WHAT IS THE PHOENICIA?
Reconstructing the world’s oldest ship replica proving that the Phoenicians had the technology to cross the Atlantic 600 years before Christ.
PHOENICIA 600 BC REPLICA
The Phoenician Ship Expedition, led by Philip Beale, recreated a 6th Century BC Phoenician voyage using a replica ship. Departing from Syria in 2008, it sailed through the Suez Canal, around the Horn of Africa, along the west coast of Africa, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and across the Mediterranean before returning to Syria. In 2019, the ship sailed to America and landed in Florida. Both journeys demonstrated the seaworthiness of ancient Phoenician ships. The vessel, Phoenicia, modeled after the 2600-year-old Jules Verne 7 Shipwreck, sailed 30,000 miles, proving her seafaring capabilities. Due to circumstances, the ship requires reconstruction. The replica ship's components were shipped to Montrose, Iowa, where it is being reconstructed. (see more)
If you sign up for recurring payments, we will send you something special from our Phoenician Museum. Small monthly contributions of $10 have a significant and lasting impact on our work. Your support is invaluable in advancing our understanding of ancient American civilizations and the restoration of Phoenicia. Thank you for considering how you can contribute to our cause. For additional donation options, see the link below.
Construction workers in July 1993 discovered the wreck in the low oxygen mud of the ancient port of Marseille, France. Marseille is older than Rome. The city's history is a worthy showcase for the Jules Verne 7 Shipwreck, which is the source for the design of the 600 BC Phoenician replica in Montrose, Iowa.
LE MUSÉE D'HISTOIRE DE MARSEILLE has many artifacts and displays that cover the city's port from the 6th Century BC to the 4th Century AD. The museum's oldest shipwreck came out of the mud of the ancient port. The wreck goes back 2,600 years and provides the details for the reconstruction of the PHOENICIA. The original wreck is in the Old World, and her replica is in the New World. They are now connected, resulting in the rewriting of ancient history.
Construction workers in July 1993 were digging foundations in the port when they discovered one of Europe's oldest shipwrecks in the mud. The French put a great deal of time, money, and effort into the study and rescue of what they called Jules Verne Shipwreck 7. The remains of this 600 BC shipwreck are today on public display at the Musée d'Histoire de Marseille for you and others to see. The wreck goes back 2,600 years and provided Philip Beale with the details for his faithful construction of a replica ship that he called PHOENICIA. Captain Beale sailed his square-rigged replica ship 30,000 miles around Africa and across the Atlantic. Philip Beale raised two million dollars over 16 years, and he involved the efforts of nearly a hundred volunteers as crew members. In the Old World, there were 2,000 sponsors, including the British Museum. This was a very big story in Europe. It was on national television throughout North Africa, where 100 million viewers saw the ship. In February 2019, the Phoenicia arrived in Florida. Because of setbacks caused by COVID and a tropical storm, the ship replica, like her original, ended up in the mud. In 2021, a crane pulled the ship replica out of the mud from a canal in Fort Lauderdale. Captain Beale cut 40 tons of timbers and planks into sections. We bought half the cut pieces and moved them by truck to Iowa. The other half of the pieces we moved by water from England to Iowa. The original wreck remains in the Old World, and her replica is now in the New World. They are both connected, resulting in the rewriting of ancient American history.
Captain Philip Beale has earned the right to join the ranks of history’s great explorers. There is no other living person who has sailed as far as Philip on the world’s roughest seas in replica ships that were built according to patterns that are thousands of years old. Philip has traveled over 30,000 nautical miles on the world's oceans in square-rigged ships. No other person has done what he did, and having done it, Philip does not plan to do it again.
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The best minds of the PHOENICIA Restoration Team consulted with Captain Philip Beale about the fine points of joining the ship planks to the ribs of the hull.
The more we examine these details, the more amazed we are at what the shipwrights of the ancient world accomplished with the tools they had. To create a seafaring vessel that could cross the stormy seas of the Atlantic, each timber, each plank, and every joint had to be carefully put in its right place. Everyone considered it a great honor to be a part of such a restoration. America's ancient history will never be the same again.
TEAMWORK
PHOENICIA
WORKSHOP
The ship is in her current state of preservation thanks to the efforts of thousands of people and millions of dollars. Nearly all of that support came from the Old World. American volunteers donated 6,000 hours during the last two summers to restore the Phoenician ship replica. In the coming year, more volunteers and donors in the New World will support this project. We need to double our efforts to match what the Old World under the direction of Captain Beale has done in the last twenty years.
