The Lake Nemi ships. PBS had an interesting story about the two wrecks of ancient ships, found in the Italian Lake Nemi. These ships were constructed by the Roman emperor Caligula, and were enormous-one was constructed with 5 keels (for a beam width of 60 feet). The ships had buildings constructed on them, with tile floors, piped water systems, and elaborate systems including a mechanical bucket chain for emptying the bilge . Does anyone know what these ships were used for? Were they “party ships’ for the Roman nobility? Anyway, I ssume the life of these ships in fresh water could be very long-perhaps centuries? Is there any record of what happened to them under subsequent emperors? And, was there anything special about Lake Nemi? Was it the big vacation spot in 30 AD?
Did you watch the show? It was facinating, and they covered a lot of what you’re looking for. They were indeed the pre-Minnesota Vikings version of the ultimate party ship. The most infuriating thing is that there’s so much we’ll never know about the ships because retreating Nazi bastards burned them as they were being pushed out of Italy by the Allies.
PBS said what wiki did
One ship was a shrine dedicated to ceremonies for the Egyptian Isis cult or the cult of Diana Nemorensis, [edit and was] designed to be towed, and the other was a pleasure boat with buildings on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi
I never understood why the Germans burned these ships – it really was a loss for us all, they had no military value and, really no proganda value for a Army on the verge of getting Rome – and yet the Germans went out of their way to do this even to the point of using scarce fuel to make the burn complete … it just never made any sense to me