Bronze Age Carpow Logboat Moves to Permanent Home in Perth

We haven't had time for a post lately, so to keep the pump primed, we'll bring this recent news item to your attention, courtesy of The Courier.

The Carpow boat, a 3,000-year-old logboat excavated in 2006 from the River Tay in Scotland, was recently moved to a permanent home at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery. The 9.25-meter-long boat was recovered in generally very good condition, and it includes the transom board that closed in the stern. It is the second oldest logboat discovered in Scotland. Sadly, much of the bow is missing, but it is still one of the best-preserved Bronze Age logboats in Britain. This short video summarizes the excavation.



This next video shows the boat after conservation. The transom board is not in place, but you can clearly see the bosses that held it there, which were left standing on the inner surface of the boat when the trunk was carved out.

An Ancient Scottish Logboat

This logboat was discovered in 1960 near the shore of Loch Glashan in Argyll, Scotland, and the boat led to the discovery in the lake of a nearby crannog -- an artificial island settlement. (This one was from the 6-8th centuries.) The boat is on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.

The boat hasn't been well dated, and it's thought to date from the 1st through 10th centuries. A paddle found nearby -- which might or might not have been associated with the boat, has been dated to the 6th to 9th century.

The boat measures about 3.15 meters long and a bit under 0.8 meters in breadth. It possesses some interesting features for such a basic vessel.

Even considering that the sides have sagged downward, the bow is still very high relative to the height of the gunwales. (There is no evidence for the use of of additional planks that would have raised the sides.) If its height was intended to keep water out of the boat in a heavy chop, it would have been necessary to keep the boat head-on to the waves at all times.
Just barely visible is a false stem, which extends beneath the hull to form a false keel. For such a short boat, this probably was a considerable aid to directional stability. (Click any image to enlarge.)

A sitting thwart is supported on cleats left standing proud when the hull was hollowed out. It's quite low to keep the center of balance low. 

The stern was enclosed with a plank transom that fit into a slot that's let into the hull a couple inches forward of the extreme aft end. The transom plank (or planks) was considerably thinner than the hull. Some kind of caulking was probably used, possibly moss or some natural fiber.

(photo source)

The thwart-support cleats and false stem and keel can be seen in the section view. The upward bend of the bottom in the middle (in section view) is almost certainly due to deformation while the boat sat on its false keel, not the original shape. The sitting thwart is rather far forward for a solo paddler.

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Photos by the blogger, except the final one, which is sourced with a link. The illustration is from the Kelvingrove Museum.