One of the few things that is fairly well known about the ship class (another blog posting will have to deal with the shifting use of the name) Liburna/Liburnica is that it meant a fast ship from its origin until the 2nd century AD.

What we know of the early Imperial liburna - structurally speaking - can be summed up in two words: not & much. It is commonly attested in funerary inscriptions, contracts, altars etcetera, as a type of ship. We know of a few dozen names of liburnae of the Misenate and Ravennate fleets and several names of ships in provincial fleets. It is a type of ship regularly mentioned in ancient literary sources as well. But what it looked like, can only be derived from those same sources. No remains liburnae have ever been found and then there are representative sources...These have their own problems of course, not to mention the fact that no image is ever positively identified as a liburna (oh, to have a grafito like the Alba Fucens one of a 'navis tetreris longa', ie: quadrireme).

It was already mentioned in AW II-2 (News and letters): the municipality of Millingen a/d Rijn (Netherlands) has conceived of the plan to rebuild a Roman liburna of the 1st/2nd century AD. As one of the very few Roman naval specialists in the country, I was asked to provide academic assistance.