2010-05-05 - Edinburgh (UK/Scotland) - Rectangle

Rectangular black object floating out at sea.

I was walking home on 5th May 2010 with my 18 year old daughter. We live by the beach in Portobello Edinburgh. The sea is visible at the foot of our street and we could both see a large black featureless rectangle about three quarters of a mile out to sea. The weather was clear, calm and visibility was perfect.

I’m always observing ships and am reasonably familiar with most the ships that frequent the Forth.

I couldn’t make out any superstructure. No masts, funnels, sails..anything. No markings. I don’t have the best eyesight so I asked my daughter if she could make out any details. She could not.

I went upstairs to get my binoculars and to check out www.marine-traffic.com and to see if I could still see the object from my sitting room window. I couldn’t.

I checked Marine Traffic and there was one ship displayed which was a great deal further out and it looked nothing like what we had seen.

I took the binoculars down stairs and went to the beach. The object had gone. The ship recorded on Marine Traffic was half as far away again as the object, but was easily distinguished as it was red and we could make out superstructures even from that distance, even without binoculars.

I would estimate I was no more than 10 minutes maximum upstairs. Such is the range of view from the beach, a motorboat would have had difficulty in disappearing out of sight in that length of time.

I asked some people on the beach if they had noticed anything; they had not.

I’m reporting this simply because it was, by definition ‘unidentified’ and it may help should someone else report the event.


((NUFORC Note: We have requested clarification from the witness as to the time of the sighting, which was not indicated in the original report. We have assigned an arbitrary time, to reflect a daytime sighting. PD))