Phoenicia Gift Shop
Heartland Bus Tour
Thousands of People and Millions of Dollars
Captain Philip Beale has dedicated his life and fortune to the PHOENICIA. More than 200 research institutions, governments, and scientists have contributed to his experimental archaeology. Over a dozen countries sent 52 volunteers to rotate as crew members on the ship around Africa and across the Atlantic. Thousands of people and millions of dollars have been involved in the sailing of the PHOENICIA on two expeditions. As much as any other person, Captain Beale has shown the ancient connections between the Old and New Worlds.
The City of Carthage was one of the largest metropolises in the world at the time of 600 B.C. PHOENICIA. The city was a significant power in the ancient world that dominated the western Mediterranean. Heartland Research is happy that it works with Club Dion de Carthage in Tunisia.
We are so pleased that our friends in Carthage and Morocco offer to participate in establishing our Museum by bringing the history and tradition of their great civilizations. Welcome to America, where you can sing your songs, pray your prayers, dance your dances, and celebrate the trans-Atlantic crossing of your ancestors from the Old to the New Worlds.
ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORTERS OF PHOENICIA AT FIRM FOUNDATION CONFERENCE, OCTOBER 2022
FRIENDS OF PHOENICIA GATHERED FOR GOOD FOOD AND GOOD COMPANY
VOLUNTEERS AT FIRM FOUNDATION EXPO SALT PALACE, OCTOBER 2022
BOOK OF MORMON CENTRAL AND HEARTLAND RESEARCH, SPRINGVILLE, UTAH, OCTOBER 2022
HEARTLAND RESEARCH PRESENTS TO FRANK MCALLISTER PHOENICIAN ARTIFACTS THAT TRAVELED 30,000 NAUTICAL MILES AROUND AFRICA AND ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.
Captain Philip Beale's Expeditions on World Map
Storms on the high seas can strike the ship’s hull with hundreds of tons of water, putting the ship at a high risk of breaking apart. The PHOENICIA is flexible and strong. 10,00 joints tie the planks to the keel and ribs. These joints give the ship her unique strength. The ship takes the force of the waves, stays upright, and keeps sailing. No other ancient ship had such a strong design
2,600 YEARS OF UNBROKEN CHRONOLOGY
PHOENICIA is the world's oldest replica ship that crossed the Atlantic. The 2,000 Years Before Columbus Expedition rewrote the history of America.
The Phoenicia was built using knowledge of construction techniques from discovered wrecks. The hull was made sturdy by using tenons to join planks together and then drilling holes and hammering pegs through the joints (pegged mortise-and-tenon joinery), after which the ribs of the ship were fit in.
Ultra-High-Definition LiDAR Scanning of 34,000 Acres -- The Important Job is Done -- The image is just across the Mississippi River from the PHOENICIA.
The skies were clear. The Leica LiDAR Scanner sent billions of laser light pulses to the ground and measured how long each pulse took to return to the airplane. The return times of the laser pulses are the basis for computing the images on the ground. The GPS and IMU units determine the precise location and attitude of the scanner as the pulse of laser light moves from the air to the ground and back again. The exact coordinates for each laser pulse are now in the database. Next week, technicians will begin working with the collected data to create ultra-high-definition digital maps.
The Leica Scanner used an oscillating mirror or rotating prism so that the light pulses swept across a landscape below the aircraft. A large area of 34,000 acres was included in the survey with a series of 29 parallel flight lines. The laser pulses were safe, and the flight crew returned safely to their motels. The point cloud from the LiDAR scans will allow us to determine the truth of what is in the ground in a way that has never been possible heretofore.
Survey Solutions Using SENSYS Magnetometers
There is no other project in North America where such a group of talented people has come together to create magnetic scans of lands that will have 6,912 data sets for every square foot. For each observation point, the data set will include two GPS coordinates (+/- 0.25′′) and a very fine magnetic force measurement (nano-Telsa). In this study, the primary focus is to identify variations in the gradients of nano-Tesla levels to locate fire pits, post holes, roads, and other changes that native people made to the soil over a thousand years ago. Several factors indicate that an ancient population in Lee County could have been greater than today, including the Upper Mississippi and the Des Moines Rapids.
Cedars of Lebanon are rare in America. We need to rebuild the decks of the PHOENICIA, and we thought that it would be impossible for us to locate logs that are cut from the Cedar of Lebanon.
