Watched an interesting documentary last night about the recovery of two cannon from an Elizabethan warship off the coast of Alderney, archaeology at sea is much trickier and much more dangerous than when done on land – a diver died in the course of this dig. In her father's reign (Henry VIII) a warship would have had cannon of different sizes which could make reloading a problem as you would have to find the correct sized cannon ball to be able to load it.
The point of the dig was to demonstrate that this ship was carrying cannon of a uniform size by raising two to compare with one recovered earlier from the sands below, all of the shot recovered from the site had been of a single size.
This was achieved and marks the start of using a naval ship as a gun platform much earlier than historian believed previously and led to a change in tactics away from boarding towards coordinated firing of cannon in a broadside.
They also recovered a musket and a steel breastplate while excavating the cannon and carried out an interesting experiment using a replica of the musket and a piece of steel of the same thickness as the breastplate. They fired a round from a modern 1911 pistol at the steel which made a noticeable dent but did not penetrate, the musket ball on the other hand went straight through.
Even having watched this I think that I would prefer the ease of use of the 1911 to the complicated reloading of the musket if I ever found myself in a gun fight - not that we have many of these round here.
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2 comments:
Interesting. :) I love the kind of history that involves "digging up" the facts. There was a British show on one of our channels that did digs under time constraints. It was interesting.
Oh, and while you might not need a gun, I read somewhere that knife crimes are rising--probably just in certain areas, though. Just the same, be careful. :)
rt, That would probably be Time Team which is one of my favourite shows.
Local big city does have it's knife crimes but it is just a case of always being aware of your surroundings and what is going on to avoid them -so far so good.
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