Note that this video is an explanation of the methods which Sea-Gunners in the Age of Sail learned from contemporary manuals to operate their artillery. It is not a modern ballistics video, which means some things will be wrong when compared to the science we have available today. Nothing of what I presented in this video are "my opinions". I condense and relay information from period documents and modern historical books into a more digestible format.
@@zacablaster”One-Eye-Billy was it? Yes, we’re having this meeting today because your coworker claims you called her a “beautiful lady”, this type of language will not be tolerated here on the Devils Revenge. Esmerelda has asked us to speak with you to explain that she is a professional prostitute with certain standards. If this happens again, you may be looking at a standard plank walk.”
I've been playing assassin's Creed black flag and it's a very fun game, I think some of the ship "Upgrades" are kinda goofy. So I'd like to know what you think of them, their version of forward facing cannons, a reinforced ram on the front of the ship and a few other things like that. And if not, then I'd like to know what you think of the british and Spanish ships, naval forts and weapons that are shown in the game.
Jesse… we have to calculate ((AR/10) -(MIR/100))°7+FBR & Currset mark on the quadrant Culverin esample: MR. 2000 X: 2 PBR 200 (2000/10) = 200 - 20 (2000/100) = 180°2 = 360+200 = 560 yards
Bit iffy on the math notation there, but generally close enough to use. If a cannon shoots 2000 yards at 45° (max range) and 200 yards at 0° (point blank), the total difference elevating the gun does is 1800 yards. If you divide the angle from 0° to 45° into ten sections, each of them is going to add about one tenth (180 yards) of distance. (It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but I'm not sure you'd actually notice much of a difference with wooden tools on a moving ship shooting at a moving target both affected by the swell of the sea.) So, to figure out how far the gun will shoot at what mark you'd calculate d (the total distance) = 200 yards (PBR) + x*180 yards (one tenth of the difference between MR and PBR), with x being the number of marks your quadrant shows (with a maximum of ten at 45°). Or, more generally, d = PBR + x * ((MR-PBR)/10), which you could simplify by assuming that PBR = MR/10, leading to d = MR/10 + x * 9MR/100. This is also where you can see that dividing the space from 0° to 45° into 9 equal pieces would've resulted in a little friendlier calculations as each new mark would just add a tenth of MR (200 yards) instead of nine hundredths (180 yards) but that only works if the max range really is ten times the point blank range. However, I would assume the real question a gunner was trying to solve was how to aim their gun to hit a target at a given distance. So, you'd try to solve the above equation for x, leading to: x = 10* (d - PBR)/(MR-PBR) - or in your example: x = 10 * (560 yards - 200 yards)/(2000 yards - 200 yards) = 10 * 360yards / 1800 yards = 2. (Obviously, in a real world example the distance wouldn't line up so neatly and you'd get an answer as a fraction between two marks.) Cheers, Dreadbeard
Here's all the math to fire your weapon and keep us alive....but there is so much going on, most of the math won't work quite like you want, just fire the thing and get some experience. And don't miss; our lives, but mostly yours, depend on it. No pressure. Edward teach
Interesting that such mathematical methods existed in the age of sail. I imagine only an officer, or perhaps a gun captain with training, would be able to do any of this. The average sailor wouldn't be doing any gun math. If I had to guess (without looking it up, as a thought experiment), I'd say the captain would have an idea of what range they wanted to engage the enemy at, and given the glacial pace of sailing ships they would have had a lot of time--hours--to maneuver into position. While they are getting into position, an officer can take the expected engagement range and pass that along to the gun captains, telling them to aim the guns at such and such mark on the gunner's quadrant whenever the signal to fire is given.
I am also working on a game of this type. I don't think complex math is required for a game though. Just a simulation like a loosely based system that roughly accounts for different aspects of combat. Do you have anything created yet or any social media for your development?
Artillery at sea bears no resemblance to Artillery ashore. Also you missed two important facts about artillery at sea. The ship rolls, so the cannons would be fired on the up roll. Then there is the fact that you can increase the range by skipping the cannonball across the waves to increase the range. Just like skipping a stone on a lake.
