Un voilier du haut Moyen Âge découvert près de Bordeaux
For the Gironde, the Garonne and the Dordogne have always been generous in water and sediment. This shed has enabled us today to find, in one of the small tributaries of the Gironde estuary – the Estey de Lugan – a good part of the structure of a boat in a remarkable state of preservation. Being excavated by the team of Laurent Grimbert, from Inrap, this sailboat preserved over a dozen meters long, but which measured 15 meters, was probably coasting in the region. It dates either from the end of viiie century, or, more likely, of the first half of the viiie century, a turbulent time during which Bordeaux passed successively from the hands of the Gallo-Roman Eudes of Aquitaine, to those of Sarrazin Abd al-Rahman, then to those of its Frankish conqueror, Charles Martel, in 732.
During all these events, the inhabitants of the region continued to eat and build, having goods and goods brought to them by sturdy cargo ships. Between two cabotages on the Atlantic coast and in the Gironde, its owner put his ship in safety in the estey of Lugan. We don’t know why it sank, following a flood, a storm or simply because it was left too long without maintenance.
In any case, once sunk, the boat was unrecoverable, and quickly found itself partially buried in the sediments brought by the Garonne. It is the part immersed in the mud that the researchers found. Most of the boat is built of pieces of oak, held together by many pegs and a few nails; however some parts are in chestnut, willow and pine. The location of the mast was identified thanks to the presence of its implantation, a large reservation dug into a piece of wood intended to accommodate the base. The presence of a keel indicates that the boat, in addition to its travels on the Garonne, could also sail along the coast. Researchers have yet to observe the constitution of the plating and the way it was sealed. The initial height of the boat remains undetermined for the moment since only the parts submerged in the mud and the water table have been preserved. In the boat, they only found a few shards of pottery, grape seeds and other remains of cultivated plants, including one endemic to Portugal, which could indicate one of the destinations or the origin of a shipment.
For the moment, they are dismantling and securing piece by piece this precious testimony of naval archeology in Gironde towards the end of the Merovingian era. When they analyze their data, they will benefit from the comparison with the cargo ship of the viiie century discovered in Port Berteau, in Charente, which has characteristics very similar to that of Villenave d’Ornon. A look at the Loire gabares and the Nordic scutes, comparable sailing boats, could also be enlightening. No doubt they will then find more or less the same construction strategy, favoring the flat bottom necessary in the river, but also ensuring the possibility of navigating at sea.