Phoenician replica vessel sails around Africa

Adjacent to the white sleek super yachts berthed in Manoel Island is a super boat in its own right – a replica of a wooden 600 BC Phoenician merchant ship.

Right where Chelsea’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich berths his extravagant yacht rests the Phoenicia, a 20-metre vessel on the last leg of her voyage circumnavigating Africa.

The 11-member international crew are “very excited” to be in Malta, which they leave tomorrow. Captain Philip Beale told The Times they faced many challenges before reaching “Malat”, the Phoenician name for Malta, meaning refuge.

“The most worrying was the pirate situation off Somalia. We were there last October-November, which was the height of the pirate season,” Mr Beale said, pointing out that this was just after the British couple, the Chandlers, were kidnapped, making it all the more “nerve wracking”.

“We had one boat near us that was suspicious and was following us for a couple of hours until a big ship came along and it disappeared,” he said, adding that these threats meant the ship’s voyage took longer as they had to be careful on particular routes.

Another risky area was going around the coast of South Africa and the Cape, an area many sailors are “freaked out” to face. In fact, one of the Phoenicia’s sails split during that journey, as the winds were very strong.

The other thing, the captain said, was sailing the Atlantic where the crew spent 84 days at sea, sailing from West Africa to the Azores.

“Eighty-four days is a long time to be continuously at sea in a boat like this,” he said, adding that family members of the crew were quite worried about them.

The ship itself posed many challenges. For a start, it was unable to sail into the wind, and because it only had a small back-up engine and a square sail, it was difficult to manoeuvre. The ship is devoid of modern devices like winches, which means the crew have to pull up the yard and sail, which together weigh a ton, Mr Beale said.

The expedition, covering 17,000 miles around Africa, attempts to recreate the first circumnavigation achieved some 2,600 years ago.

The replica 600 BC vessel was constructed in Arwad, Syria, using information from a sixth century Mediterranean wreck and was built using traditionally sourced materials including Aleppo pine, handmade olive wood mortise and iron nails.

Malta was colonised by the Phoenicians in about 1,000 BC, who brought to the island the Semitic language and culture and are thought to be the direct male-line ancestors of about half of the modern population. They used the islands to extend sea explorations and trade in the Mediterranean until their successors, the Carthaginians, were expelled by the Romans in 216 BC.

www.phoenicia.org.uk