Revell Viking Ship WIP- FINISHED!!

Got it, Dr. T. They did just look odd, only straight line on the ship. Fixed, and thanks for the photo. I made them a little smaller too, using your reference.

Jester, I do think those frames were to hold the thirty two oars when the ship was under sail, which was probably most of the time, or anchored. There were also a couple of long leech poles, called beitasses that stepped into some chocks you can see on either side, at the base of the bulwarks of the ship, forward of the mast. Those angled across the deck in front of the mast and were attached to the side (leech) of the square sail somewhere between the bottom (clew) and the middle of the leech. That kept the sail full and not collapsed against the mast when the ship was beating upwind. These ships could sail upwind, something hard to do without fore-aft sails. They'd be stored there.

Landstrom also notes that both could be set, crosswise to each other when running downwind. It puzzles me how a ship without much of a keel and a relatively flat bottom sails upwind, but they obviously knew how to make that work.

i'm looking forward to a book I ordered to get rigging details. For instance, what the parrel if any, looked like. Did they lower the yard, or furl the sail aloft?

That book isn't going to help much with the rigging - largely because nobody knows much about the subject.

I figured the principal lines would be these:

A stay, leading forward from the masthead to the bow. It had to be adjustable, so it could be slacked way off when the mast was lowered.

A backstay leading aft from the masthead. (It wouldn't necessarily have to be adjustable.)

Two or three shrouds on each side.

A halyard to hold the yard aloft. (Yes, the Vikings lowered the yard to furl the sail.)

A pair of braces from the ends of the yard running aft.

A pair of bowlines running forward from the leeches of the sail.

Several old sources also show an odd line that has no modern equivalent: a simple arrangement of blocks and line running down from the foot of the sail to the deck. Its function, presumably, was to assist in controling the sail when the ship was working to windward. (A sail made of wool would be really clumsy.)

Like I said in my "Gokstad Ship" thread, nobody knows where all those lines were belayed. I described my solution in that thread - but I can't claim to be certain about it.

I don't think much beyond that is known about Viking rigging.

Sure, you bet.

Things I learned today: In The Saga of Eric the Red reference is made to sealing (pun intended) ship bottoms with seal oil. The Viking Ship museum in Roskilde Denmark ran a series of experiments and got good results using porpoise oil.

Judging from the literature and numerous archaeological finds, ropes in the Viking period and the Middle Ages, and also up to recent times, were made of lime bast, flax, hemp, heather, pine, hide and hair etc. Walrus hide was used for the halyard, shroud and stay (rosmalreip, svarðreip). Use was also made of hide rope of seal, deer, elk or ox. Horsehair (simereip) was used for the sail’s bolt rope (liksima), or for sheets, bowline, braces etc. Rope made of cow tail hair, the coarse hair from sheep fleece or pig hair (bustreip) has also been used.

-Viking Ship Museum website

I have heard that in the middle ages, before widespread use of paint, fish oil was the common preservative for the exterior of ships, above waterline, in areas not painted.

Beautiful work Bill! I was planning on building in tandem another of the Revell Gokstad ships with the Heller Oseberg ship. I know the Heller kit only vaguely represents the real Oseberg ship, but I really love the carved work the Heller crew did on the model. After seeng all the awesome work you are doing I might have to do these before the Cutty Sark.

I will definitely use your's and John's threads as inspiration and borrowing of techniques.

Thanks for posting all these great pictures and explanations.

Steve

jtilley

- thereby originating the term "steerboard side," later corrupted to "starboard." I learned that in high school. Sheesh.

Well, the French co-opted aircraft.

"Excuse me Marcel, could you please serve me some nacelle on this piece of fuselage?"

Here's a rum thing. Clipped off all the oars to get them painted and was confounded a little.

Good on Revell to do that. I really wanted to cut off those hand grabs on the end as I strongly suspect they were not on the actual thing, but they'd then be too short to fit on the oar racks.

