The Dover Bronze Age Boat

In spite of its prosaic name, the Dover Bronze Age Boat is the most interesting ancient boat I've ever seen. And I do mean "seen", for I had the immense pleasure of seeing it while it was at the bottom of a 6-meter deep excavation, with road construction work going on all around it in Dover, England, in 1992.

My wife and I had moved to London, more of less for the adventure, and at the time I was attempting to earn a living as a freelance writer, concentrating on work for the public relations industry -- which work never materialized. But when I heard about this archaeological find, I ran down to Dover, talked my way into the pit, took a bunch of photos and spoke to a number of the key individuals involved (including Valerie Fenwick and Peter Marsden) before anyone realized that I shouldn't have been there at all. I did sell a short article to the Times of London, and there I let it sit for quite some time.

Recently, I've been reading The Dover Bronze Age Boat, edited by Peter Clark (English Heritage, 2004). This is an expensive collection of scholarly papers and not intended for the general public, so it's hard going, but fascinating nonetheless. Many of the earliest assumptions about the boat have been supported, while others have been substantially revised over the years. After the artifact was recovered and conserved, it was put on display in the Dover Museum (picture above courtesy of the museum). Additionally, a team of woodworkers skilled in the use of hand tools reconstructed a 3-meter long replica of the boat's mid-section, using replicas of period bronze tools, to collect new data and test a number of hypotheses about the construction methods.

Built around 1,500 BC, the boat is at a juncture between dugout and plank-on-frame technology. The four large planks that were recovered were heavily and elaborately carved, in some ways reminiscent of dugout procedures, but then they were assembled to make a boat larger than any single-tree dugout could have been. The two bottom planks were mainly wedged together, but there are a few transverse members that run through massive cleats that were left standing proud when the bottom planks were carved, and these represent an extremely early manifestation of the modern function of planks, but one that was ultimately a dead end. The next planks outboard of the bottom planks, called iles, describe roughly 1/4-round, hollow sections, making the boat flat-bottomed and round-chined. The iles were "stitched" to the outer edges of the bottom planks with yew withies -- i.e., thin shoots or branches -- that were twisted to be made more flexible, then probably soaked in water, and then pulled through mating holes in the iles and the bottom planks three or four times each. The stitches were tightened up by forcing long, thin laths beneath them on the inside of the boat, and moss was placed under the laths as a caulking material.

The rabbeted top edge of each ile, and the stitch holes that appear there as well, indicate that the hull was at least one plank taller (and probably no more than one). Neither of the top side planks survived, however, and it is believed that they were purposely removed by the boat's owners, who may have "retired" the boat ceremonially by thus partially disassembling it.

One end of the boat was recovered, but this is missing a more critical part: the end-plank, which appears to have been a kind of scow-bow configuration. The ends of the bottom planks feature the most impressive, and convoluted, carved features, with rails that form a kind of swallow-tail or V-shaped section, to which the end plank was fastened with wedges. (The iles, and probably the upper side planks, were evidently stitched to the side edges of the end plank.) I'm not aware that a more rounded front end, dugout-style, might have been considered and rejected, but the scow bow certainly seems feasible.

Due to scheduling needs of the transportation authority and the company managing the construction of the highway, it wasn't possible to extend the excavation to attempt to recover the boat's other end. This is an awful shame, since we don't know how long the boat was; don't know how the other end was closed in; and in fact don't know for certain that the end that was recovered was in fact the bow. If I had a few million dollars lying around, I'd try to mount a rescue of the missing pieces.

Hawaiian Canoe Ladders

Another item gleaned from The Hawaiian Canoe, by Tommy Holmes:

Pre-European contact Hawaiians living on headlands without access to gently sloping beaches used canoe "ladders" as a means of launching and landing their boats. This was made necessary because Hawaiians relied on the sea for the bulk of their protein -- in other words, if you couldn't launch your fishing canoe, you did without protein almost entirely. Holmes writes that "No other culture has ever been known to overcome the problem of providing boat launching and landing capabilities from a wave-lashed cliff-bound shore."

The canoe ladder was a kind of slipway built along a sloping rock or series of rocks -- always on a headland, and never in a cove or inlet. Looking much like a regular climbing ladder (or a series of them joined end-to-end), the canoe ladder consisted of a pair of parallel poles up to about 30 feet long, with "rungs" up to 12 feet wide spaced anywhere from a few inches to a few feet apart. The upper sections of ladder were tied into holes bored right into the rock. The lowest section was tied only at its upper end, essentially hinged at the top so that the lower end floated with the level of tide and waves. This lower section was installed when needed, and removed at the end of the day when the last canoe had been retrieved. From photos in the book, it appears that ladders were sometimes quite steep -- maybe as much as 20 degrees from horizontal.

In exchange for a share of the catch, helpers on land would assist the canoe's crew in launching and retrieving from the ladder. The canoe's captain would call the shots, judging the waves and deciding when to go. In both launching and retrieving, the canoeist would attempt to go when the wave was at its highest -- when landing, to bring the boat as high up the ladder as possible and prevent subsequent waves from disturbing the landing; when launching, so that the boat would be drawn as far as possible from the rocks when the wave retreated.

In some landing circumstances, the crew would jump out of the boat just before it made contact with the ladder, leaving the steersman in the stern and the helpers on the ladder to grab the boat. Although Holmes doesn't explain why, it would appear that the crew's extra weight in the boat might have presented a problem in these instances. The notion of jumping into surf below rocks just as a wave is coming in is a bit frightening, but so is the whole notion of landing a dugout canoe in this manner, for the boat, the crew, and especially for the helpers on land who had to stand by as this wooden missile, weighing several hundred pounds, rushed toward them on the face of a wave.

Maine Canoe Symposium Announces Dates, Featured Talks

One of my favorite annual events, the Maine Canoe Symposium, has announced dates for this year: June 6-8. Featured speakers will be The Peake Brothers, and Rolf & Debra Kraiker.

The symposium is a 2.5-day event that includes multiple ongoing programs ranging from camp cooking to canoe poling. Many of the programs are on-the-water and to maintain a good instructor-participant ratio, the organizers post sign-up sheets just a few hours before they begin. This ensures that everyone has a good chance to get into most of the on-the-water programs that they wish, and it works very well. Other programs that are more presentation-style and less "practical" (as in, you don't practice the skills on the water) don't require sign-ups and are open to all. The featured speakers give presentations at night in a big, rustic assembly room, and the talks are invariably engaging.

Probably the best aspect of the symposium, however, is the strong sense of camaraderie among staff and participants -- probably around 200 souls all told every year. It's just so darn friendly, that even misanthropes like your humble blogger start to feel good, being around so many like-minded canoe enthusiasts. The level of instruction is mostly quite high. About the only criticism I can make is that the event is held on a large and lovely pond that offers no opportunity for instruction on moving water. That makes it difficult to teach and learn many canoeing skills.

The setting is Camp Winona, on Moose Pond in Bridgton, Maine (in the western part of the state) -- a boys' summer camp that has hosted the event for years, just before their summer camping season begins. Most symposium participants choose to rent platform tents, which are spacious and dry, but some choose to economise and pitch tents in the open field provided. Food in the cafeteria is spectacular.

For more details: http://www.mainecanoesymposium.org/