Roman Quinquereme galley 1

Okeefanokee The Seventeenth
Whatever this is, it is not a correctly depicted Roman galley. There are too many errors in it:

SAILS
Striped sails were used by Vikings and later on by medieval ships, but not by Romans. Roman sails, if not entirely white, had a painted edge on all four sides, and could also have had a painting in the center.
Also, during movement, only masts and sails were erected but the towers parts were stored below or on deck. During battle, masts and sails were usually kept at fortified posts at the nearest shore and only the towers were erected. But for display reasons (of the model), it is still okay to show both in an erected position.

OARS
The distance between each oar was 0.925m (the Roman "interscalmium"). When you look to the distance between oars on this fantasy ship here, the interscalmium is way too big. A human, based on this faulty interscalmium, would have been so huge, that this ship would be more the size of a small lifeboat.

OAR AMOUNT
A Roman galley of this type usually had 25 to 40 oars on each row of oars. This fantasy ship here has only 13 oars, like a small support galley.

OAR BOX
The shape of the oar box on each side of this fantasy ship is totally wrong, too.

SHIP STERN
The side decoration of the ship's stern area is also wrong-by-style. The lines on the sides would have followed the bending upwards of the stern.

SHIP BOW
The over-all shape of the ship's front section is totally wrong, too. The deck area was overleaping (overheanging) the width at the waterline a bit, similar to modern ships. Here, however, we see a strictly vertical non-curving of the hull. Highly unprofessionally "reconstructed".

ARMAMENT
Roman galleys had long-distant weapons on board, like ballistae and catapultae, and even of different sizes (small ones mounted to the railing, bigger ones along the ship's center axis). This ship's decks are naked, no armament at all.

SIDE RUDDERS
The fixing of the side rudders is that of a small river galley, but side rudders of sea-going medium to large war galleys where fixed in a very different way.

SAIL CONTROL
There are absolutely no parts on the deck and railing to control masts and sails. Seems they were forgotten by the kit producers, too.

SHIP CABIN
At the stern of medium and large galleys was the cabin that hosted the captain and the commanding officer. Totally missing in this plastic model kit.

If you want to build a FANTASY SHIP, this kit is the right for you. If however you want a Roman galley, there is currently no model kit that depicts them correctly, which is very sad. Other fantasy ship producers are Imai, Heller, and Zvezda. All are faulty to the extreme.