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Professor Lucy Blue speaks with maritime archaeologists and editors Dr Claire Calcagno and Dr Elena Flavia Castagnino Berlinghieri about discovering and bringing to life Honor Frost’s unpublished book manuscript entitled, The Second Life of a Phoenix: Portrait of a Punic Ship Resurrected in a Sicilian Town. One of the defining projects of Honor Frost’s career, the Marsala ship, dated to the mid-3rd century BCE, is exceptionally important because its preserved hull provides direct evidence for ancient Punic shipbuilding. Frost believed it was a military longship, possibly lost in the aftermath of the First Punic War fought between the Carthaginians and Romans. But what makes Phoenix particularly valuable is that Frost tells this story from inside the project, rather than as a conventional archaeological report, revealing a much stronger sense of Frost as a person: determined, curious, and highly practical, as she and her team struggled to excavate, record, and display the unique vessel while working with the local community. Frost's Sicilian memoir captures an important moment when maritime archaeology was itself being developed, as Honor was not just applying established methods, she was working out how the discipline should go forward.

The English-language edition will be released November 1 2026, through Sidestone Press. The Italian-language edition is anticipated in late November 2026. For more information on both publications, please visit the Sidestone website: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-second-life-of-a-phoenix

Professor Lucy Blue speaks with Otto Uldum, Maritime Archaeologist and curator at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark about the remarkable discovery of a medieval cog found in 2021 in 14 metres of water in the Øresund Strait near Copenhagen. Dendrochronological analysis of the sapwood date the vessel to the early fifteenth century and confirmed that it was built in the Netherlands, while some of the planking timber originated from Pomerania in present-day Poland, revealing the far-reaching timber trade networks of the period.

The ship displays distinctive cog shipbuilding techniques, including scarf joints, clinker planking, clench nailing, and square-section iron nails, all of which created a hull that was both light and exceptionally strong. Unlike many other vessels, cogs were characterised by a broad flat-bottomed midship section that enabled them to carry cargoes of up to 300 tons. Named Svælget 2, the vessel measures 28 metres in length and is among the largest and best-preserved medieval cog ever discovered. Every surviving timber has now been raised and laser-scanned, and once conservation is complete the ship will be reassembled alongside its extensive rigging assemblage, including a rare complete set of deadeyes with surviving rope fragments. Many questions, however, remain unanswered. The nature of its cargo is still unknown, and the circumstances of its loss remain elusive. Could Svælget 2 represent the last gasp of cog usage within the trading networks of the Hanseatic League?