Grinding Mustard: Cannon Ammo in the Age of Sail | Pirate Weaponry
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As you might have noticed, this is my third video covering pirate artillery. Originally, it was all going to be one video - then I realized, I best make an instructional video on their handling. And the day before I published the previous one, I discovered some new information on the ammunition, and here we are.
Modern sources:
cindyvallar.com/LaBuse.html
www.britishtars.com/2019/02/l...
The Sea-Rover's Practice - Benerson Little
Pirates 1660-1730 - Angus Konstam
Period Sources:
Sea-Man's Grammar - John Smith
The Sea-Gunner - John Seller
Elements of War - Guillaume le Blond
An Universal Dictionary of the Maritime - William Falconer
Memoirs - Jean-Baptise Labat
Image sources
By Gaius Cornelius - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
0:00 Introduction
1:11 Wadding
3:44 Round shot and variants
6:03 Bar shot and variants
6:53 Chain shot and variants
8:31 Alternative materials
9:36 Canister and langrage
13:42 Grapeshot
15:13 Conclusion
16:02 Outro
#history #cannons #pirates #privateers #goldandgunpowder
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Stop blowing holes in my ship!
(In Shrek's voice)
I believe they are called glory holes, you know, so the guy on the other side remembers you
-🤓
*Fucking make me landlubber!*
Some buggers trying to poke holes in my ship
"Only the most demented of savages would fire this random crap at you."
You, sir, have a way with words! Recent subscriber, love your content.
If you're firing "buck and ball" or "ball and grape" or "ball and canister" shot, just make sure whichever projectile is lighter goes down the bore last(closest to the muzzle in the shot column), because, Sir Isaac Newton said some stuff....
Something something momentum.
something something barrel go boom
Wadding is still used even in modern weapons. Specifically, shotguns but it is all stored within the shell itself. If you ever fire a shotgun you can actually see the wadding fly like 50m or so it's kind of cool .
shotguns, because they don't have rifling are a lot like age of sail cannons.
@@suddenllybahtrue and the types of ammo are basically everything a canon can shoot, but on a smaller scale
shotguns are literally just the modern evolution of the musket
5:48 cross bar shoot unlocked a memory... According to one of my history teachers they are a primitive form of shaped charge, they would fly into the haul of an ship get stuck on the out side and via a timing fuse it would explode on the side of the ship creating massive holes and sending more splinters into the ship.
You can actually see the gun powder hole on the photo.
They also used to damge land structures and to blow open large wooden fort doors to making an hole into the fort there you could fire all sorts of nasty shots into like mortars, explosive, burning and grape shots.
Again this is according to my teachers. edit forgot to mention besides explosive they could also be filled with a material which was flammable and since the crossbar/ nail would sink into what ever you shoot it at it would be hard to remove and would basically become a long burning torch
At 5:48 crossbow shot is introduced...where the ball has a spike cast through it.
The ball appears to have a hole in it, so perhaps it was hollow and meant to be an explosive shell by loading hollow with powder and having a fuse to set it off.
Perhaps the spike was meant to embed in the hull, a mast or a cabin wall and the shell would explode shortly after.
It's clearly a armor piercing discarding sabot round.
My favorite shot is the canister shot loaded with flint flakes. I expect they would've shred like a thousand flying knives, plus they were dirt cheap. Just take whatever's left after knapping your gun flints and load it in a canister and voila!
Our gunner just made a reproduction langrage round I'll definitely be filming next week. We are also getting a little too curious about how it would work and how best to set it up for a potential demonstration.
not standing in front of it is always a good setup, good luck and I look forward to seeing the results
@@GoldandGunpowder we got to see if our home site will let us. Haha.
Ask not for permission first, ask forgiveness after.
As a human cannonball, i approve this video
One could say the advantage of Bar Shot is the cost to construct it versus that of Chain shot.
