Materials. Cardboard of medium thickness (thin cardboard will bend and thick is difficult to cut), white paper—cartridge paper or ordinary exercise paper—and coloured paper or chalks, scissors and pen-knife, ruler.
Fig. 170
CARDBOARD AND PAPER SHIPS SCHOONER
(Part II, Chapter XIV)
Plate IV CARDBOARD AND PAPER SHIPS
The Viking Ship (Fig. 170). Give the children oblong pieces of cardboard, A B C D, about 8½ inches by 2½ inches. A line, E F, drawn across the middle of the cardboard gives the top of the ship. The ship is then drawn on the cardboard, and the shaded part of the cardboard is cut away. Dragons' or serpents' heads are drawn on paper, cut out and gummed on to the stern and prow (as G and H); a tongue cut from red paper can be added to each dragon. (The 'dragon ships' were, as a rule, the largest, the 'serpent ships' being smaller and better adapted to sailing.) The mast is cut out of cardboard and gummed behind the ship; the sail is cut out of paper and gummed to the mast. The shields are cut out of cardboard and pasted along the sides. The ship may be painted white, blue, red, or any combination of colours; the warriors' shields were also of different colours. The sails were generally in coloured stripes, blue and white or red and white. Masts brown. For teachers who want to be historically accurate the following notes on the viking ship may be useful.
The viking ship (from ninth century on-wards) was clincher-built, caulked with hair, and iron fastened. One ship we know to have been 78 feet long by 15½ feet of extreme breadth; the ships varied in length from 50 to 150 feet. They had from twelve to thirty-five seats for rowers. Generally both ends of the vessel were alike, so that it could be steered from either end by the paddle, which was used everywhere until the invention of the rudder.