Germanic Pirates and the Saxon Shore

[Longovicium]

For those who see this as a sign of heavy Saxon sea-borne raiding I would like to add that modern English has a lot of Dutch shipping terms - I hope that's not seen as proof for heavy Dutch raiding of the English coasts either.

Agreed - it does seem to point to the impact of Germanic seafaring in that the word in its native form was co-opted into Latin rather than being translated into a native Latin one. The question is what form that impact had: I doubt it was a large trading presence which led to the Germanic/English ship word becoming adopted but rather its war presence in the British and Gallic waters.

However, as Gildas is the first to use it, I agree it is no more than a tentative clue to the earlier presence of Saxon and Frankish seafarers. It may be anachronistic to project Gildas' use of the word back into the 3rd and 4th Century!