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Re-creating a Medieval menace
Local man helps build catapult for public TV
By Anne Aurand
The Bulletin

Not everyone would enjoy enduring two weeks of 10-hour days providing unpaid physical labor in the rain.

But Derwyn Hanney, who works for Earthwood Homes in Sisters, said he was in heaven.

The 45-year-old Hanney, along with a crew of about 60 timber framers, engineers and medieval historians from the United States, Britain and Germany traveled to Inverness, Scotland, on Oct. 16 to volunteer 15 days of their time building two authentic replicas of a medieval siege engine — a catapult — called a trebuchet.

In an attempt to reconstruct 13th-century technology and warfare, the team re- enacted how attackers, with out cannon fire relied on trebuchets to knock down the thick, formidable stone walls of great medieval castles.

From the very beginning it was very primitive," said the burly, bearded Hanney. But he liked that. "We just fell into this medieval atmosphere."

The crew's intentions, Hanney said, were to use hand tools only, but toward the end when they were running out of time they switched to power tools.

The routine started every morning when they loaded on the bus, drove 20 miles in the dark, then walked a quarter mile to the site that is inaccessible by road. During the walk the sun would rise, Hanney said, and the fog would begin to clear, creating a
mysterious and medieval-looking setting.

The medieval weapon of destruction is a massive wooden structure built in proportion to the length of its longest part — the 40-foot oak throwing arm. It is a huge slingshot powered by gravity. The throwing arm harnesses gravity to accurately fling
300-pound limestone balls up to 200 yards at the top speed of 126 miles per hour. Hanney said it took the crew nearly 90 minutes to cock the machine to fire, and involved about 60 people pulling ropes and pulleys. Eventually they used a tractor.

A team of masons from Historic Scotland constructed a sandstone and mortar wall 25-feet long, 15-feet high and 5-feet thick to test the validity of medieval manuscript accounts claiming the effectiveness of the trebuchet against these barriers.

"It was very very hard work." And free labor at that.

NOVA sponsored the project, paying for all the crews expenses, but Hanney took an unpaid vacation from his job as a timber framer at Earthwood Homes.

The project was filmed by NOVA/WHBH Boston for NOVA's "Secrets of Lost Empires," a program that has previously re-created building pyramids. It will be shown on public television in early 2000. NOVA's goal was to demonstrate the technology available to a 13th century carpenter. Hanney said the project's budget exceeded the planned $800,000.

The expensive project was built in the shadow of the Urquhart Castle overlooking Loch Ness, a popular tourist spot. Tourists would reliably ask what they were doing.

"When you had to explain it, it came to you how ridiculous it was," he laughed behind his glasses. Despite the historical value, he said it sometimes felt absolutely ludicrous.

One time, centuries ago, the construction of an English siege engine to be used in the 1304 assault on Stirling Castle in Scotland was so frightening that the castle surrendered before the trebuchet could be tested. Edward I, who also took the Urquhart Castle as his own, refused to be deprived of the use of his extensive project and blasted the surrendered castle anyway.

Hanney got involved with this historical re-creation project last spring when he saw a notice in the Timber Framers Guild newsletter. The Guild, a non-profit organization for educating timber framers and the public about timber framing, sponsored the Ronald McDonald house. The notice sparked the world traveler's interest and he called NOVA. After some phone interviews and lots of paperwork, the former logger got the position.

In the middle of the trip, at the height of horrible weather, he said overall morale was diminishing. It was hard for everyone to imagine they would ever finish the construction project. Many were complaining about the TV crews, the food, the rain, the
logistics and organization of the project. "But for me, I was just happy to be there." The 20-year Oregon resident lived on the coast for a stint so the rain did not bother him, he said.

After the 15 days, Hanney departed on schedule to go visit his family in Wales, where he had lived for a few years in his youth.
However, the project lingered on for two extra days with a skeleton crew. Hanney missed the final triumphant day with balls flinging toward and repeatedly hitting the make-shift castle wall.

Hanney said the team succeeded, but his biggest pride was "what we came away with: camaraderie, team spirit."

He said his one underlying fear during the project was injury. "If someone would have gotten hurt we would have failed." He said no one knew where to stand during the first firing, but they pulled it off without a scratch.

The crew stayed in the Fort Augustus Abbey at the southern tip of Loch Ness. They held their "strategy meetings" at the Loch Inn Pub and managed to stretch their energy into festive evenings. He was sorry to see the trip end.

One of the trebuchets remains at the site as part of an agreement with Historic Scotland as an added tourist attraction, and the other will be moved to a different castle.