Something silly

Forgive me, this is something silly and unrelated, but since yesterday was my day off I decided to take advantage of the facts that museums were for free.

I went to visit the Museum or Roman Civilization, amongst other things, and found a few models of ancient Roman ships.

This one was built based on the frescoes found in Pompeii!

This is a Roman system for hoisting sails

(some things never do change! O_o Amazing!)

And this is a mercantile ship:

It was particularly interesting to see the sail rigged through the canvas. Also going aloft was done through the rigging positioned in front of the mast. The ship also seemed to have additional steering to the front.

On both sides... and I am wondering if this is due to the fact we have lots of sand banks along our coastline.

Anyways... apparently they didn't know how to swim either - like most sailors - and one of the proof is the fact that swimming pools in public baths were pretty shallow and they could always touch the bottom XD.

The forecastle is small and cute and the ship is pretty razed. Merchant were really wealthy! Look how nice the decorations are (and I saw some decorations in another museums once and they were made of copper and iron and were really rich looking).