FYI 1.0

At Amazon.com : on comment page for Imperial Roman Warships NV 230

I please You to post correct and scientific critics on the PUBLIC post in Amazon. In Your blog You are master, and You can write whatever You want. You had do a public critic, please post a scientific comment which justifies Your critic. To these I will answer with my scientific work. Please post also the list of Your articles and books on the topic.
The Dhromon You criticized is mainly based on the works of
Bonino, M., Archeologia e tradizione navale tra la Romagna ed il Po, Ravenna, 1978
Morrison, J. S. & Gardiner, R. (ed.), The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times. Conway Maritime, London, 1995;
ILIAS AMBROSIANA
Prokopios of course
Some details are from the graffito of Malaga
Anchor from the garden of Museum of Marsin
The warships from Yenicapi are related to 10th - 11th century context, but for the ship structure I have used some technical detail visible in the VI-VII century Yenicapi excavations, where I worked with Cemal Pulak for some days.
Best wishes
Raffaele D'Amato

 Dear Raffaelle,
I will not copy what I have written at my blog here. This is not a forum for discussion. When the new book comes out if there is something to be written maybe I can write it on a comment for that Amazon page. Anyone can make comment at a blog and I do not censor comments. It is quite public on a blog.
My detailed criticism of the Osprey books is on my blog Rams, Ravens and Wrecks. If you search with the 'label' 'D'Amato ' or 'Osprey' you will see all posts, keep using the 'older posts' button until there are no more
Regards

I will make a review of the book (Osprey NV 244, Imperial Roman Warships 193-567AD) when it is
published and I have a copy in hand. Dr Raffaele has been kind and open to say exactly how he built up the dromon on the cover. I still think it is odd and will explain in more detail when I review the book.

Battle Identified

The battle in Rava's cover plate from Osprey NV244 is apparently that at Sena Gallica in 551AD.
I looked further on his FB.

This was a battle between an Italian Gothic fleet and Byzantines. The Goths lost heavily.

This is an obscure battle, mentioned only by Procopius. Quite helpful in making a fantasy-full reconstruction. My criticism of the galea-bireme-dromon ship stands. Elsewhere, Procopius clearly states that the ships of Belisarius reconquista were single-banked, cataphract, with possibly a lateen rig. (History of the Wars, Book III, xi). These were called dromon(es).

The depiction closest in time is here, from the Vatican Æneid folio 77.

A dromon of c.500AD

That the Goths had a fleet of similar vessels to the Byzantines of this time is ... debateable.

It is nice that Procopius mentions the sides engaged with arrows and lances and swords, But fire-projectiles, always a risky tactic at sea ? And super-explodey ones too.

The Gothic ship at lower right is ...odd. Why should a railing run up into the vertical on the stern ? Who is going to fall off sideways there ? And nice uniforms by the Gothic army.

A naughty detail is that the ship at the back - a galea-medieval-dromon , has the upper corne rof its mainsail colourd red. According to Procopius, Vandalic War xi - on his expedition to Africa in 533AD, Belisarius had the sails of his own and two other ships which carried his personal guard coloured red in the top third. Just a leetle tweaking to get his feature over to Sena Gallica eighteen years later.

Red sails in the sunset. (ish)

Anyway, the oncoming book is getting even more interesting.

Drom - on

A sail is sighted over the horizon! A first view of the oncoming Osprey New Vanguard 244 Imperial Roman Warship 193AD to 565AD. Giuseppe Rava has been unable to contain himself and released a view of the cover before the publisher themselves have.

The splendid view of a medieval galea equipped with personal little escape ( or ventilation ? ) doors for the rowers, a spectacular plinth for the bow-ballista near the bows which offers zero protection, a mammoth stern-castle and - a sight not seen for a couple of hundred years ...( and never seen again ..) an oarbox.

Keeping the arrows out !

This oarbox is a special one with an open top. This open top has to be covered with a tarpaulin to keep arrows out. The oars are bizarre - try to extend the angle of the upper oars into the ship and imagine how much space there is to row with the things ......They plunge into the sea at an extreme incline. The lower rank of rowers have it better, they are have little hatches to open if things get too smelly inside. They may even be naked in there ? Their oar shafts are not so steeply inclined so they have it easy. The rig is lateen, so this would argue for the vessel being a dromon but the fact that it is a bireme means it cannot be a dromon.: unless we are in the period well after the stated terminus for the book of 565AD.

Ravenna ships: big brackets for steering oars

 The steering oar is acting through a truly massive bracket stuck to the side of the vessel. Looks like a literal interpretation of a mosaic picture.

John Coates as scale for bracket on Olympias

I do not know what the scenario for the picture is  - maybe the battle of the Hellespont in 324AD where Constantinian forces defeated those of Licinius: hence the Christian emblems on the main vessel.


