SALAMIS 10mm New Recruits

I got the troops for my 10mm Phoenician triereis today.

Some Immortals..

 And some average 'Eastern spearmen'..

And Immortals again..

I plan to do some small episodes from Salamis..

Great deal from Wild Duck Trading.  I'll get some on the table for a game and post photos later.

Proto-typing Triereis

I'm now making some models for 10cm scale /  1:400 triereis. They may be made in metal or resin.

 

  It's fiddly and frustrating but work progresses. 

 

 1/300 figures - at least the smaller ones - can be used without too much of a problem. I may end up making  some true 4mm figure 'clumps' but for now...

203 Men in a Boat : Stunning Build of Dusek's 1/72 Trireme Kit

Go to Dusek's site for a stunning set of photos which show modeller 'Mr Cryns' from Amsterdam's detailed and artistic build of their wooden kit. There are many authentic features added to the already excellent kit. The crew are individually modelled and it certainly beats the hell out of the usual  'three men and a panzer' type of diorama!

Go HERE to see the rest

The  basic wooden 1/72 kit is enhanced and manned with superb figures and the whole is beautifully painted. Makes me almost want to padlock my workshop forever...

Look at the photos in full screen..marvelous. Right click and 'open new link in new window' then click to enlarge - then you get thephoto  full size instead of the slideshow format.

INSPIRATION TO GET MODELLING AND GAMING

A nice series running on a 'neighbouring' blog.

Navwar galleys - 1/1200 - coming into service at 'Geordies'..HERE

Look at the whole series.

OLYMPIAS SAILED AGAIN

Apparently Olympias has been in the water over the summer.
She was successfully restored after the ravages of rot and worms and was 'søsæt' on 19th of April.

She is a bit sad-looking under tow but here is the Hellenic Navy promo of the event

I have looked for more information but not lighted upon anything more informative than these pieces
ARCHAEOLOGY NEWSNETWORK
and NAVY RECOGNITION

It seems a test was done last summer witnessed by a nice promo video from the Hellenic Navy which gets the pulse moving and lets her beauty shine through better than when a towed hulk.




But then..tadaaa!  A video which is really inspiring! Sponsors Jotun (marine paint firm) filmed Olympias for an advertisement. I don't think I'll buy their paint but the film is wonderful.
Shot this summer. The Age of the Trireme continues !!!!

CORNFLAKE QUINQUEREME

53 Euro for something one could make from balsa or cornflake boxes is quite steep. I saw this model 'quinquereme' advertised from Battlefield Accessories..




This is a kit made of laser-cut MDF and is to 28mm scale. 28mm is really 30mm but no one dares say it. OK its fat, giant 25mm. Great for sculptors and easier to paint. I have seen some ugly ships for 25mm which are, as this is, really symbolic representations rather than true models.

The good thing about this kit is that it is modular and can represent a longer or shorter ship. With a nice paint job it will not get in the way of the figures used with it.

On the other hand, it has a corvus which is like a fireman's turn-table ladder, and the hull is not very ship-shaped. 'But your ships are like that !' I hear you cry. Somewhat, but mine are 10cm long. This monster is 50 plus centimetres long. Plenty of scope for modelling.

If you really want a basic ship for fighting across with your chubby giants then how could you build a worse one from balsa, polystyrene or cardboard ? Maybe I  should publish some simple plans here ?

You can also see YOUTUBE videos of building the model. It comes as a short $OZ45 version and the large $OZ80 quinquereme.


Thier diminutive trieres at 8cm for $OZ2.50 is, on the other hand, good value. It makes the best of this material and building technique and you could use 6mm figures on them, or card ones.

See it HERE.
Its scale is about 1/460 and similar to the scale I finally settled for with my card ships.

Capitan also have laser-cut ships HERE

N-Gauge Fleet Review

After some overtime in the forests  of Thracia and the shipyards of Piræus the Athenian trieres Fleet puts to sea for a test-cruise.

6 triereis with deck crew

 

Epibatai and command are Magister Militum 10mm hoplites

Bridge-decked and Full-decked triereis

Steaming along..the rowers that is..phew!

Narrrowly avoiding the edge of the world..

10mm hoplites at sea. These photos not the best but I'll put better ones up soon.

  One-to-one deck crew and N-gauge ships seems to be a good combination.
I was pleasantly surprised at how nice 10mm figures are. 6mm are another thing altogether which I have tried but dropped in favour of card units- 10mm are quick to paint and look very nice. There are just four colours on these figures and an ink wash.

The ships are made of paper, card, polystrene, glue and elbow-grease. Oh, and pins. Lots of pins.

