RULES PREVIEW

I have put up a better preview of Shock!andOars at the slowly expanding website. 

The version I have concentrated on is 1/350 for my card ships but they should work from 1/300 down to 1/1200. Smaller ships make it impossible to represent deck fighters so some recording ends up being necessary. The strategy I have used to avoid paperwork is to evolve a control console and markers which are anti-cheat, unobtrusive and quick to use. The differing skills of crews and commanders adds a level of the unknown and extra character to the fight.

I have two (or even more) sets of rules which are suitable for 1/900 or so ships and 1/3600 ships.
These are for progressively larger battles but of necessity lose details I was deterrmined to include in a set of galley warfare rules and so  the bigger ships - my own cards ships - got priority. |If you look at this blog you can see I was at different times considering 1/300 and 1/500 ...This was a tough decision after also building fleets of 1/900 ships from plasticard, paper, bristles and god knows what else.

The focus is on a battle of several squadrons which can be used to fight parts of the larger ancient battles...explanation of this in the rules. I have also made a simple map campaign to allow fights to be easily linked for realistic priorities in battles.

Maybe I am too prefectionist but I dont want this project to be a damp squib like many other wargame rules projects. Money is not the thing (how many galley wargamers out there ?..not many) but the idea of creating a rules set which can recreate this type of warfare and still be authentic and interesting,,and fun..!

I am simultaneously finishing a book on the Four so things are a little pressed. And I would like to put more on the blog. I can safely say that ancient galley warfare is the most interesting and most diverse subject I have found in wargaming over now xxx years and would like to share more before I kick the bucket. I first made a set of rules for galleys in 1980 and was disappointed when I found quickly out they were boring and inauthentic and that the subject was an iceberg of classical scholarship tipped by Charlton Heston and Jack Hawkins on a raft. But I have not let it lie.

I would appreciate a comment from the SandO website if you think this rules set appears interesting.

Our group's ship, Aslak - squint a bit and it is an ancient galley on a Mediterranean shore.!

 Shock!andOars website HERE,,,,, It is @  SHOCKANDOARS.com

Another Fine Mess

One of the things delaying the rules is..
how to write a fool-proof protocol for sorting-out this kind of thing!

There are four squadrons of ships here. Two Persian, with red squares, and two Greek.
There are 15 ships, two of which are swamped, two of which are damaged. Some have rammed and then in turn been rammed. 

The dilemma is that one wants the capability to create such chaotic melees of ships but this then creates the problem of adjudicating the fight.

Who does what and with what and to whom and when do they do it.......???????
I am close, I can smell the cigar, but I don't have it just yet,,,,,,

The Last Galley

Some reading for you. Pleasurable, not a chore...

Arthur Conan Doyle penned a series of stories about the ancient world in 1915. The anthology is entitled 'The Last Galley - Impressions and Tales'. The stories are short but many quite evocative in the way he describes the ancient world they are set in. Some ideas are anachronostic or even quaint but the stories work anyway when penned by a master story-teller.

Conan Doyle was no stranger to life on the ocean wave. He was doctor on an expeditionary ship in the Arctic Sea. He kept a notebook now available from the British Museum.

Conan Doyle 3rd from left.

 'The Last Galley' is about a Carthaginian galley. While it is a short piece it is full of atmosphere and has a lethal twist in the tail. In a few words he brings the Mediterranean to life.

Could be 'The Last/Lost Galley ?   Found this at random. No i.d. Anyone know where this 'ship' is ? Looks like a copy of Olympias but crazily shortened- stern ornament stowed inside.

You can read the book HERE at Project Gutenberg, choose any format.

If you don't know Project Gutenberg, ..shame on you.. . Out of copyright books available for no money. Many classics, a lot of academic works and historical material. Go there and get lost for a few hours. e.g.

Title: Ancient and Modern Ships. 

Part 1. Wooden Sailing Ships
Author: George C. V. Holmes

Title: Famous Sea Fights 

From Salamis to Tsu-Shima
Author: John Richard Hale

Title: The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars

Author: L.P. Gratacap 

GALLEYS IN THE BASEMENT

Beautiful but hideously rugged coasts of the Dodecanese : hunting grounds of the war-galley

 I was recently in the Dodecanese to gather information for a book. Apart from a great chance to examine earthquake damage from last year's magnitude 6.7(!) earthquake, I had a look at some shipsheds.

