A team of specialist archaeologists built the vessel over three months on the Roman Lawns at Dover Museum Photo: PA
A team of specialist archaeologists built the vessel over three months on the Roman Lawns at Dover Museum Photo: PA
More with champagne popping cork launch video at:
Video: That sinking feeling... Bronze Age boat replica fails to float
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2012/may/14/bronze_age_boat_video.aspx
(You gotta love the headline “...replica fails to float” - As if it were the boat’s fault that it sunk!)
The lines are similar to a kit kayak I helped build once. The craft was constructed with plywood sheets sewn together and tacked onto ribs. Of course, we moderns used fiberglass and resin on the seams. Worked pretty good, too.
Liberals with no common sense build a boat, and it sinks? Who is surprised?
Every wooden boat leaks when first put in the water either after first being built or having been out of the water for an extended period. Don’t those dumb arses realize that the wood has to swell? If they seal it tight before putting it in the water it will fail when the wood swells when they do put it in the water.
“The boat, which is a half-sized replica of the original Bronze Age boat found in Dover back in 1992...”
I’m wondering - did they also find it at the bottom of some lake or river....?
Something’s missing, and that would be a coating to provide waterproofing. Pitch was used for this purpose going back to Biblical times and before. I doubt the recovered Bromze Age craft would float as discovered even if intact, if this was as painstaking a half scale replica as it sounds.
Looks like a canoe.
...And he couldn't bloody do it!
-Benny Hill
Kon Tookie tookie?
What they don't have is the skillsets. Those don't get preserved in dirt.
/johnny
ping
The missing ingredient was that it must have been space alien technology that helped the ancient people build these things.
I mean we all know how “stupid” the ancients were - they couldn’t have been smarter than we modern men - right?
The Egyptians were too stupid to build the pyramids - it had to be space aliens - right?
There are wooden clocks built in the colonial era of our own country that we can’t figure out how it was done - and, that was only 200 years ago.
We aren’t as smart as we think we are.
http://www.fotevikensmuseum.se/sewnboat/index.htm ~ right down to modern times the Sa’ami have had folks around who could build seaworthy sewn boats. There’s some evidence from remains found high in the mountains in Scandinavia that such boats have been built since people first arrived in the region ~ maybe 7500 to 9000 years ago!
I watched a show on the Discovery Channel about a year and a half ago about Viking Long Boats. A group of modern day Vikings from Iceland belong to a club. They carry on the traditions of the Vikings of old by making long boats. A Viking crew of 14 to 16 men was said to be able to make a long boat using only axes and knives. It would typically take under 3 weeks and would use the wood of 4 large trees. The men of the club build a long boat complete with dragon’s head every summer; they use only axes and knives and it does take them less than 3 weeks.
Their long boats are then sold to fund the club, and many of them have been used in Hollywood films.
I imagine the Bronze Age builders had a few boats sink before they got it right.
This simply reinforces my long held total disdain for archeologists both physical and cultural. Generally most are delusional attention whores whose main talent is weaving the most elaborate tales from the skimpiest of evidence. And I have never, ever heard of a single instance when one of these parasites ever said the three magic words : "I was wrong."
Years ago, our most popular joke (among engineers of all disciplines) was how one of these educated imbeciles would find a single human foot bone and, from that, weave a book length pompous narrative of an entire society, what they ate for breakfast, what diseases (plural) they suffered from and a thousand details only a truly demented neurotic human being could invent. All with a straight face.
Or, as Mark Twain so classically summarized, "Such large returns in conjecture, from such small investment in fact."
I hope these delusional "scientists" at least learned a smidgen of humility.
Well Duh! It’s too small to float. I reckon you make one about double that size and she’ll be seaworthy!
I once learned about a very ancient boat that was made with layers with wooden pegs that pegged the layers together so that when the pegs expanded when wet they secured the layers together even better. The boat was wonderfully sea worthy and would last for much longer than ships built after it. I tried to search on the web for info about the technique and ship but can’t find anything about it.