EGADI RAM AT BRITISH MUSEUM

 

From April the BM have an exhibition about 'Sicily: Culture and Conquest'. It will include one of the Egadi rams - I presume the one illustrated which is Ram 6 I think. 4 and 6 have the interesting history of maybe being reused captured Roman ships sunk by the Romans. A trieres-sized vessel.

Details HERE

ASHMOLEAN UPDATE!

I have heard thathe Ashmolean exhibition, 'Storms War and Shipwrecks' will actually include TWO Egadi rams including the Punic one,

FEAT OF CLAY ?

 The terracotta model that is in the Danish National Museum and known as the 'Erment Model' was fuel for a debate in the long-running saga af the ancient galley.

My reconstruction of the 'Erment Model'

Lucien Brasch argued in 1969(1)  that the model supported the idea that there was more than one type of trieres. His reasoning was that the Greeks had their own interpretation of an original idea by the Phoenicians. The model was found in Egypt and must represent a trieres tradition from the eastern Mediterranean which differed from the Hellenistic variety.

Just how one could make an alternative trireme is a  bit of a puzzle but not beyond ingenuity. We have today the advantage of having seen a working trieres in the form of Olympias  (2) and must admit that this colours our vision. Notwithstanding this, there are still critics such as Alec Tilley(3) who have alternative suggestions for how a trieres could be constructed on other lines.

The '3' is here three men sitting side-by-side

Tilley would have the oarsmen on the same level - ergo Erment cannot be a trieres

 Tilley thinks the Erment model could therefore be a hexeres !(x) With two men on each oar because only with such a large number of men and oars would  tiers be necessary.

After Brasch the Erment model is seen as supporting a version of the trieres which is first seen on the Sennacherib stela from Nineveh and that show the flight of Luli from Sidon.

Nineveh stela c.701.bc.

 It is narrow and high, with no apparent outrigger - the parexereisea. Even 'The Athenian Trireme' supported the idea that there is a an unused tier of oarplaces in these reliefs. Odd. If one is fleeing why not use full speed? A rather unbelievable illustration of these ships was given in the Osprey New Vanguard 196 'Warships of the Ancient  World' book.

 In 1975 Alan Lloyd(4)  pretty much knocked the 'Phoenician trieres' theory into touch with his thorough-going rebuttal of Brasch's paper. It includes a quote from R.C. Anderson's 1962 paper(5) which is rather damning. viz.

'It may be made for a trireme, but there is nothing whatever to be learnt from it.'

Subsequently, an expert on specifically Egyptian Hellenistic terracottas  remarked (6)

'Technically Græco-Egyptian terracottas are clumsy work, made with few moulds and the minimum of effort.'

Lloyd's conclusion/broadside...

'M.Brasch may well be right in claiming that the craftsman had in mind a Phoenician trireme but it seems hazardous in the extreme to use such an object to prove that the ship did not possess a parexeiresia, was not equipped with wales - neither of which occur  on Egyptian ships and may well have fallen outside the potter's experience - and had a hull whose proportions differed fundamentally from its Greek counterpart.'

Erment/Phoenicia to the left,: Olympias/Greece to the right

The model has also been used as a possible blueprint for an eastern Mediterranean penteres (7) which is supposed to differ from the Syracusan version by, again, having no outrigger and with double-manned upper oar-tiers.

Straight.sided penteres(removing hanging oarbox

Making the model gave me a little insight into the potter's task. Forgetting any high ideas about an accurate scale model - the concept of which was probably some way ahead in history from when the clay ship was produced.

As any clay structure is built up it tends to sag under its own weight. One can avoid this by a) avoiding overhangs and b) ensuring all points are supported from beneath c) making the structure lighter in the top.

I think the Erment model has its final shape because of these factors. The original profile of a trieres is almost impossible to make in a model of this size if one is not going to take time-consuming steps to support it and let it dry progressively as one builds.

Looks Ementish but WRONG. From Napoleon III's reconstruction of 1882 by Admiral Serre. A classic failure.

Still wrong profile - perfectly round is BAD (puking imminent)

Profile of Olympias by John Coates. Too broad for a clay model.

This is no problem for some smaller, more primitive ship models. Pottery has alway sbeen a lowly trade and pot items very cheap. The idea of taking an inordinate amount of time on a cheap votive item is unlikely.

I also  think the Erment model does have an outrigger but it is misunderstood by the maker. AND transformed so that it fits with the clay's characteristics.

Instead of the oar tiers being set further outboard as in the real thing, the model has them set over each other for the sake of constructing something easily from clay.

