Location: Still in the tunnel, looking for the light. Gender:
Posted:
Sep 13, 2012 - 6:22pm
cc_rider wrote:
I'd like to know why they felt the need to have buckshot rounds on the ship in the first place. Skeet shooting?
Apparently a particularly nasty cannon round was two iron balls connected with a few feet of chain. The chain whipped around like a lethal bola, slashing through masts and bodies like a giant weed whacker. Nasty business.
They were used, as you say, to bring down the ships rig.
Straight forward cannon balls were fine right up until they smashed into the oak timbers of the target vessel. And that could be dozens in a single broadside from a ship of the line, from no more than a few hundred feet away. Think shrapnel, but in dirty great jagged shards of oak, and lots of it.
The RN pretty soon worked out that the best way for the gun crews to keep working in such terrifying circumstances. Train and train and train the gun crews and the matelots until they could do their job in their sleep, and then give them a whole pint of rum each before engaging the enemy.
That thing looks like a toy! It ships in an ammo crate. I'd expect a Tall Ship to use something more...impressive.
If you fired a 10 ga. buckshot load out of one of those it would fly backward hard enough to hurt people.
Well anyway for show purposes I can see having the big cannon re-tooled to take those boomy blanks. Gotta wonder about mistaking buckshot weight for a blank wad tho. I think someone's going to get arrested before it all settles out.
I wondered about that too. What sort of cannon was it that could fire shotgun shells, and more importantly: what was Donna Reed doing on the ship? Was there some sort of time-portal involved?
I'd like to know why they felt the need to have buckshot rounds on the ship in the first place. Skeet shooting?
Apparently a particularly nasty cannon round was two iron balls connected with a few feet of chain. The chain whipped around like a lethal bola, slashing through masts and bodies like a giant weed whacker. Nasty business.