The music has been fire lately! 🔥
a lot of YTers use this guy's music since it's royalty free, so it was hard to find something that fit my content and wasn't used so much by others
Wonderful detailed look into the topic. Cheers! 🏴☠️
Thank you very much for getting back to me, I'm sure as a content creator you don't have time to respond to every comment, this being my thought process and also being unsure if you were the kind of content creator who would answer new comments on past videos, i reposted it in the comments for this video. I am making my way through your videos(excluding shorts for the moment) in order of release. i am currently trying to finish the 1st Bartholomew Roberts video, and with the catchy music coupled with the fact that my medication that keeps me focused and all similar meds are part of a nationwide shortage, I'm having some trouble focusing on the info in said video rather than the music. lol. I was also unable to absorb any information from the 3-part special for the same reasons. however, i still intend on trying to listen to them, but will wait until i get more of my medication. Thanks again for getting back to me, Love your content and the goofy little background sounds add a little extra enjoyment to the videos, at least for me anyway. Cheers!
alright take care
The silly cartoon sound effects always cause me to burst laughing because one moment this dude is talking about an island’s governor having his intestines cleaved out and the next moment it’s the wilhelm scream
I thought the same thing.
5:15 This a very old, entirely false myth that is still said to be true about large bullets like .50bmg etc. If the cannon shot was dispering that much force into the air around it, it would only fly a couple hundred feet at most. I love your channel and videos!!!
Most curiously of all, were reports that men were wounded by artillery that didn't even hit them. Surgeon Ambroise Paré explained that during a 1545 military campaign,
a peece of Ordinance... passed very neare one of them [two men on horseback], which threw them to the ground, and t'was thought the said Bullet had toucht him, which it did not at all, but onely the winde of the said Bullet in the midst of his coate, which went with such a force that all the outward part of the Thigh became blacke and blew[25]
Ambroise Paré, The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, 1649, p. 770
from: piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/foreign_object_wounds1.html
@@GoldandGunpowder it's much more likely that the near miss caused the horses to buck the riders off which caused their thigh injuries. You'd certainly feel the wind rushing past you and maybe attribute it to that. That account is from one of the first surgeons in history. He wouldn't exactly have all the information and evidence to know if it was a shockwave emitted from a near miss, and even then it reads as a second hand account told to him by one of the victims. It's evidence of people fearing or accepting that there's a shockwave but it's not evidence of such a thing existing.
@@GoldandGunpowder Interesting account. I wonder if there's a simple lack of perceiving the event correctly? Modern times have created accounts of soldiers saying a sniper missed his target by an inch but he still lost an arm etc, do you have a take on the matter? Thank for your reply and for your amazing videos man
Ha! 50 Butt Munching Gun?
Meet MR 76 caliber rifled flintlock!
Yeah, I've read several historical accounts of "the wind of the cannon ball" killing a man without obvious injuries. The physics doesn't add up. The mass, velocity, and size of the balls were all too low to even think about creating that kind of overpressure, especially in an open environment(field, deck, ect...). The theory of overpressure killing these men is one of the leading theories, mainly because the description of them is similar to modern men killed by the overpressure of an explosion(ruptures a lot of things in the body, without getting into a class on it). Another theory is that these were "grazing" hits. I'm not sold on that one either, but under just the right circumstances, it might be a possible explanation. Most likely, there are a variety of explanations, as not every account is perfectly identical.
Excellent video as alyways, thank you for making it.
The crazed cannister cannoneer!
Sir Gideon Ofnir, the report-reading!
The weight of gunpowder required is extraordinary.
I’ve read that chain shot was used primarily against ships’ rigging. If you blast a hole in a sail, the sail still works (though less efficiently), but if you manage to cut the stays that hold up masts and yards, or the sheets (ropes) that control the sails, it becomes impossible to maneuver the ship at all.
Of course, getting hit with a flying chain would also damage a human.
But the chain would be unlikely to penetrate a ship’s hull. For that, you want round shot.
