Louie da fly

Interesting what you see even when something is really familiar to you . . . After years of looking at the ship with the Greek fire, I've only just noticed that she has what are almost certainly TWO banks of oars! So she IS a dromon! Steven

According to the thesis by Mark Geanette (Mast Step and Keelson: The Early Development of a Shipbuilding Technology) mediaeval Mediterranean lateeners didn’t have a separate mast step. The keelson performed that function, being fixed more firmly to the keel where the mast was, as can be seen in the 11th century “glass wreck” of Serce Limani. Now that it’s almost time to put in the keelson I need to start thinking about whether the dromon should have one or two masts. Unfortunately, the available evidence is equivocal – some points to a single mast, some to two masts. One Mast: 1. When writing of dromons, Leo VI in his Navmachia Leontos Basileos (On Naval Warfare by Emperor Leo) refers only to “the mast”, never “the masts”. 2. The inventories for the Cretan expedition of 949 have survived, and they specify that for the 20 dromons of the fleet, 20 chalkisia (masts with sheaves at the top), 20 psellia (“rings” - probably some equivalent to parrels) and 20 sails must be supplied. 3. The only contemporary picture of a Byzantine warship with mast raised (the well-known picture from the Skylitzes Chronicle) shows a single mast. As it is using Greek fire, it’s almost certainly a dromon. Interestingly, the mast seems to have sheaves at the top. Two Masts: 1. An 11th century Byzantine document on siege warfare in the Vatican library (MS Vat. Gr. 1605 fol 40r) contains a contemporary picture of flying bridges being used to attack and cross the seawalls of an enemy fortification. These bridges are supported by two ships lashed together, each with two masts (see picture). It seems unlikely that without the support of a second mast a bridge of this sort could be kept from sagging forward too far to be of use. In his definitive book Age of the Dromon, Professor John Pryor has come down in favour of two masts, on the basis that a single mast would be insufficient for a vessel of this size, which would luff up and be uncontrollable. I’m not an expert in the balance of forces involved in the mechanics of sailing, but there are any number of contemporary pictures of galleys even larger than my dromon, with only a single mast and sail. They date to the 16th century, not to the 11th, but I don’t believe there would be any difference in the sailing capabilities of a 16th and 11th century galley. If anything, because the later galleys had up to four or even five men to an oar, their crews were considerably larger, increasing the weight of the later vessels. There is other evidence, but it’s also either confusing or equivocal. One quote (in Greek) from Leo VI text refers to a wooden castle “around the middle of the mast”. Though this initially sounds like a fighting top, galleys fought with their masts lowered, so it can’t be. On the basis that this passage was wrongly transcribed by the copyist, Professor Pryor suggests that with only slight alteration it could be read as “around the middle mast” or “around the middle (i.e. half way between) of the masts”, or “around the mast of the middle” (a term used to describe a mast shipped amidships, no matter how many masts the ship had.) The first two would mean the ship definitely had more than one mast, and the third could also be interpreted that way. But there is another possible “correction” – “in the middle, around the mast”, which takes no more liberties with the original Greek than the other three passages. Though most of the information above suggests a single mast, I’m leaning towards two, but I’m not certain – the evidence is just too indefinite. But I like to think of my dromon under both sail and oars, before the wind, with the two great lateen sails “goose-winged” – one to starboard and the other to port. Any comments or suggestions would be very welcome. Steven

This is looking very good, Patrick. Steven

I realised I'd lost track of this build and was wondering what had happened to it - I was enjoying it very much. I hope Glenn gets the opportunity to get back to it eventually. It's a beautiful model and a fascinating build. Steven

Hi Dan, Did this ever get finished? It was looking so good, and then just seemed to vanish off the radar. It'd be nice to see photos of the completed build if they're available.

