Corbita Sailing

Illustration

by Jan van der Crabben
published on 13 December 2014

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Corbita Sailing — This marble relief shows a man sailing a corbita, a small Roman coastal vessel with two masts. Found at Carthage, most likely produced in Africa Proconsularis (modern-day Tunisia) circa 200 CE.

The corbita's sails were most likely made of cloth, reinforced with leather at the corners. Small boats such as this were responsible for a large amount of coastal trade in the Mediterranean, going from harbour to harbour.

On display at the British Museum, London (GR 1850.3-4.32).

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About the Author

Jan van der Crabben

Jan is the Founder and CEO of World History Encyclopedia. He holds an MA War Studies from King's College, and he has worked in the field of history-related digital media since 2006.

License & Copyright

Uploaded by Jan van der Crabben, published on 13 December 2014. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

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References

http://www.britishmuseum.org/, accessed 1 Dec 2016.

Cite This Work

APA Style

Crabben, J. v. d. (2014, December 13). Corbita Sailing. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/3313/corbita-sailing/

Chicago Style

Crabben, Jan van der. "Corbita Sailing." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified December 13, 2014. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/3313/corbita-sailing/.

MLA Style

Crabben, Jan van der. "Corbita Sailing." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 13 Dec 2014, https://www.worldhistory.org/image/3313/corbita-sailing/. Web. 16 May 2025.