The most obvious example is that the Suffolk excavators found and researched the iron ship-rivets from Mound 2 in 1938 and were therefore ready to recognise them as soon as they appeared in the following year. They had also realised that the objects being found were of early Anglo-Saxon date during 1938. In the novel the realisation that there is a ship in the ground comes as a complete surprise (pp. 65–68), and the credit for recognising the early Anglo-Saxon date of the find is given to the "professional" archaeologists who take over from them (pp. 141–143). Basil Brown had recognised this in 1938. "I can now return to my original theory of last year" he wrote on Tuesday 18 July 1939.