To complement our Bireme, here is a small trading ship in 1:72 scale from the same era.
The hull and the deck of this ship print out as one single piece. Only the stand and the masts, yard and rudder parts come as separate items.
As my historical reference, the aim here was to reproduce the second ship that is depicted on the Vulci vase that had provided the reference for the Bireme. It is a trading ship, with a distinctive rounded hull, moving by sail rather than by oars and with railings on the sides. The bireme on the vase is very flat in comparison.
This model is 20 cm long which means that in real life the ship would have been around 15 m in length.
The crew of these ships apparently was small with four to six people. You can find a Greek steersman in my Greek Sailors set. Shortly I will add there some more regular sailors that you can use for this model.
The pictures here show my first quality test result with the model reduced to 1:100 scale (x0.72 of original size). Of course a full size version fully rigged with bales of cloth, amphorae of oil or wine and pallets of timber in the open hull is in the works and will be featured here soon.
