'River Clyde'

NS47SE 64 unlocated

On display in the Hunterian Museum (under accession number HM A.33) there is an impressive logboat for which there are no records of provenance or discovery. This boat may be equated with any of those that are said to have been preserved but cannot now be located, including particularly Buston 3 (NS44SW 34).

The boat has been worked from a whole log of timber with few but large knots and has suffered from splitting (most noticeably around the bow) and warping which has displaced the bottom of the boat downwards along the sides. The vessel measures 6.35m in length over all by up to 0.94 transversely and the port side survives to a height of about 550mm above the bottom.

The bow is of rounded point form and is rounded both internally and externally in longitudinal section, but is flat with rounded corners when viewed transversely. The stern has been formed by a transom set at an angle to the centreline in a groove which measures 35mm across and 20mm in depth, and survives all the way up the port side; the starboard side is missing at this point. The transom is set in a raised section, and immediately forward of its groove there is a single irregular mark which was possibly made during recovery operations.

The sides of the long midships section are nearly parallel and rise vertically from the bottom of the boat, except that the port side is rounded externally amidships. Both sides and bottom measure about 50mm in thickness.

Along the upper surfaces of the two sides there are a total of fourteen dowel-holes which measure up to 30mm in diameter and 60mm in depth. One of them retains a projecting dowel about 20mm high and another has its dowel broken off level with the upper surface of the sides. On the starboard side there are eight holes roughly spaced at intervals of between 0.6m and 0.8m, but the six holes on the port side are less evenly spaced. Three of them are set within 550mm near the bow, but there are none at all near the stern. Although these features might be seen as evidence of washstrakes or extended construction, their setting into an uneven upper surface suggests that they had a structural function, being intended to retain sections of the side which had broken or split away.

At a point some 2.7m from the bow, the exterior of the port side has been partially cut away to about half the thickness of the side over a length and depth of about 80mm for an unknown purpose and possibly during recovery operations. About 1.65m from the stern there is a major declivity in the same side which apparently owes more to the presence of a massive knot with its associated splitting than to any constructional feature.

In the floor of the boat there are four thickness-gauge holes which measure between 20mm and 30mm in diameter and are spaced irregularly along the centreline. The two nearer the bow retain their plugs while the two nearer the stern may be unfinished or have retained the plugs set deep in the holes.

Set transversely across the boat at about 2.6m and 4.8m from the bows, there are two false ribs which continue up the inner sides; each of them measures about 90mm in breadth and about 15mm in height.

On the assumption that the port side survives to its full height, the slenderness coefficient is 6.4, the beam/draught coefficient is 1.7 and the displacement is about 1.96 cubic metres under standard conditions. Assuming the longitudinal profile of the surviving side to accurately represent that originally constructed, the McGrail morphology code of the boat is 44c1:111:322 and the form is dissimilar-ended.

Information from Mr J Hunter; R J C Mowat 1996, visited October 1987.