The bow of the ship coming into the picture from below is equipped with a forecastle mounting a torsion ballista. The planks that floor this position are something like 10 or 15 cm thick and 60cm wide. They shouldn't break in combat.

The forecast remains bleak for the third New Vanguard by the Deadly Duo, D'Amato and Rava.

Italian Blight; Hot air soon: Poor to severe becoming tragic: Low expectations, filling slowly with dubious interpretations. Text, moderate to dull.

Of course, I may be proved quite wrong.



Battle now identified HERE

OSPREY NV230 IMPERIAL ROMAN WARSHIPS : THE REST OF THE BOOK

You may ask why I am doing this ?

These ARE the illustrations you are looking for...

According to Osprey : "Books in Osprey’s New Vanguard series deal with World War II tanks, AFVs and ships, as well as covering the vessels of World War I, World War II and the Napoleonic period, and the artillery and naval innovations of the American Civil War and medieval periods. Featuring specially commissioned full colour artworks, including exploded and cutaway diagrams, books in Osprey’s New Vanguard series are illustrated throughout with black and white photographs and diagrams. A valuable resource for model makers, wargamers, and military history enthusiasts."

Somehow these ancient ship books were shoe-horned into this category where they do not belong.

These books contain rare black and white sections which are copies of others' work. They contain no cutaway illustrations and little which ranks so high as a diagram.

There is a species of reader who hold the printed word in awe and dare not criticise the content of books or even web-published material, believe it all, even. I am not one of those.There is a species of reader who are so empathetic that they cannot bear the anguish caused by criticism to others and so avoid it. I am not one of them.

There is a species of reader which considers that anyone presenting information as fact and not fantasy is thereby opening themselves to the slings and arrows of criticism. In this way fact can be discerned from error or fantasy. I am one of those. There is a species of reader who consider that companies and authors who churn-out publications of poor quality while claiming they are the bee's knees and charging cold hard cash for the privilege of consuming this snake oil should get some return fire. I am one of those.

THE TEXT 

While not as appalling as the text in NV225, this book has its moments.
p.26  - A division of warships into larger and smaller sizes is misunderstood. D'Amato here includes Fours as 'smaller size' warships according to Livy (37.23.5).This is so basic it makes one's jaw hit the floor.

All over - The type names of ships are spectacularly inconsistent. e.g. liburnica biremis, liburna (biremis), liburnæ, liburnians, liburnicæ biremis, liburna
EVEN!..p34. 'a second century liburnæ'  This is a supposed Classics scholar - the indefinite article, singular, is used with a plural. Has he any Latin ? This manuscript was written at 2 in the morning after a lot of coffee and never corrected? Various ancient sources may have different words but the author's job is to clarify and unify a text that readers can read without confusion.

p.30 He writes about the Pozzuoli relief ships but doesn't tell that the photos are on page 8. if one did not know what these looked like it would take some time to put the two together.

p.31 Quadriremis 'evolution' - development , surely!, is NOT discussed in a paragraph which has this title. It actually contains a completely confused discussion of Fives.

p.32 'The main difference between the liburna and other ships, and especially from the triremes, quadriremes and quinqueremes, was not necessarily its system of oarage, but its  construction.'
This sentence has no semantic utility. This is like saying ' the main difference between a tank and a truck is not in the armament and traction systems but the way they are made.' Unclear. Explain. D-

p35. On the ship Nemi II - 'The steering device...was leaning and lashing against the first lower cross beam and against the other two upper beams.' Mystical stuff. Also, too much Nemi in this book. The Nemi ships are pleasure barges. Why drag them in here ? A clue is given on page 42. He appears to think that a) there was only one Nemi ship, when there were two, and b) the Nemi ship, or one of them, was a warship ?.! A warship in an isolated lake ? A warship 70 by 20 metres on a lake of 1.7 square kilometres.....

p.36 The kind of construction used in Roman warships was the 'carvel method'.  This is jaw-droppingly wrong. Anyone can check on Wikipedia. Why did the author  not do this? There follows a confused description of building technique which I think is a garbled account of the Nemi ships. If someone thinks that the spacing between planks did not exceed 45cm  he is obviously never thinking of going to sea in that type of vessel. The description is odd.

Methinks we exceeded the 45cm gap between successive planks. Bugger.

p.38 What is a canteer (sic)?

Maps : LACK OF MAPS!
Despite considering the various fleets in geographical sequence. Despite giving lists of fleet bases. Despite showing a lot of monuments from different places. Despite quoting various ancient authors' accounts of goings on at various places. THERE ARE NO MAPS! Not even one of the Roman Fucking Empire, whose ships are under scrutiny here. Shurely shome mishtake.

Sub Armalis
Maybe the Italian connection makes it essential to include fashion themes in each book. Last time it was Etruscan clothing for sea-going personnel, this season's collection includes the leather shirt found with the Pisa ships interpreted as a 'sub armalis'. Why in God's name would the supposed under-armour garment for a legionary soldier turn up in a backwater dock near boats sunk in a flood but never on a military site ? Can a fisherman/stevedore not have a leather jacket to keep the wind out ?

