Letter about a Storm at Sea

Unusually, this letter was written on parchment rather than on paper, which would have been cheaper, and in large calligraphic Hebrew letters, well spaced on the page, by an expert scribe. The writer appears to have lived near Naples, perhaps in the inland city of Benevento. His signature is lost, but he was clearly well educated, as shown by the talmudic allusions at the beginning of this text. In the first part of the letter, not translated here, the writer complains about the teachers that he found after his travels to the East. In this excerpt, he writes of a perilous journey and shipwreck on the Mediterranean. Ellipses indicate lacunae in the manuscript.