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.

Reconstructing any ancient warship is frought with problems, however, so a lot of research will have to be done before the keel is laid. To start off with, we (Erik de Gans, projectleader for the municipality, Henk van der Zand and yours truly took ourselves to the Museum für Antike Schiffahrt (Museum for Ancient Shipping) in Mainz, Germany. This museum has life-size reconstructions of two late Roman warships, the wrecks of which were found in the city of Mainz a few decades ago. Around those two reconstructions they collected a bunch of (copies of) inscriptions, reliefs and depictions of ancient ships so that the museum really has become a study-center for shipping in the ancient world. What better place to start our investigations?

Erik presented our plans to Dr.Ronald Bockius, lead researcher at the museum. He, in turn, explained some of the problems in reconstructing any ancient ship and especially the enigmatic liburna. On the museum floor, he showed how he derived proportions from the Neumagen wine ship relief and Trajan's column to reconstruct two 1:10 scale models of a 3rd century bireme (the wine ship) and a early 2nd century liburna. We'll have to do a lot of research ourselves (of which more in later blogs), but this visit was certainly illuminating and helped us get on the right track from the beginning.