Roman Warship

Will do Rod.  I have really been modeling, just not as much as I like.  Between the boys and writing, I do not have a great amount of time to build.  If I get a half hour a week, I feel lucky.

I am still trying to think up a way to remove the bloody rear hatch on the Nina without pulling the deck out.  It may come to that in the long run but I am not quite ready to do that.  Which is a long winded way of saying the Nina is on hold as well as the Pinta.  The Santa Maria was pulled apart a couple of weeks ago so that I can renovate it.  I let my youngest "build it" but he lost interest after glueing the hull and decks on and as far as he's concerned, he's done, perfectus!

Hope you are doing well and please post your Chebec here if the feeling hits you, it is a thing of beauty that you need to share it here.  We need more sailing ships here, Rob has been pulling the load with his beautiful Cutty Sark builds without much help from us.

Semper Fidelis

Steve

Ha!  It's true...I've been sitting back, watching Rob's CS build for weeks...now that he's done, I find myself looking for more fun builds to follow!  Good times!

I bought the Imai "Roman Warship" kit a few years back in its new Academy box.  In many ways it's an excellent kit.  I love the planking detail and, especially, the ingenious slide-molded deadeyes.  I wish they were available separately, by the dozen or hundred.  And dig those wonderful "gold"-plated mounting pedestals!  And Mr. Millard did a superb job on his.

I have to say, though, that I have two reservations about the kit.  For one thing, the scale on the box, 1/250, is utterly absurd.  I don't know whether the original Imai version had that scale on it, or whether Academy added it, but the kit is on a much larger scale than that.

My other, more serious reservation has to do with the oars.  The hull is that of a bireme.  There are supposed to be two rows of oars on each side - one row sticking out below the "outrigger boxes" (as supplied in the kit), and the other row (not in the kit) sticking through the holes in the edges of those boxes.  Without that upper row of oars, the outriggers have no purpose.

I don't know why Imai made this mistake.  I do remember that Imai offered two ancient galley kits - a Greek one and a Roman one - that used many of the same parts.  (I don't recall whether the hulls were identical - but I think they may have been.)  The "Greek" kit, as I remember, had the oars sticking out through the outrigger boxes, and the "Roman" version (the one offered now by Academy) has the oars sticking out underneath.

I can suggest three fixes.  One - make the additional oars from scratch.  (Let's not get into the question of how Academy would feel about making cast resin copies of the ones in the kit.)  Two - buy two kits.  (The oars in the lower row presumably would have to be shortened.)  Three - just put all the oars that come with the kit on one side of the model, and display it on a narrow shelf with the other side facing the wall.  (Or maybe the oarsmen on the other side have been ordered to ship oars, perhaps to avoid another ship.) 

The goof regarding the oars is a real shame.  To my eye, at least, this is the best of the several ancient galley kits on the market - far better than the Heller alternatives.  The Imai line of sailing ships was, in my humble opinion, the best series of plastic sailing ships we've yet seen.  I think these two galleys may have been among the company's first efforts.

Ambitious modelers interested in ancient galleys might be interested in the wood kits made by the Czech firm Dusek.  I hadn't heard of this company until quite recently, and I've never seen any of its kits "in the flesh," but on the basis of the photos the Greek bireme and trireme look pretty good.  Here's a link:  http://www.dusekshipkits.com/kits.html .

Finally - for the benefit of "Ben Hur" fans who haven't already heard this:

"Battle...speed!"  Thump.......thump.......thump.......thump....

"Attack...speed!"  Thump.....thump.....thump.....thump....

"Ramming...speed!"  Thump...thump...thump...thump...

"Waterskiing...speed!"  Tumpathumpathumpathumpathumpa....

As I suspected, no surprises but this model falls straight from the pages of Landstrom, in this case 44-45. Many of the ancient kits out there do.

One major difference is the deadeyes; L's are rectangles, but everything else is a direct lift down to the wolf on the beak.

He spends some time discussing the castle, including the theory that in one bas relief that's a good depiction of a trireme the thing may in fact be a tower on a farther shore beyond. But other drawings show such a thing on board, although more in the form we'd expect from that civilization that were gifted military architects.

As the Romans were good at this stuff to understate the case, and as everything they ever created was copied for centuries, and not knowing of any later examples of floating masonry with the possible exception of those concrete ships from the early 20 th and the try works on board the barks that my Nantucket forebears sailed on and mutinied from, I am going with painted wood ala theatrical excess.

A marvelous feature on a wonderfully built model.

Part two of a very lazy afternoon.

Tilley's one sided display idea is a good one. For some reason every ship I build ends up with a good side and a bad side, and they all get displayed on shelves broadside as well. I've even cheated on the rat line issue that way. Under the assumption that someday when I "have nothing else to do" I'll flip the thing around and go to work on the other side.

I could also see lessening the difficulty of making more oars by shipping the lower ones against their bulwarks with only the blades evident under the side extensions.

Of course having the oars extended without slaves holding on to the ends is a little unusual.

If memory serves me still, the Aurora Viking ship had rowers.

But that idea has practical limitations.

Here are the two models with the replacement shields and figures that are in 1/72 scale.  As you can see the hulls are different especially in the bow and a bit in the stern.  In regards to the other pieces, the mast and ladders are the same as well as the steering oars and deadeyes.  The shields are much too thick and clunky for me, hence the replacement shields.

Orion Figures packages a set of Roman Sailors which includes 26 rowers, and a drummer laying down the groovy beats that Prof Tilley has provided.  There are also sailors that are in in various poses, "marines" with something that I believe represents a flame thrower a la Greek Fire.

Since there are currently 26 oars in both the Roman and Greek versions, I would venture that the set was set up for the Roman or Greek Warship. If I could figure out how to make more oars, say with resin, I would buy more figures.  I have not done a price comparison on making resin oars vs. buying two more ship kits to create a bireme along with two more figure packages to populate them.

Steve

Can anyone tell me if FSM published an article on a Roman Warship?  

Paul Baum

Missouri