"Battlefield Detectives: TRAFALGAR

[capnwilliam]

Did anyone watch the recent (just about an hour ago) showing of TRAFALGAR, on the History Channel's terrific new series "Battlefield Detectives"?

On the whole, I loved it! Of course, you really had to suspend credulity to take seriously some points they were attempting to "prove", some 200 years after the fact: such as whether the French sniper who shot Admiral Nelson actually knew it was Nelson he was shooting at!

Also, I loved watching them shoot the replica rigging wuth round, bar, and chain shot: but what was the purpose of affixing a piece of ugly blue duct tape to the chain? And why in Davy Jones' name did they wimp out and fire the cannon via remote control? "AARRGGHH", is right!

Capt. William

[Longarm]

I'm sorry I missed it. But I do have a great book for you if you interested in Nelson and Trafalgar. It's called 'Decision at Trafalgar' by Dudley Pope. I tell ya if there is anything you want to know about that battle it's in this book. It covers both side of the engagement, from the orders given by both commanders down to what they ate before the battle and everthing leading up to and everything that happened afterwards. In other words a very detailed and informative book.

[El Pirata]

Who's Admiral Nelson? Be related to Willie?

[capnwilliam]

Longarm, I thank ye fer th' readin' recommendation, and I intend to get and read this book. This era is becoming most interestin' to me.

Pirata, I KNOW yer kiddin' : (aren't ye?!)

Capt. William

[Longarm]

Pirata, I KNOW yer kiddin' : (aren't ye?!)

Capt. William

With Pirata ye never know. They would make an interesting pair you've got to admit.

If your interested in the British navy during the time of Nelson check out some of thes books.

'Men-of-War Life in Nelson's Navy' by Patrick O'Brian, I found this in my local library and I really hate to give it back because I've never seen it a bookstore nor is it listed under books O'Brian has written.

'Hornblower's Navy' 'Life at Sea in the Age of Nelson' by Steve Pope

' Patrick O'Brain's Navy' 'The Illustrated Companion to Jack Audbrey's World' edited by Richard O'Neill. I just picked this up and havn't had time to read it but, thumbing thru it shows it to be a very well written book.

Last but not least is 'The Lost Fleet' The Discovery of a Sunken Armada From the Golden Age of Piracy' by Barry Clifford. Clifford is the one credited with finding the Whydah. I'm still reading this but so far so good. Not only does he exlpain about th4e expadition and the mapping of the wrecks, he also goes into alot of the histories of the buccaneers of the era. Some of whom I've never heard of but apparently they where quite well known in their time.

Good reading to ya mate! :) Longarm

:)

[Scupper]

Aye it was a great piece. But they did stretch it a bit in the accuracy department. i think the duck tape was to see if it hit in the center when it was fired. I think the whole replica firing and damage piece could have been done much better. And what a bunch of cowards firing by rmote. They could have had a whole gun deck of volunteers if they even asked.

Scupper

[capnwilliam]

Longarm,

Thank ye fer all yer readin' recommendations. Ye certainly seem well versed in this particular nautical era. (Well prosed, at least! )

I ordered the DECISION AT TRAFALGAR book; am waiting fer it to come in. Meantime, I'm reading, among other things, NELSON'S NAVY, in the Osprey series.

Admiral Nelson and Willie Nelson? Now, that would a hard act to follow! Throw Pirata in there fer good measure, and as my grandfather from Scotland would say, "ye cannae beat it"!

Speaking of acts: a co-worker of mine always wanted to team up Tennessee Williams with Tennessee Ernie Ford!

Capt. William

[capnwilliam]

OK, Scupper, that makes sense about the duct tape. I agree: they could have found volunteers galore to man the cannon. Hittin' th' bunkers...what bilgewater!

Capt. William

[John Maddox Roberts]

Concerning firing the cannon by remote: The crew may have been willing, but the insurers might have refused to allow it. Film and tv productions have to be insured or no go, and insurers are notoriously timid.

[the Royaliste]

A follow-up episode is also running; 'Myths of Nelson's Navy'..Not too bad...Interesting facts on the total amounts of prize monies following the Battle of the Nile....

[capnwilliam]

Ye might be right about the insurers, John; but still, reenactors fire old cannon all the time, and such firings are often taped for viewing.

