Two weighty tomes have appeared in the last few years dealing with 'ship garages'. Shipsheds are the buildings in which galleys were housed when drawn up out of the water, to protect them from the elements and allow craftsmen to work on them out of the elements.
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| SHIPSHEDS.. |
These two books are not really in competition with each other - at first sight, Shipsheds is a catalogue of all known shipshed remains and Ancient Harbours of the Piraeus Volume II (AHP II) is a detailed excavation report from a single location -Zea Harbour.
Both books are well worth buying if you are a galley freak but Shipsheds obviously has a broad range of comprehensive content compared to the narrow focus of AHP II.
Shipsheds is presented by Blackman, Pakkanen et al, HERE on vid.
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| AHP II |
There is more to this pair of books than meets the eye, however, these academic volumes conceal a universe of competing egos, betrayal, error and misrepresentation that is more than your usual fare when looking for stuff about where the ancients kept their boats in the winter - we are talking
SHEDWARS.
The cast:
AUTHOR OF AHP II......
Young Loven (now somewhat older) : PhD student working for Athens Harbour Project and Zea Harbour Project sponsored by Danish Institute at Athens.Upcoming and yet-unspoiled.
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| Yaaaay. Let's dig and find stuff! |
AUTHORS OF SHIPSHEDS....
Old Rankov and Old Blackman along with Ja Ja Pakkanen and the lovely space princess Kalliope, established British grizzled academic researchers and their cohorts, authors steeped in shipshed lore. But totally absorbed into the Dark Side.
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| The Darth-Ran-Kov and Black-man Axis of Evil - Tell daddy what you found Luke! We will explain it! |
£113 Shipsheds Hardcover £45 AHP II Flex/Hard Cover
Shipsheds appeared in 2013 and AHP II in 2019. It turns out, though, that AHP II was originally to come out in 2013 also. It was pipped at the post but this gave Loven a chance to discover, to his horror, that the Dark Side had stolen a march and mishandled him in a decidedly nefarious mode. AHP II was shelved in disgust.
The Dark Side utilised the Rebel Alliance's data against them and constructed a model to show the world which we shall hereafter know was The Death Shed.
The Death Shed was constructed from a series of surveys and discoveries made in 2003 to 2006 and prior to then. It is finely illustrated and reconstructed in Shipsheds.
Key aspects of the Death Shed (at the risk of boring with minutiae)
1) The gradient of the floor of the sheds at Zea
2) The length of the sheds at Zea
4) The form of the shipshed floors at Zea.
5) The ancient sea level used as a reference to model the harbour
(That's enough minutiae, Ed. - there are plenty more)
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| SURVEY DRONES FIGHT FOR THE INTEGRITY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE DATA MODELS |
Battle-hardened heroes such as ....
John Hale William Murray Ionnas Nakas Vincent Gabrielson allies to be proud of.
All guns blazing, Loven went full speed into attack on the Death Shed.
Academic writing has often seen a clash of opinions. Darwin's evolutionary theory got its fair share of public debate and discord. Indeed, the idea that the Earth is round still has its critics! The subject of' the trireme' was a flashpoint for years in the period after the reconstruction was mooted. But usually error or misinterpretation has been dismissed with a corrective footnote or a letter to the TES but not so for this unholy construction. The Death Shed required the nuclear option of direct contradiction and accusation in black and white in the body of the text of a major academic reference work.
Let's look at a few of the missiles Young Loven sent crashing into the mass of the Death Shed.
Loven left the harbour project in 2006 due to disagreements over LEADERSHIP, AGREEMENTS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES ! And at that point he had 'simply had enough'.
CRASH
Despite a variety of suggestions for the difference in mean sea level since antiquity - these ranged from 3.5m to 1.5m - Shipsheds uses 1.40 metres and not the 1.90m established by the Zea Harbour Project. The 1.90m figure was firmly established using the depths to which stone had been quarried around the harbour. It has even been subsequently revised to -2.25m of the present level.
Shipsheds' figure assumes that stone was quarried below water level !! Loven is curtly dismissive of this idea when he says that to suggest the ancients quarried or worked stone - stone available nearby on dry land - in the surf zone or under water is to deny their evident mastery and sophistication in masonry. Rankov and Blackman suggest casemates and temporary walls could keep out the sea while works were conducted...
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| THE HEIGHT OF THE WATER WILL INFLUENCE WHERE THE TOP OF A 40 METRE RAMP IS LOCATED |
In the same discussion, to reduce the amount of sea level change required, Rankov and Blackman also try to say that solid rock can be liquified in earthquakes and cause large structures built on it to settle......
