Insula Planasia (Massilia)

Planier 3 Wreck

ShipwreckGallia Narbonensis · Ile du Planier, Marseille, FranceBuilt 70 BCE · Destroyed 60 BCE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

The Planier 3 wreck lies at the base of a drop-off on the Pierre-de-la-Bague reef off Marseille, found in 1961 in the strong currents that have claimed several ships at this single point. Chemical residue analysis of its amphorae detected grape and fermentation markers, confirming the ship carried wine rather than oil or fish sauce when it sank. The find sits among a cluster of wrecks at Planier that map directly onto the shipping lanes converging on Massalia, ancient Marseille's harbor. It offers direct chemical proof, not just jar shape, of what a Roman wine ship actually carried to market.

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.