The Ancient Greeks: Sailing and Navigation in the Mediterranean

I’ve been lucky in my travel for work, the history nerd in me often visiting sites that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. One such trip was to a site on the Mediterranean coast that was settled by the Greeks around 500 BC. Called Apollonia, the ruins are located just outside of Herzliyah, Israel, a few miles north of the ruins of the Phoenician settlement at Tel Michal. Apollonia rose to prominence in the Persian era, as the Phoenician settlement at Tel Michal declined. The town would thrive under the successors to Alexander the Great, before being destroyed in the 13th century AD. My main interest is the Greek history though, spanning the thousand years between the time of the Iliad and the conquest of Alexander the Great. The maritime nature of that culture, those that sailed in small wooden vessels over the “wine-dark sea”, fascinates me.

The cliffs overlooking the harbor at Apollonia

The site of the Apollonia is on a limestone bluff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, with the medieval fortress of Arsuf just to the north. The fortress guarded a harbor that has the remains of breakwaters and a tower projecting out into the sea. However, my uninformed bet is that the shallow area in front of the town was the original Greek harbor. The sandy floor before Apollonia and the narrow beach seem better for landing shallow-draft craft. Of course, we’re talking about something that existed thousands of years ago … but the sailor in me sees a shelter for the ancient Greek vessels that's better than the medieval harbor.

As I looked out over what I thought to be the original harbor I was taken by what the ancient mariners had to do to reach this small Greek town. I’ve read Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, Arian’s Annabasis of Alexander, but also the accounts of Hanno the Navigator ca. 400 BC, Scylax of Caryanda ca. 330 BC, and Pytheas of Massalia ca. 320 BC. As a sailor myself, I find the mastery of sailing and navigation displayed by these ancient mariners awe inspiring. I use a compass and paper charts, while using Navionics software to make sure I’m not too far off course. I wanted to know more about how these nameless men accomplished deep water crossings in open boats. How they managed to criss cross not only the Mediterranean Sea, but also the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea?

Wind and Current:

Both the joy and bane of a sailor’s existence are wind and current. In classical times there were the gods of the four winds that represented the principal annual winds of the Mediterranean: Boreas (north); Eurus (east); Notus (south); and Zephyrus (west). In the winter the cold Bora blows down from the north, making sailing difficult from the Adriatic to the Aegean. During the summer though, this moderated and the Etesian winds (aka the Meltemia) filled in, which also blow from the north. Presumably, both were still controlled by the god Boreas. The winds from the west, those of Eurus, today are the Levantine winds that blow from the coast of Syria and Lebanon from May to October. The Notus today seems to be associated with the summer Sirocco, the dry wind from the south that occasionally carries sand from the Sahara. The gentle wind from the west, controlled by Zephyrus, was present in the spring and early summer.

For the ancient Greeks, there was a season to sailing in the Mediterranean, which began in the spring and ended in the fall. The harbinger of the sailing season was the Pleiades constellation, the so-called Seven Sisters of Greek legend. This constellation appeared in the winter, at the beginning of the autumnal equinox and disappeared below the horizon at the vernal equinox: October-ish to April-ish. Therefore, near the end of their time visible, when the Pleiades rose in the evening of April near the vernal equinox, it began the ancient Greek sailing season.

Navigation:

It’s difficult for us today to imagine going to sea without a compass, charts, or GPS for that matter. To leave port without any way to know your course other than the sun and stars seems ludicrous, but they did it. A passage from Homer, describing the voyage of Odysseus from the island of Ogygia toward his homeland of Ithaca, represents the earliest description of ancient navigation:

"Moreover, she made the wind fair and warm for him, and gladly did Ulysses spread his sail before it, while he sat and guided the raft skilfully by means of the rudder. He never closed his eyes, but kept them fixed on the Pleiads, on late-setting Bootes, and on the Bear - which men also call the wain, and which turns round and round where it is, facing Orion, and alone never dipping into the stream of Oceanus - for Calypso had told him to keep this to his left. Days seven and ten did he sail over the sea, and on the eighteenth the dim outlines of the mountains on the nearest part of the Phaeacian coast appeared, rising like a shield on the horizon."

It should be noted that he washed up on the “shore of Scheria, in the land of the Phaeacians,” rather than Ithaca. This island may have been Corfu, and if he really started from the Maltese islands, he would have sailed about 400 nautical miles through open ocean ... without a compass or chart ... and still managed to hit Greece. Since this occurred around 1180 BC, I think he did pretty well! Granted, this is an epic poem, not necessarily history, but the above passage does tell us something of navigation of the ancient Greek mariners.

In most cases, they would have hugged the shoreline, using the distance sailed in a day between ports for awareness of their position. The ancient mariners recorded this information in what was called a periplus, which is the ancient equivalent of a medieval rutter or modern written sailing directions/coast pilot: the navigators wrote down their estimate of distance between ports and what could be found there. But this doesn’t mean they didn’t sail in deep water, out of sight of land: the ancient settlement and trade between multiple islands in the Mediterranean suggests otherwise. I would surmise that much like the later use of latitude to find islands before longitude was known, the ancient Greeks would have sailed in a cardinal direction from a known point to reach a known island some distance away.

The course though… north, south, east, west …? During the day, the sun would provide direction; rising in the east and setting in the west. Also, at noon in the northern hemisphere, the shadow cast by the mast would point north, providing some indication of direction. During the evening, using Homer’s passage as a guide: the Bear or Wain, was the constellation of Ursa Major. Along with the constellation of Orion, it’s one of the most identifiable group of stars in the northern hemisphere. In classical times the celestial pole was located somewhere between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Therefore, the exact point of north was unknown in the evening, but by paying attention to Ursa Major a navigator of the time knew where north was. Odysseus’ vessel was pushed along by the winter Bora and he was guided by the sun during the day and Ursa Major at night. Like thousands of ancient mariners before and after him, Odysseus kept his course and reached his goal. In his case, his course was slightly north of east and once he reached Corfu, all he had to do was sail south another 100 nautical miles … all … I think he actually walked it in the Odessey.

The next vernal equinox is 20 March 2025, in the early evening, I’ll be looking for the Pleiades to mark the sailing season’s beginning. Looking west in North America, I’ll find the three stars of Orion’s belt, then to the right of them should be a cluster of six stars close to the horizon (the seventh sister isn’t visible now). I’ll remember that I have one minor thing in common with those ancient mariners, that I can at least find the stars in the sky.

REF:

Baird, W.S. “The Myth of the ‘Non-Mariners’.” https://www.minoanatlantis.com/Homer_Stars.php

Yachting Magazine. “The 7 most common winds you'll find in the Mediterranean.” 30 AUG 2024: https://www.yachting.com/en-gb/news/overview-of-mediterranean-winds.

Alexander, C. “A Winelike Sea: Homer’s famous “wine-dark sea” has left scholars wondering: how did the Greeks truly see the sea?” Lapham’s Quarterly 6, No. 3: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sea/winelike-sea.