Glad to see a new video i really enjoyed it,thanks for the effort of making it
What is so funny, is I was going to ask you to cover the different types of cannon shot.
And I was going to reference Pirates of the Burning Sea (which I played), and ask if there really was stone shot or brass shot or star shot?
Imagine my surprise.
brass shot I haven't heard of and I doubt it was used, since brass was much more expensive than lead or iron, which were the most common metal for cannonballs
just for info purposes, mexican troops in the mexican-american war were said to use copper shot. no idea why.
I suspect the advantage of bar shot was probably a lower production cost. It’ll cost less to cast a bullet that to cast 2 and chain them together
Great video as always, always appreciate the good content
I love this channel!!
Amazing video . Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to research this to pass information along witch is what's it's all about.....
Great video! Glad I was here for this one as I have been on a huge pirate rabbit whole lately and have watched nearly all your videos at this point.
Hope you make a video recommending some good, and accurate, pirate media as my love of them first started with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and would love to play some or watch some actually accurate stuff. Love your vids and can't wait for more!
Excellent and informative as always.
ALWAYS INFORMATIVE AND 👍 A SUPER ENTERTAINING STYLE ! THANK YOU SIR .
Fun fact, mitrailles sounds similar to the Spanish word for the "fragments" thaf would cause damage in a fragmentation grenade or shell. We call them metralla, and it refers to any small pieces that would break off from an initial exploding device or any fragments that are shot out after an impact. Say, if a hull was hit by round shot, the wooden splinters would also be called metralla.
The word for that in english is Shrapnel
binging this channel today :) thank you and the algorithm for matching us
If I'm remembering correctly the Marine Corps got its nickname from The Tall leather collars they would wear to protect themselves from flying debris.
Yes. Marines were issued leather jackets or overshirts with tall, stiffened collars that were good for stopping splinters and other small Shrapnel.
They earned the nickname 'leathernecks' for this.
And cutlasses. Apparently one of the first US Navy and marine core battles, was fought with enemies who preferred to swing their cutlass at neck level. At least that's the rumor I've heard.
Thank you for the instructional video!
I'm Canadian and Canada is one of the most restrictive countries to acquire weapons. Therefore, I have to learn diy projects for homemade weaponry. I made a semi-functioning mini-cannon that I learned from an old Russian movie called Brat-2. The first one blew up in my face, and fortunately my face escaped injury. Since then, I've been diligently studying better ways to make an improvised mini-cannon. Your video is helping me, thank you!
5:47 I can say this was the first Sub-Caliber Round in the history of gun… 17th century APCR
The French navy in the 18th century preferred to use bar and chain shot because they wanted to dismast the enemy ships as it made it easier to capture them. The British used round shot to cause as much damage as well as killing or disabling the enemies crew making it easier to defeat them after boarding. Also the British Navy spent much more time at sea so were much better trained than the French who would spend more time in their barracks on land.
Canister shot was also used on land, especially at cavalry, and was even used by the Australian Centurion tanks when fighting in Viet Nam. During one battle the Australian Centurion tanks had moved through a village and when they got to the other side the platoon commander ordered the tanks to fire canister into the tall grass in front of them. As it happened there were enemy troops hiding in the long grass ready to ambush the Australians when they turn away from the grass. The canister cause utter devastation to the ambushers.
I wanna see someone shoot a Gibson Les Paul Studio a distance of 50 meters into a Marshall 800 stack. Ammo that rocks, it's self evident that this needs to happen.
I'd like to thank you for sharing what would otherwise be unnoticed nuances in the world of the Pirate Hoards. Scurvy, the fresh fruits the pirates had access to, the food and ships, strategies, dress, flags and lives clear issues I never actually dreamed existed in standard histories. We had two cannons but one cannon ball, which we could not fire because it was used to crush their mustard? Heh... I never suspected.
