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Superguns Helped Defeat the Spanish Armada
Hugh Pickens writes "With the discovery last year of the first wreck of an Elizabethan fighting ship off Alderney in the Channel Islands, thought to date from around 1592, marine archaeologists are revising their ideas on how the English defeated the Spanish Armada. Replicas of two cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck were recreated in a modern foundry, and tests carried out showed that the Elizabethans were throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. Elizabeth's 'supergun,' although relatively small, could hit a target a mile away. At a ship-to-ship fighting distance of about 100 yards, the ball would have sufficient punch to penetrate the oak planks of a galleon, travel across the deck, and emerge out the other side. Tests on cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck also suggest that the ship carried guns of uniform size, firing standard ammunition. 'Elizabeth's navy created the first ever set of uniform cannon, capable of firing the same size shot in a deadly barrage,' says marine archaeologist Mensun Bound from Oxford University, adding that that navy had worked out that a lot of small guns, all the same, all firing at once, were more effective than a few big guns. '[Elizabeth's] navy made a giant leap forward in the way men fought at sea, years ahead of England's enemies, and which was still being used to devastating effect by Nelson 200 years later.'"
Speaking of a Brit I am always humbled at my nations level of mastery of naval tactics, from the early 'near supersonic' artillery mentioned in this article, to the modern... "Just ram the fuckers with a submarine" approach that we employ today... *wipes tear*
Two cannons were shown on the programme being lifted from the sea bed to join a 3rd that had been lifted earlier.
They wanted 3 cannons to make sure that a matching pair was not a fluke. A matching triple is much less likly. It was also interesting to to note that all the cannon balls lifted were of the same size.
It's both fascinating and sad how technology and warfare has been intertwined from the very dawn of man. A lot of "geeks" from way back, Greek philosophers, Leonardo da Vinci, etc. were sponsored by the rich and powerful of their respectable eras in exchange for using their minds to create better warfare technology.
For good or for evil, it seems that's the way it has always been, and likely always will be. We possibly wouldn't be having this discussion if it weren't for DARPA...
.: Max Romantschuk
Since you can't be arsed to read the article, let me quote the pertinent part for you.
The point isn't the size or type of cannon. It's the notion of using a bunch of identical ones as opposed to a variety.
The difference is that while EVERYONE had guns that could fire something inaccurately over a long distance these guns had a few rather special features.
Firstly they are all the same, no variability which means that the shot can be made more precisely and firing can be made more accurate
Secondly their recoil was able to throw the gun back into the ship consistently (read straight) due to the level of accuracy, this meant that the guns could be reloaded quicker
These combinations also meant that the guns could be used effectively in a broadside with standardised shot rather than having shot "tuned" to each individual gun.
So while the Dutch may have invented the stock exchange and orange carrots the guns used here by the Brits (strictly actually the English at this stage) were the first "modern" cannons if such a term can be used.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The pistol they used in the test at the Royal Armoury was not particularly modern -- it was a GI-standard Colt 1911A1 firing milspec .45ACP ball ammo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Armada
What amuses me is the selective memory Brits have on their naval affairs...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cartagena_de_Indias
That's what I'd call a defeat.
The author of the article concludes it by saying English gun founders were 50 years ahead of their time, which would seem to indicate a gun capable of firing a mile was unheard of. From my brief perusal on Wikipedia guns mounted on galleons tended to have a range of 1/5-1/4 of a mile. For the person that posted above regarding a kilometer ranged Dutch gun, remember a mile would be an additional 60% or so.
That only happened near the end of the 17th century - well after the start of the decline of the Dutch empire. Earlier that century, the Dutch did defeat the English at sea - three times.
So whatever advantage these guns gave, it wasn't very long-lasting.
The Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, so maybe everybody else had caught up by the mid 17th century?
The dutch had a problem: they sea exits were very shallow, which put serious limit on the size of ships they could build and run domestically. They even invented cumbersome floating drydocks to help "fly" large east indiamen over reefs, but eventually trade and commerce went to the brits and the french, just like the german Hansa alliance lost most of their lucrative trade about 150 years beforehand.