At last. on page 43 we get to Roman Naval Tactics in the Early Empire
In the whole book there are 20 lines on this subject. For comparison, in this book there are 10 lines on the nails of ships which are not even warships.
Here is a summary of the ridiculousness which ensues

.

Romans did not follow Greek practices. (We are hundreds of years removed here!) They used the discipline and power of their soldiery at sea (sounds like this escaped from the Republican Roman book!). The essential thing was to get close and win with troops. FOR THIS REASON RAMMING WAS USED. This is like saying 'in order to win with skirmishing tactics the Barbarians always ran straight into the enemy lines.' An author who has supposedly studied ancient naval topics has failed to see the contrast - eloquently set-out by Thucydides - that ramming tactics were definitely different from deck-fighting tactics.

But the punchline tells us that the most damaging thing in a naval battle was artillery (tormenta)!! Whaat? ARTILLERY!   I can't hear you I'm in the ......
Then why, pray, tell us, have there  only been five woolly lines ( p.41)  expended on artillery in the whole of the rest of the book and no diagrams or photographs?

Two hopelessly irelevant passages from Cassius Dio are quoted. -Another attempt to produce a rabbit from a hat which fails miserably. How a massacre of small boats by warships and the actions of divers contribute to explaining the broad sweep of Roman Imperial naval tactics beats me. It really does.

That's it. Thats how the Empire of Rome dominated the seas from 27BC to 193AD, using artillery, driving over small boats and pulling ships to shore with cables nailed to their hulls underwater.



OK. Osprey cannot be expected to have peer review, but maybe at least 'brain review' could be applied before publication ?

THE OTHER PLATES

PLATE D has a garbled caption for a Three and confused liburnian. The author is confused about what made a bireme a bireme. Not bad pictures even if wrong in detail.

PLATE E has a Five with FOUR banks of oars. This is plain wrong. It has sails that hang limply and would never work. That is because it  is a coloured-in version of John Coates drawing. As appeared in the previous book NV225. The 'Quadriremes'(sic) is not controversial except for the onagers on board and monumental figurehead.

Coates' Five is popular with these boys.

PLATE F shows a liburnian from Trajan's Column combined with Coates' drawing. Hey, you know what ? Its quite nice. There is even a plan view!. Despite the absence of a canopy mentioned in the caption, and the upper oars being wrongly placed. Oh no! It is a 50-oared ship with....48 oars. And one steering oar is missing. But apart from that it is nice.

PLATE G  shows an actuaria with a keel so bowed- 'rockered' -  it is impossible. It has a ludicrous ram. There are depictions, they have no artemon and no stern castle as shown here. This is an amalgamation of a merchant corbita and an actuaria. Actuaria with less then 30 or so oars- like this one - were called actuariolæ.  

It also shows a HEXERIS which is simply copied from Viereck rather than 'based upon'.

Rava 2016

OK it is coloured and has oars. D'Amato and Rava have here not even bothered to add a rig but the Coates Five(Plate E1), even though also with its tower raised as for battle, did get the rig it had in the original drawing.

Where does' based-upon' become copied ? Viereck 1975

Is the job of someone creating 'meticulous new profile art' to create something new and believable or to copy and embellish a bit ?

Viereck's work is now dated. The beam of his ships is usually far too broad, for example.But the artillery which Viereck loved and placed on his ships is not explained in this volume.At no point do these two books offer their own cross-sections and only one plan ..I wonder why ?
 

Sailing back to the future

PLATE H has a giant Three ramming a Hjørtspring type boat. Hjørstspring boat is dated to  4th century BC. Hmmmmm. Garbled caption.






The photographic material in this book is great. It may be that this justifies buying it if you want a hard copy of many related photos in one place. It is, however, possible to find photos of many of the subjects online with some judicious searching. The authors fail to take advantage of their strength in this area. Two photos of ships from baths at Pompeii on page 41 have not been shown in detail anywhere I have seen. Pity those two photos are not the clearest - in which case,,,how about a line drawing ? Eh ? Eh ? Maybe the artist only does colour plates ?

PARTHIAN SHOT
The bibliography is interesting. It is divided between 'Ancient Roman Sources' and 'Scholarship'.
The format of the scholarship entries is odd. The place of publication is given for all, but the publisher only for a few. This is an undergraduate error. This author holds two PhDs. What is more interesting is that the author has  an entry which is published at Oxford. Nice. The book is actually published by Osprey, who also published this book, and the book referred-to in the sole footnote in this book. Are Osprey books scholarship ? Does Oxford look better than Osprey ? Why did the author use such an amateur format for his bibliography? Are PhDs worth the paper they are printed on ?