Progress so far:

I rarely say things like this, but have faith in Revell. Those oars, like just about everything else in the box, are quite accurate. The oar blades have a pretty subtle shape, and Revell got just right.

I have got to admit that I have rarely followed a thread with so much interest as I am following this.  Great work!

Bill Morrison

jtilley

I rarely say things like this, but have faith in Revell. Those oars, like just about everything else in the box, are quite accurate. The oar blades have a pretty subtle shape, and Revell got just right.

There were 36 total on the sprues, in groups of 6, which obviously enabled them to be various lengths.

They'd also be two handed. Did the left handed guys sit on the starboard side and the right handed guys sit on the port?

Like baseball, the lefties would be in high demand...

I've only used about 12, and don't really want to stack the rest on the deck. I may work a little on the so-far unused oars and replace the ones on the rack.

Funny thing, I've run out of parts. If it would stop raining I'd get some paint on her. Also going over to Michaels to get a plaque base and some square link chain.

I think that it is a bit ironic to say " . . . have faith in Revell."  Aren't they the company that brought us HMS Beagle, USS United States, Thermopylae, and CSS Alabama, et. al.?    But, they seem to have done well with this kit!

Bill

Ironic indeed! This kit is on a completely different level than any other Revell sailing ship. It reminds me in many ways of an Imai kit.

GM - what are you going to do with square-link chain? It's been a long time since I did mine, but I don't recall that any chain was found on the Gokstad site.

At Gokstad the anchor hook apparently disintegrated when excavated, leaving just the stock.

At Oseberg, an anchor without a stock, and two other stocks, were found.

At Ladby (pronounced Lad-boo) in Denmark a very nice anchor without stock, and 10 M chain were found.

Landstrom on page 63 reconstructs an anchor and chain from all of the above.

Verrry interesting. There's certainly justification there for an anchor chain.

The other questions then are, what was the chain attached to? The Ladby ship had the remains of a hawser, Gokstad doesn't even seem to have bitts.

The drawing in Landstrom, behind the anchor is of a knorr, and it clearly shows how the leech pole was set up.

Dr. Tilley, a question.

As you've got more research materials than I, and much more knowledge, would it seem likely to you that the oars were stored in the T shaped racks? They scale about 2500 mm above the deck, which is reachable but high. They'd need two tall guys, and it would get difficult after the first layer. Now, difficult for a Viking is a different thing than difficult for me. Certainly it's really annoying to climb over gear on the deck of a sailboat, they must have been stored somewhere. And the distance between the admidships frame and the rear one is a lot longer than the oars, but right for the leech poles as I see you stored in your model. So getting all or most of the 32 oars on the forward set is a task, as I've found out. The Oseberg ship had a pair of forked racks above the bulwarks on either side of the ship, as you know. Seems a more sensible set up.

Further to the admiration for Revell- the anchor scales exactly to the dimensions of the nice drawing above, if a little thick.

GM,

First, you're doing some great work on the Revell "Viking Ship".  It makes me want to add one to the stash! 

But second, and this is the part that will probably get me laughed at, is the stowing of the oars.  I've looked at the T-racks in the pictures of the Oseberg ship and they don't really look like they were designed to store things on.  They really have a curve up in the middle and not downwards like you would see if you wanted something to stay inside.  It looks very insecure and I would be afraid of these oars crashing down on my head when the sea got rough.  Securing them firmly would be a task, and getting them down would be quite a task.  I think this would be closer to what I think stanchions for oar storage should look like:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3540/3815187387_633a627e43_z.jpg?zz=1

I see the oars secured horizontally, but sliding out aft or forward?  Seems like it would take too many ropes.  This worries me.

On the other hand, I've always thought these had another purpose, if not for oar storage.