Otherwise, english victory over the Spanish Amrmada was due to two factors mostly: wind conditions made it impossible to land the big spanish ships on british mainland and the english made iron cannonballs were of much higher quality owing to the slow cooling process applied after casting.
The spanish just threw their freshly minted cannonballs into a bucket of water, which made the metal brittle, so it shattered when hitting the outside of a sailing ship's thick timber, making little damage inside, if any. The english buried their hot cannonballs into charcoal, taking days to cool to ambient temperature, so the resultsing piece of iron was almost as soft as a piece of lead, staying in one piece while it went throught the timber of spanish ships, sometimes even coming out on the opposite side of the impact! (Whatever was in-between got almost totally destroyed).
On the other hand, one should not overestimate the role of artillery in late XVIth century sea combat. Accuracy was nil and reload times / repeat fire rates were nowhere near the Nelsonian standards. The Lepanto sea battle only a decade before, fought between venetians + spanish crusaders and the ottoman turks, was mostly sword and knife gore.
Let's say bad winds and substandard or outright bad seamanship was 75% of the 1588 spanish defeat, their commander actually never been to the sea before, he was simply a close relative of the king, that's why they appointed him to the post. (The russians made the very same mistake in 1905, earning the catastrophic Tsushima defeat.)
the guns were not very special. It's the way they were used that was special.
That's what she said.
Actually, the funny thing is: only because our history textbooks are still fascinated with conquerors, ignore civillian progress almost entirely, and kings which built up the economy instead of going to war are presented as weak kings. So yeah, you only get to hear about the stuff used in war.
But if you look as far back as the dawn of civilization, the advances which made those armies and empires possible in the first place were almost invariably civillian technology. E.g., you wouldn't have had those empires rising and falling in Mesopotamia without irrigation and timekeeping and a bunch of other things. I'm hard pressed to see how irrigation might have been developed for warfare.
Or if you look at ancient Egypt, their greatest advances were made before the Hyskos invasion, while Egypt was still shielded by the desert from any noteworthy warfare. Their only concerns were minor border fights against raiders and nubian tribes, and they didn't waste much of their GDP on the army or even on fortifying their cities. In fact, none of their cities had a wall at all. And yet in this age they developed construction, medicine, etc, to an extent far beyond their warring neighbours.
Romans, if you look at them, were actually a remarkably peaceful civilization. With some few exceptions, like the last war against Carthage, Rome almost never started a war of aggression. They just defended what was theirs and honoured their alliances to the letter. But when attacked, they hit back _hard_. Among other things because they hadn't ruined their economy and manpower with pointless wars before that. The vast majority of their conquests were actually done in counter-attacks.
But anyway, while everyone drools about the Roman legions, few people give thought to the economy that could afford them in the first place. There were advances in engineering, administration, construction, etc. There was stuff like the aqueducts that allowed Rome to have that monstruous manpower to throw at an enemy. Most of that stuff was civillian tech. Nobody built an aqueduct as an offensive thing.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Dude, I don't know about you but Slashdot didn't stop me doing that...
*blushing furiously at being caught typing nonsense in Slashdot*
Then again judging from your UID you might be a little younger than I am? ;)
Yeah. Any tips, dude? How do I charm and seduce the mysterious species known as "females"?
---
"Why do they have to travel in packs? And how are you supposed to get one alone long enough to ask them?"
Actually, dutch and french ships were highly valued by the british, since they were better at maneuvering than the english ships. A fairly large percentage of the legendary english ships are actually of dutch or french design :p
The real difference was: English crews/commanders. Many of them were, even during the late 16th and most of the 17th century, out at sea for very long durations, even years. And there was also the process of continuous drills.
Nelson was nobody's fool, he used that tactic because it favoured his technology.
The brits had shorter guns that when fired would roll back into the ship ready to be reloaded. The spanish had guns that had to be loaded by climbing over the side of the ship. This new information that the british guns were powerfull enough make two holes with one shot makes the technological gap even wider and thus more effective.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I never heard of ramming being used by Nelson. Also, given the layout of ships at the time it would have been all but impossible to ram and shoot an enemy vessel.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, it's an example of the power of consistency, which is best obtained by sourcing from a single supplier. I highly doubt these warships had cannons from a variety of manufacturers made to detailed open specifications. More likely, navy smiths made all the cannons themselves, with the same tools and same people each time. In a modern context, it'd mean the navy standardising on one technology from one supplier - ie, Microsoft. Nice try though.
