DUCK-BILLED-NON-WARSHIP

Something new down the slipway today. A model of the Marsala ship. A monokrotic bireme i.e. two men per oar, with a single row of oars.

This model is a fusion of the two ships excavated by Honor Frost in the 70's near  Marsala / Lilybæum in western Sicily. More HERE.

Previous post on the ship's demise HERE.

The reconstructed picture has shields on a rail and the up-turned 'duck-bill' ram. Frost had decided this was a warship connected to the Egadi Islands battle of  241bc which ended the First Punic War.

Later work  on the two ships cast doubt on the identification of the up-turned prow as a ram. The physics of shoving such a wierd structure into an enemy vessel do not make for efficient holing or escape of the rammer.


 
The ships from Trajans Column show similar upturned rams but it is thought these are the result of artistic licence rather than direct observation.






Ships with concavo-convex prows feature on Roman mosaics and in the famous 'Observer's Mosaic of Roman Ships' from Althiburus near Tunis. Especially the Akatos or Actuaria which is a small merchant galley.





The prow structure is a 'cutwater' which gives the vessel better sailing properties to breach waves  and it is also a useful modification to aid navigating areas with shallows and sand banks or to ride up onto beaches. The upturned prow rides up onto the soft material rather than digging-in. This was nicely demonstrated by Pedersen in 1996 when he likened it to the structure of Frisian fishing boats.






Pedersen tried some rigs with vertical prows and the duck-bill. It is obvious the upturn allows a ship to tide over a bank or at least not to dig in. Small coastal and riverine trading vessels would regularly  have run the risk of meeting such hazards.

 







The structure of the bow extension also argues against any military function because it is two skis rather than a massive timber and seems never to have been equipped with a bronze ram as we know now from the fanastic finds at the Egadi Islands warships must have had.

The ram? / cutwater from Bosporos is a similar form HERE

The Marsala ships are not, then , the first Carthaginian warships found but the are the first and best Carthaginian ships we have to date. The Carthaginian rams from Egadi are the first true remains of the carthaginian navy we have found but maybe my card models may get in a fight anyway . On the tabletop, that is.


Frost, H 1975 IJNA 4 (2) The Ram from Marsala
Pedersen RK 1996 Waterschip ZN42i,A Clench-Lapped Fishing Vessel from Flevoland, Nederland(Lelystad)
Averdung og Pedersen, Skyllis  2012 Heft 2,  The Marsala Punic Warships

ANCIENT WARFARE : FIRST PUNIC WAR SPECIAL

The AW 50th issue special edition arrived friday. It's a bit of a curate's egg. There are articles on naval warfare but rather limited ones. They raise an interesting point about digital versus print media.

 The main naval article deals with the battle of Ecnomus quite well but has a rather uninspiring graphic of the progress of the battle. I think it is here print must try to capture readers, I feel. Lively explanation rather than endless quotation or discussion of scources.  On the other hand there is a splendid double-page colour illustration showing a Punic 4 getting the better of a Roman 5. The drowning Latins in the foreground are horribly convincing but if I was a Punic archer I don't think I would waste arrows on men in the water. The nice thing about this picture is the unusual angle one views the capsizing Roman vessel from.

The other long maritime article is about the Roman decision to expand their maritime capability in the course of the First Punic War. The slight drawback of the article is that it does not seem to take into account the newer ideas that neither fleet was composed mainly of 5's.

Such information has been derived from the RPMN researches at the Ægadi Islands battle site. It is this which graces the cover of the edition with a short accompanying note. There is another article which summarises finds from Ægadi but not in much detail, with references to the RPMN website.

It is welcome to find a publication that deals in some way with galley warfare but the sum of the material here is nothing one could not find on the web quickly and, a little more time would provide so much information that this offering would quickly pale. This is a problem for a periodical. How to compete with the web. For me, the tactile pleasure of a book or magazine - and especially the smell of a newly-printed magazine as one opens the envelope !!! is unmissable. Content is the problem . How to find it and present it cost effectively on paper. Many publishers try quantity over quality and flood-out poorer offerings. The kind of art AW includes is often inspiring but maybe it needs inspiring articles too. Not to tread over to the territory of all blood and sex, but maybe get out of the rut of showing reenactors alongside summarising pieces.  In this issue a piece of historical fiction is presented - this is certainly trying something new, but does it belong in AW ? AW is a little trapped between wanting some academic bona fides but needing broad appeal over a wide time range to get enough readers.

A tall order, but BUY the magazine and hope they continue to work on it. There is not much else out there other than Osprey and Pen and Sword.