"The Ferriby bronze age boats are probably one of the most important finds in maritime archeology. The technology and size of the boats has lead experts re-evaluate bronze age society. The Ferriby boats support the belief that man was capable of crossing oceans more than 4,000 years ago.
The Wright brothers of Hull are to maritime history what their namesakes are to aviation. Yet the discoveries of Ted and Willy Wright are relatively unknown. Now the tide is turning.
In 1937 shifts in tidal currents had exposed the strata and that day they saw three great oak planks protruding from the estuarine clay: the brothers recognised them as the remains of a boat from antiquity. But how old? Initially it was thought to be of Viking origin, until analysis dated it from the bronze Age, more than 2500 years earlier.
In 1963, Ted made his most significant find, the third of the Bronze age boats. A 50 ft craft having the shape of a melon slice, with space for 18 paddlers. It was made of thick oak planks bound with twisted yew branches, and sealed with a moss caulking. The latest dating technology has determined that the bronze age boat could be 4,000 years old, making it Europe’s first known seacraft.
A major excavation and recovery campaign was undertaken between July and October 1946 during which Boats F1 and F2 were completely cleared, first by a small local team and then with reinforcements from the British Museum and elsewhere.
Attempts to remove F1 in a single lift proved unsuccessful; but all the parts were saved. F2 was cut up and lifted piecemeal. The remains of both were taken to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich on Admiralty transport.
The remains of Ferriby Boat 1 (F1), the most complete find, consisted of a flat but rockered bottom-structure of three strakes: the keel-strake of two planks jointed amidships and with one end (and presumably the other) shaped with a steep upward curve; on either side of it were outer bottom-strakes, each a single plank 35 feet long and curved in plan on the outer edge. A short piece of the first side-strake was preserved on one side angled to the bottom at 128 degrees, but with the end shaped in three dimensions to fit into the space on the bottom-structure. There is good evidence that there were two more side-strakes making a total of three along each side. The bottom-structure was braced laterally by transverse timbers passing through cleats shaped integrally on the planks. The planks of oak were mostly of 3-4 inch thickness, but increased to 6-8 inch amid-ships. They were stitched to each other with individual withies of yew-branch at 9-12 inch intervals. The seams were caulked with moss and capped by oak laths for watertightness. It is thought that a peeled branch of yew was fed in and twisted inside the thickness of the timber as the stitch was formed, to separate the fibres and make the withy flexible. The edges of the planks were shaped with a variety of interlocking seams, the main purpose being to 'bury' the stitching for protection against damage on grounding.
Dates for Ferriby Boats, as at March 2001
In 1996, a piece of oak plank with carved features surviving on it for it to be recognised as a piece of boat plank of the type similar to the Ferriby trio was found by the Hull Natural History Society on the Holderness coast at Kilnsea. It had probably been washed from an exposure of clay deposits in an extinct tidal channel connected with the estuary of the ancient Humber. It was dated by the AMS method of radioactive assay to between 1870-1670 BC, that is several centuries earlier than the age previously estimated for the Ferriby Boats at about 1300 BC. The Ferriby Heritage Group, with funds given by the Sir James Reckitt Trust Charity, then commissioned a programme to obtain revised dates for the Ferriby Boats using the same AMS process partly as a check on the earlier radiocarbon dates and partly in the hope that the very precise AMS process might make it possible to separate the ages of the three finds from each other. Only two out of the three determinations, those for F1 and F2 proved successful so that the second objective was not achieved, but figures were announced in 1998 which gave date ranges of 1890-1700 BC for F1 and 1930-1750 BC for F2, marginally outdating that for the Kilnsea plank.
The small number of determinations were insufficient to satisfy the experts and English Heritage came into the picture to initiate and fund a more comprehensive study with financial support also from the Oxford AMS Unit. The results of this were released as part of their contribution to National Science Week at Hull and East Riding Museum in March 2001. These broadly confirmed the 1998 figures and these are shown in the table below with other comparable dates for sewn plank-built boats from the British Bronze Age, the latest first:-.
"Raft" from Brigg, Lincs. - C.800 BC
Plank from Goldcliff near Swansea - After 1017 BC (by tree-ring analysis)
Dover boat - 1575-1520 BC (or 1589 by tree-ring analysis)
Severn plank - C.1600 BC
Kilnsea plank - 1870-1670 BC
Ferriby 1 - 1880-1680 BC
Plank from Caldicott, Gwent - 1880-1690 BC
Ferriby 2 - 1940-1720 BC
Ferriby 3 - 2030-1780 BC
It is clear from this that boats with common characteristics were built and used in estuaries and coastal waters around Britain from Early Bronze Age times and may have survived for a thousand years or more thereafter into the Middle and Later Bronze Age. Study of the incomplete remains discovered has led to suggested reconstructions which are thought to be seaworthy enough to ply the seaways of the North Sea coasts and the English Channel. In the Early Bronze Age there is archaeological evidence for the appearance of goods in Britain of undoubted mainland origin such as central European bronze and Baltic amber. The theory is now being advanced that such overseas exchanges became possible through the existence of craft of this kind.
Boats of Ferriby type have no known ancestors or descendants but are obviously of a long lineage. The earliest known boats are log-boats or dugouts, with examples from Holland and Denmark going back to the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic at about 7000 BC. Logboats survived in Europe until modern times and are still made in the Tropics.
In Europe planked boats are thought to have been derived from extended log-boats or from rafts. In the case of ancient Egypt their form suggests that reed-bundle boats have a place in their ancestry. After a period of stitching or sewing of planks, the Egyptians developed edge-fastening by mortises and tenons which became the standard method throughout the Mediterranean and lasted through Greek and Roman times. Frames developed there too, eventually into the rigid frame-skeleton, covered in planking, of the familiar carvel-build. In the north, hulls were built up of thin planking overlapping at the edges which were 'clenched' by dowels or by iron rivets, hence the common term 'clinker-construction'. Ribs were inserted afterwards to keep the hull in shape. These two methods are termed 'skeleton first' and 'shell first' respectively.
The earliest plank-built boats are from Ancient Egypt and include the royal barge of Pharaoh Cheops, found dismantled in a rock-crypt in front of the great Pyramid and dated to about 2600 BC. Sea-going vessels followed and are depicted in bas-reliefs and wall paintings. In the Aegean a positive regatta of boats was depicted in fresco on the walls of a building destroyed by the great volcanic eruption of the island of Thera (Santorini) in c.1400 BC.
Our British Bronze Age boats, ranging in age from the Ferriby boats (c.1800 BC) to the Brigg 'raft' (c.800 BC), in their several ways resemble none of these and are unknown elsewhere. The nearest in age from Northern Europe is the unique Hjortspring canoe from Denmark of c.400 BC.
For fifty years the Ferriby boats and the accounts of them stood as a benchmark for the study of ancient boats in this country. They had no equals in Europe and for that matter anywhere. It is only in the last five years, first by the Severn Estuary and in 1992 at Dover, that their like has been found."
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