The British had for almost a 500 years a fairly simple approach to warfare. It's called "shoot the enemy a lot". I'd bet that it comes from their own ancient fascination with the long bow, where, really, you had to just put as many arrows in the air as possible to win and they did win that way at Agincourt.
From that they always worked on the rate and power of their fire, whereas other nations had a more mixed set of priorities. It wasn't just about getting more hits - they also recognized the intimidating effect having a lot of stuff coming your way meant.
But even after their machine gun, you saw British military theorists like Lidell Hart advocating for what the Germans would adapt into their own blitzkreig, and the USA into its Shock and Awe. And, even their commandos and SAS, upon which all the special forces of the world are based, are also really about, "shoot the enemy a lot"...
Bottom line is, if you mess with the British, they are going to shoot you a lot. So its really easier just have them as an ally and keep them working on their bad food and good music and television.
This is my sig.
"We Dutch had the same guns on our trade- and war ships in that time"
The Spanish were notably impressed by Dutch gun makers, and commissioned lots of cannon and ammo for their armada from them. Unfortunately, the fact that they were occupying Holland by force at the time meant that the Dutch hated them, so archaeologists have found Dutch cannonballs on Spanish wrecks that had been "accidentally" made just slightly too big or just a smidgeon too small for the intended cannon.
These differences in tolerances were small enough to ensure that they looked as if they were the right size to Spanish inspections. Attempting to fire them at the English however would have had tragi-comic results such as swearing gunners being unable to force some cannonballs into the muzzles of their guns, while others formed such a poor seal that most of the gases from the burning powder went round them, so the initial "bang" was followed by the sound of a ball rolling sluggishly along the muzzle, and then a "plop" as it fell into the sea.
The strangest part of all this is of course that archaeological evidence from non-Spanish wrecks indicates that the Dutch ammunition tolerance problem didn't occur in stuff they made for themselves or sold to countries who weren't occupying them at the time. Some historians believe that this notable discrepancy may well have been behind the famous rant from King Philip II, where he threw his throne at a courtier while screaming "I'll kill those fucking Dutch!"...
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
The gaul wars were a mixed bag and Caesar was going to be investigated by the Senate for it, when he decided to attack Rome instead.
But even there, it all started when the Helvetii attacked some gallic tribes which were allies and clients of Rome. The next two major interventions there followed the same pattern: someone attacks the allies of Rome, Rome smacks back hard.
It has nothing to do with crying "the Gaul have weapons of mass destruction", and everything to do with your allies being actually attacked first. Big difference.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Philips made radio tubes for the Wehrmacht, Kriegmarine and Luftwaffe during WWII while Holland was occupied by the Nazis. Remarkably the tubes suffered a high failure rate, but only after several hours of flawless operation, enough to get them past inspection and initial fitment but not much longer. Odd that.
Because this is the internet. People dont't ever admit they're wrong here.
Another advantage of cooling off iron in charcoal is that the exterior absorbs carbon. You know what iron + carbon is? Steel. It's called case-hardening.
there was a display in d.c. some time ago of russian war booty: hitler's desk, swastika-etched globe, military banners (direct descendants of medieval heraldy)...and nazi & russian small arms: the german guns were beautifully machined, but each took a unique ammo; the russian were stamped-steel, but all took the same round, a major logistical advantage...
Actually on many Frigates and Cutters (smaller fast sailing ships) a small number of guns were often placed in the foredecks as the ships were used for pursing merchant vessels. The idea behind this was to fire chainshot into the sails of a fleeing merchantman.
Ramming was a common tactic from the dawn of naval warfare, many of the first combat ships were dedicated rammers as were the first Ironclads used in the US civil war. Even in Nelsons days it was still common. You forget just how hard it is to actually sink a ship made out of wood, especially when your only weapons are iron balls. Ramming was also a good way for small ships to destroy big ships, sailing ships cant manoeuvre quickly so a small frigate on a ramming course towards a ship of the line would take five minutes to execute but it takes five minutes for a single course change order to be executed on a large sailing ship.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
which obsoleted all warships before it when it appeared in 1906. If anything this older ship they should follows the same idea, lots of powerful guns all the same size. What is known as a uniform main battery. The article on wikipedia is pretty good when it comes to why such a feature is important.
What it comes down to is range. Having the bulk of your guns available at range is what used to win naval battles. The same could be said this day and age about your missiles. Who can shoot the furthest should win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Almost everyone seems to be making stuff to such standards nowadays.
"pew pew pew"
People in occupied France often served the Nazis with food and wine that wasn't quite up to their usual standards. The idea behind this was that nobody would want to stay in a country where every sauce was a little lumpy, every vegetable was limp through overcooking, and every glass of wine was a tad on the sour side, so the Germans would rapidly tire of France and leave of their own accord.
The flaw in this otherwise cunning plan was of course the fact that the German idea of good food and wine is based on quantity rather than quality, so they weren't at all put off by pate served at slightly the wrong temperature if there was lots of it and they didn't get diarrhoea or indigestion from eating it.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Well, certainly everything is possible, and it did happen at least once off the top of my head. But I think that _most_ of the time they didn't actually need to fake anything, and it would have been hard to fake it anyway.
For example the Daci had raided into Roman lands across the Danube since the times of Caesar (i.e., for more than 150 years) by the time Trajan had enough and finally conquered them. It's easy to fake one attack, but it's hard to fake 150 years of your settlers being attacked and your settlements sacked.
For example at the other end, did they really need to fake, say, the attacks of the Picti in Britannia? Britain ended up needing 3 legions and IIRC a whopping 20% of the auxilia in the Empire just to keep the picts from raiding south. Not only were these a financial burden, but it was a source of civil wars too, as whoever commanded 3 legions and that many auxiliary regiments soon got the idea that he can march with them upon Rome.
I.e., if that was done to fake a need to push the border farther north of Hadrian's wall, it would have been the most piss-poor and expensive fake in history. The area between Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall just wasn't worth the cost of such a "faking". So, no, I don't believe that was faked.
For example, going back in time a bit, to the time of the Gallic Wars, the Helvetii had attacked the Romans and their allies before. (And indeed used that pre-existing history as a bargaining chip to try to get Caesar to back off.) Do we need some elaborate conspiracy theory there? I'll apply Occam's Razor and say there probably was a genuine attack there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Then we just put the battleships in space, you dolt! Strap a star drive to the Missouri to counter some other ship of the era, and launch the puppy.
The USAF and USN are currently working on a technology to allow space-bourne Battleships and Carriers to transform into giant man shaped fighting machines as well.
Now, if you want to decry a weaponized space, how do you think we are going to deal with extra-terrestial enemies? Oh, I know, you'll want to sing them to death with your love songs.
Now, get off my lawn you damned dirty ape.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It's more than that. The British had developed gun making tech to the point that their guns had more uniform bores and had tighter tolerances twist bore and shot, so they could fire more shot with less powder and less danger of blowing up; their guns were lighter for their caliber than the French and Spanish, hence ships carried larger guns. These were carronades, short barreled, and shot best from close distances. I believe one British ship, firing down the stern of a French ship as each gun came to bear, killed or wounded one third of the French crew in just the one pass, at either the Battle of the Nile or Trafalgar.
The British also trained far more than The British and Spanish and could reload about 3:2 times as fast. The shorter length helped reload inside as noted.
Infuriate left and right
You are wrong. The only "ramming" occurring in sailing ships was to come close for boarding. Oared galleys rammed but also tried just sweeping close by to break oars, the early ironclad steamships rammed wooden sailing ships, but sailing ships did not. They had no ramming forefoot to do any damage.
Infuriate left and right
Am I the only one who sees an awesome motion picture in this? Possibly starring Liam Neeson as the English ship captain and Jude Law as his brilliant munitions engineer? Antonio Banderas can be the Spanish Admiral, and Kate winslet can be the love interest. I get 5% of the gate for casting.
