"Shipyard" Topic

A few repairs, a bit of strengthening, filling gaps and assembling – then the usual clean, prime and an initial coat of paint.

These are a pair of Bronze Age river/coastal craft destined for games featuring the NKE, Peleset or other Bronze Age peoples.

They needed a little more work than expected, but they're finally starting to look like boats rather than a collection of oddly-shaped parts.

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Looking at these, it strikes me that most Ancient armies on our tabletops march everywhere, despite the fact that many real-world campaigns and migrations probably depended heavily on rivers and coastal transport.

Do we underuse boats in ancient wargaming?

Believe you posted other pics of these earlier and mentioned a friend in Australia had printed them? Are they available widely and does he do it herself?

Do we underuse boats in ancient wargaming? Yes
25MM?

Looking good.

Very nice! You've got me thinking of adding boats to my Mycenaean and Sea Peoples armies!

Do we underuse boats in ancient wargaming?
Just thinking about it, some ways we could use boats include:
1. Naval battles between two squadrons (if those are 28 mm, the term "Fleets" might border on the grandiose.)
2. They could be part of a base, with the troops camped along the shore, and the ships drawn up on the beach. At Marathon, the Greeks and Persians fought among the ships.
3. As part of an assault force. Perhaps not quite a Bronze Age Normandy landing, but something close.
4. As an objective. If the ships are captured, the army has to walk home.
5. A portage the rapids game with the ships ashore being pulled over rollers has possibilities.
6. Use them as pontoons and run a roadway over them. Have guys with whips standing by ready to beat the sea if it is uncooperative.

Grelber

Cool ideas, Grelber.
When these are done, I'll have a total of six boats – 3 different types. Enough for some sort of clash.

@ Dave Jackson. My friend runs a commercial operation & would be open to orders. These can be sized to any scale. He charges reasonable prices but P&P to Canada would be not inconsiderable. I can give you his email address if you PM me.

Alternately, you could find the files online, buy them & find someone nearer to print them.

Ochocinco, I have a friend who has a 3D printer…so..if I look for them online, what am I looking for?

The boats are not actually historic but fantasy – though they look a lot like the Uluburan shipwreck.

Look for "Dwarves of Naminia" & "Naminian Boats". Done by Imagine 3 Designs. It says they'e on link

If you have problems, PM me & I'll talk to my 3d guy.

Do we underuse boats in ancient wargaming?

Of course I'm going to say yes.

But seriously: until the invention of the ram we don't read much about actual naval conflict, and ships were probably mostly for transport. In Bronze Age armies, most boats will be relegated to camp features.

OTOH: At a skirmish or mass-skirmish level, any scenario you can think of for Vikings involving ships will work for ancient raiders too. Homeric Greeks (and probably Luwians?) are generally assumed to have used ships of broadly similar design and function to Viking long ships.

I'd challenge the claim that there was little naval conflict before the ram.

Piracy was endemic throughout much of the Bronze Age. If people were attacking merchant shipping, then ship-to-ship interception and boarding actions must have been occurring regularly, even if they are poorly documented in surviving sources.

We also have direct evidence for naval combat. The reliefs of the Sea Peoples' attack at the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III depict what appears to be a major naval engagement during the Battle of the Delta. The ships are shown fighting at close quarters, with archery and boarding actions playing a prominent role. That suggests naval warfare in the Late Bronze Age was already more sophisticated than simply transporting troops from A to B.

If anything, the absence of an effective ram may have made boarding the decisive method of fighting at sea. The ram changed naval tactics; it didn't create naval warfare.

That said, your wider point stands: Homeric, Mycenaean, Sea Peoples, Phoenician and other early Mediterranean forces offer plenty of scope for Viking-style coastal raids, river expeditions, beach landings and shipboard skirmishes that are rarely seen on the tabletop.

I'd challenge the claim that there was little naval conflict before the ram.

That's not quite what I said, and definitely not what I meant.

When I say "ships were mostly for transport", what I mean is that all ships of the period were for transporting people and/or goods, but true warships specialized for naval combat at sea (starting with biremes, then triremes, then polyremes), and of marginal or zero utility for most anything else, hadn't been invented yet. A Homeric "war" ship was still basically a troop transport with a shallow draft and a lot of extra oars for bursts of speed, better littoral performance, and some ability to navigate dangerous waters (e.g. reefs and shallows) where tubbier or sail-powered ships wouldn't dare go. Like a Viking longship. In fact, the Greeks even called them "long ships".

Also keep in mind that the ships Homer describes are from his era in the Iron Age. He wasn't an historian, and the Iliad and Odyssey freely mix contemporary, historical, confabulated, and fantasy descriptions together. I don't think we really know what Mycenaean or Anatolian ships of the Bronze Age looked like. I would also take your approach, using good-looking models of approximately correct style with some kind of national character.

AFAIK the 1175 BC Battle of the Delta was the first naval battle documented in history, and literally the only one documented in the Bronze Age (so far). Since it was an ambush by a rich king against a huge maritime mob of warlike migrants, I don't think it works as an example of a standard sort of event of the period. Piracy, raids in force (of multiple ships), large transport operations, and big amphibious operations are all plausible, but nobody seems to be documenting anything like a "navy" (a fleet of ships dedicated to military operations on the water) or dedicated naval operations until well into the Iron Age.

- Ix