Clinker boat building with Damian Goodburn

Ros Ereira, cameo producer

Ros Ereira, Time Team cameo producer, explains the experimental archaeology involved in the reconstruction cameo for the Grace Dieu programme. This involved ancient woodwork specialist Damian Goodburn attempting to recreate the unusual clinker boat building techniques used for the Grace Dieu.

This was less of a traditional Time Team 'cameo', and more the attempted creation of a partial 3D model to show us what a section of the Grace Dieu would have looked like, to help us see the complex design more easily, and to demonstrate just how time-consuming it was. From the small section that Damian and Alex Farnell (of the Centre for Maritime Archaeology at Southampton) made, we could see just how massive the ship must have been. The very fact that they couldn't finish the small section in the time available demonstrated what a very labour-intensive way this was to build a ship.

Local blacksmith Colin Philips made the nails, and even though I had given him the measurements and commissioned them myself, I was still astonished when I saw just how enormous they were. Each nail weighed more than one and half pounds and was four times the size of the nails normally used in shipbuilding during this period, so it was hardly surprising that Damian was struggling to bend them over by hand!

Damian Goodburn, archaeologist and ancient woodwork specialist

Time Team has made a tradition of experimental archaeology cameos as part of most of its projects. Those of us who work in archaeology and are particularly interested in understanding how things were made in the past have found this an important part of the programme. This is especially so because while our grandparents lived in a Britain where 'making things' was commonplace and highly valued, this is not the case now.

Archaeology involving experimentation with practical techniques is a way of getting in touch with that disappearing part of daily life. I've been very lucky to have helped Time Team with other ship- or boat-related experiments, from building a replica of a 9th-century AD dugout boat to building a section of a 14th-century clinker ship hull for the Smallhythe programme in the 1999 series.

Clinker boat building started in the Iron Age, when people built boats as a shell of partly overlapping boards strengthened by cross frames that were added later. By medieval times in England, ships were normally built with a single thickness of boards held at the laps with iron rivets and strengthened with heavy cross frames and beams. The boards were still assembled first and not bent round a rigid framework, so they had to be fairly thin. The shipwrights who built the Grace Dieu, which was far larger than other clinker ships, were struggling to make a strong hull of thin boards by using three layers with tarred moss between them.

Alex Farnell, of the Centre for Maritime Archaeology at Southampton, and myself were asked to find out more about how this was done by making a reconstruction of a small section of the hull. The work was a very complicated and laborious procedure for them, and so it proved so for us too – even though, when we examined some fragments from the wreck, we found the finish was actually quite rough.

The main nails were massive, with 20mm-square shanks of iron at the end. Here we were unlucky: despite the best efforts of the blacksmith, we had wrought iron that was far harder than the medieval material and forming the rivets proved virtually impossible. However, despite failing to complete the intended experimental hull section we did learn a lot about the skills, effort and materials needed to build the ship, as well as what further questions we need to ask of those studying the wreck in the Hamble and the fragments in local museums.

Medieval shipbuilding talk

Damian Goodburn will be giving a talk on 'Medieval shipbuilding crafts and the problem of the Grace Dieu of 1416', organised by Winchester Museum, on 12 May 2005 at 7.30 pm.

Amtec Co-op

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To find out more about Damian Goodburn and ancient technology, visit the Amtec Co-op website describing the work carried out by Damian and other experts in ancient materials, technology and conservation.

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