Enjoyed the video! Very informative mate! A little over a year ago we Pirates of St Augustine had an event at the local gun range firing cannon shot at mockup of a British warship. There were 2 cannon on carriages and 2 swivel cannon. The video is on my TH-cam channel if you're interested. Most of the pirates dressed in period correct garb for 18th Century for the event too. The cannon shot themselves ranged from 1 lb to 3 lbs. I slowed down the video footage in several scenes so you can see how shot travels through the air! It was so much fun! More interesting was that it was the 1st time since the American Civil War that cannons using gunpowder had fired actual shot in the city limits of St Augustine!
Wouldn't a gun that was almost horizontal or actually level still nonetheless occasionally point downwards due to the rocking action of the waves causing the boat to pitch up and down and thus wadding would be always needed to be placed after the bullet while shooting on anything like a rough sea?
Yea, he just pointed it out that you CAN shoot it without the other wadding.
Is it good idea to do it on the sea? No.
What would be really useful is a plumbata designed to be fired from a musket. Due to aerodynamics it will have incredible range and acracy while the weight behind the tip guarantees it comes down on point.
So using something similar to airplane sights you measure the trajectory to arch your shot.
Enemies begin marching into standard range and are confused as to why darts are raining down on them from further than it.
this sort of weapon existed, will either cover it in a remade muskets video or the one on grenades
@@GoldandGunpowder Nice! 🧊
An important note would be the distinction between cannon and caronade
13:10 Cartouche is very common word in Russia, it was widely used in historical documents and literature. In russian languadge it sounded like "kartetch", and meant a canister shot filled with iron pieces, rocks or whatever you stuff in it.
*After every battle
(sigh) "Start swabbin' the poop deck..."
5:22 Damage from bullet flying nearby is common fudd lore myth. Its completely harmless for modern shells and I don't think that round cannonball aerodynamics were worse enough to create a shockwave
Wish that he could see this comment
I found this extremely interesting.
hmm it would seem to me that if you fired a chain shot at rigging it may just latch on around it at times. But if you fired it at sails it would usually tear through. The bar shot may have tore through rigging and sails. However one could imagine if they had some type of reason they wanted the bar to stay on the ship like having some sort of combustion in the bullet then they may want to use chain shot. Being that the bar shot would more than likely bounce off what it hit and not stay on the ship. Now it could have of course been whatever they had available but I think the physics may have came into play for their strategy in many cases.
R.I.P. Mr. Bill
🤕
Bad Dog!
1:09 Sometimes, the wadding is consensed from two separate pieces on each side of the shot, to the shot being tightly wrapped in a large amount of cloth.
This method is good for quick reloads in close combat.
Edit: I am not referring to cartridges. I am giving a brief discription of an emergency quick loading method
I think the idea of the crossbar ball was to focus all the weight and force of the shot down to as small a point as possible, to better crack heavy armor.
3:45 so… shots were called bullets, and bullets were called shots?
now I’ve heard _everything!_
When firing grape shot at a line you could eliminate 6 men wide 3 men deep from the battle field
"Pirates, merchants and *The Frenchmen*".
Throughout the ages "The French" has always been and always will be a relatable inside joke.
No matter to which century you travel, you can always make a joke about the French and people will laugh.
it's not even a joke lmao
Hey man. I like the video and I found it very entertaining. However, the part at 5:18 is erroneous hearsay. I work in powder burning weapons professionally. There is no concussive force as a projectile passes by. I may make a lot of noise, but this has been demonstrated time and again to be fictitious. The best demonstration I have seen is a .50 BMG projectile fired through a house of cards by my friend Matt at Demo ranch. That projectile, while weighing less, would be traveling about 400% faster than round shot. KE=1/2mv^2.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out. Cheers
12:26 Oh no Mr Bill!