This book describes Nelson's tactics in full gory detail. No ramming. His aim was to bring the broadside of his ships-of-the-line against the bow or stern of the enemy ships. It exposed them to fire as they approached, but put them in a short-range position where all of his guns on one side (52 cannons?) could be brought to bear, with the enemy unable to fight back effectively. The book I mentioned relishes in describing the tactic of "raking", where cannon balls from broadsides are sent from one end of the enemy ship out the other end, destroying everything in it's path: splintering wood and shattering humans. The decks of the French and Spanish ships were flooded with blood, with some crews almost completely wiped out. The shots that were "making two holes" were actually problematic at times, specifically when an enemy ship had a British ship along both sides - at that point the British gunners would have to reduce the amount of gunpowder lest their shots passed right through the enemy ship and into a friend.
You are right in spirit and intention, but wrong in details.
* Pistols are sub-sonic .45 ACP rounds are subsonic.
--- In fact, most of modern military handgun rounds are supersonic. Some of the
* fire bullets that are mostly made of lead
--- In fact, today revolvers remain the only handguns with lead rounds made for them, and even those are not in the majority. Most have at least partial copper/brass jacket. Rounds made for military are almost exclusively fully jacketed (FMJ). If you meant that the cores are made of lead, then it is no different for long guns. Few cores are made of steel. Steel cores contribute to premature barrel wear.
* They have a ton of stopping power
--- In fact, they don't. They are notoriously poor stoppers. That is why police carry shotguns in the trunks of their cars in the US. One blast of 00 buckshot is devastatingly more incapacitating compared to almost any commonly used handgun round. The only way you can reliably stop an attacker with a handgun round short of hitting the central nervous system is to cause sufficient disruption in blood circulation to the brain. Due to their small diameter, it is not easy to achieve with one shot with a handgun.
* almost no penetration
--- Depends on what you are penetrating. For a human being, a FMJ 9mm has a tendency to overpenetrate. Not only can that result in injuries to bystanders, but it lowers the effectiveness of the round on the attacker. Hence the development of the hollow point rounds.
* the bullets, even milspec, are rounded at the front. It's designed to mushroom like that
--- It is primarily, not even, in the milspec. Rounded FMJ rounds penetrate more reliably than mushrooming (hollow point) rounds. This requirement for a rounded FMJ stems from the Hague Convention and the fact that reliable penetration is more important to the military who often face purpose-built or improvised obstructions in the path of their projectiles.
Other than that, I agree with you.
BTW, it's a pity DL lists do not work in /.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
I can't believe that the Spanish had not figured that out
Whaling is a much older business than cannon-fighting. While almost any country that whaled from boats threw their harpoons down onto the whales (like Japanese) all the ship based whalers already knew that throwing a harpoon up into the air would carry it a longer distance. The same goes for archery. Chinese and the English archers were firing their arrows into the air in massed volleys for years before the Spanish Armada. I can't understand why the Spanish would not have figured out that the same rule worked for Cannons.
Also note that Galileo's compass already simplified most of the math.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
No, the Russian admiral at Tsushima, Rozhestvensky was a very competent and disciplined officer, and not some clueless fop. His problem was a conscript crew on the verge of mutiny, poorly trained officers, outdated ships ill suited outside the Baltic and only a few colliers stationed along the way for resupply. The Emperor ignored all of his suggestions and concerns.
The Japanese had a volunteer navy, British-built warships of the latest design with British-trained officers, and a variety of home ports nearby for refit and resupply. Oh, it also had Togo, the most brilliant and aggressive naval commander of his generation.
The Baltic Fleet was doomed before it even set sail, despite the quality of its commander.
Some historians believe that this notable discrepancy may well have been behind the famous rant from King Philip II, where he threw his throne at a courtier while screaming "I'll kill those fucking Dutch!"...
Steve Ballmer in a past life...
The idea of bring your broadside into the bow/stern of the enemy is called "Crossing the T", and is/was the standard tactic from, as you say, Nelson's era up until the end of "Gun ships" - aka the classic multiple cannon (actually rifles) of ships into the 1960s
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
It was standard for ship to ship fights, but for fleet battles they would form into lines and trade broadsides as the opposing lines passed in parallel but opposite directions. Nelson's big idea was to allow the enemy line to cross your T while he sailed directly at their line. Nelsons ships absorbed multiple long to medium distance volleys without responding but were able to fire at extreme short distance, many times to both right and left if his ship survived to cut the enemie's line.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important