The Monks Boat

Recovery of a dug out canoe in Lough Lene

Black and white photograph of divers recovering a dug out canoe in Lough Lene

© Sean Magee

Recovery of a dug out canoe in Lough Lene
© Sean Magee

Recovery of a dug out canoe in Lough Lene

Black and white photograph of divers recovering a dug out canoe in Lough Lene

© Sean Magee

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The Monks Boat was discovered by Mullingar Sub Aqua Club in 1968, lying in 4-5m of water with the nearest land being a little headland in Cummerstown townland on the eastern side of the lake. Tradition in the area linked the boat with Fore Abbey. It was told that the boat was attacked when trying to move some property to one of the islands and sank.

The Sub Aqua Club moved the boat to a shallower spot and then on 28th September brought it ashore to allow for a survey by P Healy on behalf of the National Museum. Brindley and Lanting believed that the boat was very unusual, It belonged to the Mediterranean tradition of ship building which differed from celtic contruction techniques.

Radiocarbon dating led them to believe that the boat was constructed in the early Roman period (1st century AD) at the latest but may have been constructed as early as the 4th century BC. O hEailidhe went a step further in his analysis of the construction techniques and concluded the "The Lough Lene boat combines techniques of sewn boat construction together with that of mortise-and-tenon in a way which cannot be paralleled elsewhere at present"