As I wrote at the top. If someone sells me a cake with a dubious filling they should not be surprised to have it served up for themselves. This redresses several hundred kroner and some hours lost.

 My brain hurts... nuff writtten.

Size is n't everything. Just nine tenths of the law.

The challenge presented to the sculptor of Trajan's Dacian Campaigns Frieze was immense. He had to describe the Emperor's two campaigns, with as much detail as possible on a spiral 'scroll' 190 metres long and between 1 metre high at the base and 1.2 metres high at the top. We will not discuss the immense engineering task involved. We are interested in the problems of depicting landscapes, buildings, transport, men and animals in a series of vignettes which flow into one and other and still make visual sense and satisfy a constrained  but lively visual æsthetic.






The first decision was about the level of detail. The sculptor decided to represent the soldier figures at a size where he could render very small details of equipment such as armour construction and hair styles. It could be that this was a prerequisite of the design because many of the faces would be modelled after actual participants. It was certain that the Emperor would be depicted and he should definitely be modelled from life and recogniseable. He crops up 59 times on the monument and so it was abviously an important ´factor that the passing dignitaries and onlookers' kids, could easily pick out Trajan in his cartoon-strip superhero world.  This condition meant that the smallest characters would be about half the height of the frieze. Sculpting in stone which is to be plastered and painted cannot go below a level of detail where either the stone edges will easily weather and crumble or the paint and plaster will fill it in.  The Emperors face must be large enough to recognise but not so large the other figures appear out of kilter as he performs his feats. A man sixty centimetres high could still be discerned up to the column's 35m top.
 

Ok why the long paragraph ? Because the men dictate how much space there is left in the frieze for stuff. A weapon a man is holding or horse he is riding stays near to scale, but to save room and to make scenes more meaningful - for example, showing the foot of several fortress walls rather than the whole fortresses - buildings and nature  and transport are shrunken down to various proportions. In this way forts, ships and cities can be meaningfully and impactfully presented along side the men who can readily be seen to toil, fight, march, suffer and die before the onlooker. Remember this is the culture that brought you gladitatorial games. The culture that thought watching helpless people being eaten alive was right-on. The culture that, should anyone have suggested the establishment of safe spaces or issuing of trigger warnings at the Colosseum, would probably have dumped the suggesters straight over the parapet onto the sand.

Trajan's architect, possibly Apollodorus of Damascus, had the genius to proffer a bloody and moving spectacle to the citizens of Rome that continued long after the last Dacian captives had expired in the arena. An everyday set of executions in gory colour. A banal and baleful spiral of violence that one could sit and contemplate while eating lunch five days a week. Any Roman confessing himself tired of Trajan's victorious tragedy would indeed be a Roman who was tired of life, and death.

But triremes. What  about the bloody triremes ! ?        Coming to that.    I promise.

The problem of proportions when one looks at anything on Trajan's Column must be considered. When one looks at fortification or engines, for example. Especially when one looks at the ships.
The size of  things must be worked-out. Relative to each other and relative to the men in and around them.

PLATE B

The caption to Plate B in NV230 informs us that we are looking at the 'river biremes and triremes of the Classis Pannonica on the Danube.' Both ships are 'copied from Trajan's Column.' There are three ships in the picture. The third is a merchant sailing vessel transporting an enormous radio valve as part of the logistical effort on the campaign.Oh no ! Maybe not , we'll deal with that later...

Actually, on the Column the trireme is only ever shown at sea and not a long way up the Danube.

The nearest ship is a Three, in Roman parlance a trireme. Oarboxes seem to have been dispensed with by Trajan's time and the vessel depicted on the column has two tiers of oars worked through ports and one over the gunwhale. This kind of hull would have been more stable than when the oar-tiers were canted out over each other.  All fine and dandy. Apart from the fact the artist has screwed the upper oars in place under the lattice screen - how could they be moved ?

We are lucky- our oars are proportionate

Scale immediately rears its ugly head. The rowers in the ship are like little mice behind bars with their little paws struggling to use the telegraph-pole oars. Nuff said.

Trajan(?) - presumably, and some sailors look up in wonder at a lamp hanging from the aphlaston which is metres above them. The arched shelter is vast. Why should it be so vast ? It will catch wind. It will block sight. Is it so the Emperor can ride into it on horseback ? It takes up too much room. Or maybe the men are dwarves. The aphlaston itself, instead of being a delicate, graceful display of the carpenter's art is a monstrous thing made of giant timber.

The rowers are sitting surrounded by an expanse of deck. The only problem is that the deck should be over their heads. The deck should be sitting on the top of the megalithic lattice-work that screws the top oar tier to the topwhale. On the column, our sculptor chappie has omitted the deck so he can show a few oarsmen in the vessel. The trireme is Trajan's flagship and so he should have some company, working hard to propel him along. But he cant have all the rowers hidden in the ship. So he gets a few that are liberated from inside the ship and proportionately larger than the ship but matching Trajan.

