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View Full Version : Chain shot and other means of casuing pain



Berthier
12-15-2011, 02:11
Chain shot like it's partner in crime barshot, is designed to cause damage and wreak havoc to a ship's mast, rigging, spars, sails and tops.

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Naturally the shapes of the projectiles rendered them pretty poor aerodynamically and thus their range was limited compared to roundshot. A 24lb roundshot could reach out to 1.5-1.75 miles, chain shot might be half that. In medieval times it was used as an anti personnel weapon particularly during sieges. The result of a short range blast on advancing soldiers could easily be imagined for the lethality it would inflict. Later canister and other variants of multiple projectiles from a single firing (like shotgun) were used for this anti-personnel purpose.

The French favoured aiming at masts and rigging to disable a ship and make it easier to move their own ship into a raking position in safety. The British fleet favoured hull shots to disable enemy cannon, inflict crew losses and beat the opponent into submission. There may be more to this than simply doctrine though. A hull shot is trickier to execute well, since the gun platform is not stable as a ship is in constant motion in three planes of movement (roll, pitch and yaw like an aircraft). If the cannon is fired as the ship rolls in the direction of the broadside, the shot may land harmlessly in the sea before the target. On the other hand if fired "on the up" as the ship rolls to the non firing broadside, it will fly higher and could even go over the target. The ability to time the firing of the shot was critical and the RN were the masters of this and thus could aim and fire with higher reliability than French or Spanish crews. A policy of firing on the up is more forgiving of errors and may be an additional reason for favouring chain shot etc since the most likely object to be hit is the spars, masts, rigging etc. So a less skilled crew may have more chance of achieving hits this way.

Other types of shot include round or solid shot (basically an iron ball of various weights depending on gun calibre- think shot puts for the smaller calibres), canister (similar to grape shot on land but with musket size balls as opposed to larger ones in grape shot), heated shot (red hot solid shot) used to start fires on board, incendary or carcass shot with highly inflammable chemicals that spread on impact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cannon_projectiles

Comte de Brueys
12-15-2011, 14:01
Thanks for this detailded information.

Attila57
12-18-2011, 01:46
Nice info

Attilio