So, I found myself in the basement of a police headquarters with 5 policemen, 2 armed,2 museum security guards and, maybe because it was the foundations of a neorion I was examining, a naval officer!

Looking down a slipway..plastic canoe at right is not original inhabitant of this neorion, pillars are modern!

The ship was dragged up a sloping ramp over beams/sleepers in the floor and then supported in place by wooden stays. Gear could be stored above or alongside. Some shipsheds took several ships side-by-side or end-to-end.

picture by Yannis Nakkas for Zea Harbour project

The slots for the sleepers are still visible....

 
Shipsheds are a fantastic type of building, the remains of which allow us to learn about the vanished galley fleets. Rather like the naust used to store wooden boats over winter in Scandinavia, The neoria of the ancient Mediterranean protected the galley from sun and weather over the winter season or when it required repair or maintenance.

I am sure galleys laid up in neoria grumbled and gossiped as much as steam engines !

 Neoria can tell us how many ships were stationed at a harbour, how big the ships were and how these changed with time. They had a light structure of columns bearing a tiles roof but the base for the columns and the slipway up which the hull was dragged, were solid enough to survive as some kind of remains.

Zea harbour :  again by Yannis Nakkas

 The simplest forms were rock-cut slipways which probably had a light timber roof originally.
This one is at a Rhodian anti-pirate naval station and probably accommodated 2 hemiolia.

2200 years of waves have taken their toll but the cut on the right is still obvious and the parallel sides

There are hundreds of slipways identified all over the Mediterranean, above which were once erected neoria. The haydays of Athens and Carthage as well as the long arm of Ptolematic Egypt, and the scale of naval investment by the tiny island states all become apparent from the study of shipsheds.

Carthage Admiralty island by Peter Connolly

Mediterranean cats are always appealing.

SHIPWAYS ? NOT AT THESE PRICES!

3D printing is here to stay and is making increasing inroads on the sculpture and modelling world. If you can master RHINO or SKETCHUP or another 3D CAD package then the world may be your 3D printed oyster.....

D3 printing solve your modelling problems can it do not

Issues of quality have now been largely solved. Some beautiful things can be produced with 3D printers in various materials.I have used SHAPEWAYS to make some 'safe' flexible plastic javelin heads and they are great.

Available HERE - you get two heads

SHAPEWAYS is one way to overcome the outlay on a 3D printer. They are still not cheap if you want a good one. Another argument against buying your own is the time, noise and temperature required.


Printing things takes time when using a fine strand of medium to build up the model. Hours are needed for even small things. The machines are not silent by any means and trying to sleep with a 3D printer chugging in the next room is difficult! A friend had to move his to the garage at his wife's insistence! (her or machine, he chose to move the machine ..new bed for her in the garage was too expensive).  Another factor is that the medium must be kept at a specific temperature range and this may involve insulating the printing pad or the room...

etc. etc.

SHAPEWAYS idea is that you send the file, they print it , you get the thing. Great !  They offer a great range of different materials from ceramic to plastics to steel !!!!! Once you set up your page there you can also sell to th epublic if they want a copy of what you have modelled.

There are galley models available on SHAPEWAYS. They look very nice. They are not so accurate representations of any ancient prototype but they prove it could be done. Relatively simple models should be easy and look very nice at various scales. Search for galleys or modern warships and you can find some nice looking stuff.

See at shapeways HERE

The big downside with SHAPEWAYS is the price. Economies of scale have not kicked-in yet. My javelin heads were so expensive I could not sell them. The model above is 26 Euro for a 6cm long model. Ancient galley battles require a lot of models...

The best function for SHAPEWAYS just now is for prototyping. Make your original and cast it in resin or lead.

The future is beckoning, though. Many times we can see CAD images used in advertising for miniature figurines rather than real figures. Look at Zvezda who use a lot of tech versus Streltsi who do not.

What the actual model looks like is another question...

 Soon the quality of 3D printing may approach a true copy of the CAD images.  The skills of the physical sculptor will vanish like the galleys we love.

Can the next one be a warship, please ?

Another well-preserved wreck from the Black Sea. At 2000m depth !

A small freighter of the size of the replica 'Argo or so. Cargo intact, wood preserved.


Read the whole story at BBC (pic from there too)

UPDATE

Work on rules and on a book continue. Reports from Rhodes and other places to follow.