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Madrague de Giens Wreck
About
This 40-meter Roman freighter sank off the Giens Peninsula around 65 BCE hauling roughly 6,000 Dressel 1B wine amphorae stamped by the potter Publius Veveius Papus. At 400 tons deadweight it ranks among the largest Roman shipwrecks ever excavated. French Navy divers found it in 1967, launching France's first scientific underwater excavation.
What happened here
A merchantman goes down with everything aboard and the sea keeps most of it. Cargo is usually amphorae — wine, oil, fish sauce — stacked in layers in sand, or roof tiles, or marble in the round, or ingots stamped with the smelter's name. Timbers survive where the mud or the cargo covers them, and the hull shows how it was built: planks edge-joined with mortise and tenon before the frames go in, a way of building that is slow, strong and about to be abandoned. Personal things come up too — a cooking pot, a lamp, coins that date the last voyage to within a few years. Most losses happen in autumn, close inshore, on a coast the crew knew.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →