Exploding shells vs. wooden-hulled ships

[RetiredCanuck]

Sorry if this has already been asked.
Grapeshot, chain, bar, and solid shot were obviously common in 19th century naval fighting.
But how common was the use of exploding shells against wooden hulled sailing ships. I'm thinking field gun size like a 12 pounder or 3" Ordnance Rifle?

Any replies appreciated.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Sorry if this has already been asked.
Grapeshot, chain, bar, and solid shot were obviously common in 19th century naval fighting.
But how common was the use of exploding shells against wooden hulled sailing ships. I'm thinking field gun size like a 12 pounder or 3" Ordnance Rifle?

Any replies appreciated.

The effect of fuzed rounds on wooden warships was established in 1795. Read more here.

Link

Loading…

www.usni.org

The effect of exploding shells on wooden hulled ships was no surprise during the Civil War. November 30, 1853 a Russian fleet destroyed a powerful Turkish squadron at the Battle of Sino. The fuzed shells exploded amid tarred rigging, ready ammunition on deck & the kindling created by the spall of the shower splinters from impacts. Warfare at sea would never be the same.

Fire aboard a wooden warship in the age of sail was a terrifying prospect. Once the top hamper was kindled, there was nothing the crew could have done to put it out. The detonation of the ready ammunition leading to the catastrophic blast of tons of powder in the magazine could be heard twenty miles away.

During the duel between the CSS Alabama the gunners aboard U.S.N. screw sloop-of-war Kearsarge cut fuzes on 100 pounds shells for five seconds. At the (+/-) 1.500 to 1,000 yard range of the engagement, that meant that the shells would detonate after penetrating the Alabama's light hull planks. The rounds for the 30 pound rifles were contact fuzed bolts.

When the blockade runner Modern Greece was intercepted, solid shot were fired with the intent to disable her. When the crew ran Modern Greece aground near Fort Fisher NC, fuzed shells were fired with the intent to set the wreck & cargo afire.

There was a natural inhibition to having fuzed rounds aboard wooden ships. The ignorant gunners aboard the Alabama did not know that the bronze caps on their British impact fuzed rounds were safety devices. As a result, Semmes believed they were all duds. All the fantasy what ifs about the bolt that hit Kearsarge's stern post are just that. Had the contact fuze have been active, that round would have exploded harmlessly against the hull far from where it caromed into the sternpost.

Side Bar Note: At Fort Donelson, the 8" shells of the water battery were obviously useless against Ironclads. There naive gunners poured out the powder & filled the void with molten lead. I have no idea what the round weighed. An 8" diameter sphere of lead weighs 110 pounds. Instead of caroming off the armor, the strikes kind of liquified & splatted. The impact caused the (+/-) zero degree iron plate to shatter exactly like a pane of glass. ( Consult your local metallurgist for the physical state of iron at various temperatures. For example, at "black heat" after the heat color leaves steel, it has the same physical characteristics as at absolute zero. )

Needless to say, the wooden fabric of riverine gunboats & transports in the Mississippi Valley were vulnerable to fuzed rounds coming aboard. Of course, both CSA regular & banditti cavalry wanted to loot the cargo of transports, so the use of fuzed rounds was problematical. Read more here.

Link

Russian Bear's Rampage

Czar Nicholas I's warships destroyed a squadron of unsuspecting Ottoman ships at Sinop in the Black Seat at the outset of the Crimean War.

warfarehistorynetwork.com

 

[Old Soldier]

It didn't really matter much after 1805 - Trafalgar - as there were no major sea battles by the French, the British or Spanish fleets. The nearest they got was the Crimean War. That's why they developed Ironclads. Only shore batteries and monitors could fire these shells originally, the ships didn't start until much later. However, the introduction of the shell-firing gun ended the tactic of 'the line'.

