3-065-952 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ancient boat found in the bed of the River Forth at Stirling, 1874. '...an ancient canoe, which had been discovered in the mud and gravel of the river Forth, at Stirling, near the old ferry at Cambuskenneth Abbey, was dug out and towed ashore. The boat, which seems to have been 20 ft. long by 3 ft. wide, is cut from one piece of solid oak trunk. Tradition says that a boat coming from a feast at the Abbey, in 1529, with fifty persons crossing the ferry, was by overloading capsized; and this may be the one. It certainly has the look of greater antiquity; but must have been used in later times, as it bears tracing of patching, with iron nails of a make common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The canoe is to be cleaned and preserved, and placed in the Smith Institute, at Sterling. A sketch by our esteemed correspondent, Captain H. G. Robley, of the 91st Highlanders, now at Stirling Castle, shows the spot in the river where it was dug out, as marked by the stout ferry-girl in her boat, who has conveyed him over'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.