The rigging is up again. And all the oars are out. Read the 'Olympias' books to learn this is a rare occurrence, especially when the sail is so full that the ship will move faster than the oars and give the rowers an interesting experience. The rig is not badly done but a galley of this size would not have a rope ladder for the tiny crew to climb and the reefing lines should be secured at the gunwhales so they do not form a barrier across the deck.

Now we get to the front of ship and something odd awaits. Dodging the health and safety problems of a barbeque on deck we see an enormous castle is erected in the bow. Plainly, the castelated prow of the ship on the column coul dbe scaled up a bit, but this much ?.

The forecastle is too high. Even assuming the men are 1,65m tall it is three men high. 5,7m is a lot to stack on a ship's bows. No wonder it's going fast with full sail and the wind catching in this structure!
But there is no wake so I need not be worried, Looking at the column the ship's forecastle could easily be interpreted as being as high as a man's waist only.

Something funny happens at the bows where the ship is flaring out but this is hard to discern.

The liburnian sailing along on the port side suffers the same problems but has few visible crew. Its upper oar tier is worked through the screen rather than under it but this is merely an adjustment of the basic error. The screen was a deck support - the oars worked over the gunwhale. The steering oars are truly massive.

Both ships have very high freeboard and massive sterns.

The freighter in the background is a classic corbita. It turns out the giant radio valve is a lantern hanging from the trireme's aphlaston so that problem is solved..whew. No more detail can be seen than in any sculpture.

That's it. The ships are disproportionate and have misinterpreted structures.

PLATE C

In plate C the Pannonian Fleet is attacked while iced-in by Iazyges.

Two ships lie in the foregound so that their curved bows and prow ornaments form a picturesque circle around struggling Romans and barbarians who have now become Jazigi(sic)  and Quadi.

Oar is 4.95 plus length under water and inboard.

The left is supposed to be a celox or keles from the Alba Fucens relief. There is no evidence for celoxes after the first century BC according to Casson. A celox was a light, fast merchant galley with few oars. This one is big. The gunwale is about 3.5 metres in the air. This means the ship is as high as a Seven, surely not. The oars necessary to row this 'ship' along would have to be about 6 metres long to be useably. Longer than those of a Three.


A handy feature of this book is that it contains the evidence that proves itself wrong. A celox was a ship with a straight bow. The Alba Fucens relief on page 40 shows this.The caption of C says this. The ship in the painting does not have this - it has an outward-curving fore-foot with a bit of tin plate nailed to it. This 'ram' appears to be the forefoot reinforcement of the boat 'Alkedo'/Seagull found at Pisa illustrated on page 39. The boat on page 39 is not given a scale, why ?  Because it is too titchy ? In fact, this boat is only 1.23 metres from keel to gunwale. It was 14 metres long and 3 metres wide. It was not really a ship. It was a fast riverboat. At 14 metres it could have been rowed by about ten men. It is not a warship. It would not be fitted with a ram. Wishful thinking.

The right ship is not discussed but seems to be a liburnian from the column. It is, as usual. too big.

Meanwhile, the Romans and Jazzy guys hack and slash in the background. The dead warrior in the foreground is derived from Osprey Men at Arm 129 Germanics and Dacians. He is a mix of figures C1 and C2. Is this good enough ? An Osprey book which uses Osprey books as its reference sources ? The shield design is exactly the same for fucks's sake.

I am no armour buff but didn't leather strap armour go out with early Hollywood ?

What the book has let slip is a chance to really examine and reconstruct the ships of Trajan's Column because this is the single biggest assemblage of detailed evidence. There are warships of different sizes  and other military support ships. They could have been well reconstructed and illustrated. They are shown in photographs but not reconstructed here.

The other chance lost was to use the excellent photos the author has of the Pompeii and other frescoes. They are nice to see in clear colourful photographs but quite  a chance is lost to recreate them in colour.

Coming soon - more crap.

An Empire of Hurt

IMPERIAL ROMAN WARSHIPS 27BC-193AD 
NEW VANGUARD 230 : OSPREY PUBLISHING
Author: R.D'AMATO  Illustrator : G. RAVA

New Vanguard 230 is the second in a triad of Ospreys about ancient galleys. The third is due out in February 2017. Something to look forward to. I predict it will focus on dromoi,and riverine craft which could have been included in this volume and have Germans on rafts etc. Anyhow, gudeskelov!, we will be treated to another volume by Butch and Sundance.
This book,NV230,  in common with New Vanguard 225, is presented as a great new addition to a field which galley fans consider lacking in easily-accessible material. Like NV225 it falls down on closer examination.

You know who you are !