The strips supporting the upper two tiers are there because they look like they should be there when one looks at a real trieres but they are also necessary to support the oars in the model. They cannot be set out from the hull or the thing will sag and break so they are set over each other. They show a gunwale and an outrigger but they cannot be set out from the hull or the whole lot will collapse.

The parexeiresia is beneath the upper oars but squished inboard

The epibatai (which could aequally have been the hyperesia) must be set on last. When the decks have dried a little and gained some strength the figures and shields can be glued -on with slip without fear of collapse.

The ship's profile is explained by these factors also. It is flat-bottomed because it must stand solidly as it is built. It is high and stright-sided because an open, low form will collapse unless a time-consuming process is adopted for construction.

I would say the modeller wanted to give a good impression of a trieres and he does. It is a slim, sleek ship with many oars. It has a fierce prominent ram and efficient prominent pedalia which look like they can really affect the ship's progress.

Version 2 may be painted to look a little less like Sonic the Hedgehog!

 Along with the many odd-shaped clay ships i think the Erment model has to be considered just that. In the broadest sense of the word. It is not a scaled-down copy of any ship, penteres, hexeres nor trieres but it is a representation interpreted by the non-sea-going potter and made within the limits of the chosen material. This trieres really does have feet of clay.
It's awful, but I like it.....
(Ref.list to follow)

DEATH OF THE MARSALA SHIP

Italian freelance 3D computer modeller Francesco Frazzitta has made some impressive renderings of the Marsala ship and its demise at the hands of the Egadi 1 ram mounted on a Roman trieres. 

The Marsala ship was a wreck found with another off the Ægadi Islands in 1969. They were identified as Carthaginian and have subsequently been much discussed. The wreck appeared to have a single tier of oars but they were possibly double-manned. Its curious upturned 'ram' is probably a structure to facilitate operating in areas with many sand bars rather than a weapon. Its companion ship was equipped with a bronze ram of which only the supporting timbers remained.

Frazzitta's graphics of the Marsala ship are also impressive.

I am working on the Roman-Carthaginian naval conflicts now and it is great to see these archæological remains brought to life.

A BEACH IS LIFE

In ancient naval battles commanders sometimes actually chose to run their ships in to the shore as a tactic. This seems, at first, rather puzzling. Why should ships throw away their mobility to fight ? How could they cast themselves ashore which is what good navigators try to avoid, isn't it?

'Time and tide wait for no ship'

Ancient galleys were built for speed. They did not carry large quantities of provisions and there was no space on board for cooking or sleeping. At a pinch men could eat bread dipped in olive oil while they rowed but the normal procedure was to eat ashore.

'Otter's noses in a bun-only 2 drachma!'

The stern of a galley curves steeply upwards and the hull draught is generally shallow. This means that such ships can easily drive up against a beach without becoming fast. With the use of an anchor to each side the ship can be secured against moving in the wave wash. The crew would then disembark via ladders set against the threnys. 

Æneas casually deserting Dido up his gangplank or 'apobathra'
Oops,, black sail and figure in background has helmet...
this is Theseus casually deserting Ariadne

When it was time to depart the crew could row away from the land. It has been suggested that ships could have carried wooden rails to allow them to be drawn completely out of the water on any shallow beach for maintenance but this was not the everyday occurrence of simply running in to shore for a meal break or overnighting.

How NOT to beach a galley - these will be here for some time...10years?.

An answer becomes more apparent when one considers the alternatives for a fleet which is either surrounded or outnumbered. Ramming tactics rely on getting around the enemy to deliver the deadly blow while safe from the target. Counter-tactics can be evasion or facing the enemy head-on when the rams of both neutralise each other. Should a fleet have a suitable beach to its rear it makes sense to back water and drive the ships in so that they form a bulwark of rams facing to sea. Any assault must now be a meeting of the ships' prows and a slugfest between epibatai. Generally, not so many epibatai were carried, 10 to 40, but a beached ship could also use the manpower of the rowers to fend -off attackers with poles or oars if nothing else.

If the shore was occupied by friendly forces then reinforcements could board the ships and add to their defence. A palisade could even be thrown around the beached ships producing an armed fort to defend the vessels.
The attacker would have to keep all his rowers at their station and if he could not board and take the beached ships he must attempt to get lines onto them and drag them to sea. An alternative was to disembark troops or call supporting forces and make an assault from the land.

In any event the beaching tactic was a good one to avoid rapid or certain defeat and gave the underdog a chance to save some of his ships or delay the inevitable so he could escape after dusk or save his manpower by disembarkation. The cost of a trieres was quite enormous and so both sides made great efforts to either capture enemy vessels or preserve their own. A trieres was not like a tank or destroyer – it was not a disposable artefact which was merely a means to allow soldiers to fight. Tanks or destroyers allowed men to attack the enemy but the loss of the machines was not of itself important. They could be replaced. Even the crews were relatively quickly trained. A trieres was a synthesis of ship-building skills, selected raw materials, sailors and soldiers which created a weapon of war, transport and power projection. It was replaceable but at great cost and effort. 

