Grapeshot

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

... Curious about the guy second to the last, right. Think he was pulling the 'Napoleon' thing with his hand in his coat.

A prestigious "Napolifashion" in the period, Jim

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[fernando]

Was it 'over' heating due to intense discharges or 'over' loading of gunpowder ?


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[kronckew]

I suspect, (from the video I posted above), that it was a casting flaw. Cooling a casting from the outside in makes the inside softer and changes the crystalline structure. Failure can occur early in it's life, or later after wear. Cannons were apparently NOT proof fired with a large charge.

The iron clad ship: Note the thickness of the gun-port covers. I've been on the HMS Warrior here, the UK's first iron hulled ironclad (after, they built a few for the Southern States navy) - equally thick shutters but the ironclad hull was a lot thicker. constructed from 4 ½ inch thick wrought iron plates bolted to 18" inches of teak, then mounted on the 1 inch thick plating of the hull itself, behind which were the frames and timber lining. In all this represented a total thickness of some 2 feet.

[fernando]

Aren't they ugly, when you think of the charm of "normal" sailing ships ?

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[kronckew]

One of their main problems were that cannon balls of the period bounced off the durn things, so they went back to old school, really old school an put a ram on the bow, much like a Greek/Roman trireme. If you can't shoot a hole in it, crank up the boilers and ram it. That bottom pretty one was built by the UK for the Confederate navy, but it arrived after the war was over.

The beak of a roman era trireme was called a rostrum. The Roman Forum had a speaking area where rostrums from defeated enemy warships were mounted as trophies. You would literally stand on the rostrum to speak to the crowds at the Forum, hence our use of the term to mean a speakers platform.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by kronckew

... The beak of a roman era trireme was called a rostrum. The Roman Forum had a speaking area where rostrums from defeated enemy warships were mounted as trophies. You would literally stand on the rostrum to speak to the crowds at the Forum, hence our use of the term to mean a speakers platform.

Ephemeral, if i may; Romans borrowed the term used for the beak (snout) of an animal and we, Post Romans, later brought it back, this time for the face (rosto) of a human .
For the ships ram we here use 'esporão' (large espora=spur) also from latin 'sporõne'.
... just for perusal, of course .

[kronckew]

...and they called another 'weapon', a boarding ramp that let them put infantry on Carthaginian triremes rather than ramming, which the Carthaginians were better at, called by them a Corvus as it had a big curved spike at the end like a crow's beak to embed in the deck planking, blackbirds, crows, rooks, jackdaws, and ravens are all classified as Corvidae. The crow is a Corvus in latin.

..but we digress.

[Philip]

Originally Posted by kronckew

The Roman Forum had a speaking area where rostrums from defeated enemy warships were mounted as trophies. You would literally stand on the rostrum to speak to the crowds at the Forum, hence our use of the term to mean a speakers platform.

You can still see the Rostra (named using the plural form of the neuter noun, since it was once adorned with several trophy beaks taken at Actium) today in the ruins of the Forum Romanum. History records that it wasn't only the beaks of ships that were displayed there. Recall the grisly fate of Roman statesman Cicero, who was assassinated in 43 BC on order of the Second Triumvirate -- his severed head and hands were displayed on the Rostra by Mark Antony, who was the target of Cicero's letters and speeches.

[fernando]

It would appear as one reads that, the fashion to exhibit ships rams of defeated enemies was first practiced by Gaius Duilius, eventually the same who first used the boarding bridge (corvus) against Carthaginians, in the battle of Mylae (260 BC); such rostra column formerly in the Roman Forum, presently replicated, including the original inscription remnants, is kept in Capitoline Museum.
Much has been written on the corvus, to the extreme point of its existence being denied by some scholars on basis that, once such bridge was raised would make a ship, with the design like that of the Roman galley, to roll over and capsize. More within reasoning is that of considering such apparatus only being viable in flat waters, opposite to those of high seas, due to problems with ship's navigability; it has been suggested that this instability led to Rome losing almost two entire fleets during storms in 255 and 249 BCE. Apparently this system was 'soon' abandoned in favor of the more orthodox a harpoon & winch system, known as the harpax.

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