Phoenicia

The Phoenicians were Semites who lived on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in what is now Lebanon in the centuries before Christ.

By 1250 B.C. the Phoenicians were well established as the navigators and traders of the Mediterranean world, enjoying the commerce that had once been in the hands of the Aegeans....Phoenician seamen came to dominate the Mediterranean. They went to the edges of the known world, trading from the Iberian Peninsula to the Dardanelles. Some authorities believe they went as far as Cornwall, seeking tin. There is evidence that in Egyptian service they may have sailed down the western coast of Africa, and possibly their ships even rounded Africa and reached the East Indies. The Phoenician carrying trade was enormous, and their wares were varied. They had an important monopoly on the great cedars of Lebanon from their homeland.

For hundreds of years, the Phoenicians flourished as a civilization, but

The individuality of the Phoenicians was dwindling, and with the rise of Greek naval and maritime power the importance of the Phoenicians disappeared. They were, however, able in the 4th cent. B.C. to offer serious resistance to Alexander the Great, who took Tyre only after a long and hard siege (333–332 B.C.). In Roman times the cities continued to exist, but Hellenistic culture had absorbed the last traces of Phoenician civilization.

Historians are learning about the ship building skills of the Phoenicians through the study of Phoenician shipwrecks.

These ocean-going ships were built for huge loads and long hauls. They made the extended trips from Mediterranean ports out to Cadiz, Lixis and other destinations on the Atlantic Ocean coasts of Spain and Morocco, and had to make each trip count. People have remarked that those cargo ships which sailed the seas for many hundreds of years B.C. were comparable in size to the ones Columbus sailed to America in 1492 A.D. Thor Heyerdahl, the modern-day explorer, noted that the Phoenicians could have sailed to Central America themselves. I don't know if they did or not, but well-informed people see it as being within the capabilities of Phoenician ships and navigators. That is quite a compliment to these early people of the sea and what they were able to accomplish.