In December 2022, we found what we thought would be very unlikely. We drove to the Tyler Arboretum 20 miles outside Philadelphia, the birthplace of America. We had a wonderful meeting with the caretaker of the forest. Last year, the forester cut down a tree that was the largest Cedar of Lebanon in America. The Tyler Arboretum has 650 acres of forest with hundreds of tree species. This section of land attracts 75,000 visitors who discover the beauty and mystery of America's birthplace and original forests.
William Penn was an English Quaker leader who advocated freedom of religion and oversaw the founding of the American Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers and other religious minorities from Europe. The Tyler Arboretum traces its land ownership back to a deed signed by William Penn. They have a copy of the original 1681 deed. It is certainly one of the oldest deeds in America.
The farms at Tyler were safe havens for hundreds of slaves who traveled north to freedom on the underground railroad. The freedom-loving, Bible-reading people of Tyler in 1859 planted Cedar of Lebanon seedlings. One of those trees grew and became very large. In 2021, the tree came down, and its branches were cut into logs.
The directors of the Tyler Arboretum heard our story to reconstruct the PHOENICIA in Iowa. The directors were immediately taken in because the Phoenicians used the Cedars of Lebanon to build their ships 2,600 years ago.
The forest caretaker has agreed to let us take the Cedars of Lebanon to build the decks and other features of the PHOENICIA. There are three large truckloads of logs ready for our use. We recognize the Hand of God in making these Biblical trees available for our use in the reconstruction of the ship.
We will now move forward with a firm resolution to finish the job we started, rebuilding the world's oldest ship replica that crossed the Atlantic.
ESCAPE FROM JERUSALEM TO AMERICA
In the 6th Century, Before Christ, the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, sacked the City of Jerusalem, killed the heirs to the Throne of David, took the Jewish king and his people into captivity, and displaced the Ark of the Covenant. This story is found in the Bible.
There is more to the Bible story. Mulek and his party escaped certain death at the hands of the Babylonians and crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
The PHOENICIA is a wooden 600 BC replica boat that British explorer Captain Philip Beale spent a lifetime recreating. During the last 15 years, he steered the ship on 30,000 miles of open oceans to prove that the Phoenicians had the technology to reach America 2,000 years before Christopher Columbus.
Cedar of Lebanon Logs Ready to Mill into Ship Planks
2,600 YEARS OF BEAUTYFORM AND FUNCTION
It is becoming such a large artifact. It is hard to appreciate the integration of 40 tons of timbers in the assembly of the PHOENICIA. The ancient people who constructed the ship were rich because they could move millions of tons of goods over millions of miles of water. They devoted their minds and hands to creating ships that were true in form and function. Today, we can see and feel the details of the construction of the joints. The joints are strong and flexible.
Frankly, it is hard to imagine how the shipwrights kept such tight control over the flowing patterns of the ship's hull. Each side is a mirror image of the other side. The lines are not straight. These lines are designed to cut through the waves of the seas while keeping the ship's mast upward against winds that provide the power of motion.
The more we work on the ship, the more amazed we become at the mastery of the technology that made it possible for the ship to move in the storm-tossed waters of the Atlantic.
Come to Montrose to see the world's oldest ship replica that has crossed the Atlantic.
Kieth W. Merrill is an American filmmaker who has worked as a writer, director, and producer in the film industry since 1967. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America. He received an Academy Award for The Great American Cowboy and a nomination for Amazon.
In 2023, Kieth met Mike and Betty LaFontaine to discuss Philip Beale’s adventures on the high seas with the 2,600-year-old Phoenician Ship Replica. Kieth had made 45 films and was struck by Philip's importance when he sailed around Africa following the expedition Pharaoh Necho II commissioned in 600 BC.
Kieth supports the Phoenician Ship Museum.
Heartland Research is a non-profit and volunteer-driven organization that aims to connect the Bible to America in the 6th Century Before Christ.
The clearest artifact confirming this ancient connection is the Phoenicia Ship Replica in Monrose, Iowa.
So far, we have received over 6,000 hours of labor and thousands of donations, both large and small.
We need additional support to finish the project.
If you sign up for recurring payments, we will send you something special from our Phoenician Museum. Small monthly contributions of $10 have a significant and lasting impact on our work. Your support is invaluable in advancing our understanding of ancient American civilizations and the restoration of Phoenicia. Thank you for considering how you can contribute to our cause.
For additional donation options, see the link below.