

aground, the sailor shall give the owner of the boat

another boat as compensation.

237

If a man hire a sailor and his boat, and provide

It with corn, clothing, oil and dates, and other things

of the kind needed for fitting it: if the sailor Is

careless, the boat is wrecked, and its contents

ruined, then the sailor shall compensate for the

boat which was wrecked and all in it that he ruined.

238

If a sallor wreck any one's ship, but saves it,

he shall pay the half of its value in money.

239

If a man hire a sailor, he shall pay him six gur

of corn per year.

240

If a merchantman run against a ferryboat, and

wreck it, the master of the ship that was wrecked

shall seek justice before God; the master of the

merchantman, which wrecked the ferryboat, must

compensate the owner for the boat and all that he

ruined.