Archaeologist
who found boats on the Yorkshire coast that date back thousands
of years
Ted
Wright found Europe’s oldest heavy-duty boat, but it was
only in March of this year that scientists confirmed that it
dated from as far back as 2030 BC. He died just two months after
his archaeological argument, based on a lifetime’s work,
had finally been vindicated.
The
50ft boat, which Wright discovered in 1963, was the shape of
a melon slice and had space for 18 paddlers. Made of thick oak
planks bound with twisted yew branches, it could have carried
metal, furs and amber from the Continent. It has also been suggested
that it may have been used to carry stones to Stonehenge.
This was the third boat that he had found at Ferriby in East
Yorkshire, and it showed that northern Europe four millennia
ago was more technically advanced than had previously been believed.
“It’s pretty exciting at the age of 82 to find out
that you made one of the most significant discoveries in British
archaeology,” said Wright.
Since
he was a boy, Ted Wright had been fascinated by boats, and in
1937 he and his brother were on the Humber foreshore at North
Ferriby, near Hull, when they found three large planks sticking
out of the mud. They recognised that these were part of a boat,
and soon realised that it was a very sophisticated design that
must have been created by highly competent craftsmen.
Wright
remained obsessed by archaeology during the war years, when
he was a tank commander. In 1940 he had joined the East Riding
Yeomenry as a second lieutenant, but he successfully requested
that they stop their training at Sutton Hoo, because it was
damaging to practise tank warfare on the Anglo-Saxon burial
mound.
While
on leave in 1940 he found a second boat at Ferriby. Although
it was hard to conserve the boats at the time, he visited the
site to escape from the grimness of war. In the following years
the arguments about his discoveries became his private casus
belli.
In
1946 Wright endured cold, mud, stench and exhaustion on the
riverbank to dig out the two Ferriby boats, a task which he
described as “like getting slices of crumbly cheese out
of glue”. He said that it was his experience in the war
that enable him to carry out the excavation.
The
timbers were taken to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich
for study and conservation. After some years the stench from
the treatment tanks became so unpleasant that the trustees ordered
wholesale disposal, but fortunately some parts were rescued
surreptitiously by one of the curators.
In
1963 Wright stumbled upon a third boat at Ferriby. He was with
his son Roderick, who was standing on the mud in the middle
of the boat when Wright realised what it was. “Stay where
you are,” he said, “or you’ll trample on the
evidence.”
When Wright became a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum
in 1972, he was instrumental in setting up the Archaeological
Research Centre, and was given the facilities and encouragement
to undertake further investigations into the Ferriby boats.
He
had spent many years trying to persuade marine archaeologists
that the boats were used before 1700 BC, and defended his claims
in The Ferriby Boats: Seacraft of the Bronze Age (1990). But
it was only in 1998 that scientists began to think that the
third boat might have been used even earlier than that. A new
dating technique had been developed known as accelerator mass
spectrometry, which needed only a small sample of material,
and eventually this enabled scientists from Oxford to demonstrate
that the third boat dated from as far back as 2030 BC.
Wright never lost his enthusiasm for old boats, and a few weeks
before his death, despite his fragile health, he held forth
to a group of reporters on the foreshore at Ferriby, confirming
the point hat he had been making all his life.
Edward
Vere Wright was born 1918, the son of the chairman of British
Oil and Cake Mills. His great-grandfather, Sir William Wright,
was chairman of the Hull Dock Company, and laid the foundation
stone of the Hull Maritime Museum.
After
schooling at Charterhouse, Wright read Greats at Christ Church,
Oxford. During his first public examinations, he had appendicitis
and was granted an aegrotat, and because of the war he passed
his finals in absentia.
Wright
was promoted to captain just before he took part in D-Day, and
from Caen he sent home for preservation a fossil that he had
found in the wall of a latrine. Soon after D-Day, he fell off
a tank and hurt his knee, but he soon returned to action and
finished the war as a major. He was later appointed MBE and
took charge of the Royal Armoured Corps personnel, but he left
in 1946 to spend more time with his boats.
In
1947 he joined Reckitt & Coleman, where he became overseas
director. On his business trips he tried to establish ways in
which other peoples built their boats, and used to bring back
samples and models. He wrote the first volume of the company’s
history.
When
he died he was helping to write the history of his regiment.
He also enjoyed expeditions to find orchids and fossils.
Wright
was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries. In 1987 he
and his brother Claude, with whom he discovered the first Ferriby
boat, received honorary doctorates from the university of Hull.
His
wife Jane died in 1993. He is survived by their daughter and
four sons.
Ted
Wright, MBE, Amateur archaeologist was born on June 21, 1918.
He died on May 18 2001, aged 83.
From The Times
