Syracusia

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The Greek ship Syracusia had a length of 55 meters (180.4 feet) is sometimes claimed to be the largest transport ship of antiquity. It was designed by Archimedes and built around 240 BC by Archias of Corinth on the orders of Hieron II of Syracuse. It was later given to Ptolemy (Ptolemaios) III Euergetes of Egypt and renamed the Alexandris. A discussion of this ship, as well as the complete text of Athenaeus (late 2nd-century Greek writer who quotes a detailed description of the "Syracusia" from an earlier, now lost, writer Moschion) is in Lionel Casson's "Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World" (Princeton 1971).