There are good things about this book. The standard of written English and editing has increased greatly. The photos, often by the author or his contacts, are often fresh and some novel. Living in Italy has some advantages apart from looking at girls on  passegiata. It is worth getting this book just to have a new set of visual reference material. BUT, I write only of the photos. The reconstructions, the main selling point of Osprey's titles, fall down again. Discussing the text in depth is a fool's errand when it comes to a short book such as this that draws from the entire field of ancient history. There are arguable passages but life is short. I will try to hold to the 'in your face' assertions of the reconstructions.

It can be argued that a reconstruction need not be rigidly constrained in such a publication.  In former days illustrated magazines often included a degree of fantasy to enliven their reconstruction scenes.

Something just doesn't ring true here......(Don Lawrence)

I do not deny this possibility. To some degree it is essential if a scene is to be made complete, lively and immediate rather than a staid 'illustration' like a Victorian parlour photograph. Books about Arthurian topics or 'Celtic' Heroes etc. have appeared over the years with more or less fantastical content but they fill a need felt somewhere.

The frados came seeking a crate of bronsons but with no kale to their name.

The topic covered here has been worked-on for lifetimes by technically expert linguists, classicists, archaeologists and marine architects. To avoid their conclusions must be folly.

One cannot have one's panettone AND eat it. Surely, one cannot author a hasty, erroneous publication AND expect it to be taken as gospel, an unchallenged academic groundbreaker. But maybe one can.

On to Plate A....
 

This plate is about Civilis' revolt in 69AD inspired by  an event from Tacitus V.23, when the Imperial commander Quintus Petillius Cerialis faced an ad hoc fleet of rebels in a lagoonal area at the confluence of the Rhine and the Maas. Cerialis' ships were larger than those of their opponents. Civilis' fleet included biremes as their heaviest units and a mass of single-banked vessels and small boats of which any used cloaks as jury-rigged sails. The (un) interesting thing about this encounter is that the two forces sailed past each other once, exchanging a few light missiles as they did, before the rebels withdrew. There was no encounter whereby oars could be broken or whereby ships were ready to board each other . Two formations navigated past each other in opposite directions. Tacitus says the Romans were aided in speed by a favourable wind and the rebels by the current of the Rhine.  One should add that the 1931 Loeb translation which NV230 paraphrases declares that 'In the confused condition of the text at the beginning of this chapter, we cannot do more than give the probable sense of what Tacitus wrote'.

Down to brass tacks.

The British Fleet fights some Batavians (Are we supposed to descriminate here between Batavii and Cannafatæ?) manning captured Roman ships.....

THE SCENARIO (hypothetical)
A galley, Midship we will call it, has been inefficiently rammed by another, Rightship, in the stern starboard quarter. Midship is under full sail AND has oars out. This could mean a high speed, up to 11 knots if the oars are out of the water. If there was no benefit to be had from the wind then progress would be by oars alone.  It has no discernible wake. There is no wake from the steering oar. Is the ship stationary under sail and oar ? One could make a case that it has just made an abrupt course change to port and thus whacked its starboard stern quarter onto Rightship's port forward quarter, smashing some oars. But why would it have done that ? No, it appears that Midship is under attack from Rightship.

'Ok men,,erm..Things.. Full Speed ! '

Rightship is under oar. Large ones of the species. Calculating from the foot of a rebel warrior, conveniently having a breather on the parados, These oars are about 20cm thick. Luckily, we cannot see the Schwarzenegger-Orc mutants hidden inside the ship who are pulling these things.

The oar under my foot can pull a 23m Viking galley along. With a few others working alongside, of course.


Rightship is attacking a target which should be moving faster than it, both have two banks of oars, are 'liburnian' types, but Midship has full sail.If the oarsmen on Rightship make another stroke, however, the foremost oars will strike the stern of Midship.

 If Rightship had intended to make a hypothetical 'oar-sweep' onto Midship, surely its starboard banks will have retracted their oars to avoid damage ? So that option is out.

The only option remaining is that Midship held course as a slower vessel loomed to port on a collision course and only when impact occured, steered away.

Meanwhile Leftship, a galley under oars is managing to come up against the wind with sufficient speed that it intends to ram and board Midship head-on. Only in the movies.

THE SHIPS

 Let's look at  Leftship. It's quite broad. If it is a liburnian then it should have a breadth in the order of 4 metres. If the chaps calmly standing to attention on the non-existent oarboxes of  a charging ship are 1,8 metres tall then we can easily see that Leftship is drawn as being five times as broad. i.e. 9 metres or so. Should be quite stable, then. These men are doomed if any impact occurs, of course - 2G of force will throw them bodily into the sea or onto the deck of the target ! The ship  appears to be directly based on one of the ships from the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, shown on page 11 even though the caption says it is based on the Aula Isiaca fresco - which is not shown in the book and only shows the stern of a ship. Confusion in the ranks somewhere.

Broadly speaking, this is inaccurate.

