Age of Sail Gunnery - The Lethality of Splinters (ft.Vasa) 

Pinned post for Q&A :)

Many moons ago now I had the miss fortune to get on the end of a 105mm artillery round or two.. I dug a piece of shell casing out of a door that had stopped me being mangled. It was about 6 inches long by an inch and made to fragment. The edges were razor sharp and ever since I have thanked my lucky stars it was not an AP or HESH round.. Amazes me how the sailors of old could go up against an 80 gunner of the line. Great work by the way. Always fascinating and you certainly know your stuff sir.

Anyone who has ever experienced an artillery attack in a wooded area knows how deadly those "splinters" (some of them literally as large as logs) can be.

Took a nautical archeology class from Dr. Hocker in the late 90s at Texas A&M - it's good to see he's still at it! Thanks for the age of sail content Drach!

Myth Busters did not take into account the age of the wood. Wood that has been soaked in salt water, rain water, dried by the sun and subjected to heat and cold is not the same as wood just milled.

I got a splinter from Chinese Baltic birch substitute while running a CNC beam saw. Within 24 hours, my finger knuckle was like a huge grape and painful. The amount of stuff in this abscess was incredible as was the pain. I can only imagine what this horror was like and in a period of no antibiotics

The compressive feeling of being on deck of an Iowa class battleship is quite amazing. The closest that I could get to the forward turrets, on USS Missouri, was approximately the large antenna near the anchor chains. The thick windows on the bridge had to be lowered so as to not blow them out. This created some fun when the loose papers get sucked out of the bridge and go fluttering across the waves. One of our Executive Officers, I won't name him, got very jumpy and ducked when on the open area above the bridge. The big guns hit you with a big whoomp feeling. The smaller 5" guns were much more annoying as they have a sharp krang that hits you in the groin. To me, it was a glorious experience and best captured with a fast motor drive on the camera. To those at the end of the round's trajectory weren't as enthused. Below decks, there was virtually no affect other than a dull whump sound of the guns. Inside the turrets, it's very quiet with the sounds being mostly crew talking and the mechanical sounds of the loaders and breeches. So sad that people can't experience that sensation anymore. PH1 (SW) ret.

The Mythbusters experiment is better described as a BB gun being used to simulate impact damage of a .50 BMG as far as caliber, impact damage and of course splinter damage.

Having seen a piece of broken baseball bat puncture a player's lung, and in other cases the big end knocking the catcher or umpire off his feet, and given that ships of the line created splinters that big, sharp on all sides and moving much faster, I'm inclined to side with Drach.

to be fair about the smoke filling up the ship...in a battle, if you're (un)lucky, you'll have extra vents holes punched through the sides over time

Something that isn't talked about nearly enough, is the effects of double and triple shotting the guns. That is loading multiple cannonballs into a single gun in order to increase the amount of metal being thrown at the target, as well as reducing the velocity of each individual round, so as to reduce the risk of over-penetration, and more effectively transferring kinetic energy into the target, especially in close range battles. There are accounts of this being used to great effect, even shredding entire decks, at Trafalgar.

My issue with Myth Busters is the way they "scale down" their tests.

40:20

Drach out here busting Mythbusters

Drach: „three problems with mythbuster experiment“

Oh, yes. I can see why sailors wanted that last stitch through the nose. The perfect horror would be waking up at twenty feet, bathed in pearlescent light with a cannon ball at your feet. Fascinating conversation with Dr. Hocker that goes into very satisfying depth about the phenomenon of splinter formation and effect.

This is really cool.

Good job! Have been enjoying this series, even if it is embarrassing to see myself on video.

I just watched the footage of the test firings. As of now, the first thing I'm going to do if I win the lottery is pay the Vasa museum whatever it costs to get another round of test firings, and pack the Slo-Mo Guys off to Stockholm.

The splinter protection part of that Mythbusters episode may have been inaccurate, but I tell you what: the eyepatch preserving night vision experiment is spot on. I still cover my right eye when I go to the bathroom at night so that I don't fall over the cat on the way back to my bed.