The Gulf of Sidra (, also known as the Gulf of Sirte (, is a body of water in the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya, named after the oil port of Sidra or the city of Sirte. It was also historically known as the Great Sirte or Greater Syrtis (; ; contrasting with Syrtis Minor on the coast of Tunisia).
Geography
The Gulf of Sidra or Sirte has been a major center for tuna fishing in the Mediterranean for centuries. It gives its name to the city of Sirte situated on its western side.
The gulf measures from the promontory of Boreum (now Ras Teyonas) on the East side to the promontory of Cephalae (Ras Kasr Hamet) on the West. The greatest extension of the gulf inland is land inward and occupies an area of 57,000 square kilometres.
History
Ancient history
Syrtis is referred to in the New Testament of the Bible, where Luke relates the Apostle Paul being sent in chains to Rome to stand trial before the Roman emperor, Nero. The crew of his ship was worried about being driven by a storm into Syrtis, and they took precautions to prevent it, but the ship was shipwrecked on the island of Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea.
In ancient literature, the Syrtes (the Greater, or , in the eastern and the Lesser, or , in the western part of the Gulf) were notorious sandbanks, which sailors always took pains to avoid. The local climate features frequent calms and a relatively powerful north wind. The shoreline between Cyrene in the east and Carthage in the west featured few ports.
Ancient writers frequently mention the sandbanks and their vicinity as dangerous for shipping. The Syrtes maiores are unusually tidal and feature a strong (3 knots) clockwise current, at the rising tide, which then switches when the tide ebbs. That feature may explain the curious corkscrew shape in the area on the Peutinger Table. The landward side was a featureless plain which contrasted with the fertility of the rest of Tripolitania, to the west.
Ancient writers mention sandstorms and serpents in this area. Strabo describes a march by the Roman general, Cato the Younger in 47 BC which took thirty days "through deep and scorching sand". Strabo also gives a full account of the dangers for shipping: "the difficulty with both the Greater and the Lesser Syrtes is that in many places the water is shallow, and at the rise and fall of the tides ships sometimes fall into the shallows and settle there, and it is rare for them to be saved" (17.3.20). Pomponius Mela gives a very melodramatic description: "The Syrtes [Minores] ... have no ports and are alarming because of the frequent shallows and even more dangerous because of the reversing movements of the sea as it flows in and out ... then [there is] a second Syrtes, equal in name and nature to the first, but about twice the size" (1.35–37).
These sources should not however be taken at face value: Mela goes on to say that there were no ports in the Greater Syrtes either, but his reliability on this point – and therefore presumably others – is highly questionable: Pseudo-Scylax, writing in the early 4th century BC, records a port in the larger gulf (109), and Strabo places a "very large emporium" in the smaller one before Mela's time (17.3.17). Furthermore, the ancient textual evidence is not unambiguous in its condemnation of the Syrtes. Plutarch gives a much less melodramatic account of Cato's march than Strabo's, saying (admittedly implausibly) that it took only seven days, and that locals were engaged to protect his troops from serpents (Cato Minor 56; see also the uneventful late 5th-century journey along the coast from Euesperides to Neapolis reported at Thucydides 7.50.2). And while Strabo pointed out the dangers of the sandbanks, he continues: "On this account sailors travel along the coast at a distance, taking care lest they are caught off their guard and driven into these gulfs by winds." As in Cato, they do not avoid the area, but merely take precautions against its relative dangers. Similarly, Pliny's warning that the gulf was "formidable because of the shallow and tidal water of the two Syrtes" at Natural History 5.26 should be seen in the context of his broader claim in that work that all the coastlines of the Mediterranean were welcoming (NH 2.118).
Their infamous reputation is, however, found in Roman poetry, from Virgil (Aeneid IV, 41) on.
The information in this section is largely taken from The Syrtes between East and West by Josephine Crawley Quinn.
World War II
Two naval battles were fought in the Gulf of Sidra in World War II: First Battle of Sirte, between Regia Marina and the Royal Navy in December 1941. Second Battle of Sirte, between Regia Marina and the Royal Navy in March 1942.