The whole bow structure of Leftship is odd. The stem-post has a Swan as an emblem, usually associated with the stern of Roman merchantmen. The ventilation course is absent, so the straining monstrous orc hybrids in the basement will soon collapse.  There are no apotropaic eyes, which this artist generally renders quite generously.  Maybe the ship had to be blind in order that it should be persuaded to ram bow-to-bow against a faster oncoming ship.

Leftship is supposd to be copied from a fresco found in the cult room or Aula Isiaca under Domitian's Palace in Rome. The ship depicted there has THREE oar levels. Only the stern part survives.

 
Rightship is closer to us and has more detail. It is copied from the Aula Isiaca as was Leftship. It has the same errors. Two tiers of oars in an oarbox. No ventilation for Arnie and his cohorts.

The prow is decorated with gold, apparently. On a minor warship ? The apotropaic eye is like a live thing from a fantasy film.

Scale has gone to pot again. The oarbox on the Aula Isiaca ship has been reconstructed to be about 1 metre high. The warriors standing on the box here, which has only two oar levels, are diminutive. The men on deck seem to stand with the top of their heads circa  4,5m above the waterline. On a liburnian this should be about 3 m according to naval architects.
What is mysterious is that an accurately drawn copy of John Coates 1994 reconstruction of the Aula Isiaca -Pompeii Fives is given IN THIS BOOK ON PAGE 30 The authors' could not even read their own book ? :(

Rightship appears to be directly based on a ship from the Temple of Isis, Pompeii. The caption states it is based upon the Aula Isiaca fresco - which does not show the prow of the ship - and is not shown here. The illustration on page 6 shows the prototype for Rightship. It is the author's own photograph. Confused ? Me too.



Midship is the target of the others' attention and it surely deserves ours. It towers out of the water to the extent that the soldier's heads are about 7 metres above the sea. The deck must be at something like 5 metres. This is greater than the dimensions of a Six or even a Ten. According to calculations of naval architects published twenty years ago and not superceeded since.

The gallery on the stern and the caption point to this being a liburnian but it has the rigging of a large freighter, with its very high mast, rope ladder and large sails.

The timbers supporting the gallery seem to be about as thick as a human head and the steering oars are enormous.

Midship is supposed to be based on a relief from the British Museum which shows a light bireme warship. The relief only shows the prow. The plate only shows the stern. The wales on Midship are not present on the relief, neither is the balustrade.

The real stroke of genius is to inform us that ''On the prow of the British(sic) liburna ..are two parallel wales terminating forward in the proembelion, here not visible.' Read that again to make sure you get it. The artist is illustrating something not visible in the plate.

The wales shown here cannot possibly terminate in the proembelion.

These are not the wales you are looking for.

 On this composite you can see how the proembelion of the relief is mounted on a combination of the gunwhale and a wale originating between the oar levels. The wales on the stern of Midship do not correspond. At all.



COMBAT
 How goes the fight in Plate A ?. Not too well for the Tulip-Fanciers, it seems. Having chosen to clamber out onto the parados formed by the top of the oarbox. This is not clever. The oarbox top was sloped to deter boarders. Anyway, they perch there until plucked off by Roman javelins, a collision chucks them off or they just get bored and sit down for a while. What use could they fulfill standing there ? Why would they do that ?

The Romans have a great time flinging javelins down from their eyrie, protected by the solid bulwark.


Somehow, two men ended in the water. Where did they come from? The blue one must be a Roman - a crap fighter to get hit in this situation and a true athlete to chuck himself over the parapet afterwards. The blonde must be a stroopwaffel-eater judging by his clothing. He fell a looooong way.

Oar fragments drift around. Try and work out from where and why they came. It seems that Rightship advanced from behind a faster ship and broke some of its oars with no danger to its own then ended standing-off to starboard of its target. Those Arnie-Orcs were doing over-time. Remember that we have two ships here which both have the same oar system. The target has the bonus of wind-power in what appears to be a stiff breeze, yet was struck.

OK it's no big deal. The picture is off. However, reading the back cover one discovers that the book is 'Illustrated with meticulous new profile art, spectacular battles scenes...'. My arse.

P.S. This book has the classic orphan footnote which refers to the authors' other work in the series. Shameless.

Plate B beckons.

Oh the horror, the horror..

The text of Osprey New Vanguard 225 Roman Republican Warship, is a horror show. I originally read it as a glad fan of ancient ships eager to glean anything new or different,  but..

The previous 7 blogposts I have made addressed the colour plates concocted for this book. As is the Osprey format it is these that sell the books. The text should also be examined. The main incentive for examining the text closely was provided by the examples of plagiarism I found in connection with the illustrations. What is lying in the long grass of the text ?

If one then reads the book as I would students' submissions then I am AMAZED that it came to press in its current form. That is, if it was proof-read or subject to editorial examination. I do not now believe that Osprey have a meaningful editorial staff. The author is writing in a second language and a lot can be accepted on that basis. Shakespeare he is not. However, grammar, punctutation and consistent style can all be marked down  a long way.