I saw some shot by cannon of 3 pirate vessels attacking Monterey, California,
before sacking the port facilities. California Missions had advance notice
delivered by military horsemen and some choose to send choice comforts
elsewhere. I found one such trove under 12 feet of seawater in 1976 . No,
I did not despoil the site other than lay both my hands upon it.
Actually it takes more energy and resources to make a round steel ball than to turn stone into a balls. The reason why steel balls were preferred is because they are in fact much more effective than stone balls because steel is more dense therefore delivers more energy into a target
Bar shot and chain shot were specific to rigging damage.
"Arrgh!" 🏴☠️ ☠️ 🦜
I can’t help but imagine that, given their propensity to fire random crap at people, pirates would naturally stumble upon the cartouche method out of sheer laziness.
As for why it might not have been mentioned until later, there’s the possibility that it may have been something that was considered common knowledge and not worth writing down or something that was never really recorded by the people using it. Though obviously you have more info from the period sources than I
I can't prove it, but I recall reading an account of a pirate ship where their situation was so dire they ended up tearing up their own shirts to use as wadding for the cannons.
It’s almost as if Blackbeard deliberately set up his ship so that upon its wrecking, as much knowledge about their ways as possible. “Gentlemen. Ye must load the canister BEFORE the cannonball.” “But. . .aren’t we ditching the ship, cap’m?” “YAR ARE YE QUESTIONING ME ORDERS?!”
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Nice channel 👍
New subscriber. I'm enjoying the technical side of piracy. Curious about navigation, how was it done?
I mainly listen to your content rther than watch, as i become too distracted by the wonderful imagery you display in your videos. So therefore, by listening I gain more of the knowledge you provide. However, As integeal as music is as part of my life, i have a ver hard time focusing on the information you provide. I would never tell someone how to make content(as I have no clue how to do so myself...), but if you could possibly make the music i your videos... perhaps a wee bit less boisterous(I use ths term loosely, perhaps a more suitable word would be; flambouyant(Yes, I am aware i might've misspelled that, my attention span and brain isnt quite what it used to be.) it would be greatly appreciate. I pla on using much of the information you present in your content to inform myworlduilding decisions for a dnd pirate/sea roving campaign i am working on.
you're reposting a comment from one of my older videos, I don't know if you've actually watched my newer upload but you might notice that the audio quality is different and probably more to your liking
Hey, I just discovered your channel and its super interesting! Could you do a video on how women were treated on pirate ships and what their role might have been? I‘m trying to write a book with one of the female character in that situation and i want it to be as accurate as possible, but i don‘t really trust the other sources I’ve found so far. You’re channel seems very reliable and i like how you explain these things in your videos. Thank you and have a great day1🫶🏻❤
I've summarized it in this video: th-cam.com/video/ixfpPEBtPgQ/w-d-xo.html
will make a full video at some point but no guarantee when it comes out
@@GoldandGunpowder thank you so much, I’ll check it out!🙏🏻
I have a question about these older guns/cannons that can also be seen in newer guns from the world wars. Why is the thickness of the piece thicker closer to the breach and thinner towards the muzzle?
Hi, could you please make a video about Henry Every (sorry if the name was wrong)and the Fancy? I love your videos
The "bar shot" is just pirate gym equipment being used as makeshift ammunition...
Shiver me timbers!
Mitraille would be more similar to shrapnel since it’s a type of « ammunition » in a way.
What's your opinion on general sea and land battles in pirates of the caribbean (the fitst one)? It's my favorite movie
I'll tell you soon
@@GoldandGunpowder hell yea
where did you find the music used in this vid?
Ahoy there ... my father told me back in the 70s that the only pirate movie worth watching was a movie called " Herr der Sieben Meere" ... did anyone here ever come across that morsel ?
Eyepatches.
Pretty much all boarding sailors would wear one, for that simple reason that we dont have electricity. If you pad one eye then youl have that eye ready for when you go below deck where you dont have to wait for your night-sight to kick in. You can just flip up the eyepatch up and you can see things in a matter of seconds after. Even below deck where the sun dont shine
they had lanterns below deck
@@GoldandGunpowder and you defo count on that as boardingparty, right??
cmon..
aha for boarding, where is your evidence that eyepatches were widely used for this purpose during the age of sail?
