The Ferriby Boats Book

In 1937 the author, then aged 19, found some old timbers sticking out of the mud of the Humber shore at Ferriby. His amateur interest in archaeology helped him and his brother to identify them as remains of an ancient boat. "The Ferriby Boats" is Edward Wright's own account of his discoveries, excavations and research over 50 years since the first boat find. The importance of this, and the subsequent finds was only fully recognised after the World War II, when the new technique of carbon-14 dating revealed that the Ferriby Boats were built before 1000 BC. This makes them the oldest plank-built boats found anywhere in the world apart from Ancient Egypt and the Aegean; they predate any similar craft in Nothern Europe by half a millenium. And they present evidence for a style of boat building previously unknown, thus adding a completely new chapter to our knowledge of prehistoric boat building. The excavation and preservation of the boats presented many problems for Edward Wright and his fellow workers, not least the constant battle with mud and the tide, which was always threatening to sweep the boats away. Over the years he has pioneered methods of excavating and recording which have since become standard in the field of maritime archaeology. With the aid of a naval architect, he has now achieved a realistic reconstruction of the boats with estimates of its performance. They suggest a capacity for navigation at this time not previously imagined and add a new and fundamental dimension to the history of man's relationship with the sea.Read More