Amazing what you can find ......

[nagarifle]

more of a case of drinking the juice old fruit

[xl_target]

Nah Richard - I had an eyepatch and a cutlass to repel boarders however

What? No Blunderbuss? No Sea Service pistol?



Just cold steel?

[Grumpy]

Nope, the blunderbusses shredded the sails ..... and the sea service pistols were always wet.

[Skyman]

I wonder if they were always wet? Perhaps they were stored and brought out when there was battle to be had.The captain and mates would probably have a pistol or two on them, and the rest brought out from the stores for the crew when needed.

As for the scope, don't listen to this fellow.With the coconuts, i'll also send some fine green chillies and a recepie for coconut chutney.Eat that and you will weep,wheeze and stumble around.Heck, that's the closest i have come to narcotics.

The long guns were used to hit the men working on the sails and rigging were they not?

[xl_target]

I wonder if they were always wet? Perhaps they were stored and brought out when there was battle to be had.The captain and mates would probably have a pistol or two on them, and the rest brought out from the stores for the crew when needed.I wonder if they were always wet? Perhaps they were stored and brought out when there was battle to be had.The captain and mates would probably have a pistol or two on them, and the rest brought out from the stores for the crew when needed.

Black powder firearms would never be stored loaded. Black Powder is hygroscopic and if damp, can cause corrosion of metallic parts when the Pottasium Nitrate leaches out. They would be loaded just prior to the battle. Especially with the Flint lock pistols that was the typical Sea Service Pistol used during the Napoleanic wars. Also, if the powder is damp, it can fizzle instead of exploding.

Boarding by boat could cause a pistol to get wet if there is any kind of sea. Even boarding from vessel to vessel could cause pistols to get wet if the seas were rough enough.

The long guns were used to hit the men working on the sails and rigging were they not?

Royal Navy Marine sharpshooters used muskets to pick off officers and opposing sharpshooters from the fighting tops. Marines also boarded as it was hard to fight a line of Marines marching across the deck with their bayonets leveled. One of the first things done by a boarding party was to try and cut the rigging, not the sails. You wanted the rigging damaged in case the attack failed so you could come around again and hit the enemy. Cutting enough rigging would prevent the enemy from sailing away immediately or as soon as the action was over. You didn't damage the sails as you wanted your prize crew to sail the prize home. During the Napoleanic wars, British sailors were paid "Prize Money" for every ship captured and brought home. No prize money was paid if you couldn't get it back to port.

[Skyman]

Didn't they hit the sails to slow the enemy? I'm dead sure pirates did this.

[xl_target]

The French Navy did that quite often, shooting chain shot at the rigging and sails in an effort to take away the maneuvering capability of the enemy.
Pirates might have too.

[Skyman]

Though, pirates would mostly transfer cargo to their own ship.This probably was the reason they didn't mind a few holes.

[Grumpy]

say something silly and someone is bound to get serious .............
Re, blackpowder being hygroscopic ...... Leave some out in out weather conditions and it`ll take on water at a remarkable rate - salts generally do. Leave a blackpowder charge in a gun and the damage it will do in a comparitively short time is extraordinary. I`ve had to `unplug` two or three old muzzle loaders and the sight that greets you when everything is washed-out thoroughly and you can shine a light down the bore is horrific. There`s a good reason that nipples and surrounds were often made of precious metals.

[timmy]

The French Navy did that quite often, shooting chain shot at the rigging and sails in an effort to take away the maneuvering capability of the enemy.

The French naval doctrine was always operating at a higher level than the British. They were always on some "mission" and tended to decline battle, so as to preserve their ships and fleet. They tended to work along the lines of the "fleet in being" strategy, where the threat of their naval forces would bend the enemy to their will. So, they shot at rigging to prevent their ships from being pursued.

French ships tended to be fine sailers and able to sail closer to the wind, a key tactical advantage: by being able to sail closer to the wind, in many instances, they could evade an pursuing enemy.

The British operated more on a brute force level: their tactics stress sea control and superiority, as control of the sea meant that all other missions and needs tended to fall into place. So, they would immediately engage and fight at any opportunity. They tended to fire at the hulls of their enemy. This tendency would manifest itself in the French firing on the up roll, causing their projectiles to be "over," going through the rigging on the way. The British, on the other hand, would fire on the down roll, hitting their opponents near the waterline. Nelson, in fact, used this tactic and would skip or bounce his projectiles off of the water's surface like a skipping stone, to have it slam into the enemy's hull very close to the water line.

British ships tended to be more stoutly built than French, and more "bluff": blockier, wider in proportion to the length, and with blunter bows. French ships were more scientifically designed, and as the British studied captive French vessels, profited from this study -- HMS Victory was one such result of this "technology transfer," being one of the finest sailing first rates (over 100 guns on 3 decks) in the Royal Navy. For this reason, it was a favorite flagship of admirals, including Nelson.

Generally, sailing ships were not sunk in action, but were captured and brought back to port as prizes. Looking through the names of famous Royal Navy vessels, one will note a large number of French names, which were names of former French vessels taken as prizes and the names reused by their replacements.

It was very hard to pierce 3' thick oak sides with the ordnance of the day, and casualties often were the cause of surrender, and fire the cause of destruction.

However, you can judge the French vs British philosophy by its results: The Royal Navy was often not deterred by even the greatest of odds and would often throw itself against an opponent, regardless of how overmatched. The sinking of HMS Rawalpindi in action against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau is one good example of this. The sacrifice of a merchant vessel armed with some ancient 6" guns to a pair of 11" gunned battleships seems like a foolish suicide wish, until one remembers that the British convoy got away. Despite the inevitable losses in individual actions sustained by the Royal Navy because of this, its sea power retained unbroken global superiority for over 100 years, and made French, German, and Italian naval investments a very poor bargain.

It's not enough to have good tools (French, German, and Italian ships were often fine vessels with great potential), one has to know how to use those weapons wisely and well for them to make the investments worthwhile.

[timmy]

Grumpy, maybe you could take your Glastonbury transmitter to SeaLand and set up shop there!

[Grumpy]

Oh yeah - another pirate mission to Fort Roughs. Prince Paddy was an absolute nutter .... and there have been several other lunatics involved with the place since the mid-`60s.
Somehow I don`t think that a 10 watt FM transmitter would be up to the job of broadcasting to the Essex/Suffolk/N.Kent coast - the BBCs main FM transmitters are 250kw and whilst a somewhat less powerful transmitter could be quite effective it would still need to be at least 5 kilowatts. Sealand would have a good approach to the coast but getting a signal inland would be problematical because of it`s location and ( lack of ) height. The cost would be hopelessly prohibitive when an adequate transmitter, antenna mast and power generating plant are taken into consideration. Medium wave AM is a waste of time nowadays as barely anyone listens to AM.

[timmy]

So nobody's out there anymore?

[Grumpy]

I think there might be a caretaker.
The place is for sale ..... but the asking price is absolutely crazy - almost a billion dollars I think.

[timmy]

So, if the place is out of the jurisdiction of the UK authorities, why can't someone just go squat there like Bates did to begin with?