Did cannonballs* used in naval warfare around the time of the Battle of Trafalgar explode? Or, was their effect strictly kinetic?
*I understand that, according to some, cannonballs are solid spheres that by definition do not explode. Obviously, I am using the term in a broader sense.
(We’ve talked about cannonballs several times in the past, so I may well have missed it on my Board search. If so, my apologies)
According to this, explosive shells came about later in the century.
Around the time period you are referring to cannonballs were solid. (unless you want to digress into talking about grape/canister/chain shot).
Early naval exploding shells were fired from mortars rather than cannons. IE they were fired in a parabolic arc, rather than direct fire. They tended to be used for shore bombardment rather than ship to ship combat, and were usually mounted on specially designed (altered) vessels.
The problem with early iterations of exploding shells was the only fusing system available was an actual burning fuse. Which means you had to judge (and cut) the length of the fuse before loading the shell into the mortar. It ran very real risks of exploding early while still in flight, or rolling around on the ground for a while before exploding. There some historical accounts of mortars shells being extinguished by people at the target, when the fuse was cut too long.
I’m not sure if true, but I have read one or two accounts where early trials in firing exploding shells from shipboard cannons resulted in the fuse being cut short by the firing action and the shell exploding prematurely.
They were used in land warfare. Recall Prince Andrei being wounded by one at Borodino in War and Peace, like a good Russian literary character, musing on his mortality as it spins and fizzes in front of him. Later he’s treated at a field hospital by a doctor caked in blood except for his fingertips, which he delicately uses to hold a cigar.
Technically, even a projectile fired “directly” follows a parabolic arc (modified, of course, by the effects of aerodynamic drag). But you are quite correct that mortars were used to “lob” their projectiles in a high arc (tends to defeat the value of fortifications).
Right. Acceptable accuracy depended on firing from a fixed location (e.g. an anchored vessel) toward a fixed target. They would have been close to useless in a ship-to-ship engagement.
I am not sure that Tolstoy was accurate. Once in a while I see references to Napoleonic era cannons firing shells, but I suspect that those claims are from people who assumed Tolstoy’s scenario was correct. Digging through the actual history of cannon shells, I have found stronger support for the following: The French Admiral Paixhans began writing theoretical works on the topic of exploding shells in the 1800s and his ideas were not successfully tested until 1824. After that, it was a matter of developing the appropriate cannon to deliver the shells. The natural conservatism of the 19th century military combined with a lack of large-scale ongoing wars probably delayed their acceptance, as well. (For one thing, the earliest cannon developed to handle the new fuzed shot were pretty massive, limiting their use to capital ships or siege guns.)
After Paixhans’s experiments, the best timed fuze that was developed in the 19th century was the Bormann fuze. Charles G. Bormann was a Belgian officer who developed it around 1840, the fuze was kept a military secret, and Belgium did not get into any wars, so that delayed its use in smaller cannon for several years. Belgium adopted the Bormann fuze in 1851. Other nations copied it or produced it under license beginning a few years later. Its first use in combat, of which I am aware, was in the Crimean war. It was not until the U.S. Civil War that more guns of smaller calibers could be built and tried out in large numbers.
Mortars are featured in two of the Hornblower novels. In Hornblower and the Hotspur, the Hotspur comes under fire from a French land-based mortar. The mortar shells work by burning fuses. In The Commodore, Hornblower commands a small flotilla which includes two bomb ketches, designed to be used for coastal bombardments.
prior to the bowman fuse it was certainly possible for a ship’s cannon to fire an exploding shell but it served no practical purpose because it needed to explode on contact to do any damage. If they aimed it at the crew it would have to explode as it arcs over the ship. Pretty hard to time it that way. If fired Vertically from a mortar then any time on the descent it exploded it would kill people.
I’m a bit confused by this. Every account of Napoleonic warfare I’ve read includes talk of “shells”, hollow cannonballs filled with black powder. The Wikipedia article on artillery fuses speaks of shells as early as the 14th century, with numerous developments in the intervening centuries. Admittedly, the Napoleonic era shells were finicky and often not very effective - with fuses too short or too long, and the shells themselves breaking into only a few pieces. It was the latter that led Shrapnel to invent his “spherical case” shot in 1784, adopted by the British army in 1804 and used throughout the Peninsular War.
Or are you just distinguishing between mortars/howitzers and cannons proper?
Bad phrasing on my part. I was aiming (as you’ve said) to differentiate between a high ‘lobbing’ arc from a mortar, and the far more flat arc described by the typical Age of Sail cannon.
Hmmm. So, the answer is ‘yes’, but not from *sailing *ships themselves?
Thanks, I appreciate your replies!
And we all know who was a young artillery officer at Sevastopol. “I am so using this in my next book!”
There are accounts of the British army experimenting with exploding shells, and indeed rockets. They were very unreliable however and probably made little difference to any outcomes.
At Trafalgar there was no exploding ordnance. Don’t forget that Nelson’s ship, Victory, still exists, and if you are ever in Portsmouth, England, you can visit it.
It seems that the French at least were using exploding howitzer shells at Waterloo in 1815, but I suspect that the navy would not have been keen.
You may not be aware but there are many learned and enthusiastic people who research and argue endlessly about the minutia of military conduct and equipment in this period.
It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous enterprise than storing hundreds and hundreds of hollow cast iron balls some six inches or so in diameter and filled with pretty unstable charcoal-sulfur-nitrate gunpowder on a wooden ship filled with tarred hemp, pine resin and cloth sails. Plus, at the time there was no reliable fusing system and the effective tactic was to simply to get as close as possible and batter your opponent until he could not function any longer. Safe explosive shells were not developed until the mid 19th Century and even then were not especially reliable – see the engagement between the Kearsarge and the Alabama in 1864,
I’ve read on the Telegraph that British cannonballs at Trafalgar did not explode but the French ships were made of pine so their planking did explode into splinters, with resultant damage, as opposed to the British ships which were made of oak and the cannonballs stuck.
The British army had shrapnel shells during that time. Itw as adoped in 1803.
This was an exploding shell that scattered musket balls. Never, as far as I know, used by the navy.
Very interesting letter! Thanks for the link.
The English were fond of French shipbuilding and used captured vessels. How long did the use of pine continue?
No western nation was building oceangoing war ships out of pine or fur. The exception may be the Americans on Lake Erie (we have met the enemy and they are ours). Otherwise the standard material for ships hulls was seasoned oak. French oak and Spanish oak was just as good as the best English oak. As noted by carnivorousplant, French and Spanish shipbuilding was superior to the British product during the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. A number of big British battleships at Trafalgar, Cape St. Vincent and the Glorious First Of June were French or Spanish captures. Some fought for King and Country without having their name changed.
In short, the Telegraph is wrong. No fir built battleships in the Combined Fleet.