Third logboat spotted by drone in the Boyne river at Drogheda

I spotted a third logboat in the river Boyne at Drogheda this morning using my drone. It is positioned near the northern bank of the Boyne some 270m west of the Bridge of Peace.

It is located about 400 metres downstream of the first logboat I saw and reported on Monday last.

I went to the banks of the river Boyne at 10am this morning (Sunday 2nd May) with the express purpose of carrying out an aerial survey of the river between the Bridge of Peace and the location of the second logboat I had imaged earlier in the week - which is about half a kilometre west or upstream of the Bridge of Peace.

During the course of carrying out a vertical photography reconaissance mission, I spotted what appeared to be two lengthy, straight timbers in the Boyne about 270m upstream of the Bridge of Peace.

These were abeam the remnants of a tree lodged in the southern bank of the river. The wooden object close to the tree appears to be just a lengthy piece of timber. However, the object near the northern shore (circled in red in the image above) certainly looks like a logboat.

It is similar in appearance to the first logboat I documented last Monday, but appears to be quite a lot longer than it, perhaps twice as long.

I flew the drone at a lower altitude to get a closer look (image above) and could see that this wooden object appears to have raised sides (like gunwales) similar to the first dugout boat.

It is difficult based on preliminary assessments to provide a length for this object, but I would say it is perhaps somewhere in the region of 15ft (c. 4.5m) in length.

There has been quite a lot of publicity around these drone "discoveries", but the National Monuments Service has since said that it is aware of "a few" logboats in the Boyne at Drogheda, and that the first boat documented here on Mythical Ireland last Tuesday had in fact been reported to them in 2020. 

I took the opportunity this morning, under blue skies, to revisit the site of the second dugout boat, and was able to capture a nice clear image of it. See below.

I'm assuming this is one of these "few" logboats which NMS says it is aware of in the river Boyne at Drogheda. However, the drone photography of same brings a new perspective on these ancient artifacts. Dugout boats were in use for an immensely long period of history, from the Stone Age up to medieval times.

Video footage

Here is some video footage of the third logboat, captured this morning:

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