Then came the Paixhans Gun: Developed in the 1820s by French General Henri-Joseph Paixhans, this was the first naval gun designed to fire explosive shells. (Note: gun = flat trajectory; howitzer = high trajectory, mortar = v high trajectory) It effectively doomed wooden sailing ships and forced the development of ironclad warships, but it took time. The French Navy adopted it in 1841. In the USA, the Dahlgren gun was developed from the Paixhan by John A. Dahlgren in 1846, with advantages over Paixhans guns in that it could also fire shot.

The Royal Navy's answer was two-fold. The 68-pounder Cannon designed in 1841 by Colonel William Dundas. Weighing 95 hundredweight (cwt) and firing a 68-pound projectile. It was used heavily in the Crimean War (1853–1856) and even equipped early ironclads. The 32-pounder 56 cwt Gun was redesigned from firing just solid shot, to fire explosive shells, shrapnel, and canister. Both were smoothbore.

Then came rifled guns.

 

[RetiredCanuck]

Thanks for the information above.
I'll now reveal what inspired me to ask the question. Watched a bit of Horatio Hornblower film yesterday on TCM. In that film there was a great deal of discussion and effort to disable and capture enemy ships as a prize of war.
I imagine ship's commander's in the 1800s who could still claim prize money would have an emotional tug of war when directed to use exploding shells that could inflict potentially fatal damage on the other ship.

 

[jepridgen]

The effect of fuzed rounds on wooden warships was established in 1795. Read more here.

Link

Loading…

www.usni.org

View attachment 581803

The effect of exploding shells on wooden hulled ships was no surprise during the Civil War. November 30, 1853 a Russian fleet destroyed a powerful Turkish squadron at the Battle of Sino. The fuzed shells exploded amid tarred rigging, ready ammunition on deck & the kindling created by the spall of the shower splinters from impacts. Warfare at sea would never be the same.

Fire aboard a wooden warship in the age of sail was a terrifying prospect. Once the top hamper was kindled, there was nothing the crew could have done to put it out. The detonation of the ready ammunition leading to the catastrophic blast of tons of powder in the magazine could be heard twenty miles away.

During the duel between the CSS Alabama the gunners aboard U.S.N. screw sloop-of-war Kearsarge cut fuzes on 100 pounds shells for five seconds. At the (+/-) 1.500 to 1,000 yard range of the engagement, that meant that the shells would detonate after penetrating the Alabama's light hull planks. The rounds for the 30 pound rifles were contact fuzed bolts.

When the blockade runner Modern Greece was intercepted, solid shot were fired with the intent to disable her. When the crew ran Modern Greece aground near Fort Fisher NC, fuzed shells were fired with the intent to set the wreck & cargo afire.

There was a natural inhibition to having fuzed rounds aboard wooden ships. The ignorant gunners aboard the Alabama did not know that the bronze caps on their British impact fuzed rounds were safety devices. As a result, Semmes believed they were all duds. All the fantasy what ifs about the bolt that hit Kearsarge's stern post are just that. Had the contact fuze have been active, that round would have exploded harmlessly against the hull far from where it caromed into the sternpost.

Side Bar Note: At Fort Donelson, the 8" shells of the water battery were obviously useless against Ironclads. There naive gunners poured out the powder & filled the void with molten lead. I have no idea what the round weighed. An 8" diameter sphere of lead weighs 110 pounds. Instead of caroming off the armor, the strikes kind of liquified & splatted. The impact caused the (+/-) zero degree iron plate to shatter exactly like a pane of glass. ( Consult your local metallurgist for the physical state of iron at various temperatures. For example, at "black heat" after the heat color leaves steel, it has the same physical characteristics as at absolute zero. )

Needless to say, the wooden fabric of riverine gunboats & transports in the Mississippi Valley were vulnerable to fuzed rounds coming aboard. Of course, both CSA regular & banditti cavalry wanted to loot the cargo of transports, so the use of fuzed rounds was problematical. Read more here.

