Phoenician Ship Expedition
The Phoenician Ship Expedition is a re-creation of a 6th-century BCE Phoenician voyage conceived by Philip Beale. The replica of an ancient Phoenician ship departed from Syria in August 2008, to sail through the Suez Canal, around the Horn of Africa, and up the west coast of Africa, through the Strait of Gibraltar and across the Mediterranean to return to Syria. The objective of the expedition was to prove that ships built by the ancient Phoenicians could withstand the conditions around the African coastline. The expedition reached South Africa in January 2010 and Beirut in  October of the same year. The ship is twenty metres long and was constructed at Arwad Island, the site of an ancient Phoenician city-state just off the Syrian coast, by Syrian shipwright Khalid Hammoud, using traditional methods. Phoenicians Before Columbus Expedition. A second sea voyage has also been completed. On Dec 31st 2019 at 11:50am the Phoenicia safely docked in the port of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. For this final voyage, Beale set out to demonstrate that the Phoenicians could have crossed the Atlantic Ocean long before Christopher Columbus. The journey was launched on 28 September 2019 in the  commune of Carthage, Tunisia, site of the ancient city of Carthage, and reached Santo Domingo before 31 December 2019. External links. Official website