I would love to watch some videos of you dissecting / fact checking of Black Sails, I know the story is heavily tweaked but still. Also about the sailing and just general lore and techonolgy.
i was born in Chicamagua, Ga one of the Civil Wars turning point battle fields and Historical Sight and recreation field . . . I've had many pics of myself and kinfolk climbin all over many of the cannons and huge pyramids of welded cannon shot. Also, check out what was called The white stone battle tower, 280 spiral steps I believe- Thanx U!
What was the reason behind the cannon taper? Just to reduce cost/material during construction? The added material around the breach would help keep it from exploding but why taper it down and make the sights more complicated than aiming down a straight tube?
Cost is probably a factor, but i think the weight reduction matters even more. Lighter canons means more can be stuffed on a ship or be drawn by less horses on land, plus they are easier to handle when aiming/loading
I imagine some gunner's quadrants were made with six instead of ten marks because six is (obviously) half a dozen and back then there were still a lot more people who preferred the duodecimal over the decimal system for everyday use
And it's much easier to repair. Or to make new one. It's really hard to divide 1/8 th of circle 10 times without proper tools. And it's pretty easy to divide it 6 (or 8 times).
Its kind of odd that they used decimal for calibers but pretty much nowhere else until much later, the Brits didnt use decimal currency until like the 70s.
@@mrfancypanzer549 The Brits preferred an accounting system based on 12 for a very long time because it has many factors. 2, 3, 4 and 6. 10 only has 2 and 5.
Not necessarily. This is an artillery weapon. The larger sight allows for marking on drift (not every cannon was of a straight and perfect quality when cast) and when covering a target allows for the knowing maximum affect of the shot (not every cannonball was full iron, some were explosive shell, some were case or grape shot).
@austinwilson1765 They had charts on the gun rails that the main gunner was responsible for double checking every cannon before firing. They had all of the values available so there was minimal guess work. While you are partially correct, the distance values you are referring to were already charted and in use to make firing broadside a more smooth and efficient maneuver.
As a former artillery officer I can confirm that the information given about the basics of aiming is very accurate. I would also like to add two more factors that made aiming hard. 1. the material ( Iron lead) and type of the projectile. ( ball,grapeshot etc.) 2. The quality of the gunpowder as different mixtures give different results.
@@GoldandGunpowder And I also liked that video. I am mentioning ammunition here as one of the factors that made aiming process difficult. Firing different types of ammunition from a gun with rudimentary sights requires a lot of practice.
Although after the golden of piracy, when talking about aiming the cannon it reminds me of Captain Philip Brokes who made some fascintng innovations to his ship HMS Shannon. Such as having adjustable tangent sights that would give accuracy at different ranges. He had the elevating 'quoins' (wedge-shaped pieces of wood placed under the breech) of his long guns grooved to mark various degrees of elevation so that his guns could be reliably elevated. As the decks of ships back then curved upwards towards the stern and bows, he cut down the wheels on the "up-slope" side of each cannon's carriage in order that all guns were level with the horizon. He also introduced a system where bearings were incised into the deck next to each gun; fire could then be directed to any bearing independent of the ability of any particular gun crew to see the target. Fire from the whole battery could also be focused on any part of an enemy ship. Broke also drilled his crew to an extremely high standard of naval gunnery, he regularly had them fire at targets, such as floating barrels. He even had his gun crews fire at targets without them being allowed to look at the target, they were only given the bearing to lay their gun on without being allowed to sight the gun on the target themselves. This constituted a very early example of director fire control. He would also use one of his long 9 pounder guns as a short of giant sniper rifle that would be aimed at specific parts of the ship such as the Helm to blast anyway anyone who tried to use it and blast away the wheel itself. All this meant that when HMS Shannon fought USS Cheaspeake in an exceptionally short gunnery duel, Shannon handly beat her opponent and landed 4 times as many rounds on the opponent.
