16th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology

23 Zadar, Croatia | 26 September – 1 October 2021 Kroum Batchvarov University of Connecticut, Department of Anthropology and Maritime Studies Program, Storrs, USA Ottoman Ships of the Black Sea Between 2015 and 2017 in the process of gathering data for reconstruction of the quaternary paleo-landscapes of the Bulgarian shelf, human response to Pleis- tocene and Holocene water level changes and to enhance the existing sea level curves for the Black Sea, the Black Sea Maritime Archaeological Project located more than 60 shipwrecks. High-resolution video and photographic surveys were used to create three-dimensional scalable models of the vessels from which constructional and design details can be extracted. The time span of the finds is from the 5 th century BCE to the 20 th century CE, but the largest group of the shipwrecks dates to the Ottoman period and are likely of local, Black Sea origin. A total of 38 wrecks be- long to this group and twenty-two of them are of sailing ships. The state of pres- ervation varies among the wrecks. Some are fragmentary, some are too deeply covered by the sediment to extract sufficient information for analysis, but most are lying exposed and in fairly good state of preservation. A few of the ships still have masts standing, for others, the spars, though fallen, are easily identifiable and measurable. These wrecks present unique opportunity to study masting of Ottoman vessels with details of rigging that are quite different from Western tra- ditions. Ships are single or two-masted and at least one appears to have been an armed vessel as testified by the presence of gunports. The vessels exhibit characteristics that place them in a common building tradition, but within this tradition there are significant variations in detail of rig- ging, deck arrangement, decoration and proportions. This paper presents new shipbuilding information and discusses the common characteristics and variations within the hulls and rigging of Ottoman sailing ships in the Black Sea.