 A trieres cost 1 talent per month to keep in service. This is was enough to feed a family of four for 120 years or more at Athenian prices! To build a trieres cost a whopping 10 talents.

For food, Greece has got talents.

If a hard-pressed commander found he had a suitable shore to hand rather than the all-too-prevalent, deadly, rocky coastline around the Aegean then beaching was to be considered. Trieres could back at close to the speed they could advance and thus a ship could run for the beach, keeping its ram to the enemy.

If the ship must be given up at last then the crew could escape overland to man another ship and fight again.

Three hundred mens' fate and the time needed to create another such unit meant the loss of a single trieres would be keenly felt and so flight or beaching was a rational tactic for a fleet in danger. In a battle at sea a single successful ramming attack could seal the fate of a vessel and crew in a few minutes. Beaching gave the crew a fighting chance against superior numbers and would at least prolong the fight and give the crew a possible route to safety, and life.

Epibatai, beached and bleached.

CONNECTIONS

.

James Burke began a TV series in the seventies he called Connections. Via a series of intermediate, linked steps he would show how modern coffee makers depended upon the ability of prehistoric man to build Wendy houses, or suchlike. I loved the programme because it brought out so many amazing (to a young boy) juxtapositions and coincidences and used many recreations of ancient warriors.  Still available on YOUTUBE, of course maybe.

Anyway, it is still nice to hear tales of coincidence and serendipity. Despite my adult knowledge of statistics and the human brain's inate ability, or even persistent habit, of finding patterns where they may not even exist. Wow my new girlfriend loves so many of the same things I do ! (so did the last one...)

Classical galleys and trieres are not associated with the northern land where I live. OK there are early medieval galleys which arose froma different ship-building tradition - some call them 'viking ships'.
However, one was actually found just down the road from where I write this.

The grave of a Late Roman Iron Age man - called the Ishøj 'Prince' in the popular press was found in 2007. He had been badly cut up, hopefully by a group of revolting peasants shrugging off their aristocratic overclass. The fact that his grave is stuffed with luxury goods points to the peasants failure. Amongst the goods is a trireme.

 Well, not an actual trireme but the closest one is going to get to one in Denmark. The Danish/ Sjællandiske nobility loved Roman glass beakers - a number have been found - and in Ishøjfyrsten's grave were found two such. One has a lot of dolphins on it, the other ..wait for it.. two galleys.

 The ruling elite of Sjælland at this time had good relations with the Roman empire. They may have fought as auxiliary troops. They may have helped provide a buffer zone for the empire's borders against even more hairy barbarians from further out in the darkness. In any case they obtained and valued fine Roman goods including the beakers. I can think of no better gift for an ancient Sjællandsk warrior on Fathers' Day. A fine drinking vessel for fine mead and wine decorated with either the denizens of the sea- dolphins - or with a ship. The island-dwelling Danes have been of necessity a maritime people throughout history. The maritime themes would be instantly recognisable and appeal.

Barbarians could not make such glass beakers.  The item was transported over the limes somewhere and into the barbaricum. Later, it crossed the sea to Sjælland and was given to the 'prince'. He was felled in battle - seriously finished-off. The beaker ended in the chambered grave barrow with him.
Now Ellekilde lies almost  in the suburbs of Copenhagen. Building work means more and more of his tribe or even family have been disturbed in their eternal sleep.

The decoration of the beaker is not able to photographically record a galley, of course, but the ships shown is a nice small galley familiar if you have looked at Roman murals or at Trajans Column.

There are the familiar high prow and stern - with terminal volutes. There is a steersman in the stern with maybe his right hand on a steering oar not visible and outstretched left hand  struggling with the sail or rigging.

  The hull is low and topped with a lattice-work balustrade as we see on Trajan's Column. The oarbank appears from the lattice-work angled to the stern.

And I now sit some kilometres down the road from a place where a luxury glass beaker bearing the depiction of a Mediterranean galley was found. The beaker having been used by a wealthy man and ended in his grave after he was violently killed. The grave was then dug-up as Copenhagen's suburbs devour the countryside of Sjælland. Sitting in these northern wastes dreaming of torquoise seas and black ships it never occurred to me that someone had maybe done the same 1500 years ago..while sampling the local brew. These connections...who'd have thought ?

'Cheers, Jim !'