Katana Viking Longship
08/03/2001
The Katana is Mitsuo Kobayashi's ship, built in the style of a Viking Longship. Mitsuo uses this ship to cruise the waters of Castle World. It has enchanted cargo holds that allow it to hold much more than would appear from the outside. It also has enchanted sails, which Mitsuo can use at any time to always have wind in the sails. The ship has a crew of 28 oarsmen, one man at the rudder, a cadence drummer, three lookouts, Mitsuo, and his son Kenji. The Katana is the flagship of the Stone Dragon Clan.
While I was attending Brickfest 2001, I marveled at all the magnificent castle and pirate creations, and decided that it was time for me to expand into another theme. However, being who I am, I can't do anything like what's already out there. Thus, I decided to make a Viking Longship, as there are very few viking creations out there. But not any ordinary longship, oh no. This particular one has a motorized rowing mechanism. All 28 oars row in unison.
This longship took about a week to design and build, with a great deal of pondering and thinking along the way. The mechanism that runs the oars is driven with a cam at either end. These cams are connected via an axle through the middle of the ship, so they spin in unison. The cam at each end is connected via a long technic beam. In every other hole of this technic beam is the end of an oar. This beam rotates as a four bar mechanism in the shape of a parallelogram (the mechanical engineers among you should understand this quite simply). A technic motor drives all 4 cams.
The rest of the ship was built up rather simply around the rowing mechanism. There are 28 rowing seats, plus a steering oar/rudder on the aft of the ship. There is also another sailor there to keep time. The ship is 14 studs wide at its widest point, and is 108 studs (33 inches) long. In case you're wondering, no, the sail is not from Lego. It's actually a piece of cross-stitch canvas.
The astute viewer may notice that these aren't vikings manning this ship. Well, when I built this ship, there weren't Viking Lego figs, and since I needed a crew of at least 32 (28 oarsmen, one rudder operator, one guy to keep the rhythm on the drum, a lookout, and the captain) I needed to crew the ship with a theme I had plenty of figs in. Thus this ship comes from a slightly alternate reality, where Feudal Japanese Culture has Viking Longship technology. Hey, it's Lego, expand your mind :)
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