Investigation 3e The Graveney boat

A personal account - Paul Constantine

The core information about this craft was produced by Angela Care-Evans and Valerie Fenwick who directed work in the field for the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, both of whom were also closely associated with the Sutton Hoo ship and who were responsible for chapters in Volume 1 of Rupert Bruce Mitford’s book, The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial.

Graveney is a village close to Faversham in Kent.

This brief outline is from ‘Historic Kent’ and covers the basic facts.

The timbers of an ancient clinker-built boat were found in September 1970 during the excavation of a large drainage channel for the Kent River Authority. The vessel, of well-preserved oak, survived for c. 10 metres of its length, but it can be estimated that its full size was over 14 metres long and less than 3 metres broad, with a 7.5 metre keel. There is no sign of a mast. The floor timbers are massive and would have given the boat great strength for carrying heavy cargo. They are fastened to the shell with wooden tree-nails. The shell is built of narrow strakes fastened together by iron rivets - now rusted away. There were indications that the vessel was berthed for repair. The hull had been repaired and the boat, secured by a series of stakes round the hull, lay on a platform of brushwood. A rope attached to the sternpost was probably used to drag the boat onto the platform. The platform, perhaps part of a timber hard. Several sherds from the base of a large medieval pot were recovered from it. Finds from the excavations included:- pebbles, shells, Roman tile fragments, sheep bones, pieces of Kentish rag and lava, and twelve Continental pottery sherds of 10th or 11th century date. The ship was taken to the National Maritime Museum for conservation. Preliminary research suggests that the Graveney boat is of a hitherto unrepresented class, a sea-going trading ship probably constructed in south or east England.

(My explanatory additions) Whilst dating has varied according to the methods used, from 895 to 950AD, it can be understood that they average around 900-925AD, or approximately 300 years after Sutton Hoo. This is well into the time of Viking sailing craft, which might be thought of as affecting Britain from about 800AD. 

NOTE. The pottery sherds were dated from later than the dating of the boat. The reference to 'lava' is for fragments of Mayen-lava quern stones (hand-grinding stones), that were accessed from the Rhineland.

Included in the cargo of the Graveney boat were hops, which today are usually associated with brewing beer. However, at the time of the Graveney boat the population drank ale, which did not use hops in the production process. There has been much speculation about the hops, but they have always been known to have many uses, especially as medicinal plants for internal use. Hops were not used in brewing in England until about the 15Century. The plant remains in and adjacent to the boat were subject to very detailed analysis and the report by D Gay Wilson entitled, Plant Remains from the Graveney Boat … can be accessed online.

This diagram, the picture above, and the following extracts are from the Care-Evans/Fenwick report 1971 for the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

'The plank-joins are a simple scarf fastened by one, or exceptionally two, rivets. The planking was radially cut and averaged 2.8 cm. in thickness. (Thicker than the full-size Sutton Hoo ship, at half its length) The strakes are composite, the lower made up originally of four lengths of timber and the upper of perhaps five or six. Although only eight strakes survived, the upwards projection of the fifth frame on the port indicated that at least two strakes had been lost. The strakes had been fastened at approximately 15 cm. intervals with round- headed iron nails. The shanks of circular section were clenched inside the boat over roughly square roves. The floor-frames are massive and closely spaced with an average distance of 48 cm. between them. They have a rectangular cross-section, are more than 20 cm. high over the keel and are between 9 and 14 cm. broad. Most are carefully nibbed over the strake-lands. They were fastened to alternate strakes by finely shaped treenails. These have faceted heads which projected outside the boat. During the construction of the boat a luting (part of the ‘caulking’) of felted cattle-hair was inserted between sections, including the scarf of keel and sternpost which had no stopwater. Luting also filled plank joins and the lands between strakes.

Its sturdy construction suggests that it was a cargo boat and capable of crossing the Channel in the course of its trading. Lack of a projecting keel may signify no more than a requirement to sail in shallow waters or use tidal havens. Thus, a supposed simple evolution from plank-keeled to deep-keeled craft is untenable. One must, equally, be wary of trying to make each boat found fit into a specific chronological stage in the development of boatbuilding.

Preliminary work, therefore, suggests that the Graveney boat is a competently-made example of a hitherto unrepresented class of boat of non-Scandinavian type. It is possible to see in her, elements which anticipate the cog.' This section seems to be indicating that in the evolution of boatbuilding, this craft is moving away from the lightweight, semi-flexible, slender, earlier Scandinavian hull form, towards a heavier, stronger, commercial cargo-carrying function that was to appear in England about 100 years later.. 

oooOOooo

An interesting technical detail was identified by Selina Ali, in her paper, A Digital Re-Examination of the Graveney Ship Find, for the Maritime Archaeology Department, at the University of Southern Denmark.

There has been little confusion in two articles when referencing the displacement of the boat. In the Fenwick 1978 publication, the measurement is given in tons, a spelling which usually denotes an imperial ton. A metric tonne will be spelled as tonne, denoting the unit of measurement. The Graveney boat has an estimated cargo capacity of 6-7 tons, and this has later been referenced as being 6-7 tonnes (Fenwick 1978; Gifford 1986; Gardiner 2000). 1 imperial short ton weighs 2,000 lbs or approximately 907 kg. The difference between 6.5 tons and 6.5 tonnes is approximately 604 kg difference. Not large enough to really effect the interpretation of the boat drastically. Both Gifford and Gardiner did this.

Mentioning Edwin Gifford (see Sae Wylfing this website) brings us to the scale models of Anglo-Saxon craft that he had constructed, described in his booklet, Anglo-Saxon Sailing Ships. There is currently no evidence that the Anglo-Saxons sailed their boats, but Edwin made half-length models of Graveney, called ‘Ottor’ and, Sutton Hoo called, ‘Sae Wylfing’. Edwin added mast and sail to the hulls.Ottor (see right) was built in 1988 and donated to the Faversham Creek Trust in 2015. Sae Wylfing was bult in 1993 and donated to the Woodbridge Riverside Trust in 2016.  Edwin and his wife Joyce conducted many trials to determine the performance of these craft under square sail. Their finding can be accessed in their booklet.

Dimensions. The remains of the Graveney boat were damaged, as the bow was missing, so there are discrepancies in its stated dimensions as archaeologists will only accurately record the true dimensions of what they find. An example may be - Wikipedia that describes Graveney as:

A cross-channel cargo vessel, reconstructed as some 13.6 m (45 ft) long and 3.4 m (11 ft) wide and 1 m (3 ft 3 in) in draft. The draft measurement is clearly wrong for the hull, but could almost be applied to the tip of the submerged rudder.

The Giffords say its dimansions are:13.4m (44ft) x 4m (13ft) and indicate a hull draft of about 250mm.

A difference of 60cms or 2ft in the beam is difficult to understand. It will be seen from the illustrated, detailed plan of the Graveney boat (top of page) that the various cross sections of the hull, as discovered below 2m of heavy clay, could not indicate a precisely-shaped plan view of the top planks and the sheer (Edwin uses ‘gunwale’) as they were missing. The hull at sheer level had to be ‘interpreted’ from the flattened evidence – hence the discrepancies. Edwin would know that the broader the beam, the better/safer suited his replica boat would be for sailing performance. The bow shape had to be a 'supposition', based on how the stern appeared, so the overall length may have been 44ft or 45ft - maybe?

Edwin Gifford helms Ottor the half-length replica of the Graveney boat