The Chesapeake was engaged at such close range that none of this probably mattered...and while his imagination was i n the future of gunnery the actual results were probably more haphazard due to so many factors. One that stands out is the idea of bearing. While a good concept, firecontrol has to have a separate bearing for each position because bearing does change quite a lot at range across the length of a football field
@@IDNeon357hy would you make a comment when you know nothing about the Battle. All accounts show that the training made a huge difference, two of the reasons for hitting the cheaspeake 4 times, was faster reload times and the fact the Americans who were also well drilled but nowhere close to the Shannon were hitting the water not Shannon more often than the Shannon's crew did that to Cheasepeake. The reason the gunnery duel was so short was because Cheasepeake had totally lost control due to the 9 pounder destroying the wheel. In fact this battle was a prime example of how great his innovations were. There is so much more the wiki page which is all sourced is actually a very good account of the Battle that you should look up. You don't understand how the bearings worked. The captain didn't say bearing 180 degrees, they would say directions in reaction to the ship as a whole I.e. something like 200 yards and 6 points off standard bow and the crew at each gun would move it to their specific bearings. I do find it baffling and quite risible that you sitting in your bedroom think you know better and noticed this flaw, but non of the crew who actually trained using the system did. Next time maybe wonder have you not understood correctly rather than presuming the people who drilled it 100s of times and used it in Battle where it inflicted huge loses on the enemy in the specific parts they aimed got it wrong.
@@Alex-cw3rzI wonder if he thought of something like convergence, but I guess you wanted to hit the ship in many places not just one. Concentration of fire would have been a concept when those ships came so close to each other. But the guns may have kept firing even if the bridge is nothing but a stack of split wood.
@@AllisterCaine that would only be an issue if they didn't take that into account, which they did, that's why distance as well as position in relation to the ship was relayed to the men. Yes but how Shannon did it was aiming at specific gun ports then working down the ship so that the concentration of fire would be more likely to dislodge a cannon and it meant guns on the enemy ship at poor angles to get a shot at Shannon were not having wasted fire upon them. The guns would keep firing but because the cheaspeake had lost control it was easy for Shannon to move in position outside of the field of fire of those guns. It doesn't matter that much but, just an interesting fact they didn't have bridges back then.
@@AllisterCaine Yes that is really something I am used to in fighter aircraft and flight sims and mech combat games. Would be cool to use that on pirate ships to have more lead on specific targets, like helm or masts. More concentrated firepower. Though since the firing line is perpendicular to the direction the ship is moving im not sure if it would be useful for more than one volley if both ships were moving at different headings. for broadside duals with ships going the same direction convergence could be very useful. Ill see if I can train my pirate crew on Sea of Thieves to use this. As captain I just kinda call out what I want the gunners to aim at during battle in any given situation. Like enemy masts or enemy cannon lines to knock them off guns or kill the enemy gunners with balls to the face.
I intend to make a series on both topics but I want to tackle all the weapon systems first. Since the artillery series has performed so well I intend to make similar series on the other weapons, so an entire month dedicated to small arms, one for melee weapons, etc
A cannonball never goes straight, it starts to drop the moment it leaves the muzzle. But since the drop is an accelerated movement initially that does not make much of a difference.
I did read one of the Destroyermen books, even though it's an alternate history book. It does give very good details of what a cannonball can do to very thin steel and especially what it does when it strikes humans. Definitely a very brutal way to go.
Love the video, definitely learned something I’d never thought of before. I think a video on pirate discipline and punishment on the ship would be a cool video for the future.
I own replica 17th century cannons and do a lot of historical talks about them, and yes they are live, must say your videos are very informative and factual, keep up the good work,
Ballistics in Renaissance was surprisingly sophisticated considering the oldness of time. Nicolo Fontana ‘Tartaglia’ even already knew a trajectory of cannonball isn’t utterly depicting parabola in the air, but composited from linear and curve. His method wasn’t a formula which considered the drag of air and gravity acceleration as the parts of equation but a geometric approximation, though it could give projectiles’ trajectories which were quite similar to real those by calculations on papers
Even going back to antiquity, the Romans and Greeks were using formulas with root cubes to design their torsion weapons. Artillery has always been a military field a step ahead of the rest.
imagine if all the math questions for kids were about shit like this. “Blackbeard has sighted a Royal Navy ship 100 meters away. If his cannon fires in a 30° arc, at what angle should Blackbeard fire?”
The thumbnail has a scene from the Treasure Island of 1990, starred by a younger Christian Bale. It's a very entertaining little gem that flies under the radar; i highly recommend it.
This video has several of my favorite elements in a video. There is an instructional quote, a math formula, scientific concepts that can be applied to real life, graphics that help explain the concepts, and interesting historical examples. I could watch these for hours.
