Calling all ancient warships fans

[JWintjes]

Ok, let's see how far we can get. What I want to try is to collect all information available on plastic kits of ancient warships out there. Not that there are many of them.

First off, a list of kits with short notes; longer reviews further below:

Academy

Greek Warship - 1/72 (also sold as 1/200) - well-engineered kit, good hull, very poor oarage, old Imai?
Roman Warship - 1/72 (also sold as 1/200) - well-engineered kit, good hull, very poor oarage, old Imai?

Aurora

Bireme - ?Scale? - no info

Heller

Bireme Imperator - 1/72 - excellent kit with good detail apparently well researched; hull considerably too short, though
Bireme Imperator - 1/225 - no info

Pyro

Roman Merchant Ship - no scale given, perhaps about 1/200 - smallish Pyro kit with some toylike features; still fairly good representation of a Roman corbita

Zvezda

Greek Trireme - 1/72 - well-engineered kit, but very inaccurate; probably rather 1/100
Roman Trireme - 1/72 - basically the same as the Greek Trireme
Roman Imperial Trireme - 1/72 - basically the same as the Greek Trireme
Carthaginian Warship - 1/72 - basically the same as the Greek Trireme

If you have any info on any of these kits or know of other kits of ancient warships, post it below, I'll then add it to the list.

Jorit

[JWintjes]

Heller Bireme Imperator 1/72

Below Heller's Bireme in a fairly old box (nice box top design). What is already obvious is that there is some issue with the hull.

Which becomes more obvious here - the hull is too short, lacking a number of oars on each side. That makes it necessary to lengthen the hull a bit.

Smaller bits and pieces.

More smaller bits and pieces.

A largeish chunk of plastic that could turn into a nice stand.

Vacuformed sails - certainly not to everybody's liking.

Instructions.

So what do we have here? As a kit it's a nice one, well-engineered and with good detail. But is it accurate?

In all honesty, that is very difficult to say. The box top claim is not exactly specific - probably a ship from Roman imperial times, which happened to span half a millenium. Unfortunately little is known with any precision about Roman ship types from that period. The kit's smaller details (bow decoration etc) are based on sarcophagi, reliefs and other iconographic evidence from the early empire; hull shape, oarage and other major construction elements however are largely unknown.

Personally I believe that it is possible to build a plausible, generic 1st c. AD bireme from the kit (if one does the hull lengthening bit that is).

Jorit

[aleccap]

Awaiting Emhar 1-72 Viking long-boat, by all accounts a very nice plastic kit, crew in the form of oarsmen from Emhar - be able to tell you more when my kit arrives, please check my thread on the above subject.

[JWintjes]

Great, but I guess it will be better to open a separate Calling All Viking Ship Fans thread here - after all, calling them ancient is stretchings more than only a wee bit...

Jorit

[JWintjes]

Pyro Roman Merchant Ship

Pictures follow tomorrow, but here is a first impression. For some reason "Septimus Severus" is written on the box (should of course be "Septimius Severus"), but at least we thus have a fairly precise date for what the model tries to portray - a late 2nd/early 3rd century freighter.

No scale is given, but 1/200 to 1/220 figures look about right aboard; the hull is about 14cm long. The ship is clearly modelled after some sarcophagi, which unfortunately tend to distort dimensions dramatically. I'm unsure about the hull, which is almost drop-shaped, but the smaller details are both nice and surprisingly delicate for a kit that dates back to 1968.

Jorit

[cerberusjf]

....

[JWintjes]

Great, thanks for the additional info!

I have some of the paper kits and one of the AER wooden ones (these are really bad as kits go) and will try to get them in here in the future.

The Mantua, well, "thing" is really a bad joke. It almost looks like they took the Imai/Academy model as their prototype.

The big and expensive one should be the Andrea Miniatures "Bireme", which caused quite a stir when it was shown off at Nuremberg a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it's woefully inaccurate, which is a pity for a kit that expensive.

In general I cannot fail to be absolutly flabberghasted by the fact that noone managed to produce a halfway decent trireme, even if we have a decent reconstruction (not without its problems, but probably as close as we'll ever get).

Jorit

[cerberusjf]

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[JWintjes]

The original Zvezda kit is sold as "1/72 Greek Trireme"; unfortunately, the classical trireme is the ship we probably know most about, so there is good reference and even a reconstruction to check the kit against. Major points are:

1. Scale is off. If you let a 1/72 figure "stroll" over the decks, you'll find that most of the fittings seem to be designed to 1/100 scale rather than 1/72.

2. The ship is kataphract (ie has an upper deck). That's totally wrong; classical triremes were aphract (at least in the overwhelming majority of cases) unless there were special reasons for having that upper deck (eg horse transport). As a result, the ship looks very dissimilar to the Olympias reconstruction and the available iconographic evidence.

