Well now that I have completed la EstefanÃa the number of boats in my collection has well and truly doubled! But, why stop at doubling my collection? And as I have been making boats according to what some of my friends and family have been requesting I have one more to do. This one is.... odd. I offered to make my friend a pirate ship. In my mind I was going to make a little Fluyt. But then he turned around and asked for a Greek/Roman warship! And so it began...
 |
| This thing is very small for a rowed ship. so I'll give it some serious sail power to compensate |
 |
| I'll add armour plates to the front. To protect it against cannon fire once it goes in for a ram. |
 |
| The book in the background is Patrick O'Brian's HMS Surprise, an appropriate book to be reading! |
 |
| I'll probably use oars (forgot the term for them) rather than a rudder on this one. |
Well there you have it. My strangest boat yet. Lots to do yet but it'll be a fun one once it's done. Also if you know where I can get Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin series cheaply I'll be very thankful. I have books 1-3 then 8. So I need to get 4-7 or else number 8 will be sitting on my shelf tempting me to skip ahead.
It is not clear whether the vessel you are making is from 'Ben Hur' times, or perhaps much later - Lepanto, say. What yoyr pictures show, it could be either!
ReplyDeleteI am very much an admirer of Patrick O'Brian's sea novels, though I haven't read all of them - not even half (1.2.4.6.8 and 9) The first on I've read #4 'The Mauritius Command' I still regard as the best, and is one of the five titles I have in my bookshelf.
For a long time I thought that the Battle of Ile de la Passe in the Mauritius Command story was simply the Battle of Algeciras translated to an exotic setting. Turns out I was wrong. A few years ago I picked up a copy of Samuel Walters Lieutenant RN 'The Memoirs of an Officer in Nelson's Navy'. That told me there WAS a Mauritius campaign in 1809-10, and a real Ile de la Passe battle that was... I'll leave you to discover the outcome of that action.
Indeed that is part of the mystery/problem. It is what happens when someone asks for both a pirate ship and a galley a la 'Ben Hur'. I am sure it will look nice in the end but I doubt it will ever look right. But sometimes peculiar is good.
DeleteWhen I was a kid, my mother had a whole bunch of Girls Annual type books, full of short stories and articles. The stories didn't interest me much (one or two did, but, tou know... girls. This when I was ten, you understand). But one had a rerrific article called 'The Corsairs', and it was about the Muslim pirates of the North African coast, who preyed on Christian merchant vessels in the Mediterranean sea. A lot of the corsairs' ships were in fact galleys, chock full of men, ready to pounce on the incautious who had becalmed themselves too near their lairs and ambuscades.
ReplyDeleteMan that was a great article - some really exciting stories of desperate, and not often successful defence. So your pirate galley could as well be from a classical as the Renaissance period.
Interesting. Although I believe that the galley (or rather ram) design I am using is more suited to the ships of the ancient world rather than the Renaissance. Although Oronegro is a fictional setting so perhaps some people saw ancient designs and thought they might still be effective.
Delete