Logboats

Logboats. . , Logboats or dugout boats have been used for transport in Ireland since Mesolithic times (7000 BC - 4000 BC) and continued to be used for thousands of years well into the Late Medieval Period 16th and 17th centuries). They were made from hallowed out tree trunks, often oak. It was a relatively quick way to build a vessel and logboats were often large enough to transport livestock as well as humans., Photo/Illustration captions, Logboats enabled small numbers of people, perhaps livestock and goods to make use of rivers and lakes when water presented an easier, quicker and safer alternative to traveling overland., Well over 120 logboats or fragments of logboats have been found in Northern Ireland, most of these in the Lough Neagh and Erne basins. Some of the logboats discovered here were quite small and light enough to carry over short distances. However many were long and very heavy (the largest example found in Lower Lough Erne measuring 6.3 metres in length)., Hallowing out the inside of a tree trunk was the method used to make logboats, simply by chipping and hacking out the wood. In an experiment in 1959 conducted by the Ulster Museum, a 5 metre long logboat was constructed this way from a felled oak tree.