Saxon "Keel" Construction

[authun]

This replica roman goods transport ship had to be rowed against the strong river currents of the Mosel and Rhine

This replica has an engine.. :wink:

They also used epoxy in its construction!

It's based on the memorial of a roman wein merchant which is in the museum in Trier. According to this stone sculpture, it should really be manned by giants and rowed by dwarves.



cheers
authun

[Robert Vermaat]

According to this stone sculpture, it should really be manned by giants and rowed by dwarves.

Seven dwarves (heyyy..) rowing with 3 oars each! Wow...

[M. Demetrius]

That's easy! One oar in each hand, and [not yet invented] stirrup for one foot. Obviously, the other foot is needed for balance, and for pushing the rower's weight against the oars.
:lol: :roll:

[authun]

I can't believe you bothered to count them!

That's it. It's obviously a rubbish replica. It's only got 10 oars per side. Completely inaccurate and pure speculation. I bet the wine is not original roman and simply purchased from the local Co-op. Come to think of it, they weren't even speaking latin.



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authun

[M. Demetrius]

At the same time as all that, it's about the best avaialble nowadays. Boats are required by law to have motors if they haul people. The price of getting a wooden boat build by a master ship's carpenter would be twenty times what they paid for Stella, and it would simply never have been built. Either we build models and marvel at them, and wonder what it would be like to have a "real ride", or we do what we have to do in the 21st Century, burdened down by bureaucratic regulations and insurance company requirements overpowered entirely by government demands.

They used epoxy. Yep. The Romans used pitch. So? They probably used electric saws to mill the wood. I don't care about that. They DID SOMETHING that nobody else was doing, and made a glimpse of Roman history available to the public that would otherwise not have been done.

Huge congratulations to the shipwrights and financiers who made this possible!

As for the sculpture, we already knew that it was characteristically unreliable as to scale. Cavalry riding dog-sized horses, scuta the size of dinner plates, pilum shafts the thickness of a man's wrist...it's artistic interpretation, and having to work with limestone, hammers and chisels. Can't argue about that, can we?

[authun]

I had hoped that my reference to giants and dwarves might have indicated that I was being somewhat tongue in cheek. As someone who builds boats using marine ply and epoxy, I am well aware of the benefits of modern materials. Many re-enactors use plywood for their shields anyway. It would have been financially impossible to replicate the construction method. As it is, the replica cost 400,000 euro. Pitch by the way was used as a sealant. Epoxy is used as a structural adhesive. They play quite different roles in boat building.

The engine is not so much a statutory requirement but a practical one. The ship is chartered and it is not possible to assess the rowing abilities of the people who pay the fee beforehand. I doubt the office workers out for a day on this boat have any idea of the effort required in rowing a 14 ton boat for a full day. Just in case you read german, there is a pdf about the boat's construction here:

[url:3mx2o6cu]http://fzarchiv.sachon.de/Fachzeitschriften/Maler-und_Lackierermeister/2008/02_08/ML_02-08_32-34_Roemisches-Weinschiff_auf_der_Mosel.pdf[/url]

The photo of the memorial above doesn't give much sense of scale. The real thing is huge. You can see how large on this casting mould taken from the original on page 3 here:

[url:3mx2o6cu]http://www.reckli.net/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/Flyer_Abformtechnik.pdf[/url]

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authun

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Well, since you have all agreed this is a totally inauthentic boat, not worthy of your selves :mrgreen:
best send it to me! :twisted: I can put my dream of owning a fleet of pleasure craft and yachts on the Med on its way, then!

It looks quite impressive! I wonder if it would have had ballast as it seems to ride very high in the water?

[Ron Andrea]

It does look well built.

Assumedly all those ale kegs. 8)

Riding that high and with do keel (in the modern sense) they better hope they don't encounter any cross winds or they'll all go swimming. :wink:

[authun]

Assumedly all those ale kegs. 8)

The memorial stone was that of a wine merchant and the Mosel river was a wine producing area in roman times. The area is full of roman sites.

One I visited was that of two restored mausolea at Nehren.



Vineyard workers had been using them as work huts for storing tools in the middle ages. When they were restored, they found the chambers still had the original paintwork on the plaster.



The mausolea still look over today's vineyards



and the Kelterstein, the large stone used for pressing the grapes is now located in the village down by the river. The actual villa site is at the bottom of the slope and, as an archaeolocial site, vines are not planted there.

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authun

[authun]

It looks quite impressive! I wonder if it would have had ballast as it seems to ride very high in the water?

It has a large hold so I suspect that the wine barrels were down below and rowers sat on the deck. I guess the memorial stone has the barrels on top to indicate that this was a wine merchant and the only way of doing this was to put the barrels, on the memorial that is, on the deck.

You'd probably want something more naval military rather than a bulk cargo transporter



Unless you wanting to go into the whisky export business that is.

NB for Ron: even with a mast and sail they still had a lot of oars.

[Ron Andrea]

Great pictures. Thanks.

The Romans may have transported wine, but I assume the Germans preferred a brew, like beer.

[M. Demetrius]

Maybe so, Ron. But Roman wine was held in high regard by Gallic chieftains, and perhaps Germanic, also. The beers and mead they could get any time, but wine wasn't produced in their areas so much at that time. Now, of course, French and German wines are world class as well as Italian.

[Robert Vermaat]

At the same time as all that, it's about the best avaialble nowadays. Boats are required by law to have motors if they haul people. The price of getting a wooden boat build by a master ship's carpenter would be twenty times what they paid for Stella, and it would simply never have been built. Either we build models and marvel at them, and wonder what it would be like to have a "real ride", or we do what we have to do in the 21st Century, burdened down by bureaucratic regulations and insurance company requirements overpowered entirely by government demands.

Not quite, fortunately. This one and the one recently completed in Woerden(The Netherlands) are little more than Roman 'look-alikes' which are used to ferry around tourists. And indeed, such ships are required to have an engine and other alterations to the original design. Both of course were freighters and not people haulers.

However, that's not necessary for all Roman replicas, such as these fast river patrol boats: the Victoria, the Lusoria and the most recent one from Millingen, The Netherlands. The were not built with modern materials, nor fitted with an engine I think.

[Robert Vermaat]

Back to topic though: does anybody know of a modern reconstruction of a Saxon vessel?

[Ron Andrea]

Yes, Robert, I believe that's what this earlier input by Ingvar Sigurdson was about. Of course, Sutton Hoo was a few centuries later than our period of interest.

Edwin Gifford, a martime architect built a 45 foot half size replica of the 'ghost' of the sutton hoo mound 1 vessel named the 'Sae Wylfing' .

See here for some small details and images http://maritimewoodbridge.org.uk/2007/SaeWylfing.htm

I believe that the small publication that he wrote on Anglo-Saxon vessels/sailing is still available from the Sutton Hoo Society.

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Ingvar

It's a very handsome reconstruction, whatever it's merits.