A ship’s figure head found during dredging operations in the River Scheldt in Belgium in 1934. The British Musuem has carbon dated the wood, which is oak, to 400-615 AD (although it could be as early as 250 AD). The location and age are right for this to come from one of the ‘barbarian’ ships that started raiding the coast of Roman Britain from the 3rd century onwards.
A Roman aristocrat called Sidonius wrote about Saxon pirates terrorizing the Atlantic coast of what is now France. The Saxon is “the most ferocious of all folk. He comes on you without warning; when you expect his attack, he makes away. Resistance only moves him to contempt; a rash opponent is soon down”.
Sidionius was writing in the 470s, so its possible some of these Saxons had come from England in their “small curved pirate ships”. The British Museum figure head is 149 cm (59 inches or 4’10”) long and you can still see the tenon projecting from the base and perforated to take a fastening peg. So perhaps the Saxon ships that Sidonius describes were fitted with heads with the same gaping beak-like jaws and prominent teeth as this one ?
