The Armada of Venice

While my main interest is in the Age of Sail, recently my fascination with Renaissance galley warfare increased. Due to changing from larger scales to 1/1200, and other, more economical projects in the foreground, I thought I could scratchbuild some, to complement my Ark Royal ADW ships.

Fortunately I have Blue Stuff at my disposal, so my thought process was to create some masters from balsa, then a bunch of resin copies using magic sculpt. On the image above you can sort of see the evolution of the idea, from left to right.

First I made a rather simple hull that looked sort of okay from a distance, and made a two-piece press mould for its left and right sides. I made two copies of the hull which came out less than stellar. I used balsa strips for the oars which kind of looked out of scale, but fulfilled their visual cue. I upgraded one of the resin hulls with a more pronounced forecastle and some sanding at critical points. As I had no more need for the master prototype, I painted it as an Islamic galley in mostly green colours, and some bright dots on the deck to represent the oarsmen. Now it awaits its base, some rigging and a layer of varnish to be finished.

At this point I consulted some reference images taken at Sjöhistoriska in Stockholm and the Athens Maritime Museum, both of which I have visited and have excellent large scale galley models. These show some detail that are nigh impossible to discern from period art. I also looked up the Galera Real housed in the Barcelona Museum, and I've wrought my cunning plan.

For the second master I built a ship that was more galley-like, especially at the prow (this time made of two separate pieces), and also sculpted a three-dimensional representation of the oarsmen (which is just a bunch of protrusions at this scale). 

It was time to improve the press mould as well. I made a four-walled rectangular frame for it, which resulted in a better fit for the two parts, and instead of casting sideways, I made an imprint of the bottom and top sides of the ship (that's the blue thing secured with tape, third from the right, with another galley just 'on the stocks' inside of it). The results, I think, speak for themselves - these can now go into 'mass production' (meaning one or two complete hulls a day, depending on the weather, which affects the curing time of the magic sculpt).

I dropped the balsa oars as well and marked some strips of more magic sculpt with a dull scalpel, which look way better in my opinion.

Now that the assembly line is ready, I intend on making about ten regular galleys, a couple of galeasses (the master for which can be seen at the bottom), and a further few galiots and flagships. Blue Stuff can be put in a pot of boiling water and re-used, so the other ships will follow after my tally for the current hull type is complete.

All of this reminds me of the Venetian way of assembling galleys in a 'production line' I just read about, hence the title of the blog post.

My long term goal is to purchase more from the excellent Warfare Miniatures and Langton ranges, but, considering the price of the models, especially for the latter, now I'm contended with making my own.