SEARCH FINESCALE.COM

Enter keywords or a search phrase below:

recommendations for medieval ships

12964 views
39 replies
1 rating 2 rating 3 rating 4 rating 5 rating
  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Saturday, May 3, 2008 1:38 PM
 hstry wrote:

Thank you, John, 

Could either the Greek or Carthegenian galleys be used as a painting model if the ships were just lengthened on the canvas or are they just too far from truth at the very core to be used at all for painting a picture from?   Ditto with the Academy Roman warship.  Again, I'm not concerned so much that the model ships are perfectly accurate, only that they get me into the right ball park with the correct perspectives and that the painted image look close to accurate on the canvas.

Its easier to paint something that you have never seen before starting with a less than perfect model than to try paint all of the compound angles of the ships entirely from the imagination.   Can any of these ships be used just for a ballpark representation if lengthened them on the canvas or are they just too bad for any purpose?

I've have thought of the beginning of the Renaissance as the early 15th C, but most historians that I have read seem to go much later at 1500, I suspect because of the European discovery of the western hemisphere.   It is all academic to me and I'll let them fight it out.  I just want to paint the history as closely as time and available research allow, knowing that I am going to step on someone's toes.   As in most fields, historians cannot agree on much.   I've been down this road before and it helps to explain why very little history painting ever gets done. 

Thanks,

Richard

 

...Of course, neither the Greek, Carthaginian, NOR the Roman galleys can be considered medieval, but are classical warships, regardless of model...... Also, I agree, 'Renaissance' and 'Medieval' are very loosely defined, and occured in different places at different times......

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Saturday, May 3, 2008 1:36 PM

Well, so far as I know, not much.  I should in fairness emphasize that, though I think I can claim to be fairly well "up to speed" regarding the American wood ship kit industry, I make no effort whatever to keep up with the HECEPOB (Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank- On-Bulkhead) companies that make up the majority of the business.  As I've ranted more than once here in the Forum, their products (with some exceptions) don't deserve to be taken seriously as scale models.

I do know of a few wood Viking ship kits, but none that I've seen really impresses me.  It's hard to blame the manufacturers for that situation.  An accurate wood model of a Viking ship on anything but an enormous scale would be an extremely delicate, intricate thing.  Most of the planks on the Gokstad Ship, the largest surviving Viking vessel, are less than an inch thick; the ones below the turn of the bilge are secured to the frames with knotted tree roots.  And virtually all the structure of such a ship is visible.  To design an accurate wood Viking ship kit would be a huge challenge - and the kit itself would end up consisting of little more than a set of plans and a bundle of sticks.  Hardly the sort of thing that would sell to the people who normally buy HECEPOB kits.  I think I may have bumped into an ad for a couple of medieval ships from a German company, but my memory of that is extremely vague. 

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Saturday, May 3, 2008 1:34 PM
 Umi_Ryuzuki wrote:

 

What is available in wooden ship kits?

Smile [:)]

Well, you can go out to the backyard, pick up a few sticks, and with a piece of old leather, make yourself a scale model of a Coracle!

  • Member since
    January 2007
Posted by hstry on Saturday, May 3, 2008 1:33 PM

Thank you, John, 

Could either the Greek or Carthegenian galleys be used as a painting model if the ships were just lengthened on the canvas or are they just too far from truth at the very core to be used at all for painting a picture from?   Ditto with the Academy Roman warship.  Again, I'm not concerned so much that the model ships are perfectly accurate, only that they get me into the right ball park with the correct perspectives and that the painted image look close to accurate on the canvas.

Its easier to paint something that you have never seen before starting with a less than perfect model than to try paint all of the compound angles of the ships entirely from the imagination.   Can any of these ships be used just for a ballpark representation if I lengthened them on the canvas or are there just too many other major design problems?

I've have thought of the beginning of the Renaissance as the early 15th C, but most historians that I have read seem to go much later at 1500, I suspect because of the European discovery of the western hemisphere.   It is all academic to me and I'll let them fight it out.  I just want to paint the history as closely as time and available research allow, knowing that I am going to step on someone's toes.   As in most fields, historians cannot agree on much.   I've been down this road before and it helps to explain why very little history painting ever gets done. 

Thanks,

Richard

 

  • Member since
    April 2003
  • From: PDX, OR
Posted by Umi_Ryuzuki on Saturday, May 3, 2008 12:05 PM

 

What is available in wooden ship kits?

Smile [:)]

Nyow / =^o^= Other Models and Miniatures http://mysite.verizon.net/res1tf1s/
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Saturday, May 3, 2008 2:56 AM

Revell Europe and Pyro both made carrack kits once upon a time.  But they represented (not very well) fifteenth-century or later vessels - i.e., post-medieval ones.  (The "medieval" period is generally said to have ended with the beginning of the Renaissance, in the late fourteenth century.)