Link

Russian Bear's Rampage

Czar Nicholas I's warships destroyed a squadron of unsuspecting Ottoman ships at Sinop in the Black Seat at the outset of the Crimean War.

warfarehistorynetwork.com

The Alabama was also at disadvantage because of bad/damaged fuses from her ocean travels. An exploding shell that would've completely disabled the Kearsarge failed to explode early in the fight. With exploding shells, a wooden hull on wooden hull battle could potentially be very short lived.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Thanks for the information above.
I'll now reveal what inspired me to ask the question. Watched a bit of Horatio Hornblower film yesterday on TCM. In that film there was a great deal of discussion and effort to disable and capture enemy ships as a prize of war.
I imagine ship's commander's in the 1800s who could still claim prize money would have an emotional tug of war when directed to use exploding shells that could inflict potentially fatal damage on the other ship.

You don't have to cite fictional characters & events. The Civil War prize courts that met in New York to divvy up the prize money from the capture of blockade runners will provide all the information that you need. Numerous blockade runners were repurposed as USN blockaders uniquely qualified to rundown & capture their former peers. Fortunes could be made by aggressive captains.

Gotta say, as a former crewman of the HMS Rose / Surprise reproduction of a 24 gun sixth rate frigate of 1757, my fictional citation would be Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey / Maturin series. They are considered the best historical fiction ever written. The fictional events are meticulously based on log books, journals & original documentation. The movie Master & Commander is based on the novels. The HMS Surprise sailed in the film is now in the seafaring museum in SanDiego was originally the HMS Rose. A five hundred ton wooden ship rigged reproduction, she is about as close to going aboard an active period man-o-war as you will every be.

 

[RodentRevolution]

Sorry if this has already been asked.
Grapeshot, chain, bar, and solid shot were obviously common in 19th century naval fighting.
But how common was the use of exploding shells against wooden hulled sailing ships. I'm thinking field gun size like a 12 pounder or 3" Ordnance Rifle?

Any replies appreciated.

"There is no similarity in the action which shot and shells are designed to exert on timber.

The shot is to pierce and separate the wood by the force of penetration alone, crushing and rending the fibres, tearing asunder the several parts bolted together, and driving off splinters large and small with great violence from the further surface.

The shell is intended to explode while lodged in the mass of the ship, disuniting its structure, and driving out more or less of the material in fragments."

John A. Dahlgren, Shells and Shell-Guns 1857

Chain and bar shot were niche ammunition carried solely for their dismasting effect, not all captains (whom in most navies had considerable discretion on ammunition types at least in the first half of the century) bothered with it at all.

Grapeshot had largely been superseded by canister which used a canister shaped rather like our modern notions of what a shell should look like to protect the interior of the barrel of cannon and disintegrated upon leaving the muzzle allowing the smaller balls to disperse upon their path.

Solid shot was for a long time the overwhelming choice until work by Henri-Joeseph Paixhans made the shell viable as an instrument of naval warfare and even then was retained for a long while as long range, anti-fortress and later anti-armour ammunition.

Prior to the 19th century the target perhaps better the objective of most ammunition in ship board warfare was the crew unless it was the rigging as sinking ships was really hard. Even with shells sinking ships remained really hard. The Battle of Sinope is much held up as the obsolescence of wooden ships but properly handled they did in fact continue to stand up to shell fire. HMS Queen for example was set on fire three times at Sevastopol in one action and returned to the line of battle twice and survived handily enough to be rebuilt to a more modern steam driven design and continued in service, arguably the most famous tortoise in the world Timothy was present at said engagement aboard her . You might liken the different outcomes of French and British ships to the surprised Turks as being similar in nature to the outcomes between US and Japanese carriers that caught fire, proper damage control made the difference.

https://archive.org/details/shellsshellguns00dahl/page/204/mode/2up

The above work by Dahlgren gives a good insight into the understand of the situation by contemporary naval officers. There would be further engagements between shell firing wooden ships and ironclads even after the American Civil War such as the Amethyst (wooden) and Shah (iron hulled and wooden sheathed) against the small ironclad Huascar and also the Battle of Lissa between the Italians (suffering admittedly from extreme incompetence) and the Austrians in which wooden ships held up reasonably well. The Kaiser (then a wooden ship of the line) notably coming off better than the ironclad Affondatore with which she had engaged at some points in the battle. Technology while useful and definitely offering an edge was still secondary to the quality of the men involved.