A good upright for shelter would be welcome, though it might get in the way of working the sail, as shown in this rather fanciful image.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fq5GCMT0Bl0/UPBA-tPAUDI/AAAAAAAAOe4/fn-gvS9Yrn4/s1600/Vikings_arriving_in_Pegwell_Bay.JPG

Anyway, those are my thoughts (silly as they may be).

Gary

GAF thanks for looking in.

Your first photo is indeed the Oseberg ship.  I'd consider adding them, but they were from a ship 100 years older, there's no evidence the Gokstad ship had them AFAIK, and, umm, I just don't much care for them. Their absense I guess is more defensible than their inclusion. Thank you though.

That second image is pretty cool. In a way there's much about it that's right. Certain details of the rig such as the block and tackle attached to the foot of the sail in the middle indicate the painter knew something about their subject. You can see in the painting that the tent is held up by scissored gable boards, which were connected by a ridge pole. I'm in doubt of the size and complexity of that tent, in particular the inclusion of a mast hole, but it's in many ways right. Rather imagine a tent aft of the mast, enough for everyone to crowd under, or not depending on the temper of the captain. (that last is my imagination).

GAF

But second, and this is the part that will probably get me laughed at, is the stowing of the oars.  I've looked at the T-racks in the pictures of the Oseberg ship and they don't really look like they were designed to store things on. 

Thanks for not laughing (at least out loud).     I did type Oseberg when I should have typed Gokstad.  I can only claim old age and clogged arteries to my brain.

These are what I meant, of course.

Gary

PS>  After looking at these again, perhaps the oars were not placed on top at all.  Perhaps there were loops of rope suspended from the arms into which the oars were slid / placed.  Then the oars could be cinched together and the bundles secured with ties (to keep them from swinging) to the uprights.  Then, when needed, all you had to do was unfasten the ties and lower the bundles to the deck and every man grab an oar.  Could those arms have supported such a weight?

Well, GAF may be right.

One thing that makes the study of these ships so interesting is that, despite the amount of research that's been done on them, some big questions have never been answered. Just what are those T-shaped things for? Why are there three of them - including one almost bumping against the mast? There's plenty of evidence that the Norse set up tents on board their ships - but just how did those tents work? Is that deteriorated mass of wool cloth in the Gokstad burial site a sail, or a tent?

Just how did the bietass work? It's widely assumed that their feet sat in those two blocks with round, shallow depressions in them. If so, how come their are two depressions in each block? I remember reading, quite a long time ago, an article whose author suggested that those blocks were in fact sockets for an a-frame mechanism that was used for raising and lowering the mast.

One possibility: the three T-shaped posts were intended primarily as supports for the yard when it was lowered. Maybe the yard served as a ridge pole for the tent.

And where on earth were the oars stowed? I haven't checked out the geometry, but I wonder if it would be physically possible to slide them under the deck boards? (Those boards are easily removed; they sit loosely in rabbets formed in the deck beams.) I don't see how all of them could have been piled up on the T-shaped thingies.

The answer to all these questions is the same: we just don't know.

The photos on my thread show my way around the problem: I glued the oars in the oar ports. (That wasn't easy - and no, I wasn't able to get them all lined up absolutely symetrically.) The configuration of my model obviously isn't realistic. (Impaled on a pair of brass posts, oars out, sail up, no chests for the oarsmen to sit on - and no people.) But viewers don't seem to be bothered by that. (After all, the great British Navy Board models aren't realistic either: they don't have planking on their bottoms.)

Building a model of a Viking ship automatically forces the builder to make some pretty big choices. Who's to say whether one approach is better than another? This is a subject that, no matter how much you read up on it, inevitably leaves lots of room for personal judgment and taste.

Well put. And imaginitive, and fun. It's always nice to be innoculated from rivet counting.

Next puzzlement for me. What to attach the fore stay, and the rear one for that matter, to. I don't think the cross beams are up to the job. They aren't particularly robust. The stem and stern pieces aren't really exposed inside the hull, because the strakes were inset into them and pretty much touched each other side to side.