That's wonderful, Jack. Thank you for your help. Best wishes, Steven

Five frames to go - well, half-frames really, as they're at the extreme ends of the ship. The new frames have made the hull much firmer and stiffer. It really feels like she has some strength to her. I still have to add the keelson and a couple of stringers, which should add further to the hull's integrity. And she looks a lot better with all the frames in place. I used the "one-shot" clamps to keep the hull ship-shape (sorry!) while I glued in all the extra frames. But now the glue has dried, the hull has retained the shape the clamps pulled it into. So I won't have to rely on the deck beams to pull the sides in. I'd hoped this might happen, but I wasn't relying on it. Next step, add the last few frames, then some tidying up - sanding the hull, repairing a few frames that broke off while I was working on the hull (VERY easy to do!), cleaning up glue residue, and trimming the tops of the frames flush with the top of the gunwales. Then I'll be able to go on and cut out the oarports. And now I'm looking ahead to where exactly the deck will go, where to put the platforms for the steersmen etc etc . . . So much still to do. This hobby is certainly teaching me the value of patience . . . Steven

Hi Jack, It's the rope loop that holds the yard to the mast. Yes, a higher resolution would be good. The picture isn't very clear. Steven

Jack, is there any chance you could post a close-up of the fixing for the yard? It's a bit hard to read the detail at this size. Thanks again Steven

Further to my post above, the tutorials which show the use of ammonia for blackening also stress the need for safety precautions, including eye protection and ventilation. Ammonia can be rather nasty stuff (it also bleaches and rots your clothes if you're not careful). Steven

Thanks everyone for the likes and comments. They're greatly appreciated. I got some time free to work on the ship after the family get-together. Making good progress. Here are a couple of photos with all the pegs in use at once. Once the glue is dry I'll be free to re-use the pegs to clamp the rest of the intermediate frames in place. However, it looks like I'll have to make more of them - I've had a larger breakage rate than I'd expected when bending them into position. Hi Druxey, One of the problems with wooden pegs is that they get glued to the frames if you're not careful. Plastic coated bulldog clips sound worth getting - could you post a photo so I can know what to look for? Does your wife remember where she got them (what town/shop)? If I can get hold of them, would you like me to buy some for you as well? Steven

Thanks for the likes, everyone. Much appreciated. Well, I was right; the in-between frames straightened out when I put them in water. So all that work at the beginning of the build went to waste. I'll know better next time (if I'm ever misguided enough to try this kind of build again!). But it made them flexible enough to bend to shape and clamp in place with the tiny clothes-pegs I once bought from an art/craft shop on the off-chance I'd use them one day. So here are the first two in place. And another few. I had to leave some spaces blank for the time being. The one-time clamp got in the way for two of them, and another broke when I bent it (so I have to soak another one to go in its place - but I have several extras I set aside in case this happened.) Tomorrow's Father's Day - the kids will be over, so I may not get any shipbuilding done - but I've got a whole lot of frames in soak for when I next get the time. In the meantime I'm listening to Paul McCartney's Ram album which my lovely wife gave me as an early Father's Day prezzie. Steven

Jack, Thanks very much for the prompt reply. I'll study the instructions carefully. Steven

Hi Cabbie, Mtbediz successfully blackened brass by soaking it in ammonia and heating it with a cigarette lighter in his Santa Maria build here. Steven PS: Nice to see a fellow ship modeller in Castlemaine. We're almost neighbours!

Jack, that is a beautiful build, with magnificent attention to detail. I'm very interested in how the yard is held to the mast. It appears to be just a simple loop of rope. Could you post a close-up of the attachment? I'm building a lateen rigged ship myself, and I really don't know the best way to attach the yard to the mast. Steven