 

[Old Soldier]

Thanks for the information above.
I'll now reveal what inspired me to ask the question. Watched a bit of Horatio Hornblower film yesterday on TCM. In that film there was a great deal of discussion and effort to disable and capture enemy ships as a prize of war.
I imagine ship's commander's in the 1800s who could still claim prize money would have an emotional tug of war when directed to use exploding shells that could inflict potentially fatal damage on the other ship.

The real answer - no skipper wanted any more explosive on board than they needed to - the risk of explosion was too great. Getting powder from the well protected magazine was bad enough. It was a fire risk, but not an explosive risk within the ship. The 'powder monkeys' did get burned from powder ignited Round shot was not a fire or explosive risk and could be stored next to the gun on the deck - doing the same with shells was not a safe option. The powder monkeys could not carry heavy shells (or ball) from a similarly protected shell magazine.

As part of a fleet, it was acceptable to sink enemy ships as there was always help at hand. For frigates and sloops who tended to go solo, there was no help. You had to think of your crew. Besides, a frigate could not carry the 32- and 64-pounders needed to fire shells. They were only carried by the 2-deckers of the fleet. (Most 3-deckers that were not scrapped were reduced to two decks after the Napoleonic wars)

 

[67th Tigers]

At Sinope, the explosive shells were largely ineffective. A squadron of Russian steamers entered a bay containing a squadron of sail who were largely uncrewed. In order to prevent capture, the Ottomans fired their own ships, and this was wrongly ascribed to the effect of shells.

The problem with shells is getting them to explode in the right place, and that place is inside the enemy ship. This is mainly a fusing issue, and with some of the better fuses shell could be very effective. The USN used an ineffective watercapped fuse with only three settings:

3.5 seconds: bursts at 1,250 yds
5 seconds: bursts at 1,650 yds
7 seconds: bursts at 2,100 yds

This made getting the shell to burst inside the enemy ship quite difficult. The Royal Navy was using pillar fuses in their Armstrongs (which were very effective when you didn't have a faulty batch) and Moorsom fuses for smoothbores. These were both very effective at getting the explosion to occur inside the target ship, and were effective against stone fortifications, but struggled against earthworks because they buried themselves without the fuse actuating. This led to the adoption of the Pettman fuse (which was a base rather than nose fuse) in 1861.

 

[Old Soldier]

At Sinope, the explosive shells were largely ineffective. A squadron of Russian steamers entered a bay containing a squadron of sail who were largely uncrewed. In order to prevent capture, the Ottomans fired their own ships, and this was wrongly ascribed to the effect of shells.

The problem with shells is getting them to explode in the right place, and that place is inside the enemy ship. This is mainly a fusing issue, and with some of the better fuses shell could be very effective. The USN used an ineffective watercapped fuse with only three settings:

3.5 seconds: bursts at 1,250 yds
5 seconds: bursts at 1,650 yds
7 seconds: bursts at 2,100 yds

This made getting the shell to burst inside the enemy ship quite difficult. The Royal Navy was using pillar fuses in their Armstrongs (which were very effective when you didn't have a faulty batch) and Moorsom fuses for smoothbores. These were both very effective at getting the explosion to occur inside the target ship, and were effective against stone fortifications, but struggled against earthworks because they buried themselves without the fuse actuating.

All part of what we call 'development'. If it does not work as it should, we make sure it does - then we make it do more damage.

