Mortise-and-tenon plank-built hull
Casco de tablas ensambladas con mortajas y espigas
- Date
- c. 1320 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Uluburun shipwreck, Kaş, Antalya, Turkey
- Credited to
- Shipwrights of the eastern Mediterranean (Levant and Cyprus)
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A hull of planks joined edge to edge by tenons fitted into mortises and locked with pegs, instead of being lashed with cords. It gave the hull its own stiffness and a building method that dominated Mediterranean shipbuilding for over two thousand years.
The Uluburun (c. 1320 BC) and Cape Gelidonya (c. 1200 BC) wrecks are the oldest surviving examples; where the system was invented, and whether Egyptian sewn-plank hulls were its direct ancestor, remains unknown.
What it led to
- large cargo ships of the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean trade
- the Greco-Roman shell-first building tradition
- less upkeep than sewn joints