Activity: Sailing a Model Roman Ship

So! We began 2021 with a look at Romans and the sea.

We had a day at the seaside at Gorleston (next to Great Yarmouth) where there is a lovely Grade 3 listed model boating pond dating from 1918, edged with a low wall and about 55cm deep.

We took along an EBayed Playmobil Roman ship, first stripped of all parts that might suddenly pop off and sink without trace (eg: almost everything, given that this is Playmobil).

As it was a Sunday morning, one end of the pond was in use by the actual model boat club with gorgeous handcrafted remote control boats, very fast toy speedboats that felt a bit threatening to our ponderous craft, and a life sized model swan, but there was lots of room at the other end for us away from the bow waves.

Our unpowered ship was tied to a ball of string for recovery which made the experience a bit like flying a kite - two or three minutes of watching it float or running along pulling the string and then an inevitable crash and relaunch. The toy boat actually floated very well unless it got water inside as that made it capsize right over at the slightest tilt, Mary Rose style, and it turned out that the sail is strong but fundamentally made from a kind of paper which shouldn’t be submerged more than once or twice. We mostly sailed the craft unmanned but we did try to stand two Playmobil legionnaires on the deck at one point - they flew right off into the water the second it was pulled fast and had to be saved from becoming human sacrifices to Neptune by some quick grabbing.

I was pleasantly surprised that neither Kane nor I ended up even partly in the pond ourselves as the string worked well for boat retrieval and at nearly seven Kane is now old enough to lean over and launch the model without immediately following it in headfirst.

Despite our very low-key nautical achievements the activity involved a lot of giggling and fun and Kane got very engaged with trying out the boat, so a good time was had by all (including several groups of spectators on the prom above).