 

[RodentRevolution]

Besides, a frigate could not carry the 32- and 64-pounders needed to fire shells. They were only carried by the 2-deckers of the fleet. (Most 3-deckers that were not scrapped were reduced to two decks after the Napoleonic wars)

This is not true. There were a wide variety of 32 pounder long guns of various lengths and thus weights introduced (I think across the 1830s and 1840s but I do not have the proper source materials to hand so my dates might be off) and frigates that remained in service from the Napoleonic Wars such as HMS Endymion were reequipped with such when the Royal Navy standardised upon 32 pounders just in time to then introduce the 8 inch shell gun of 65 cwt* (the ordnance itself there was also a gun truck of about an Imperial ton) when were then also issued in small numbers to the larger frigates. On later frigates there were also a variety of pivot guns of various calibres including the 68 pounder 95 cwt and even the 10 inch shell gun which could be found in some instances as broadside armament as well.

*You will sometimes see this listed as a 68 pounder on Wikipedia, it was not unlike the actual 68 pounder of at least 88cwt and normally 95cwt for sea service (112 cwt barrels were available for land batteries) it was not remotely strong enough to handle the charge require to usefully fire the solid shot however being of the same bore both fired the same shell of roughly 49 pounds.

 

[67th Tigers]

Indeed, the RN standardised on 32 pdrs, with weight being varied by the length of the gun. The guns were:

32 pdr 56 or 58 cwt: 9 ft 6 = 10 lb charge
32 pdr 48 or 50 cwt: 9 ft = 8 lb charge
32 pdr 45 cwt: 8 ft 6 = 7 lb charge
32 pdr 42 cwt: 8 ft = 6 lb charge
32 cwt 40 cwt: 7 ft 6 = 6 lb charge
32 pdr 32 cwt: 6 ft 6 = 5 lb charge
32 pdr 25 cwt: 6 ft or 5 ft 8 = 4 lb charge
32 pdr carronade of 17 cwt: 4 ft = 2 lb 11 oz charge

The 32 and 40 cwt guns were rebored 24 pdrs, and the 25 cwt were rebored 18 pdrs. The 56 cwt and carronade were legacy 18th century guns. The rest were introduced mainly in the 1830's. The 18 pdrs were the last to go, being replaced in the late 1840's.

By the time of the Crimea, the armaments were the 68 pdr 95 cwt, the 8 and 10 inch shell guns (65 and 84 cwt) and the various 32 pdrs.

 

[Old Soldier]

HMS Endymion - Re-equipped, yes, but not with cannon. This was a 40-gun frigate originally:

• From 17 May 1813:
  • Upper deck: 26 × 24-pounder guns
  • Quarterdeck:16 × 32-pounder (15 kg) carronades
  • Fo'c'sle: 1 × 18-pounder (8 kg) brass long gun + 4 × 32-pounder carronades

Note: the 32 pdrs are carronades - a short barreled cannon - not a 'gun' - and fired a much smaller charge - 3-3½lb as opposed to 6-8lb for a 32pdr cannon. (see above) Shells were not a commonly used ammunition in carronades, being mainly used in the 32pdr cannon.

BTW - This thread is getting me to find more information and learn far more than I should be. Keep it up!

 

[Rhea Cole]

The Alabama was also at disadvantage because of bad/damaged fuses from her ocean travels. An exploding shell that would've completely disabled the Kearsarge failed to explode early in the fight. With exploding shells, a wooden hull on wooden hull battle could potentially be very short lived.

Actually the incompetent gunners mate on the Alabama did not know that there was a brass safety cap on the fuzes of British rounds. Semmes believed that all the rounds were duds. The water distillation equipment necessary for the steam boiler was adjacent to the magazine. As a result all of the gunpowder that had not been made up into rounds & stored in a copper cabinet was ruined. The barrels of useless power were tossed overboard.

 

[gary]

Let's not forget hot shot that was designed to smolder and start a shipboard fire.