As for hstry's list of kits - I can offer the following personal observations, but please bear in mind that some of them are based on my extremely unreliable memory.  Also, several of the kits on the list are reboxings of other companies' kits; in some cases I'm guessing at which ones.  And let me emphasize again that these are personal opinions, with which anybody else is of course perfectly entitled to disagree.

Heller's "William the Conqueror Ship" is a modified reissue of the same company's alleged replica of the Oseberg Ship.  As the Oseberg Ship it's an awful, proportionally-distorted travesty; as a Norman ship it's a sorry joke.  Nobody knows with any certainty what the ships of the Norman invaders looked like; the one and only primary source is the Bayeux Tapestry, which gives only vague, highly stylized side views of them.  But it's generally agreed that they didn't look like a Viking ceremonial barge (which is what the Oseberg Ship is believed to be).  I recommend avoiding this one.

The Zvezda Greek and Cartheginian galleys are, I believe, reissues of Heller kits.  People who are more knowlegeable than I am about ancient galleys don't take them seriously; among other problems they're far too short for their height and breadth.  The whole subject of the ancient war galley has undergone serious rethinking during the past twenty-five years or so, largely as a result of the reconstructed Greek trireme Olympias.  Every plastic ancient war galley kit on the market, so far as I know, was originally released before the Olympias was built.  (It should be noted that some eminently qualified scholars have big reservations about the design of the Olympias.  But it's been pretty firmly established that the old Heller kits are grossly out of proportion.  There are several threads about them here in the Forum; the comments of a member named JWintjes, who knows far more about such things than I do, are particularly worth reading.  He suggests that, by slicing the hull of a Heller galley in half and inserting a section taken from a second kit, it might be possible to make a reasonable model.  But I don't know that anybody's actually tried that.)

I think the Smer "Viking Dragon" is the ancient Aurora kit from the 1950s.  If so, it's a great toy for kids but that's all.  The people who designed it apparently did no research whatever about Norse shipbuilding.  (They were working in the dawn of the plastic scale modeling era; their intended purchasers didn't care much about historical accuracy.)  Frankly I wouldn't mind getting my hands on that kit, as an exercise in nostalgia; I don't know how many times I built it when I was in elementary school.  But as a scale model of a Viking ship - forget it.

I think the Smer "Drakkar-Oseberg" is a repackaging of the Heller kit that was similarly labeled.  (I may be wrong about that one; I can't recall ever having seen the Smer kit.)  If so, forget it too. 

I think the "Conquistador Ship San Gabriel" by Zvezda is also a reboxing of a Heller product, which in turn was based on the hull and other basic components of the Heller Santa Maria.  I've only seen photos of the Heller "Conquistador," but on that basis it frankly looked to me like a piece of junk.  The Heller designers in those days (the early seventies) appear to have been immensely talented artisans who possessed only a vague understanding of how sailing ships worked.  They were notorious for making "new" sailing ship kits by slapping new parts on old hulls, thereby coming up with shapes that sometimes looked believable and sometimes didn't.  This one, to my eye at least, didn't.

I have the Academy Roman Warship.  It's a reissue of a kit from the late, lamented Japanese manufacturer Imai, and as a piece of plastic kit engineering it's a masterpiece.  (Imai was, to my knowledge, the only company that's ever figured out how to make reasonable-looking blocks and deadeyes in injection-molded styrene.)  It's probably the best of the plastic ancient galley kits.  It does have some serious problems, though, starting with the stated scale - which is far too small.  And for some reason the openings for the oars in the outriggers don't have oars in them.  (Imai also made a "Greek galley," which shared many of the same parts.  The "Greek" version had oars sticking out of the outriggers - but not through the oar ports beneath them.  Weird.  I think these two kits may have been among the first in the Imai line, which eventually included some of the best plastic sailing ship kits ever.)  If I had to pick a plastic ancient galley kit on which to base a serious scale model this one probably would be it.  But it's "pre-Olympias."

My senile brain has just dredged up one other plastic medieval ship kit.  Imai made a Viking ship.  But it was extremely small - probably too small to be of much use in hstry's project.

I've only seen the box art for the Zvezda "Medieval Lifeboat."  It looked reasonable - though I question whether the term "lifeboat" was in use at the time.  (Lots of people use that word to describe any small boat.  That may be what's going on here.)