DROMON UNPLUGGED! After two years and 5 months since I started planning it, and a year and seven months since I began building, the dromon has finally come off its plug. It was with heart in mouth that I undid the screws that held it in place and carefully jiggled it back and forth to free it up. I was concerned that the cling wrap might not have done its job properly, that glue might have seeped through and stuck the hull to the plug, with possibly disastrous results. But no ominous cracking or splintering sounds, and with a minimum of manoeuvring, the hull came away cleanly! I had already completed the stand so the newly free hull had something to support it safely. I'd hoped that putting gold paint on the stand would make it look like it was made of gold, but it didn't. What it did look like was gilded wood, which in my opinion is just as good and just as typical of Byzantium. The plug formed a support and and helped protect her from damage. Now she's off it, I have to be a lot more careful to keep her safe from cats and small children (both are risks where we live!). It was interesting to find that many of the frames had fragments of a thin skin of glue adhering to them, where it had been pressed up against the inner face of the clingwrap and dried, and I needed to crack them off to tidy the inside up. I'm not going to bother with being too thorough getting rid of them, as they'll be hidden by the deck planking anyway. Turning the ship right way up for the first time without the plug and its supporting substructure makes evident for the first time the slim elegant shape of what is effectively a bloody great 90 foot rowing boat. Removing the clutter at the top by trimming the frames that were sticking up above the gunwales made the shape more elegant still. And to give some idea of just how thin the planking is, here is the ship with the light behind it - you can see right through the planks! (Note; this also made evident some gaps I hadn't seen when it was on the plug, so I have some more filling to do. But it's really not as bad as it looks in the photo - the light shining behind makes even the tiniest gaps look enormous). And she's so light! - 70 grams, or 2.4 ounces. I know that there's more to add to her before she's complete, which will make her somewhat heavier, but she will still be very lightweight, as is appropriate for a vessel powered only by human muscle. My temporary (or perhaps I should say one-time) clamps work a treat counteracting the springy frames' tendency to push the sides outwards. The clamps are just held there by friction so I can take them off and put them back on as I work on the rest of the ship. I won't be able to take them off permanently till I have glued at least a reasonable number of deck beams in place to hold the sides of the hull in, but first I have to do a fair bit of mucking around within the hull, as otherwise the deck beams will get in the way of what I want to do. My next task is to put in a new frame between every pair that are currently in place - due to lack of space I'd only been able to put in every second frame while she was on the plug, so now she needs the rest of them installed. (I've got the new frames already made and bent roughly to the correct curve. But if as I plan to, I soak them before gluing and clamping them in place, I think they'll lose whatever shape they previously had, and will take on the shape of the vessel itself as they dry. So I suppose I might as well not have bothered to bend them in the first place. But that's all part of the learning experience.) Then I have to put in the mast steps, plus the frames to hold the lower oars in position (and I'm still not certain how I'm going to do that). And on and on after that. There's a lot in the sequencing, to avoid painting myself into a corner. But I'm very pleased with how she's turned out. She's just beautiful! Steven

Druxey, you may well be right. I don't have access to any oars at the moment (though Ballarat's Lake Wendouree has hosted and continues to host many rowing competitions - even the 1956 Olympics!). To see the mutant looking oars the original mediaeval representations show, have a look at some of the pictures on the first page of this log. Steven

Thanks everyone for the likes. Druxey, it's a bit hard to know. The oars are based on very conventionalised pictures by monks from the 12th century AD, showing the blade almost indistinguishable from the loom - it just sort of tapers gently outward at the end. I tweaked them to make them a shape I thought more likely to have worked. But I have no idea how close they are to the originals, if at all. All I have that I can rely on is the size of the oarports, and they are are roughly semicircular with a 2.5mm (3/32") diameter, which converts at full scale to 125mm (just under 5"). Check it on a ruler - in my opinion that's a very narrow oarblade to drive a 90 foot ship, even if you have 100 of them. I expect the oar would go through the port more easily on an angle, but it still wouldn't be able to be all that much wider than 5". Perhaps the original pictures are closer to the reality than I thought. Steven