 

[USS Cumberland]

One need only review personal accounts from the 1862 battle between the CSS Virginia and the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress, especially from the latter, to see the horrifying effects of shells upon wooden-hulled sailing frigates. Over 120 killed on board each ship, plus an unrecorded number of surviving wounded. It was the US Navy's deadliest battle to date.

 

[67th Tigers]

Virginia had a furnace and the real damage was done by hot-shot.

 

[Saphroneth]

An interesting case study from the Crimea is the bombardments of Sevastopol. The wooden ships taking part were hit plenty of times, including by shells, and suffered comparatively minimal damage and casualties. Agamemnon, for example, took 214 hits at Sevastopol and suffered 4 killed, 23 wounded.


What's going on here is that the explosive shell offers the opportunity for greater damage than a cannonball, assuming that the shell breaks through the sidewalls (which were very thick on a ship of the line, you can think of them as "woodclads" with up to three feet of wood as armour), but these are cannonballs with some gunpowder in them. They're not full of high explosive like lyddite, and even lyddite shells just produced a lot of high velocity splinters.

This is why Martin's Shot (a British secret weapon of the late 1850s and early 1860s, which was a hollow shell full of molten iron) was such an improvement over both solid shot and shells. It was easier to handle than hot shot, had the same incendiary effect, and if it shattered on impact then the result was a spray of molten iron across the inside of the ship!

 

[rebelatsea]

Let's not forget hot shot that was designed to smolder and start a shipboard fire.

that was actually feared more than a shell going bang (of futz). The last thing

This is not true. There were a wide variety of 32 pounder long guns of various lengths and thus weights introduced (I think across the 1830s and 1840s but I do not have the proper source materials to hand so my dates might be off) and frigates that remained in service from the Napoleonic Wars such as HMS Endymion were reequipped with such when the Royal Navy standardised upon 32 pounders just in time to then introduce the 8 inch shell gun of 65 cwt* (the ordnance itself there was also a gun truck of about an Imperial ton) when were then also issued in small numbers to the larger frigates. On later frigates there were also a variety of pivot guns of various calibres including the 68 pounder 95 cwt and even the 10 inch shell gun which could be found in some instances as broadside armament as well.

*You will sometimes see this listed as a 68 pounder on Wikipedia, it was not unlike the actual 68 pounder of at least 88cwt and normally 95cwt for sea service (112 cwt barrels were available for land batteries) it was not remotely strong enough to handle the charge require to usefully fire the solid shot however being of the same bore both fired the same shell of roughly 49 pounds.

you need on a wooden ship is a lump of red hot iron buried in a place you can't get too,

 

[rebelatsea]

Indeed, the RN standardised on 32 pdrs, with weight being varied by the length of the gun. The guns were:

32 pdr 56 or 58 cwt: 9 ft 6 = 10 lb charge
32 pdr 48 or 50 cwt: 9 ft = 8 lb charge
32 pdr 45 cwt: 8 ft 6 = 7 lb charge
32 pdr 42 cwt: 8 ft = 6 lb charge
32 cwt 40 cwt: 7 ft 6 = 6 lb charge
32 pdr 32 cwt: 6 ft 6 = 5 lb charge
32 pdr 25 cwt: 6 ft or 5 ft 8 = 4 lb charge
32 pdr carronade of 17 cwt: 4 ft = 2 lb 11 oz charge

The 32 and 40 cwt guns were rebored 24 pdrs, and the 25 cwt were rebored 18 pdrs. The 56 cwt and carronade were legacy 18th century guns. The rest were introduced mainly in the 1830's. The 18 pdrs were the last to go, being replaced in the late 1840's.

By the time of the Crimea, the armaments were the 68 pdr 95 cwt, the 8 and 10 inch shell guns (65 and 84 cwt) and the various 32 pdrs.

The 112cwt 68pdr was regarded as too heavy for sea service with the then standard marsilly trucks for the 95cwt weapon. Ironically Scotts iron carriages provided for the Armstrong MLR could have taken the 112cwt gun.