In June of 2022 INRAP (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research) began excavating the remains of a boat discovered south of Bordeaux, on the Garonne river. Based on the size (about fifty by twenty feet), construction (crude but sturdy), and location (abandoned in a creek that emptied into a navigable river), it is most probably a seventh or eighth century riverine cargo vessel. While that may sound mundane, this is a major find! Most of our water-borne archaeological record is of warships like the Sutton Hoo vessel – sleek, polished, fit for a king.
The Garonne ship is, most assuredly, not sleek or polished. Take a look at the overview picture, below. And while you’re taking it all in, let’s get some terminology out of the way.
A “ship” is usually considered capable of traveling on the sea or ocean. Boats, however, are not considered “sea-worthy” and stick to rivers and lakes. Coastal travel, particularly for an experienced captain, is a grey area. Someone who knew the seasons, the tides, and his vessel could certainly take a river craft up the coast in good weather. True open ocean travel was rare in any case. In the eighth century the compass had not yet been discovered in Europe, and a sailor who left the sight of land depended on a visible sun to mark his direction.
The keel is the “spine” of the boat, a bow-to-stern beam upon which the rest of the construction rests.
Ribs or frames are the pieces attached perpendicular to the keel. The long pieces of the hull that keep the water out are attached to the outside of the ribs. The floor planks, the (hopefully) dry part of the ship, are attached to the inside of the ribs.
Strakes are the long planks that form the outer hull and keep the water out. They are attached to the ribs and run parallel to the keel. Strakes can either be butted together along their long edges, which is called carvel construction, or the strakes can overlap along their length, which is called clinker built. The famous viking longships are of clinker construction, which give their hulls a distinctive look. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
A last term to keep in mind is the keelson. This is a beam running most of the length of the ship, above the keel, attached to the ribs. One of the primary purposes of the keelson is to provide the foundation for a mast, so that a sail can be used when the wind is favorable.
Now that you’re thoroughly versed in naval construction, you can identify the keel, the ribs, the strakes, the floorboards, and the keelson of our river boat. Note how the ribs closest to the bow (or stern, as it may turn out) are bent so cleverly to fit the shape of the hull. That is probably not man-made, but rather an example of the shipwright selected pieces from felled trees to fit his design.
There is no doubt that the initial photographs of the boat’s remains don’t provide much hope that a reconstruction will generate any inspirational imagery.
Image credit, Inrap
But take a look at the initial state of the Oseburg ship, discovered in Norway in 1904. Seem familiar? Hull crushed and splayed wide, strakes splintered, floorboards shattered. Who could do anything with that wreck?
Image credit, Viking Ship Museum
Yet that same ship, renovated and reconstructed, is on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo. Well, not actually on display – the University of Norway is renovating the building (in reality it must be a rebuild, given how long it is taking), to reopen as the Museum of the Viking Age in 2026.
I don’t know if there will ever be a “Museum of the Garonne Cargo Ship,” but I am sure we will see someday at least a digital reproduction of what the vessel would have looked like in her prime.
One of the first things I noticed about the Garonne ship is how heavy and crude the ribs are. As a comparison review this diagram of a Sutton Hoo ship reconstruction. The ribs are trimmed and evenly spaced. Careful workmanship has gone into minimizing weight and maximizing strength.
Image credit: saxonship.org
Our Garonne boat’s ribs are basically hewn tree limbs, flattened where necessary to attach the floorboards and strakes, but otherwise left in their bent and twisted natural state. Also note how close together they are. Really the boat is almost solid wood. It must have weighed a lot, but been extremely sturdy. Just what you want in a river cargo vessel. At sea, where big waves twist the ship along its length, you need a more limber and flexible design, like the Sutton Hoo or Oseburg vessels.
Let’s see what other details we can glean from the Inrap photographs…
If you zoom in at the top of the photo you can see many holes in the ribs. Wooden pegs (called trunnels – sorry, one more bit of terminology) like fat wooden nails attached the floorboards to the ribs.
