Roman Merchant Ship from AD 200

Description

The Oneraria was the standard merchant vessel of the Romans The concept of boarding food of all kinds, liquid and solid in identical terracotta jars, standardised to the extreme, is indeed a very old practice, born of the practice of the Phoenicians, taken over by the Greeks, then the Romans. Certainly an amphora is more modest than a modern container, but still well suited to storage in the frail merchant ships of the time. The Oneraria was the standard “cargo” Roman, it is even in some respects a generic term that intersects sub-variants, like Corbita, cargo of heavy wheat. These heavy-tonnage ships, capable of carrying more than 3000 amphorae, originated from the Greek cataphract cargo vessels which ensured trade between the Hellenistic empires in the Mediterranean basin. They were distinguished by Roman characteristics, such as the abandonment of the ladder at the rear and a strong draft, revealing modern deep-sea ports with jetties, a quarter-deck Terrace often accompanied by an awning, a bridge superstructure, a figure of goose-neck stern.