"Roman / Carthaginian galleys" Topic

Hello!

There exists 3 kits of galleys by Zvezda (Greek Triera, Roman Triema and Roman emporers galley). I would like to use these 3 ships for the battle of Mylae (260 B.C.). And there are some questions:

Is it possible to use the Greek Triera as Carthaginian galley (maybe with some conversions)?
Are the models tolerably historically correct?
Do some books, web-sites,… exist on this topic (building plans, tactics, organisation, crew,…)?

I am quite new to this period but really fascinated by these models. So thanks for all infos in advance.

Greetings from Austria
Thomas Krug

Hi Thomas,

I can't comment on how suitable the galleys are as Carthaginian ships. However, I am building the Greek Triera right at the moment, so I can tell you something about the kit. It is quite detailed, with a LOT of rigging which you have to make yourself. Doing this, the last part of building the model, after all the 'fun' painting and gluing, is quite tedious (boring) really. Of course you could leave this off the model if you intend to war-game with it.

The detail seems to be good and historically accurate. For instance there are three banks of oars, for a total of (I think I remember correctly) 108 oars in total – this looks very impressive when built and painted up! However there is no interior / below-decks detail apart from a couple of ladders disappearing down into the deck.

The box claims each ship had over 200 crew. This means almost half were sailors or soldiers (not rowers) so you should have a LOT of figures to stand on the deck and take part in boarding actions.

Luckily the Greek ship, and I would assume the others in the series, are a good size for putting lots of 1:72 scale figures on the deck, you could even add some ballistas and (if appropriate) towers on the deck. Of course you could fit on even more 15mm miniatures, or even a handful of 25mm ones! Even with the rigging in place there is still a fair bit of room for some models to stand on the deck.

A nice thing to do, if you want models to go on the deck, is to base them on some thin paper which you can buy, that is decorated (printed) with a wood-grain pattern. This looks like the painted plastic surface of the deck, so the figures 'blend in' without their bases being obvious. This of course only works for plastic models, metal ones would need a more solid base which would look a bit bad on the deck – especially if it had grass and sand on it!

The kits can be made to be a 'waterline' model or a 'full hull' model. You do have to saw the front ram in half to make the waterline model, but then it would sit flat on the table and look like it is in the water. As it is I have built one with the full hull option, so you can see the underneath of the boat. This also means you do not have to cut any of the oars to fit (or have them sticking up in the air, which would look silly…).

The main thing I would recommend is, if you plan on adding all the rigging, do not use the supplied thread which is much too thick to go through the holes in the plastic parts. You will need to use a fine copper wire or perhaps fishing line for some of the thinner ropes. The supplied thread is okay for about half of the rigging, and it does look good (like miniature rope), so don't throw it away – just supplement it with something thinner.

Just some thoughts about building these nice kits :)

A Greek Triere had 170 oars and about 30 crew (about half sailing crew and half fighting crew)

The Roman ship may be intended to be a 5 (as this was the only type fitted with a Corvus at the bow) but it is inaccurate in at least one respect – no oar box. During the Punic wars all roman ships would have rowed through an oar box though it is possible that smaller carthaginian ships did not.

I would be extremely surprised if any manufacturer produced an 'accurate' model at this scale as there are so many different interpretations of what the various ship types looked like. We have so little historical data that it is difficult to be certain of the appearance of more than a few details of even the major types.

From the illustrations on the site I'd say that they look quite good and are not ridiculously inaccurate.

Tony H

Thomas,

Zvezda have just added a Carthaginian ship to their range. It is in their catalogue and looking at the picture I am guessing it is a quadrireme.

The Zvezda Roman ship is a trireme. I'm unclear why Tony doesn't think it should have a corvus. However, Zvezda seem to be slightly short on the number of oars (they should have gone for 27, 27 and 31 on each side), and the main problem is that the ship of the line for the period you are interested in is the quinqireme, not the trireme.

The crew complement will typically be about 5 officers (captain, steersman, pilot, drummer/flutist, oars officer), 10 deck hands, and from 14 to 30 marines.

We're planning to put a game together at our club, and using triremes for a battle (in this case Hannibal the Rhodian) which was actually fought with larger ships is just one of the sacrifices.

Robert

Thanks for the infos – work has just begun. Photos can be found at

meinewebseite.net/tkr172

and

groups.yahoo.com/group/TKR172

Greetings from Austria
Thomas Krug

I belive all of the models in the range are "5s" with the usual 3 banks of oars, none of them is what we would call a classical trireme; but perfect for what Thomas is after. I think even true 25s (like Ral Partha/RAFM ) would look good, but yes, they are scaled for 1/72nd.

Lionel Casson in "Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times" reckons that in contrast to Carhaginian Fives, Roman Fives had five men to an oar, i.e. Renaissiance galley style. This was a simpler arrangement for an unskilled navy, and would have made their decks wider and able to accomodate more marines.

But it's only another theory and it wouldn't influence my use of wargame models too much.

I'm doing a bit of work with the Zvezda 1:72 galleys.

My intention is to put them to work on a large floor-area naval wargame. So far I've built 11 out of 38 planned.

The model kits are suitable for my plan, with large deck space for holding miniatures.

There are four kit styles in their series, although it looks like the two Roman ones are discontinued.

In any case, the kits share the same hull model and differ in only a few small points. The shape of the bow, the ram, the decoration over the stern are all interchangeable. It's easy to mix those parts between the kits. This means I'm creating a mixture of ships with different details but overall similarity.

Thanks to Thomas for posting the images. That helped me select the models.

Thanks also for turning me on to Casson's book. I'll be studying that (among others) while developing the rules.

My starting point for rules is William Johnson's rule set: link

More to follow on this project in a few weeks.

I wish i still had the Greek Warship that Atlantic made many years ago.

You got 2 Greek Warships for $25.00 USD now at that time that was a bargain.

Captain Gideon

You might want to look at Rod Langton's 1:300 ships link they are simply astounding.

Or to try out cheaper go for the fascinating Roman Seas range romanseas.com/index.html from Eric Hotz.

I suspect that either will be far more satisfying than the plastics.

I tried working with the Hotz models, but I wasn't happy with them at 1/72. The Hotz model images are very nice, and I'm sure they work quite well at the intended scale.

My local print shop wanted more to print the images scaled up onto heavy card than the plastic models cost out of the box.

As well, part of the fun of the project is investing the time to build and paint the models … so many details …

Hi

Doc phalanx, the problem I have with the theory is that the story by roman historians is that they copied a carthy five which was wrecked in a storm!

A few decades ago, I built a functioning model of a 5 with electric motors running the steering rack. I looked realy cool stroking across a local pond. The real problem with the model was the poor batteries of the day. It would burn out a set of batteries crossing the pond. And too often, the batteries would die in the MIDDLE of the pond meaning i had to wade/swim out to get my boat. And the local park types would yell at me.

And the "real boats" buys would JEER.

Rocky