Stormy wrote:I just got done watching an episode of Myth Busters that debunked splinters from cannon balls going through the wooden sides of ships being more lethal than the balls themselves. In fact, they did very little damage to the pig carcasses being used to test it.
Now, I'm pretty sure in the various books of the Safehold series, rather exhaustive attention was paid to the amount of splinters and how deadly they could be using various different forms of ammunition and lighter or thicker planking and what have you. Since I know DW puts quite a remarkable bit of research into his books, I was quite surprised that the results weren't a lot gorier for the pigs in this show! So how much research was put into this aspect of the stories?
MBs usually do decent enough testing and try to be thorough, but that doesn´t make them perfect.
It´s in historical records that splinters DID cause heavy losses.
Splinters by themselves are most certainly not "more dangerous" than cannon balls, but very few people got hit by cannonballs, while splinters went all over and everywhere.
It effectively becomes a game of numbers, simplified, if you get hit by a cannonball, 90% you die, 10% you´re injured, get hit by splinters 0.1% you die, 1% you´re injured, but every single cannonball tended to cause hundreds or thousands of splinters...
So at a 1:1 comparison, Mythbusters are perfectly correct, but quantity has a quality of it´s own.
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A secondary consideration is the standards of sanitation on ships of that era, and the likelihood for infection of any open wound.
Yup, infection was often a very severe killer. And every single splinter that pierce the skin, could be the one with the infection that would kill you.
There was a lot more ability to treat wounds than is commonly stated, so an infection from a splinter was far from a death sentence, but it was dangerous, and if something went unnoticed for too long, not good.
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They were using a 12 pound cannon, whis is not a 32 or 64 pounder. That episode was a "pirate episode" - they chose the size cannon that they felt was the typical caliber used by pirates. And, I am sure they could obtain. I question how many operable 64 lb muzzle- loadin cannon are around. My guess is that the majority in existance are monuments.
Do note however that those BIG ones, like 64 pounders, were often NOT cannons, but rather carronades, meaning they´re not directly comparable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carronade_gun
Carronades commonly fired various canister or "shotgun" rounds, at short range and relatively low velocity. Large caliber but relatively light weight due to much smaller powder charges used.
And for comparison, the HMS Victory at Trafalgar carried over 40 12 pounders in it´s broadsides, so it wasn´t exactly a horribly poor choice.
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The most telling is that they used a cannon with a much smaller caliber than the typical naval gun as it was a civil war horse artillery piece. The smaller hole punched (half the diameter of a typical naval gun) and the higher muzzle velocity (given the point blank range used) has a significant impact on the results.
Indeed. Instead of a wrecking ball causing lots of splinters you get a much neater punch through.
and, Mangy Fur the Smart Alick Spacecat.