Who ever you are 'Gold & Gunpowder' I like your style and have been binging on you since I boarded your Pirate ship. For your demo stats I'm from the Davy Crockett /Treasure Island boomer age & got much of my education from 'Mark Twain' who once said of his youth, " Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. "
Just recently became a fan and I can’t stop watching these videos. You should do a video on marooning and other punishments of age of piracy. That would be fascinating!
thank you for the tips and tricks finally me and Blackbeard can pull up on the ops and proceed with the sail by. This informational video has made my highly intelligent brain begin to process the incredible difficulties that come with aiming a high Calabar rounds and super high speeds. Yet again i would like to favour your odds and thank you for the informational and highly helpful video you have shown us. Please send a pigeon back when you have the available time yours truly whitebeard🐺🐺
The ART of ballistics. You have to KNOW the velocity of your projectile, the range drop of rate , and add in the rise fall and lateral movement of the ship platform. Ideally you want to have two of best three cannon hitting roughly the same spot at the same time for maximum impact. (The force is not doubling it's exponential and maxes out at three.) There are three words that make the most of your gunnery. Practice, practice and practice.
I’ll happen upon channels and vids like this every once in a while… ugh. I love this stuff. Creators just making content about the things they have knowledge on and find interesting. No begging for subscribers, no clickbait, no nothin. Thank you 🙏
Your explanation of drop @1:48 is straight up incorrect. On earth, all fired bullets are accelerating downwards from the very moment they leave the barrel at approximately 9.8 m/s, with some minor variation based on where on the planet you are. Here's the flaw - The bullet drop over time is constant. See Galileo Galilei for more information. As the cannon ball slows down due to drag, the amount of drop per horizontal unit of distance increases, but the drop per time factor doesn't change. Incidentally, this is why your math breaks at 10:10 - If 45 degrees of elevation gives 2000 paces and 0 degrees gives 200 paces, elevating the gun can only alter the range by 1800 paces. 1800 paces divided by 10 marks is 180 paces per mark. In other words, the formula there is (2000-200)/10 =180. To be thorough though, this math is actually pretty wrong. It may be close enough for field expedient use in its historical context though. Not like these gunners were running around with laser range finders or even optical stadimeters. Range had to be estimated based on experience. And what experience did these gunners have in measuring distance? It would have been lobbing cannonballs according to this formula. In other words, their math was wrong but their brains would have been calibrated to that wrong math anyways.
fair enough on the formula I calculated from 200 and not from 0, the other details don't really matter because as you say, this is a historical video on how -they- did it, these weapon systems are not in use anymore
I find the last guys advice fitting, I play a lot of Sea of Thieves, a pirate game where you have to fight other people, and I always get asked how to aim cannons well and I always say it just takes instinct and practice to learn how to aim them properly cuz of all the variables.
You're also forgetting wind resistance. That would require you to lead, for our non American friends that means to put your sights just before your target, the target.
I didn't forget it, I mentioned it in the final section. Aside from instructions on correct timing with the movements of the ship, I haven't found any instructions in period manuals on how -they- dealt with wind resistance, because it seems the concept was only barely understood for most of the Age of Sail.
@@tatumergo3931 I suspect that it does matter, a lot, but it actually alters things in favor of this formula and makes it actually work reasonably well for field expedience. Think about this - In the example, maximum range is 2000 paces, minimum range is 200 paces and each of 10 marks adds 180 paces. Now, if you remember trig at all, you should know that in a vacuum, that just doesn't work. The distance given by elevating would be tan(4.5 * marks) * 1800. In other words, elevating 2 marks would give a range increase of 285 paces, not 360. So let's think about drag. The maximum drag moment is while velocity is highest *but* maximum total drag over the course of the projectile's flight would be experienced in a maximum range shot (i.e. at 45 degrees). The catch here is that they where lobbing heavy rounds at very low velocities by modern standards. Modern artillery pushes rounds out there at 5 times the speed or more. So yeah, drag is exponential but we aren't really looking at a whole lot of velocity to begin with here. Hell of a lot of momentum though so those rounds really want to carry what energy they have pretty efficiently. All this is to say that drag adds up over flight distance in a somewhat linear fashion compared to what we're used to. This skews the range curve downwards a lot, if you take my meaning. In other words, the loss of velocity due to drag just happens to be pretty close to the inverse of the tangent by pure coincidence. When needed, more accurate information could be obtained by using a lookup table containing actual test firing data, but those guys weren't exactly using laser range finders to range their targets in the first place.
