The colonisation of South-Eastern Britain was but the first chapter in this long history of predatory excursions on the part of the Low German peoples.
The piratical ships of the early English were row-boats of very simple construction.

We actually possess one undoubted specimen at the present day, whose very date is fixed for us by the circumstances of its discovery.

It was dug up, some years since, from a peat-bog in Sleswick, the old England of our forefathers, along with iron arms and implements, and in association with Roman coins ranging in date from A.D.67 to A.D.
217.

It may therefore be pretty confidently assigned to the first half of the third century.

In this interesting relic, then, we have one of the identical boats in which the descents upon the British coast were first made.