Sinking in the Ocean (Master and Commander related)

[carnivorousplant]

@tomndebb

In the original novel, before the movie concatenated multiple novels together, Audrey’s French adversary was a light frigate, but Audrey had only a brig-rigged sloop-of-war with no guns larger than 12 pounders.

It had been a while since I saw the film and forgot that the movie had uprated his ship to a small frigate.

Master and Comander was the brig Sophie, taken as Forrester did from Lord Cochrane’s Speedy. Jack’s brig captures the Spanish xebec-frigate Cacafuego, what ever the hell a xebec-frigate is. Dr. Maturin could no doubt explain it to us.

In the novel The Far Side of the World, in pursuit of the American preying on Whalers, Aubrey had his beloved Surprise, an older, light frigate not suited to taking on one of the American “Super Frigates” of the war of 1812.
My nit pick being that the action with the Sophie/Speedy never occurred in the film, so his brig wasn’t upgraded.

Link to Jack’s Ships.

[carnivorousplant]

Wasn’t the character who committed suicide murdered in the novel by the Gunner, who became insane over the character having an affair with the Gunner’s wife?

[Huerta88]

People periodically fall off cruise ships (alcohol is generally involved) and are rarely found. So I agree that how deep you sink might not really be relevant, you’d probably be pretty effectively screwed no matter what.

[slaphead]

@jackdavinci

I’ve also heard, but am not sure the truth of, that past a certain depth, the pressure cancels out the natural floatation tendencies of the human body and you would have to expend effort in swimming to get to a point closer to the surface where you would start to float again.

I’ve heard this too - 7 metres, I seem to recall. It’s not really a big deal with modern scuba gear because you can very easily adjust your bouyancy, but apparently with the old-school equipement it used to be a real PITA - people would apparently jump in holding a bag of bricks or similar to help them get down past this point.

[pprgrl]

@Operation Ripper

Didn’t some gal poet do it?

Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with rocks and waded out into a river. Not quite the same, since getting the rocks out of her pocket at the last minute would be a bot trickier than letting go of a cannonball.

[Malacandra]

English frigates of that period mounted nothing heavier than 12-pounders, although they could also mount carronades, which though deficient in range were light in weight for a given calibre (and so could be carried on a comparatively lightweight vessel without overbalancing it).

@carnivorousplant

Master and Comander was the brig Sophie, taken as Forrester did from Lord Cochrane’s Speedy. Jack’s brig captures the Spanish xebec-frigate Cacafuego, what ever the hell a xebec-frigate is. Dr. Maturin could no doubt explain it to us.

Here ya go.

[Operation_Ripper]

@pprgrl

Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with rocks and waded out into a river. Not quite the same, since getting the rocks out of her pocket at the last minute would be a bot trickier than letting go of a cannonball.

Thar we go, many thanks kind soul.

[Khadaji]

Here are some basic facts about salt-water and pressure. One more dedicated to I might pry an answer loose from these facts.

Direct Effects of Water Pressure
Saltwater exerts a pressure of 14.7-pounds-per-square-inch (psi) for every 33 feet (10 meters) of saltwater. Every 33 feet is equivalent to the weight of our entire atmosphere, so we commonly refer to each 33 feet of saltwater as one atmosphere of pressure. For example, when you descend to a depth of 33 feet, you will have a total of two atmospheres (29.4 psi) compressing your body-one atmosphere of air and one of water. This total pressure is referred to as absolute pressure. Your depth-gauge reads only water pressure.
In physics, there is a gas law that explains pressure and volume relationships. Called “Boyle’s Law,” this concept is important to understand because it helps explain why you feel pain in your ears at the bottom of a swimming pool or why your wetsuit loses buoyancy in deep water. Boyle’s Law states that the volume of any gas is inversely proportional to the absolute pressure. This means that as the external pressure increases on a volume of gas, it will compress that volume, by packing gas molecules closer together. Let’s look at an example.
If your lungs had 6 liters of air in them at the surface and you then dove to 33 feet (10 meters), the volume of your lungs would be reduced by half of its surface volume (3 liters). This air did not escape; rather, the gas molecules compressed together causing the density of that air to double…

There’s more great stuff there too.

[bonzer]

@Laughing Lagomorph

For that matter I think he might reflexively let go of it and start swimming for the surface, regardless of how depressed he was when he jumped in.

While reflex, instinct and natural bouyancy might alone suffice, there’s the factor here that it’s not obvious that a naval officer of the period would have previous swimming experience. After all, even Captain Cook apparently couldn’t swim.

[OtakuLoki]

I’d like to speak out about a couple of assumptions that the OP made.

As other posters have mentioned it’s unlikely that the round shot used was actually 50 lbs. But it doesn’t have to be that heavy to be sufficient to sink a person. While we’re used to thinking of people as being naturally buoyant, it’s not by that great a factor.

As a general rule of thumb, most people simply floating on the surface of the water, not making any effort to swim, will have a volume above water approximately equal to that of their head. Or at least that’s my impression, and experience. Another general rule of thumb: the human head, on average, can be assumed to weigh about ten pounds. For the sake of argument I’m going to assume that the density of the human body is a constant throughout the body, so that the head, on a per volume basis, weighs as much as any other part of the body. While I’m quite sure this is a manifest falsehood, I think it’s going to be good enough for these purposes. What this gives us is that for the average person their natural buoyancy comes to a grand total of approximately ten pounds. i.e. they displace ten pounds more water than they weigh. Which is what keeps their heads up out of the water.

In which case, a twelve pound round shot is enough to sink the average human like a stone. This is neglecting the effects of any clothing that the person might be wearing, which even today can often lead to people drowning unintentionally. Even submarines don’t really achieve the state of neutral buoyancy - they’re usually kept in that state by the action of the diving planes at a slight upward angle, while the main engine drives them through the water.

The other factor that isn’t being addressed directly, is that as some other posters have alluded to, the human body isn’t incompressible. And the volume of air in a person’s lungs are often a large part of making that person naturally buoyant. So, when the body of the suicide gets down to a sufficient depth that the lungs start to compress, they have even less natural buoyancy than they did when they started the dive. So, at the most dangerous points in their dive, the potential suicide needs the most stamina to make it back to where the natural buoyancy would begin to help take them back to the surface.