1934 February, G. W. Tripp, “How Nature Harasses the Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 79:
When George Stephenson built the Liverpool & Manchester Railway he encountered the same difficulty at Chat Moss and solved the problem by constructing a kind of raft made of brushwood that more or less floated on the surface of the bog. On this he placed as much firm soil as his raft could carry, when the operation was repeated, the first raft being thereby sunk with its load of solid earth, which was not displaced.
2016 February 2, Kate Winsletet al., Jimmy Kimmel Live!:
Even though in a way you let him freeze to death in the water, because the way I see it... I agree. Y'know, I think he actually could have fitted on that bit of door. There was plenty of room on the raft. I know. I know, I know.
For timber I imported pine logs from Manchuria, rafted them two hundred miles down the Yalu River, three hundred miles over the Yellow Sea, and twenty miles up the Tatung River, where a thirty-five-foot tide lifted the consignment to Pyongyang.
1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure
Pomeroy asked me a raft of factual-type questions (how old were you when you began menstruating? did you ever see your parents having intercourse? did you have many friends in high school? how was your relationship with your father?). It seemed he had a written questionnaire & checked off answers as I have them.
2007, Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon, Blue Bridge, published 2008, page 31:
Among those arrested was the grand master himself, Jacques de Molay, who found himself facing a raft of charges based on the specious evidence of former knights [...].
2023 October 11, Dafydd Pritchard, “Wales 4-0 Gibraltar”, in BBC Sport:
The goals and entertainment dried up after the break as Wales made a raft of substitutions but, with more meaningful challenges to come, a capacity crowd at the Stok Racecourse appreciated the bigger picture with Croatia on the horizon.
Bufli, G., Rocchi, L. (2021) “raft”, in A historical-etymological dictionary of Turkisms in Albanian (1555–1954), Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, page 387