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Weapons
Swords & Daggers
| WEAPON + DEFINITION | PHOTOS |
| Cutlass A heavy, curved, single-edged sword. Useful in the tight confines of a crowded melée on a ship's deck. A close relative of the sabre. |  |
| Rapier Long, straight, narrow-bladed sword. Usually double-edged. Rapiers are found with a wide variety of different designs of hilts: cup, swept, ring, clamshell, etc. |  |
| Broadsword |  |
| Dagger | |
| Ax |  |
Guns/Firearms
| WEAPON + DEFINITION | PHOTOS |
| Musket Muzzle-loading long arm. Smooth bore. Mostly equipped with a flintlock mechanism although some matchlock weapons were still classified as muskets. Fired a single round ball. The flintlock mechanism used a piece of flint held in a hammer. When the trigger was pulled, the hammer came down, striking the flint against a cap of steel and creating sparks. The sparking in turn ignited a small quantity of powder held in the pan of the flintlock mechanism, causing a small explosion. The fire from that small explosion would pass through a small hole in the side of the musket barrel, igniting the black powder catridge inside, firing the ball. The matchlock mechanism, which predates the flintlock, uses a piece of slow match - braided hemp infused with gunpowder and lit - to ignite the powder in the pan. Pictured top right is a sea service 'Brown Bess' pattern musket, a version of the famous British Brown Bess military musket shortened for use about ships. Lower right is a French matchlock. |   |
| Blunderbuss Shorter long-arm with trumpet-like flared barrel. These were less accurate than muskets. They were usually loaded with grapeshot or similar ammo which the flared barrel caused to disperse in a wide pattern like a shot gun. They were many used against groups of people - a deck sweeper. |  |
| Flintlock Pistol | A pistol with a flintlock mechanism as described above. Matchlock pistols also existed and would have been used by earlier pirates. |
| Musketoon | |
| Cannon Sometimes referred to as the 'great guns' of a ship. Large muzzle-loading guns capable of firing a heavy projectile at high velocity over a mile in some cases. Ship-borne cannon ranged in size from small 4-pounders up to 36-pounders (the size rating being based on the weight of the solid iron ball the cannon could fire). In addition to a basic iron ball the cannon could fire a variety of other ammunition (see below). Most of the cannon of that era were made of iron. However some of the better made, more reliable and more accurate guns were still made of brass. Iron guns, when overheated, were known to explode, killing their crews. Cannon of the era of the Golden Age of Piracy were mounted on 4-wheeled carriages as pictured at right. This allowed the gun to recoil when fired, rolling back into the ship and, incidentally, making reloading easier. The recoil on the big guns was powerful, however, and the guns had to be restrained by lines anchored to the hull of the ship. If the lines broke when the gun fired, the crew were literally faced with a 'loose cannon' that could cause significant damage and seriously injure or kill anyone that got in the way. A loaded cannon contained a cartridge of black powder, pierced so the spark from the touch hole could reach the powder. In front of the powder was a wadding of cloth which helped hold the ball in the gun, and then the ball (or other ammo) itself. Up until the early 1800's cannon were fired by putting a little powder in the touch hole at the breech end of the gun, then applying a burning wick of slow match to the powder, sending a spark down the touch hole and igniting the powder cartridge. In the early 1800s a version of the flintlock mechanism being used on muskets was adapted to fit cannon, allowing the gun to be fired by simply pulling a lanyard. |  |
| Carronade: Similar to a cannon, but mounted on a non-moving slide rail rather than a wheeled carriage. Usually a heavier calibre, packing more punch than the ship's cannon, but with a shorter range and less accuracy. |  |
| Grenade Hand-sized explosive device - a premitive precursor of the military hand grenades used today. Usually detonated by a short fuse, hand lit by the thrower before throwing. | |
| Stink pot: A type of grenade that emitted noxious fumes to sicken and disorient an enemy crew. | |
| swivel gun A smaller version of a cannon that mounted on a swivel mount afixed to the rail of the ship. Often breech-loading, as opposed to muzzle-loading as with most cannon. Could be handled by a crew of one. Used mainly as an anti-personnel gun to repel boarders or to sweep an enemy deck before boarding. |  |
Types of Shot:
Cannons had different types of shot for different purposes, here are a few.
| Grape | small round balls, great antipersonnel weapon |  |
| Chain | Two balls connected by a chain which would spin in flight, commonly used to cut masts, rigging, and damage sails |  |
| Bar shot | Similar to chain shot, but the two balls are connected by a rigid iron bar rather than a chain. | |
| bomb | ball filled with gunpowder and featuring a primitive fuse which would detonate the bomb at an approximate time after firing. | |
| ball or round shot | Heavy lead or iron ball for making big holes | |
| Hot shot | A basic iron ball, but heated to glowing red hot. Would start fires on the enemy ship. Dangerous to use - often caused premature firing of the cannon, and even sometimes caused the cannon to explode | |
| Star | really nasty type of shot, a ball with four hemispheres connected by chains, when fired would the hemispheres would fly apart and spin, cutting through wood and flesh with ease. | |
| Other | when all hope was lost, almost anything could be loaded into a cannon and fired, plates, tableware, whatever. | |
| Canister | metal tube filled with tiny balls, meant to open in flight or on impact spreading shrapnel in all directions |
Blackhand_Sam |
Latest page update: made by Blackhand_Sam
, Jun 4 2007, 9:41 AM EDT
(about this update
About This Update
table fix
- Blackhand_Sam
2 words added 2 words deleted view changes - complete history) |
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