An unusual model that looks like being a lot of fun! Steven

I made filler out of sawdust and white glue, though in some places I was trying to build up the shape rather than just fill gaps. The planks are pine, and I could have colour matched using pine sawdust, but I felt it would be better for the filler to stand out somewhat so I could tell better where the sanding was needed. So I used plane-tree sawdust, of which I had huge amounts. It was all a bit gloopy, but sanding smoothed it down nicely. It's still not quite perfect, but I think it's as good as I can realistically expect to achieve. The very first strakes I put in pace were a bit mis-aligned so the carvel planking looked more like clinker, and I had to use the filler to build the hull up a bit to create a smooth surface after sanding. Here you can see the hull after filling and sanding. The darker areas are where the filler is. And the gunwales at the "tail" were a little different from each other in shape, so I used filler to build up the one I didn't like, then file and sand it down to the same shape as the other. This is the "good" one, bent directly to shape: (there's a bit of filler on the sternpost, but that's just to fill a small gap between the post and the ends of the strakes) And here's the other one fudged to the same shape with filler. Yes, I know it's cheating, but I felt justified in doing it this way rather than trying to make another wale with as little likelihood of duplicating the other one as I'd had the first time. There were also gaps in various places that the filler helped fix. I've finished shaping the ends of the stand and sanded them smooth. And I've glued the stand together. As well as white glue, I used a small escutcheon pin to hold each end to the connecting beam. Once the glue is dry, I'll paint the stand gold (there'll be gold on the model itself, so it will fit right in), and then I'll have somewhere stable to put the hull so I can (finally!) take it off the plug. But there's another issue to solve when I do that. It's been a worry to me that the springiness of the frames has forced the gunwales outward by about 3mm (1/8") each side compared to the shape of the plug. At the moment I've got the gunwales held in place with temporary screws in the plug (see second photo above), but at some point they have to be removed. So I devised a set of temporary clamps to slip over the gunwales at strategic points along the hull. They are made of popsicle sticks with a bit of bamboo skewer through a hole at one end, and there'll be another bit of skewer on each, in the right place to hold the gunwale in position at its particular location along the hull. Naturally, I have to determine the correct width for each clamp, as the width of the gunwale varies depending on position. These clamps will stay in place until I can glue in deck beams, which will permanently hold the gunwales in their proper position. Finally, after a lot of agonizing and soul-searching, I've come up with a simple, elegant jig to mark out the oarports for the lower bank of oars. Fortunately, a fragment of oarport strake has survived on one of the galleys discovered at the Yenikapi site in Istanbul, with one damaged and two intact oarports. I blew up the archaeological drawing of the strake to the same scale as the model and made the jig you see here. Its operation is simplicity itself - just rest the jig on the wale below at the location of the oarport, and trace through it onto the hull with a (very sharp!) pencil. No need to laboriously measure up from the wale each time, or try to get a line exactly parallel to the wale. Just rest the jig in place, trace through, and bingo! you have a guideline to cut the port. When it came to making the jig I discovered the oarports were quite a bit smaller in reality than I had believed. In fact the oars I'd made previously wouldn't fit through the hole in the jig. I thought I was going the have to re-make (or at least drastically alter) the 50 (upper bank) oars I'd made. But using the only lower bank oar I've made so far, I discovered a very small amount of sanding of the blade would narrow it enough to go through the port, and an equally small amount of thinning allowed the loom to fit through the port in its proper location with enough room for full freedom of movement for the oar. And the difference is almost undetectable to the naked eye. I can justify not altering the upper bank oars by telling myself that they are longer than the lower bank oars and subject to greater forces, so it's ok for them to be a little thicker in the loom (and they don't need oarports, as they are on the upper deck). And the difference in blade width - well, maybe the upper oars need wider blades to get more purchase in the water (a bit thin, I know, but what the hey - I really don't think it'll be noticeable anyway - this is just in case someone asks awkward questions . . .) Steven

Not a problem. Hope it helps. I stumbled across this book a few weeks ago and was very favourably impressed. It's not a very big book, but I found it very informative and comprehensive. There's all too little information around on these craft, and the author has not only assembled pretty much everything in the historical record, but also done his own research and recorded such things as local variations (such as the prevalence of double canoes in the South Island because of the lack of trees of sufficient girth for single ones) the recent upsurge in Maori interest in these vessels, and the building of new ones in the last couple of decades. They were in danger of becoming yet another extinct vessel, but now their future seems good. Steven

I just finished reading a very informative book on the Waka in my local library, with a wealth on detail on the canoe's history and construction with a part by part description of the parts of the vessel, how trees were selected, cut down, hollowed out (part cutting, part burning), superstructure, the role of tabu in the shipbuilding process, you name it. It's by Jeff Evans and is called "Waka Taua: The Maori War Canoe". Published 2012 ISBN 9781875514401. I recommend it highly. I had no idea these vessels were so sophisticated. Steven

Lovely work, Dick. Steven

Dick, every time I think it can't get any better you come up with something new and amazing! Really looking forward to seeing her spread her wings. Steven PS: Thanks for the comment on the dromon

Thanks for all the likes and the comments. Bearegalleon said Nope, not on this one, though one of the guys I've carved to be part of the crew is a Varangian Guardsman (He's the tall one). I've been in Hagia Sophia and taken photos of the famous runic graffiti - it says something like "Halfdan was here". But there's graffiti everywhere in Hagia Sophia! Including some ship names and dates from the 18th century on one of the marble columns on the southern gallery, plus another of a ship I think is 15th century scratched on another column (I have photos!) Steven