Having tinkered with some bowling ball mortars on 24 lbs land based limbers shot fit is important. Same charge with a slightly loose ball changes a lot.
I have read and heard in several videos recently that muskets were only "effective" out to about 50 or100 or 150 yards, but for anyone firing one today, they should know that a musket ball fired over black powder (even homemade medieval repro powder) with only a ~1000fps or ~300Mps muzzle velocity, can be lethal at a much greater distance for anyone who happens to be in its path. Lead round ball has a much lower ballistic coefficient than modern cylindrical bullet shapes but at .69 caliber a 1 ounce lead ball will still be traveling at several hundred feet per second (and more than 100Mps) at 400 meters and retaining like 185 joules of energy. If someone's head or heart happens to intersect that path they are probably gonna die. So make sure you have a backstop or a hill to shoot into.
This honestly sounds like kinetics but in a fantasy world. It really does seem magical when you take away all the modern understandings. It works, kinda, but works without understanding the very very fundamentals. Interesting that the man that became newton wasnt a gunner that felt there was more to what he saw
Outside of the US, even if we can't easly own a gun, we still can go to range from street, rent AK and have some fun with just personal ID. It probably differs from country to country, but just them have to get all licences and takes resposibility for guests behavior. Cannons are a bit more complicated as nobody will allow you to load solid shot into historical piece for safety reasons, but you can get to fire blank form napoleonic 3pdr or something similarly small on reanaction events.
I will be honest and say that I only watched this because I saw Michael Halsey's Israel Hands in the thumbnail and I was smiling when I saw the clip :-)
I liked the aiming animations of this video. But if I remember correctly firearms do not shoot the furthest when the bore is angled 45 degrees, rather 30-35 degrees, at least for small arms. I think its because the projectile slows down the farther it travels.
11:14 Soldier 1: CAPTAIN, WE ARE BEING BOMBARDED FROM A SHIP, THEY ARE ON THE SEA AND WE ARE ON THE LAND, WHAT WE DO? Captain: ok, let me make my math, ok, max range minus point blank divided by my mom age... Solier 2: CAPTAIN, THAT IS NOT TIM TO MAKE UR HOME WORK
"Bullet drop, I presume" Lol what? What the heck do you think he was measuring in the first place? The entire topic of THIS video is basically "bullet drop"
10:10 why only 180? Because the difference between Max and Min is 1800 paces, and 1/10 of that is the difference in length you get between each elevation marker until it reaches max Edit: you literally did the math for this 30 seconds later, its so fuckin simple lmao
2:27 I did not understand the difference in elevation from SPB to PBR. Can someone explain? The ranges double but he said there is no elevation. I'm confused!
A plumb on a platform rocking in the ocean? Maybe if you were on land, otherwise this would be a recipe for failure. Why not just put a pointer on the axle mount of the cannon, that rotates with the canon, and draw an angle diagram on the carriage. Or would that have been too sensible for the age?
Sorry bud, but there is no period after leaving the barrel during which a projectile does not lose speed due to friction, or height due to gravity. "Point blank" is the distance over which those losses are irrelevant. You got your first statement of "fact" wrong. Not sure how much we should trust any subsequent statement of "fact".
While I was playing dredge, I noticed their are a lot of mentions of pirates, even mention of a " pirate war" so I would like to know, in your opinion, how well could a ship defend itself against various sea monsters, giant cephalopods, monsterus fish, giant enemy crabs, mega birds and so on.
First illustration of dispart is incorrect (difference in diameters). Subsequent illustrations are correct (difference in radii). Illustration of range/elevation is correct (non-linear). Explanation of range/elevation beginning at 10:40 is incorrect (linear).
1:45 arrrgh not entirely as it sorta rises up at first, it's the distance at which the projectile crosses the imaginary extension of the bore axis (and then starts falling as you've shown) The straight->starts dropping off model is an oversimplification used by military instructors so that any imbecile can get it xD
Imagine having to do all this math in your head and having to account for all the environmental factors while at the same time having to command a gunnery crew to precisely aim the cannon on a loud, crowded gunnery deck while the other ship is firing at you too... it should stand without reason that the gunnery officers should get a larger share than the other crewmen.
