This Headline....

[Minimalist]

Cannonballs Really Could Sink Ships, Study Finds

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/200 ... studyfinds


Really belongs in the "Duh" category. What did they think that Trafalgar was fought with?

[kbs2244]

Well,
in his defense he is from a country that dosn't have a very strong maritime history in the cannonball time frame.

But it dosn't take a very deep study of European history after the 1400's to reach the same conclusion.

I did find it intresting that the lower speeds caused more damage.

[Minimalist]

You know, kb, Mythbusters did a segment on that very question. As usual, they were working towards the upper limit of the power of a cannon. Pumping a projectile through an oak plank they also concluded that the concept of "splintering" was highly overstated in spite of the volumes of written records about the numbers of men wounded by "secondary missiles." Even on land when an artillery battery fired on a town it was the "secondary missiles" which caused the most casualties.

In Ken Burns' The Civil War there was a discussion of the wounds caused by rifled muskets which were far more powerful than Napoleonic muskets but still half the pop of modern weapons. As Shelby Foote put it, "a modern bullet clips the bone and keeps on going but a civil war minie bullet would pulverize the bone" making amputation the only possible treatment. So applying that analogy to a cannon ball at lower speed seems consistent.

[Sam Salmon]

Heated shot'll get 'em!

[Minimalist]

Tough in a musket, Sam.

Burns your fingers while loading!