SMASH
At various points Rankov and Blackman give measurements of gradient to 3 or 4 significant figures whereas the original data allows only for 2. The Dark Side seem to do this to promote a hypothetical 'foot' which is 0.308m. This foot is easily disproved by Loven by simple calculation.
SPLAT
WONKY SHEDS AND RAMPS
The dispute over gradients - the two factions model the gradient diferently from different aspects of the survey data - leads to two main problems with recosntrcution of Phase 3 shipsheds.
1) How steep a ramp has to be to meet the ancient shore and therefore how long it extendsboth inland and under the modern shoreline.
2) The gradient of the roof construction set over the ramp.
The Dark Side suggest that Loven's model requires that the ramp has a kink in it as the gradient changes sharply and also that the roof had a steepened upper end.
Loven refutes these ideas, by demonstrating that a more accurate ancient sea level figure and with the realisation that the top of the ramp was inclined to fit the stern of the ship, means the roof does not have to conform to this.
These diagrams illustate the main differences shematically -(technical draughtsman not I am. Ed.)
B: MODERN SEA LEVEL
C : ANCIENT SEA LEVEL
D : UNNECESSARY INCLINATION OF ROOF
E : PROFILE KINK CAUSED BY CLASHING GRADIENT DATA
F : EACH AUTHOR ARGUES FOR A DIFFERENT LENGTH OF TRIERES
G : SHIPSHEDS' MODEL RAMP DOES NOT REACH THE ANCIENT SEA
BANG! THUD! CRUNCH!
Loven repeatedly proves errors in the Shipsheds reconstructions of the Zea structures. He is not backward in coming forward with criticism.
'the reconstructed length presented here is based on hard data not on architectural hypothesises(sic) such as the alignment of the columns of the lower end or guesswork about the length of ancient triremes.'
'Calculations such as these, which disregard the established measure of sea level change, inevitably lead to erroneous results.'
'Rankov fails to understand that an extrapolation to this depth, or to a minimum sea level change of -1-90m, as presented in Volume I, would automatically invalidate his construction.'
'No evidence found in the shipshed superstructure at Zea or Mounichia supports Rankov's reconstruction.'
etc etc. CRASH BANG WALLOP
One of the unkindest cuts of all is where Rankov actually cites Loven in support of reconstructions which Loven does not agree with !!!
Specifically, Shipsheds reconstructs the roofs of the shipsheds as being steeper at the top of the slipway because the ramp is inclined more steeply at its end to accommodate the upcurving stern.
This can be seen here where the ramps are almost fully preserved at Oiniadai on the north side of the Gulf of Patras.
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| Diffendale at flickr has many great fotos - HERE |
Loven and the Zea Harbour Project team, however, have established that the uppermost parts echoed the steeply curved sterns of the ships but the roof did not need to as the ship remained at a constant angle all the way up the slipway.As shown above -- Wonky Shipsheds.
CRUUUUNCH
The number of brickbats, slings and arrows which Loven casts upon his foes is too many to fully recount here. We will finish with the deadliest payload delivered to the heart of the Death Shed which cruelly damages and undermines the structure erected by the Dark Side.
In establishing the plans and reconstruction of the Phase 2 and Phase 3 shipsheds at Zea, Shipsheds uses findings of the Zea Harbour Project, and Loven personally, without accrediting them!
The ZHP excavated the submarine parts of Phase 2 shipsheds in 'some of the harshest and most difficult conditions in the history of archaeology'. Unacknowledged in Shipsheds.
The divers had to contend with all kinds of pollution in the restricted waters of the harbour. Chemicals damaged their suits and bodies....
The submarine parts of the shipsheds were identified by Loven. Unacknowledged.
59% of the planned features on the reconstructions by Pakkanen were identified by ZHP. Unacknowledged..
Other figures present findings misleadingly or ambiguously.
In summary, as Loven puts it..
' The failure of these scholars to follow accepted citation practice is disappointing,'
One of the most egregious aspects of the whole matter is that Jari Pakkanen was Loven's PhD supervisor at the time of the fieldwork being carried out !!!!!!!
The last word, as the fragments of Shipsheds' chapter on the Piraeus scatter in the wind, is Loven's....
'The resulting catalogue entry, "Piraeus", is thus fatally flawed and should be treated with extreme caution'
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| THE FINAL SALVOES WERE ENOUGH TO DEMOLISH THE DEATH SHED (Thanks Cornelia Parker) |
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| 'Well it turns out we were not needed. The whole thing was about Death Sheds, not Death's Heads.' |
Bjørn Loven atZea Harbour Project here
DISCLAIMER
Confused ? I was. All actors and events in this production may not have any relation to your or anyone else's reality.
Confused ? I was. All actors and events in this production may not have any relation to your or anyone else's reality.
See Loven describing Zea Harbour Project here
See a reconstruction of the military installation here