3. The outriggers are fully enclosed, which again was very uncommon with classical triremes.

4. The hull is far too squat and lacks the sharpness the prototype has.

Here you can see both the lack of a complete upper deck and the way the outriggers looked like. That's very different to the Zvezda trireme:



Then of course they committed the cardinal sin of ship manufacturers and simply repackaged their stuff. Now, a Roman ship dating to the first decade Punic wars ("Roman trireme", easy to date as it has the boarding bridge which fell out of use during the war) was presumably quite different from a classical Greek trireme (after all, there is a time difference of around 200 years), though in all honesty we don't know a lot about these ships. The same goes for Roman imperial times - again 200 years further down the line, and even less is known with certainty about how these ships looked like.

This is all rather deplorable, as - although it has hard plastic sails - the kit is said to be well-engineered and quite buildable.

Jorit

[cerberusjf]

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[RCBRAITHWAITE]

Here is a recent photo of a 1:24 model of the full size replica of the Trireme Olympias that I am currently working on.
details on progress can be seen at my website:
http://richardsmodelboats.webs.com/

[Felix C]

How much hull lengthening is required on the Heller 1/72 Bireme kit?

Is the Aurora kit the same?

[USS California BB44]

The Acadamy Roman Warship is a decent beginner kit. No small parts. But then again, most of the parts are lacking in detail. It's poroblema are similar to the heller bireme kit. Too small of a hull, vacuformed sails, almost ZERO detail and most irkingly, it only provides half as many oars as there should be for the kit. (It is a bireme and they only provide enough oars for the lower deck)

[carr]

Here is a recent photo of a 1:24 model of the full size replica of the Trireme Olympias that I am currently working on.
details on progress can be seen at my website:
http://richardsmodelboats.webs.com/

That is absolutely phenomenal craftsmanship and woodworking!

As a builder of 1700's sailing ships, though, one aspect strikes me as odd. The vertical support members (futtocks) are not joined to the floors and therefore do not form a continuous frame as seen in construction methods from the 1700's. It seems like this would produce a very weak structure with the planking being the actual structural element rather than what should be a frame. Is there any definitive evidence that this is how they were actually built? Different era, different methods, I guess.

Regards,
Bob

[RCBRAITHWAITE]

So far no wreck of an Athenian Trireme has been found. The had no ballast and so did not sink when holed. Some merchant ship wrecks (which sunk with their cargoes/ballast and become covered by sand and so protected) have been found from this period (eg the Kyrenia wreck) and these have had a similar construction. The main issue for a long wooden warship of this type was longitudinal shear deflection (rather than transverese strength of the frames) and it apears that this was aleviated by mortising the edges of the planks every 100mm or so and fitting accurate tongues of wood to lock the planks together and stop them sliding over one another. The hull is planked up over formers and the lightweight frames are added afterwards. This requires a high degree of woodworking skill but resullts in very strong lightweight hull with a smooth exterior. This kind of warship would not have been possible with the later plank on frame approach, which is much heavier and provides insufficent shear stiffness for a long warship with limited depth. John Coates book "The Athenian Trireme" has a good review of the evidence for the configuration and construction of the trireme and how he interpreted it for his "Olympias" reconstruction.

[Charlestonguy]

Another example of how the hull was made stable is found in Acts Chapter 27:17, here Paul describes how they used cables/rope to bind the hull.
"27:17 After they had hoisted it up, they used cables to help reinforce the ship. Fearing that they would run aground on the Syrtis sand bars, they lowered the sea anchor, and so were driven along."

I built the Academy and Heller kits. Both are good kits but as mentioned earlier not that accurate but they are fun builds.
The Academy seems to be closer to 1/100 scale. The most common mistake, (apart from number of oars) I have seen on both is the various shield designs used. Each ship would have been comprised of a single combat unit and as such all the shield should have the same markings and colors. The standard carried on the stern would have denoted which unit they were.
I have the Zvezda Roman Trireme to build next, but I plan to make a number of changes on this one that I did not do on the others.

Great thread and glad to see attention being paid to this subject.

Edit note on building Academy, Heller and Zvezda kits:
Academy and Zvezda are very soft plastic, be very careful when applying glue (I use Testors liquid cement), just a dab will do or you risk melting the plastic. The Heller kit is black plastic and very brittle. Take care when cutting and trimming this one.
I used Styrofoam jigs to set my oars, just place along the sides at the angle you want then glue the oars in place. Hope this helps.

Links to my Roman fleet
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

[carr]

Here is a recent photo of a 1:24 model of the full size replica of the Trireme Olympias that I am currently working on.
details on progress can be seen at my website:
http://richardsmodelboats.webs.com/

I just saw the latest update and, again, I'm blown away by the craftmanship. Absolutely outstanding! I can't wait to see more.

[Charlestonguy]

I just saw the latest update and, again, I'm blown away by the craftmanship. Absolutely outstanding! I can't wait to see more.

Agree great work and thanks for posting the build process!

There may not be any Greek Triremes around but they have found Roman period ships wreaks. Here is a link to a Punic build ship found a few years ago.

http://www.mmdtkw.org/CNAf0319MarsalaPunicWarship.jpg

[SvenLittkowski]

An old subject, but if anyone is interested in assistance for developing ancient ships, I can help you. I am since 25 years in the field of maritime archeology.

[Charlestonguy]

cool video on Greek warship Argo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_0bwC7Hi8