Having recently started work on the Academy (ex-Imai) "Roman Warship", I'm afraid I'll have to add my name to the long list of modellers with questions about building and painting this kit. Sorry for creating another "ancient warships" thread, BTW; I was originally going to post in one of the existing threads (
here's the most recent, with Millard's impressive build of the Academy kit) but my post ended up so long that I thought it would be better to post in a new thread.
Until recently I didn't really have much enthusiasm for building a model of an ancient ship, as I had the impression that all the plastic kits out there (notably the ex-Imai Academy one, the most readily available and inexpensive) were of very limited historical accuracy and owed more to Hollywood than reality. However, acquiring an old Imai catalogue and scanning in the pages to post online got me to looking up more information on some of these kits, including their 2 ancient galleys. I was surprised to read on this forum that the "Roman Warship" kit is actually a reasonably accurate and nicely detailed representation of a small Roman galley warship. Shortly afterwards I picked up a part-built Academy kit "for a song" on eBay!
(To clarify things: The Academy "Roman Warship" kit (a reissue or exact copy of the old Imai one) is roughly 1/72 scale (not 1/250 as stated on the box!) and represents (according to what I have read) a small, single-banked, Roman warship of a type known as a
liburna, intended for patrol and scouting duties, roughly the equivalent of a frigate in the "Age of Sail")
I've made fairly good progress with assembling and painting the hull and decks of my model (I'll post some photos if anyone is interested) but am getting to the stage where I need to start work on the deck fittings, oars, masts + rigging, and I have quite a few questions about these. I'm certainly not aiming for exact accuracy with my model (difficult at the best of times, but basically impossible with a model of an ancient ship) but I would like my model (if possible) to resemble a reasonably convincing model of an ancient Roman warship rather than a "Hollywood prop"!
Other than Bjorn Landstrom's "Sailing Ships" (a smaller, cut-down version of "The Ship") I don't have any reference books which cover ancient ships in any detail. However, luckly, a local museum where I work as a volunteer has a number of books on ancient and later rowed warships (they have a display related to the "Olympias" trireme reconstruction, including a 1/40 wood model) and earlier today I had a good look through them for more information. However, I still have several questions (a lot of questions, actually; sorry for the LONG post!) relating to various aspects of the ship:
- The tower/turret structure on the deck. This is represented as a stone "castle" structure which initially appears completely wrong (a solid stone structure on the deck of a shallow-draught galley would be seriously top-heavy) but several posters (in this thread) have mentioned that these structures on Roman ships, though made of wood, actually were constructed and painted to look like stone blocks, to intimidate the enemy. Is this true? Some contemporary images (carvings etc.) of Roman ships show towers very similar in style to that on Imai's kit, but was this accurate or simply an artistic representation, much like the heraldic representation of elephant howdahs as "castles"? The books I have read are frustratingly vague on the details of the construction and appearance of towers (maybe because not much is actually known about them?) but several mention that the towers were generally designed to be easily dismantled and removed when necessary, which suggests a fairly light and simple construction.
I'm definitely thinking of replacing the kit tower with a simpler "wood" structure (of approximately the same height + width) scratchbuilt from styrene. But I'd be interested to hear any thoughts as to whether this would be more plausible/convincing than the "stone-effect" tower supplied in the kit!
- The oar layout: the kit "out of the box" represents a single-banked galley or monoreme, but I have heard (I think Jorit Wintjes posted this) that this is actually an error in the kit as the "outriggers" are designed for two banks of oars (the holes in the sides are for the missing top bank). I don't really want to scratchbuild 26 more oars (or rebuild the rowing benches - though they aren't really very visible once the upper deck is on), so would it be reasonable to leave the oar arrangement unchanged? The holes in the outrigger sides look reasonably convincing as lighting/ventilation ports. (One other question: what are the Latin and/or Greek terms for the outrigger structure? I read it recently, but have forgotten)
- The figurehead (wolf?). At first I thought this seemed a bit out of place - it gives the impression of being added as an afterthought - and was going to remove it, but from the books I read today it appears that many (though by no means all) ancient galleys did have some sort of projection at this point. On many ships, especially earlier Greek ones, it is a simple "spike" but some ships have a decorative carving, including animal figureheads - there is a Roman coin from about 50 BC (the same date as Imai's Roman Warship is supposed to be) showing the prow of a galley extremely similar to that of the Imai kit, including the wolf figurehead. However, this projection (whether a spike or figurehead) appears to have been located a bit higher up, and in line with the deck, rather than angled upwards from the prow as it is on the kit. Moving it would be difficult due to the way it's moulded onto the hull. I'm inclined to just leave it in place, but again I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on this.
- The shields on the deck rails. These seem quite plausible, as shields can be found on Northern European ships from the Viking era all the way up to the 16th century (though by then they were more ceremonial than functional). But no contemporary images of Roman galleys appear to show any shields. Granted, these representations are stylised and not proportionally accurate, and may have been made by someone with little actual knowledge of ships, but they generally show all the most prominent + important features of the vessel, and brightly-painted shields on the upper works would surely be among these. On the other hand, the soldiers carried on deck would have to stow their shields somewhere, and the rails are an obvious place! (Another thought: Are the shields on the Imai kit more or less accurate for those which would be used by Roman marines/shipboard troops of this date?)
- The painting of the sails (and the small canopy on deck): Are the red + white stripes suggested by Academy (and Imai) plausible, or would unpainted canvas have been more likely for a relatively small and functional warship of the type represented by the kit?
- Along the same lines - would gilding on the decorative hull carvings (as suggested in the kit instructions) be plausible for a small ship like this?
And one final question: what would be good source of suitable figures to crew the finished model with? There are plenty of 1/72 Romans available from wargaming figure manufacturers such as HAT. However, presumably these vary a lot in moulding quality and historical accuracy, and I'd suspect that some are also produced in the soft vinyl-type plastic which is rather hard to paint and glue. Any recommendations?