twistedSkein wrote:jgnfld wrote:I see splinters. Unlike Mythbusters apparently.
As I recall, it wasn't that Mythbusters
didn't see splinters but that they found the splinters created by the impact lacked sufficient energy to cause more than mild discomfort to the human analogues they placed to catch said shrapnel. A far cry from a flying piece of shattered wood punching through-and-through someone's throat, you know?
There were occasions upon which Mythbusters had carnal relations with a pooch,
and this was one of them.
They used a 12-pounder (or possible even a 6-pounder; I don't really recall which) against a replica of a typical
merchant ship's hull (i.e., planking about 2" thick). This is a far cry from a 24-pounder or 32-pounder punching through 36" or so of seasoned oak. You get, ah . . . somewhat
larger splinters moving at higher velocity from the latter. Neither the round shot nor the planking really fitted what would have happened in a naval action of the period and, in fact, the thinness of the planking undoubtedly skewed the test much more than the lightness of the shot did. (Of course, a 12-pounder probably wouldn't have penetrated a typical mid-18th century liner
at all, which
also would have skewed the results somewhat.
)
It's worth noting that
Vasa wasn't really designed to face heavy artillery in a pounding match. As Thucydides pointed out in an earlier post, she was a transitional design from a time at which boarding actions were primary and artillery actions were secondary. By Nelson's time and the "classic age of fighting sail" that had flipped, with the gun becoming primary and boarding either a desperation tactic by a losing opponent or a final "clean up" action to follow the gun duel. As a consequence,
Vasa was far more lightly built than a British 74 from, say, 1790, which means that round shot are going to produce much smaller splinters, probably moving at lower velocity, when they hit her timbers than they would when they hit the 74.
One problem of "historical experiments" is that the experiment has to be set in context. If all the Swedes want to know is how well a long 24-pounder (which, BTW, I suspect was shorter than a British 24 of 1780 and definitely would have used "weaker" gunpowder) would penetrate
Vasa's side, their experiment's going to be a great success. If they want to look at how splinters were produced by a broadside of 24-pounders or 32-pounders firing at a genuine ship-of-the-line, then they need to build a cross section from HMS
Captain and fire a few rounds at that.
One neat thing about the video, though --- it certainly makes the importance of the weather gauge clear, doesn't it? Picture the amount of smoke that single shot spewed out, then imagine a broadside from a 3-decker (or something like the US "74"
Ohio with a broadside of 15 long 32s, 16 medium 32s, and 15 32-pounder carronades). Think 46 guns firing round shot a third again as heavy wouldn't make
lots of smoke?
)