For the side stays/ shrouds I found a detail on a rconstruction that made sense to me and followed some drawings of other ships. Each shroud has a block attached to it's end, several feet above the deck. Theres a pretty good sized hole bored sideways through the knee where the cross beams meet the hull ribs. The lanyard does a double turn through the block and the hole and is double hitched to itself top and bottom.

Some great reading and speculation. This thread gets more interesting with every post.

Here's typical detail of a "Rakki" or parrel. This one on a reconstruction of a slightly smaller 11C ship in Roskilde.

For our purposes, more U shaped, with two downhauls.

I'm making the blocks. Basically there are singles and doubles. maybe. None of the above have sheaves, axles etc.

Six double blocks, one each,  for the side stay/ shrouds. I'm saying six total singles for the mid leech left, left clew, bottom mid foot ( a pair) right clew and mid leech right for sail handling.

A pair of the big "virgin" rigging cramps/ flying cleats whatever for the forestay, that came with the kit.

I read through a series of sailing articles about the upwind capabilities of these ships. more about that later, in more detail.

Teaser: when you back a square sail all the way around to be behind the mast, putting slack on that fore stay virgin system to allow the sail to go around past the midline, and dip the fore end to the deck, what do you get?

Somewhere (I don't remember where) I found a drawing that showed a Norse method for securing shrouds in such a way that they can be cast off in a hurry. A loop of rope, maybe two or three feet long, is secured to the gunwale. The shroud terminates in a simple piece of wood shaped like a toggle, which is hooked through the loop and secured with a temporary seizing. Flip the toggle and the shroud comes loose. Sort of like a modern "come-along."

The big challenge in rigging that Revell kit is to do it without adding anything that isn't on the real ship (with the exception of stuff that could conceivably have rotted away in the higher, more acidic layer of dirt). There are no obvious belaying points other than those four cleats near the stern (which Revell reproduced very nicely). Adding cleats, eyebolts, etc. to the deck or hull is a no-no.

I figured the foremost deck beam would be strong enough to take the pull of the forestay. The stay doesn't actually have much stress on it - except when it's being heaved on to raise the mast. And that beam is quite short and sturdy.

For the rest of the belaying points, as I mentioned in that other thread, I decided to use the "shield rail" inside the gunwale. Scholars think its primary purpose was to provide a means of securing the sailors' shields, but it looks like a pretty good place to belay lines as well. It has the advantage of being adaptable; you can secure a line to it anywhere along its length. The problem is that Revell - just about unavoidably - molded it integrally with the hull halves. My solution was to drill holes through the cutouts in the shield rail all the way through the gunwale - two for each line - and pass the rigging lines out through one hole and in through the other. The little piece of thread on the exterior is hidden by the shields.

I don't know whether that scheme is right or not - but it seems to work.

Fascinating stuff. One thing we can be sure of: when it came to sailing, those old boys knew exactly what they were doing.

I added a couple-three cleats to the mast. I also agree about the fore stay. Except as I noted before, the boat could sail with the wind over the bow, and that would put stress on the fore stay, but not much as she would be tacking at a pretty considerable angle to upwind.

Here's where I got during a break in the rain this morning. I personally like to prime way off of the finish colors, as it helps me later gauge coverage of the finish paint.

Some nasty sink marks on the hull, but there's no way to fix them. I hope the dark wood color minimizes them.

Dr. Tilley said:

"Somewhere (I don't remember where) I found a drawing that showed a Norse method for securing shrouds in such a way that they can be cast off in a hurry. A loop of rope, maybe two or three feet long, is secured to the gunwale. The shroud terminates in a simple piece of wood shaped like a toggle, which is hooked through the loop and secured with a temporary seizing. Flip the toggle and the shroud comes loose. Sort of like a modern "come-along."

Yes! I now know what you mean, good description. Like this:

That's the gadget, all right. Simple but ingenious - like everything else in that ship.