I was curios about how they came to the conclusion that the boat, “able to carry a huge cargo” was 40” X 6’ with 15 crewmen, since they didn’t find any of the wooden strakes or keel or anything.
That is a very narrow configuration for a bulk cargo transport and would be relatively unstable in seas of any size.
Yeah, that 40” is supposed to be 40 feet I think. :’) Otherwise, this thing was just a glorified canoe, and not very glorified. :’) A cubic yard of water is about 1600 pounds, which won’t help us without the third D. 240 square feet is less than 30 sq yds, it’s not unlikely that a laden ship of this type and size had at least four feet below the waterline, and give or take not being square ended, the vessel thus displaced about 28 tons (+/- a ton).
Run of the mill Roman vessels displaced about 100 tons, which is comparable to colonial clipper ships (without looking it up, this is what I recall from Lionel Casson), although the Romans built some vessels which were much, much larger (moving 300 ton obelisks and whatnot from Egypt required bigger ships). Grain haulers were probably 100+. This particular ship wasn’t mass-produced I’m sure, but ships of this size were probably common.
The ancients would sail the length of a sea using vessels we wouldn’t use to crap over the side, much less take a voyage in. That was the case right up until iron started to be used, making much larger vessels possible.