The ship's state of preservation, unique features, and artifacts offered a glimpse into the advanced production techniques, and daily life aboard ancient warships.

The study of the wreck has advanced current knowledge of the Carthaginian navy at the time of the First Punic War and validated some information provided by ancient sources.

In 1969, Diego Boninni, the captain of a commercial dredge operating off the shore of Isola Lunga, not far from Marsala on the western coast of Sicily, discovered underwater formations covered with Posidonia seagrass.

Frost and Kapitän returned to the area to further investigate what they had identified as ship ballast piles, evidence of ancient marine wrecks.

Other iron objects were also found, including what was interpreted to be a corvus, a military boarding device that played a notable role during the First Punic War.

[5] The Sicilian authorities and the British School at Rome mandated archaeologist Honor Frost to direct the excavations which were carried out over the course of four successive annual campaigns.

[6] The excavation was carried out off the shore of Isola Lunga, north of the Marsala, a town known in the ancient era as Lilybaeum and founded by the Carthaginians after the destruction of Motya in 397 B.C.

Merchant ships typically have features designed for storing goods or drinking water, whereas the crockery discovered at the site was meant for individual use.

[13] The ship's hydrodynamic features demonstrate the maritime expertise inherited from the Phoenicians, renowned innovators in shipbuilding who influenced both the Greeks and Romans.

[14] Early in the First Punic War in 260 BC, the Phoenician shipbuilding technology allowed the Romans to build a fleet of 100 quinqueremes within two months.

[14] The Marsala wreck was entirely conceived and realized ‘shell first’ because of the presence of bolted floor timbers [15] From the first ship, archaeologists discovered the remains of 12 m (39 ft) of keel on the stern and port side.

With the assistance of Danish experts, including Professor Ole Crumlin Pedersen and the Regional Conservation Center in Palermo, another reconstruction was carried out.

[26] The shapes of the remains of the ships complement each other, in particular with a ram, and provide a unique document of the Carthaginian navy during the First Punic War.

[30] Painted markings and traces of two alphabetic sequences discovered on the ships' hulls, along with its Phoenician origin, indicate a standardized prefabricated components production process, explaining the rapid deployment of Carthaginian military fleets.

[10] This archaeological discovery corroborates ancient historians' observations regarding the remarkable speed of construction of these Punic ships, which was previously considered unlikely.

Since the discovery in Marsala, modern historians have been provided with further evidence supporting the assertion regarding the remarkable speed of construction of these Punic ships.

This construction system validated Polybius' account of the Romans capturing a Punic ship and using it as a model to build their own fleet in record time.