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One of my daily walks takes me past the site where the three oldest “heavy duty” boats in Europe were excavated. These “Ferriby Boats” (the oldest of which has been reliably dated to 2030-1780 BC) were cited by Lorraine Evans as evidence of Egyptian visits to (or permanent settlement in) ancient Britain.
Andrew Collins in turn uses Evans’ ideas to support an Akhenaten provenance for the Green Stone. (see EarthQuest News here: [url:1s7dnv3c]http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/news3.htm[/url])
Sadly, as I walked past the site yesterday, I saw that overnight some vandals had ripped down the planking of a nearby stile and used it to light a bonfire on the memorial to the boats’ discoverer, Ted Wright (an outline of one of the boats embedded in the ground). They had also burned away the fact sheet on the nearby board which gave information about the boats, their history and their discovery.
I cleared away the debris of the bonfire (and the empty vodka bottle) and restored the memorial as best as I could but the information sheet was totally destroyed (hopefully the council will have some spare copies).
As I had only just shown this site and the accompanying remains of the “Ferriby 3″ boat (which are on display in the Hull and East Riding Museum) to members of my family over the last few weeks, I felt a sinister edge to this wanton destruction as if my interest in the boats had provoked the attack. Probably a bit melodramatic but still nasty and one can only despair at the lack of imagination and meanness of spirit that causes people to destroy important (but vulnerable) local displays.
More information on the boats here: [url:1s7dnv3c]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferriby_Boats[/url] and here [url:1s7dnv3c]http://www.ferribyboats.co.uk/[/url]
I don’t understand why some people do these things. Hopefully the council will sort out the mess, but well done for taking the time to do your bit.
Iteresting that the most recent info ignores (as far as I could tell) Dr Sean McGrail’s (McGrail – son of Grail? – what an excellent name) 1980s comparison of the boats to similar Egyptian vessels. Though the change in dating between when AC wrote his piece in Earthquest and the present – i.e. the recent datings now have the boats pre-date the Armana period by several centuries – are too early for the Meonia ‘Heritage’ story. Not that that rules out the Heritage stuff as any evidence that Egyptians had long-established trading links with Britain would at least make it possible that some Atenists made for these shores.
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