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The Phoenicia trawled through the ocean, collecting microplastics, as it travelled from Carthage, Tunisia through to Cadiz (Spain), Essaouira (Morocco), Tenerife (Canary Islands) and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) before finally arriving in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on 4 February 2020.
Shipping gold from Africa, tin from Britain and linen from Egypt, the Phoenicians were once one of the most significant trading powers in the world. Their position as dominant seafarers has been noted by Homer, The Bible, and Ancient Egyptian artwork. Artefacts show that their trade route stretched from Ancient Britain through to Southern Europe and Western Asia, and some believe that the Phoenicians were the first to make the perilous Atlantic crossing to the Americas—millennia before Columbus.
Over 2,000 years after their prominence, British adventurer, expedition leader and Phoenician enthusiast Philip Beale now captains The Phoenicia—the only known replica of a Phoenician ship in existence. Inspired by tales of the Phoenicians’ advanced naval capabilities for the time, in 2008 to 2010, Beale circumnavigated Africa on the replica. This marked the longest known voyage in a replica of an ancient ship in modern history.
On 23 September 2019, Beale took on a new challenge: a 6,000-mile, five-month voyage from Tunisia to the United States.
Archeopteryx Member # 23193
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It has nearly become a tradition in itself to cross the Atlantic with replicas of different ancient vessels. Thus copies of viking ships have done it, and of course Thor Heyerdahl in Ra I and Ra II. Tim Severin also made a crossing in a two-masted boat which was built of Irish ash and oak, hand-lashed together with nearly two miles (3 km) of leather thong, wrapped with 49 traditionally tanned ox hides, and sealed with wool grease, following in the supposed wake of the Irish monk Brendan.
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