I was thinking about the “headless horseman” legend the other night for some reason. Supposedly some poor bloke got his head lopped off by a cannon ball in a Revolutionary War battle and is cursed to roam about in a headless state looking for the lost noggin. Would a cannon ball just knock a head off? It seems to me that the impact of such an object would pretty much reduce a human head to pulp-- but maybe I am mistaken! So what do you guys think? Would there be an intact head to find, or would it have been totally obliterated? I know, I know-- gruesome topic and all that, but for some reason these things occupy my mind from time to time!
Well I suppose it would depend on how the ball hits the head…most likely it would rip the head from the neck so that all you’d have left is a tattered flop on the shoulders.
The original legend of Sleepy Hollow if I remember, didn’t involve him losing his head by a cannon ball.
Most likely the head would be crushed beyond worthiness.
You’re probably thinking of a cannon ball as being approximately the size of a human head and it striking the fellow squarely on the nose; if the ball was considerably smaller - about the size of an orange or grapefruit seems about right, and if it hit the soldier’s neck or upper chest, I think it could decapitate and leave the head fairly intact. But then again, maybe the whole ‘can’t find the head’ thing is why the ghost in the legend has to keep looking…
BTW, how can he look for anything without… you know… a head - it’s where the eyes are. Reminds me of some story I heard about a pious man who was executed by beheading, after which he picked up his own head and kissed it.
Mangetout’s right. The standard field artillery piece of the late 18th century was the six-pounder cannon, so named because it fired solid cast-iron balls weighing six pounds. A six-pound ball is 3.5 inches in diameter – the size of a baseball – so it’s small enough to strike between chin and chest and somewhat cleanly sever one’s head.
If it hits you in the head, it’s more of a fine pink mist.
Hollywood has deceived you with their bowling-ball-sized shot; cannonballs are really small. People had to carry them around and lift them into the guns, remember. The biggest solid shot commonly used was 68 pounds; it’s eight inches in diameter. Of course, bigger shot means bigger, heavier guns – the 68s were mounted on ships or forts, tied down to arrest recoil and with ropes and pulleys to pull them back into place after firing, with the shot stacked right beside them; the most anybody wanted to drag around in the field (where the guns just rolled back unchecked when fired and had to be muscled into place for the next shot) was a 12-pounder (which fired softball-sized projectiles).