@@GoldandGunpowder lols - yaknow.. except from eyewitnesaccounts? or rather eyepatchaccounts?
I iant got shit
I have not encountered any period illustrations, depictions, paintings, eyewitness dispositions, or written accounts, or modern mentions of such accounts, archaeological evidence or descriptions of archaeological evidence, proving that any group of people used eyepatches for this purpose before the US navy in WW2. "It makes sense" is not an argument. Modern hygiene makes sense to us. It doesn't in the 17th century
Hello, how do You search for sources? Also, are You from a Nordic country?
Ah, so bullet used to cover just shot in a general, explaining bullet bills, and sprue is a general "cast in mold term)
Imagine greek fire cannons
I forgot about that. It's basically the ancestor to Napalm.
@@centric3125 fire off a cannonball that's been soaked in greek fire
It'd probably warp the barrel
"Flamethrowers?" 🔥
@@joeerickson516 no imagine a clay cannonball filled with napalm so more like an incendiary round
In French "grape" means bunch. The French word for grape is "raisin".
So what you’re saying is Pirates invented Dumbbells? 😮
The whole pressure wave causing injury thing is false. You'd feel a little air move but that's it.
Most curiously of all, were reports that men were wounded by artillery that didn't even hit them. Surgeon Ambroise Paré explained that during a 1545 military campaign,
a peece of Ordinance... passed very neare one of them [two men on horseback], which threw them to the ground, and t'was thought the said Bullet had toucht him, which it did not at all, but onely the winde of the said Bullet in the midst of his coate, which went with such a force that all the outward part of the Thigh became blacke and blew[25]
Ambroise Paré, The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, 1649, p. 770
from: piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/foreign_object_wounds1.html
@GoldandGunpowder I get that there are references, but that's not how the physics works. The reason the balls fly well is because they don't generate a big pressure wave. That'd be a massive energy cost
th-cam.com/video/Zb-eddpiYzM/w-d-xo.html
Could you please make a video on exploding cannonballs?
The reality likely is that both chain and bar shot were useless as people have been trying to recreate them with shotgun shells - so-called "bolo" shot - and more often than not, the first ball simply flies behind the second and does not spread out, spin or otherwise do anything remotely close to what was hoped it would do.
I believe bar vs chain comes down price per shot, i think solid bar shot was cheaper to cast/forge. I think you dont get the same spread as chain shot, which is more expensive to make, because you are forging each link especially in that era.
Assuming that chain shot did actually spread. I saw some chain rounds fired from shotguns captured by slow-mow cameras and they don't really spread even after traveling a significant distance and don't really spin.
Now, I don't know how comparable that is to an actual chain shot fired from a canon. The mass, the energies et cetera will be different, but I would love to see someone make an experiment and test it.
Do we have any records of chain shot being used as an impromptu melee weapon
Clanker!
I mean, isn't that what a Bola or Flail is?
Yes, bolas usually have 3 balls to steady them and the flail technically has a handle, but I have a point, weapons enthusiasts!
@@centric3125 i know it could be done but I wonder if it was recorded of someone doing that
@velazquezarmouries I doubt it seriously. Chainshot is kinda noisy and I doubt seriously it's going to be extremely effective.
Pirate philosophy
A modern 50 bmg doesn't even ruffle a card house when shot between the cards. Why would a cannonballl maim if it misses?
Basically, it’s all about size and mass. Due to the volume of air it replaces, and the wind of the air following behind it, the air is liable to deliver a massive amount of force to you, which can wound or even kill you, even if you’re not hit
Mentioning pirates of the burning sea took me back.
It was a half decent mmo a decade ago. Probably a cash grab now.
