Relief depicting a harbour on a Sarcophagus (3rd century AD) found at Porta Latina in Rome. Now in Vatican Museum (inv. 927)

I was wanting to use the Sarissa Precision Warehouse as part of a small Roman wharf, a bit similar to what they already produce. Unfortunately their one was a bit too small for me as I wanted something that was substantial and an “eye-catcher”. Also I already had most of the Sarissa pieces I needed. All I needed was the wharf itself.

The plan was to have one whole side of the town the wharf, with the warehouse and factories adjacent. The military architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was engaged to draw up the plans.

He provided this detailed drawing that was accepted by local Propraetor.

As the Aedifactor required to bring this to fruition I needed to work out how to actually build it. I wanted a solid looking dock made of stone rather than a wooden structure. To fit the crane it needed to be at least 120mm deep, and 900mm wide to go across one complete table side. The completed structure needed to be stored in the “cave” so it needed to be made out of something solid. I first looked at 4mm mdf which I could have engraved the stone work in, but building stairs would be a problem, unless they were an add on making the build more fiddly. I had a left over piece of 20mm thick chipboard, which might work. The height was about right and it would be solid enough to take any storage in the “cave”. The problem is the soldering iron engraving would not work meaning that I would have to use the cardboard tiling method I have demonstrated elsewhere. This is very effective but too time consuming for the size I was looking at, and sticking the cardboard to the side would be problematic. I then thought of dense yellow polystyrene, which would be easy to work with, but would not stand up to being knocked about in the “cave”. Back to square one. I decided to have another look at some on-line options with my “goto” mdf, suppliers and finally came across this from TTCombat.

Three would cover the board edge, it was deep enough for the crane and had the stairs. In addition it was a flexible terrain piece as two pieces could form a central elevated plaza for a number of game systems. Problem solved. It would delay the completion of the town dockyard, but it wasn’t as if I didn’t have other things to work on in the meantime.

This photo gives you an idea of the layout I am after. In order to finish this I need to finish the market in the centre, including market stalls, the wharehouse a small merchant ship and the dockside crane. I have all of the scatter terrain and civilians so then I will be able to work on the combatants.

The Ports on the Tiber

The overall look of the wharf worked out exactly the way I wanted.