I don't know much about ancient galleys. I do, however, have a good friend, my colleague Tony Papalas, who's an ancient historian by profession and has published several articles about Greek triremes. He's told me some interesting - and eye-opening - things about the subject.
Here's what I do know. The Landstrom book is a classic, and anything in it deserves to be taken seriously - with the proviso that Landstrom was working in the late fifties or early sixties. (My father, bless his heart, gave me a copy of that book for Christmas when I was in the seventh grade. I still have that copy, though it's practically falling apart. I sure wish some publisher would reprint it - along with Landstrom's book on Egyptian ships, which grad students seek like some precious metal.)
According to Tony, much of what used to be taken for granted about Greek and Roman galleys has been proven to be sadly mistaken. He talks with amusement, for instance, about the "replica" that was built for the making of the original, silent movie version of Ben-Hur, back in the twenties. The movie company hired a professional historian who was recognized as the world's greatest authority on ancient warships as a consultant, and spent a great deal of money building an "authentic" galley. The only problem with it was that, though the oarsmen hauled on those oars till they were practically having heart attacks, they couldn't get the thing to move. In the distant shots there's a heavy rope leading from the bow below the waterline to a tugboat that's just out of the picture.
Most of us, I'm sure, have pleasant memories of the "galley sequence" in the 1950s Ben-Hur:
"Battle...speed!" Thump..........thump..........thump..........thump..........
"Attack...speed!" Thump........thump........thump........thump........
"Ramming...speed!" Thump...thump...thump...thump...
"Waterskiing...speed!" Thumpathumpathumpathumpathumpa...
In that movie, I believe, all the "galleys" either were models or were sitting still in a "lake" on the back lot of the Italian studio where the film was made.
In recent years the study of ancient warships has become, as they say, "a whole new ballgame" due to the construction in the Mediterranean of a full-size replica of a Greek trireme. That project took several years of extremely high-powered research. It's generally regarded as a benchmark of how replicas of historical artifacts can be used to enhance our understanding of history.
One of the many revelations has been that the image of the emaciated, starving galley slave hauling away at his oar deep in the smelly bowels of the ship is a myth. In the first place, as the volunteer oarsmen of the replica found out in a hurry, to swing one of those oars for more than a few minutes at a stretch requires a genuine athlete in excellent physical condition. The guys who took the replica through its experimental paces spent months in training in gyms on land. In the second place, the oarsmen have to be seated in a well-ventilated space, virtually surrounded by open air. If they aren't, the perspiration on the surface of their bodies can't evaporate and they pass out within a few minutes.
Ancient historians and literary experts apparently didn't care much for the movie Troy. Not having studied the Illiad or the Odyssey seriously since grade school, I rather liked it - and though the ships in the wide shots obviously were computer-generated, I liked the fact that the guys pulling the oars clearly were sailors, rather than zombie-like slaves, and were out in the fresh air.
That replica has caused lots of scholars to tear up their preconceptions about galleys and start over. A great deal remains to be learned about this type of warship. We know that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, several European countries did "sentence people to the galleys" as punishment for crimes. But such felons must have been kept in reasonable physical shape - and the ships probably didn't try to travel more than a few miles at a time under oars alone.
To my knowledge the best source of information on this whole topic is The Age of the Galley, in the "Conway's History of the Ship" series. It's one of the most interesting volumes in the series, in that almost everything in it is new information.
As to the various kits - I haven't built or looked closely at any of them. Right at this moment I'm hesitant to spend any time on a model of an ancient galley, for fear that my friend Tony will see it and pronounce that everything about it is WRONG.