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STORY: This replica of a Roman-era boat is cruising the Danube River

The expedition is part of a project to raise awareness

of the region’s ancient Roman past

It is crewed by volunteers wearing Roman style tunics

(Rower, Sebastian Dickson)
"In sort of normal rowing, your arms just finish off the stroke whereas here it is all of it. And consequently, it is much harder work for much less gain. And that's kind of interesting from the perspective. A lot of this project is the experimental archaeology side, these guys are experimental archaeologists where they are trying to understand how it was done by doing it and that gives you an insight because by actually rowing this, it throws into context the claims made about what the Roman crews could do, a hundred kilometres a day, and we are pretty put out to do 50 or 60 downstream."

The boat was built by the Friedrich-Alexander University

based on the remains of Roman shipwrecks discovered in the German town of Mainz

(Rower, Gyorgy Adam)

"We all love different parts of the (Roman) culture, some love the military part, some the civil part, some are interested in the architecture bit, - so the Roman culture brought us all together here."