12-31-2006, 02:08 PM
My pleasure!
BTW, A Batavian soldier in all his kit would sink like a stone without his horse to hang on to!
There is a group here which wanted to try it as a publicity stunt, but never went through with it for safety reasons. A consideration was that modern day rivers in the Netherlands are VERY unlike the flatland delta rivers we used to have here in Roman times. Rivers nowadays are compressed into one deep, fast moving channel, ideal for motorized, deep laden shipping, but spelling disaster for oar powered biremes (unless rowing downstream, towing it upstream again would probably rip it apart, this is why I can't really envision it sailing from Millingen to Xanten) or horsepowered Batavians.
A liberna in RTW would indeed be very nice, especially manned with archers (flaming arrows into sails) and toting a balista or onage. Mind you, the Mainz and Oberstimm ships are quite nice, too, though less dramatic. Oberstimm predates Mainz a few hundred years, nice to see the building changes while the overall appearance stays the same.
The Masala shipwrecks in Italy (check the Navis site) were probably Liberna, by the way!
BTW, A Batavian soldier in all his kit would sink like a stone without his horse to hang on to!
There is a group here which wanted to try it as a publicity stunt, but never went through with it for safety reasons. A consideration was that modern day rivers in the Netherlands are VERY unlike the flatland delta rivers we used to have here in Roman times. Rivers nowadays are compressed into one deep, fast moving channel, ideal for motorized, deep laden shipping, but spelling disaster for oar powered biremes (unless rowing downstream, towing it upstream again would probably rip it apart, this is why I can't really envision it sailing from Millingen to Xanten) or horsepowered Batavians. A liberna in RTW would indeed be very nice, especially manned with archers (flaming arrows into sails) and toting a balista or onage. Mind you, the Mainz and Oberstimm ships are quite nice, too, though less dramatic. Oberstimm predates Mainz a few hundred years, nice to see the building changes while the overall appearance stays the same.
The Masala shipwrecks in Italy (check the Navis site) were probably Liberna, by the way!