You can also see enough of the strakes to determine that she’s carvel-built, not clinker-built. There is another photo that shows a few excavation volunteers pulling a strake from the mud, and there is no evidence of a mortise and tenon technique to attach the strakes to each other edge-wise. Rather they were simply nailed (with those trunnels) to the ribs, and caulking jammed into the long joints. The caulking, along with the wood’s natural swelling once immersed in water, sealed the hull well enough.
A close examination of the photo is rewarded with a glimpse of adze marks on the floorboards. Again, rough but serviceable.
It is possible that building a boat was not considered that much different from building anything else out of wood. “Lupus of Ferrieres asked the Abbot of Corbie for twenty trees and the loan of some skilled carpenters to aid his monks in building a better boat than they could buy. In four months the boat was completed and ready to take cargo up to Creil by way of the the Seine and the Oise.”(Riche, Daily Life, p21)
Inrap noticed a few other things during the excavation. They found some rope, which is interesting, but nothing else in the way of furnishings or equipment. No cargo, barrels, amphora, oars, steering oar, mast, sail, tools, etc. Such an absence bolsters an explanation that the owners abandoned the boat for some reason, after stripping it of everything useful. There is no evidence of dock works around the vessel, so it was probably not buried as some sort of shoreline enhancement project.
Further preservation and examination will reveal much. At a minimum, dendrochronological analysis should give us a pretty accurate idea of when she was built. Lab work will provide more details on the boat’s construction, such as the composition of the caulking and if there is any evidence of nails. We shall have to wait. I wrote to Inrap, but have received no reply.
In sum, we seem to have found a cargo vessel capable of carrying good-sized loads up and down the river, and perhaps navigating the coast during good weather. So much for the physical object. Let’s see what the historical record says about boats and river trade in this era.
Chapter XCIV of the Burgundian Law spells out financial penalties for stealing a boat or a ship. The penalties for a ship were exactly twice those for a boat, but no definitions of either term are given.1.Drew, Burgundian Laws, p.83 In contrast, the Salian law (chapter XXI) differentiates between boats and “skiffs” (ascum is the Latin). Rather than mandating penalties based on the type of vessel, the Salian law boosts the fines based on how the vessel was misused. Simply taking a boat to cross a river merits the lowest fine, while actually stealing it deserves something stiffer. The penalties further increase if the owner securely stored the boat (“under lock and key”), and an even greater fine was merited if the skiff was “locked and carefully hung up.”2.Drew, Salian Laws, p.84-85
These skiffs, which I take simply to mean something smaller than our Garonne boat, may have been referenced in the Royal Annals in 792: “A bridge was constructed on the tops of boats used for crossing rivers; it was held together by anchors and ropes in such a way that it could be assembled and dismantled.”3.RFA, 792. Not mentioned in the RRFA, oddly.
Charles had built a pontoon bridge, which has a long military history.
Pontoon bridge on the column of Marcus Aurelius, Wikipedia.
Let’s talk cargo. What was the nature of the river trade in the eighth century? Then, as now, the name of the game was bulk transport. Saintogne and Noirmoutier, both up the coast from Bordeaux, produced salt, “certainly the most transported merchandise over long distances.”4.Verhulst, Carolingian Economy, p98. Grain probably came in second, followed by all the sundries you can thing of. Wine, oil, iron, other foodstuffs, the famed “quern stones” that Charles and King Offa discussed, and other merchandise. A monk named Wandelbert wrote “The Miracles of St Goar” (I have not been able to find a translation) in 839, and tells of a group of potters traveling the Rhine by boat, selling their wares town to town.5.Verhulst, p103
Ocean-going cargo included leather and raw wool exported from Ireland, wine from Gaul, tin from Cornwall, and copper from England.6.Latouche, Birth of the Western Economy, p133
I hope that Inrap will provide progress reports and update the world if they find anything notable. As for me, I find these types of archeological finds the most evocative of all the means we have to explore the past. I love looking at those rough-hewn floorboards and thinking of the men and women that once walked that wood. I hope they had safe and prosperous voyages.