When will you do a video on Barbados?
13:10, some Arabic countries call modern cartridges, particularly shotgun shells, khartoosh. Perhaps a result of french colonialism?
yeah, you'll find the word used in other languages aswell for cartridges or case shot
@@GoldandGunpowder interesting, I just discovered your channel and I'm binge watching it, already shared it to some friends
i wonder why pirates and "frenchmen" kept being meantioned together
Is this Canon to pirates?
Not pronounced Sabot, but sabo as in sabotage ( French for Shoe)
ait ty
The idea that a near miss from any projectile can cause internal bleeding, etc. has been proven false. If it's an explosive, yes, but there is actually low-pressure surrounding a projectile while it is in flight, so unless it touches you directly, no energy is transferred to you. The same myth existed for .50 BMG, something that travels nearly 3000 fps. Compare a cannonball going a top speed of about 1200 fps (if everything went perfectly for that shot), and you're not getting hurt from a projectile simply passing you without touching, no matter how close.
Otherwise, a great video, and I definitely believe pirates would have reported this, but any injuries sustained after a near-miss were falsely correlated with it.
So this might be irrelevant to the video topic, but fuck it. I’m trying to make a historically accurate pirate outfit for a game, if there’s an image or group of images online of historically accurate pirate outfits, where would be the most simple place to find said images?
see this video: th-cam.com/video/dlBod_oKKPc/w-d-xo.html
Sabot is pronounced saboe
captain cooke was my great great great great grandfather and they ripped his book? lol that sucks
Do you think Sea of Thieves is accurate at all
I love SOT, but no, it's not really accurate.
The splinters being deadly was a myth busted years ago by the mythbusters. Cannons were not nearly high velocity to get splinters to travel fast enough to do any real damage. wood is way to light and soft to be turned into effective shrapnel.
oh yeah nevermind the eyewitness accounts of people wounded, maimed or killed by splinters, written descriptions, and instructions on how to negate the damage done by them
@@GoldandGunpowder lots of whaler said that whale blowhole spray was toxic and would burn your flesh off. Still never happened
>I was again unfortunately wounded in the Left Foot with a Splinter just before we blew up on the Quarter-deck, so that I could not stand, but lay on my Back in a great deal of Misery, part of my Heel-bone being struck out, and all under my Ankle cut above half thro’, which bled very much, and weaken’d me, before it could be dressed and stopt.
from: www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55538/pg55538-images.html
"Shiver me timbers!" "Arrgh!" 🏴☠️ ☠️ 🦜
Depends on what kind of wood you use and the weapons you use. Splinters are a dangerous thing. There is ENOUGH evidence for it.
Mythbusters debunked the idea that the wood splinters from an impact were deadly. The splinters simply don't have enough mass.
another one of their mistakes.
They may not be directly deadly. But in an age when what we consider a relatively minor infection could spread like wildfire, I imagine any penetration of the skin was bad news....
That whole thing about a near miss knocking you out is pretty much bullshit. I don’t know where it started but even w/ modern tank guns the round passing by you isn’t a real concern. Being in front of the barrel off to one side though or perpendicular if it’s fitted w/ a muzzle break is a different story.
Most curiously of all, were reports that men were wounded by artillery that didn't even hit them. Surgeon Ambroise Paré explained that during a 1545 military campaign,
a peece of Ordinance... passed very neare one of them [two men on horseback], which threw them to the ground, and t'was thought the said Bullet had toucht him, which it did not at all, but onely the winde of the said Bullet in the midst of his coate, which went with such a force that all the outward part of the Thigh became blacke and blew[25]
Ambroise Paré, The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, 1649, p. 770
from: piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/foreign_object_wounds1.html
@@GoldandGunpowder dude falls off a horse and gets a bruise? You blame the thing that didn’t touch over the ground that did him? If kinetic projectiles were that inefficient aerodynamically they wouldn’t get more a few hundred feet at most.