Dark Ages ship construction

A belated mention of an article in British Archaeology on the half-scale reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo sailing ship:

It was a very windy day, with great black clouds and blinding hail: a real storm. In July 2004 Sæ Wylfing, our half-scale replica of the famous buried Anglo-Saxon ship, was in Suffolk for the 20th anniversary of the Sutton Hoo Society. We had to sail her with 'two reefs in', a reduced sail area for the rough conditions. Dinghies capsized all around us, but our ship was quite untroubled.

Who invented the myth that the Anglo-Saxons could not sail and that the great Sutton Hoo ship (c 600 AD) was a mere rowing galley? To the eyes of a sailor, that beautifully preserved hull shape was essentially for sailing, and the three frames close together in the stern were to provide the necessary strength for a sailing rudder. For us it was not a question of 'Did she sail?' but 'How well did she sail?' The oarsmen fore and aft of the middle of the ship would provide power when the wind dropped or came ahead, the conditions under which sailing barges would anchor and wait.

Two factors seemed to worry the myth makers. They thought that the hull was not strong enough to take the sailing forces and that, without a deep keel, such as the Vikings developed some 200 years later, ships could only sail with a following wind. The depth of the Sutton Hoo keel is unknown, despite attempts to find it during the post-war re-excavation. A shallow keel, however, just deep enough to give protection to the planking when aground, has a distinct advantage in our east coast waters with their rapidly changing sands and gravels, allowing her crew to beach the ship rather than having to shelter in a river mouth.

I'd love to see a full-scale replica, but the half-scale ship seems interesting enough!