I am in the process of making a short summary of the book's text.

A is for Aaaaarrrggghhh!

To deal quickly with plate A from Osprey New Vanguard 225.

This FIVE is one of the best reconstructions in the book. Oh, but it is not Rava's work.
It is a straight copy from Jeff Burns' illustration for John Warry's 'Warefare in the Classical World' with some twiddly bits added.

Jeff Burns' quinquereme 1980

 This bireme -liburnian has an oarbox and too many oars. This ship would be 36metres long, the length of a trieres !

Still More Fish in the Barrel!

Let us now turn to Plate B of Osprey's New Vanguard 225. I will keep it as short as possible.

Plate B

Ship 1. A 'triremis' (sic)

There is a bolt-shooter mounted in front of the corvus. How is it lowered past this ?

The corvus itself is wrongly drawn - Polybius states it is secured on the pole by a slot in the plank floor of the bridge. Here it stands on its end.

There is no evidence for a corvus being mounted on a trieres - which is what this ship purports to be. trieres were so sensitive in their balance that a single man moving across the deck could disturb the stroke of the thalamian oarsmen. The weight of the corvus in raised position would give a lot of wind resistance and potential for overbalancing on this light ship.

The steering oar - pedalium - is not hydrodynamic. it has a thick leading edge and a strong rib down the middle.

The caption text is poor. It uses the Italian words for the rowers - not the latin nor relevant Anglicisation. 'zigiti' instead of zygians or zygitoi.' Talamiti' instead of thalamians or thalamoi. Traniti is replaced later in the caption by' Thranite'. This is a sign of poor or no proof-reading.

The term 'orders' is used for the different levels of oars. Why ? Maybe a mistranslation from the Latin ordo/ordines for ranks. Ranks of rowers ? Some writers do  use 'files' of rowers.

The parexeiresia is confused with the oarbox. The oarbox replaced the parexeiresia. The upper level of oars rested over a rail projected out from the ship's side - this is the parexeiresia. In the third century BC it was replaced by a fixed closed box built along the ship side and the oars were worked through ports in this.

A ventilation course is mentioned in the caption but completely absent in the illustration.

The most worrying error in the caption are  the references to oars.

It is stated that the ship has 170 oars. Why, then, is the ship drawn with 178 oars ? Why ?

Oar lengths are given as
traniti - 12 ft in length
zigiti - 'managed rows of about 10ft.'
talamiti - 'formed the lower row with oars 6ft long'.

Oars on a radius can be same length

Read carefully. I shall say this only once. The key breakthrough in working out how a trieres is constructed and rowed was the realisation that the oarsmen should be arrranged on a radius so that the oars were all the same length ! Read any paper or book about Olympias and you cannot avoid this fact.

Lower man with a 1,8m oar ?

Oh, yes and one could also think for a moment as to how useful an oar 6ft (1,8m) could be to a rower who is positioned so as to require at least 4,66m of oar to have an effect .





To finish, it is stated that the ship - a trieres - carries 120 soldiers. The most a trieres is recorded as carrying is 40 soldiers plus the deck crew. Confused with a Five ?



 Ship 2. A 'Quadriremes'(sic)

 Now, is this from Alba Fucentia - as stands on a previous photo of the graffito or Alba Lucentia ? The author  cannot make his mind up. Thanks, Osprey editorial staff.

This ship is very special. This ship defies all research of the last thirty years to resurrect a nineteenth century idea about ancient  ship construction. This ship is a 'Four', that is a tetreres or quadrireme.

Much ink and almost blood has been spilled to determine that the '4' in the name of this ship does NOT mean it had four banks of oars. On the contrary, a tetreres should have TWO banks of oars, each double-manned. How thi stype of ship can be illustrated this way in 2015 is difficult to understand. Unless the closely collaborating author and illustrator do not have a clue what they are doing and there is no editorial control.

There is also confusion here either in language or understanding, when a parados is referred-to as a 'guard-rail'. The parados is a narrow ledge outside the guard-rail where men can stand.

Again. something appears in the caption, but not the illustration - poor collaboration again. The latticed ventilation course is referenced but not drawn in the picture.

The last sentence is a pointer to the language difficulties of producing a book in a second language. BUT IT IS PRECISELY HERE THAT THE EDITORIAL STAFF SHOULD HELP !

'The upper oars (zygian) would emerge from the hull over the topwale while the oarports would serve the Thalamian(sic) oars.'

The very fact that the ship is drawn with FOUR oar rows destroys the terminology of thranian-zygian-thalamian.  In any case the sentence is confused and cannot be elucidated by looking at the picture. The upper oars would normally be termed thranite.

In fact, the top two rows of oars seem to come out of holes in the top of an oarbox ! ? Do they bend down to the water over the edge of the oarbox ?



 'I know nothing about the 'oars'