A blog is a two-ways communication instrument: who writes does expect, and sometimes receives, comments and opinion from the readers. To receive an email message is somewhat unusual, but in late September we got arequest that was a really unusual one. I contacted Michele, to make sure he could grant an answer. A carpenter receives many peculiar requests during his career, and Michele was not a novice, even before he met me. Since we began this project, though, his experience in weird requests have been put to hard test. This time, I felt, it was an easy consultancy about the construction technique of an old boat. When Michele heard the reply to his question "But how old is she?", though, a common carpenter would have hang up the telephone. But we are good friends, and in spite of everything, trust is the foundation of friendship. So, Michele believed me without flinching, I transmitted his assent and we organized a meeting.
The wreck of the "sewn ship" of Gela" has been one of the findings that shaked long accepted knowledge in naval archaeology. It has been raised and it is undergoing examinations to unveil the ancient building tecniques, and to realize the reason for such a sophisticated design.
Doctor Alessandra Benini read this blog, and asked to meet Michele Cafiero, in his cave, to ask him to examine the problems presented by the wreck of Gela's odd construction. And the unflappable Michele immediately detected on photos and diagrams of the wrecks on the archaeolgist's laptop, the familiar shapes and joints of the wooden boat construction techniques, as he learned them from his father, Mast'Antonio Cafiero, and as Mast'Antonio learned them from his Maestro, Mast'Antonino "d'o Tore" Cafiero...
As early as in 600 b.C.E., the boatwrights that built the ship of Gela mastered the very solutions that are still at the top of a millennia lasting evolution. Archaeologists will keep working to understand why a sewn ship coexisted with others built in ways so far considered more advanced, and Michele Cafiero's work will continue to preserve and hand down the Mediterranean wooden boat construction tecniques.
(the photo has been shot by dr. Marco Anzidei, geologist at the INGV)
A boat's history begins with her construction, but her life begins in the moment she touches the sea. Il gozzo in legno a vela latina della Marina di Alimuri "Santa Maria del Lauro" has been touched already by the sea on November 20th, 2008, when the storm blew the waves into the cave to splash her incomplete hull. And indeed, even before being launched, Mast'Antonio and Michele Cafiero's gozzo has changed the lives of those working on her, and perhaps even Marina di Alimuri's history.