I fear that's a rather depressing list. The medieval period just isn't well represented by the ship model kit manufacturers - plastic, wood, or otherwise.  The good news is that two of the relatively recent kits, the Zvezda cog and the Revell Viking ship, actually are nice kits.  (Dr. Wintjes pointed out, in another thread, that the deck planking of the Zvezda cog is "laid" longitudinally, whereas the deck planking of all the few surviving real cogs is laid athwartships.  But he acknowledges that our knowledge of cogs isn't enough to brand Zvezda definitively "wrong.")  I'd have trouble recommending any others.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    March 2007
  • From: Portsmouth, RI
Posted by searat12 on Friday, May 2, 2008 5:05 PM
As I recall, once upon a time there was a model of a Portuguese Carrack available, but I'm not sure who produced it... Pyro?  The 'La Reale' French galley by Heller is also of a very ancient type that was around for hundreds of years with very little alteration (think battle of Lepanto, etc, or you could go earlier by ditching the cannon and substituting Greek Fire for a Byzantine Dromon!), and of course, the Xebec/Chebec is not too far off either......
  • Member since
    February 2004
  • From: Weymouth, Dorset, UK
Posted by chris hall on Friday, May 2, 2008 8:52 AM

The current Revell Europe web catalog also lists a Hanseatic cog under "new releases."  I obviously haven't seen this kit, but logic suggests that it's probably the Zvezda version in a new box - maybe at a different price.

It is indeed the Zvezda kit re-popped with better decals:

http://www.hannants.co.uk/search/?FULL=RV5411

and £15 cheaper. Quite how Zvezda justified their price of £45 (think Revell Germany 1/350 Bismarck, 1/400 QM2, Tamiya 1/350 New Jersey, Academy 1/350 Titanic...)

Zvezda do a medieval sailing boat, which could be used as a fishing boat or even a small coastal traader:

http://www.hannants.co.uk/search/?FULL=ZVE9033

Cheers,

Chris.

Cute and cuddly, boys, cute and cuddly!
  • Member since
    January 2007
Posted by hstry on Friday, May 2, 2008 8:15 AM

Thank you, John.

How accurate are these models of historical sailing ships?   Are any of them close enough to be used for their basic shapes and perspectives in making paintings?  I can change the smaller details on canvas but getting the basic shapes and perspectives from life is the purpose of my model building.   No one else sees the plastic models I build otherwise.   I have the Academy Roman Warship and Heller "William the Conqueror" ship already, but have not assembled either.

 

"William the Conqueror" ship by Heller

Greek Trireme by Zvezda

Carthagenian Warship by Zvezda

Viking Dragon by Smer

Drakkar-Oseberg by Smer

Trireme of the Roman Emperor by Zvezda

"Conquistador Ship" San Gabriel by Zvezda  

Roman Warship by Academy

Medieval Life Boat by Zvezda

 

Thank you,

 Richard

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, May 2, 2008 2:48 AM

You've listed almost all of them.  The only other plastic ship model kits I can think of that qualify as "medieval" are the various Viking craft.  Heller makes several, all of them clones of the company's original "Drakkar Oseberg," which is, in scale modeling terms, a hideously distorted travesty of the Oseberg Ship.  And the ancient Aurora one, a delightful exercise in nostalgia for anybody whose modeling memories go back to the fifties, actually bears scarcely any resemblance to a real Norse vessel of any sort.  The Revell "Viking Ship," on the other hand, is, in my opinion, one of the best plastic sailing ship kits ever released.  It's a scale model of a full-sized replica vessel that crossed the Atlantic in 1893 and wound up on public display at Grant Park in Chicago.  That vessel, in turn, was based extremely closely on the Gokstad Ship, the largest surviving vessel of the Viking age.  The Revell kit, which was recently re-released by Revell Europe, is, in other words, a remarkably accurate, well-detailed model of the Gokstad Ship.  You can find photos and comments on it in several recent threads here in the Forum.

The current Revell Europe web catalog also lists a Hanseatic cog under "new releases."  I obviously haven't seen this kit, but logic suggests that it's probably the Zvezda version in a new box - maybe at a different price.

That's about all I can suggest.  Good luck.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    January 2007
recommendations for medieval ships
Posted by hstry on Thursday, May 1, 2008 5:39 PM

Hello All,

I have Heller's three "Columbus ships" as examples of caravels, latina, rodonda and armada, Zvezda's "Crusader Cog", and Heller's "William the Conqueror" (which I understand is not that accurate, historically speaking).

Do you have any recommendations for models of medieval carracks, (large or small) English nefs or any other medieval ship, roundship or galley, that I am not at present thinking of?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Richard

PS   Here is my website for paintings of historical subject matter, including my exhibition of  studies of historical art, artifacts and architecture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  I am planning to paint some of medieval ships and Meditteranean port scenes, ca 1100-1650 or so. 

http://www.richardrock.com

 

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!

Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.

SEARCH FORUMS
FREE NEWSLETTER
By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists. View our Privacy Policy.