Somehow I can't believe that there's not some English Napoleonic Navy reenactment group that owns their own original or reproduction cannon who'd be delighted to give that facsimile sail what-fer, could do so perfectly safely, and would be willing to sign any liability waivers that the show wanted.

Having a modern artilleryman explain things and then everyone hiding in the bunker while the cannon is set off by remote control just took too much away from it.

Capt. William

[capnwilliam]

I hope the follow-up episode is as good as the first, Royaliste!

Capt. William

[John Maddox Roberts]

Not navy, but I saw the History Channel's Alamo production last night. They built a section of wall equivalent to the Alamo's and proceeded to bombard it with a Napoleonic style 6-pounder. The crew wore Mexican artillerymen's uniforms and they stood right beside the cannon as she fired.

[capnwilliam]

Aye, saw that excellent show also, John. Must confess that I wasn't thinking about the crew standing there, though; was thinking instead, why it would take so long to destroy a wall using round shot as they seemed to indicate? Hell, if ye had even a few sixpounders at 200 yards, just train them all at the same (what you've reckoned to be the weakest) spot.

Start at the dawn's early light, and you should have a great breech therein by noon!

The show also showed a solid red flag being flown by the Mexican forces before the siege commenced, and the explanation was that this was a universally recognized symbol of "no quarter"; meaning NOT that "we won't give quarter from this moment onward", but that "this is your last chance: UNLESS you surrender now, we'll commence hostilities and won't show mercy."

Explaining it the first way just gives the attacked MORE incentive to fight fiercely, I would think. :)

Capt. William

[Longarm]

How do I keep missing these shows? I have seen one of the Battlefield Detective shows on the battle of Agincourt. I was not impressed! They tried to say and prove that the English archers had little to no effect with their bows, and that it wasn't until the hand to hand fighting got underway that they become useful. Their whole theory is based on useing a hand held metal detector for two days until they found a very corroded piece of iron that was roughly in the shape of an arrow head. By this they determined that all the arrowheads were made of iron and that it would have been impossible for such a point to pierce the steel armor of the French knights. After all the knights were the flower of French nobility so, it is only natural that they all were wearing the latest armor of steel plates. They didn't even use a bow to test this theory. They filmed a bowman then calculated the relative speed and force of the arrow and then, useing a machine they dropped the iron arrowhead they made onto a steel plate of what they gauged to be the right thickness of the French armor.

I guess what I'm getting at in my round about way is, for the History channel they made so many assumsions and guesses that it's hard to believe this type of crap could or would every be aired on a serious network with a reputation for accuracy and historical truth to maintain.

[capnwilliam]

Yer correct, Longarm, I also saw the episode about Agincourt. What was REALLY hilarious was the way they extrapolated the idea of a fine, unnecessarily fancy spur to quantum leap to the conclusion that the bulk of the French knights must have been wearing top quality plate armour; tantamount to saying that "we found the remains of a beautiful pearl handled pocket knife on this modern battlefield; ergo, every soldier must have been carrying the best quality assault rifle."

But if you listened closely, their ultimate conclusion was, I think, close to the truth. They were trying to say that it was a combination of bad generalship, mud, topography, etc., acting in conjunction with the English longbowmen, that destroyed the French knights; not that the knights just conveniently rode up to be slaughtered en masse by the obliging English archers. :)

Capt. William

P.S. I hate to watch the History Channel; every time I watch one show I see commercials for at least two others that I otherwise wouldn't have known about but now can't wait to see!

[Hawkyns]

I was on the Agincourt battlefield a couple of years ago. It's a beet field, and very obviously cultivated for a long time. Amazing that they could find anything at all, even more that they could identify a small piece of metal that exactly. Crappy museum, too. for such an important battle, it is not much more than a converted village hall. O' course, the French did lose, so I suppose they're not so eager to show it off

This show seems to go in with an agenda and then twist the facts to fit it. That, and an attempt to bust what it considers myths. That English longbowmen could penetrate plate armour at considerable distance is not in doubt. It has been re-created many times, as well as there being a fair amount of extant armour showing the piercings. One more example of not trusting what you see on TV as documentation.

Hawkyns

[capnwilliam]

Uuuummmm.....that's still highly debated, Hawkyns. Surely, a steel bodkin coming in head-on from a heavy longbow could punch through a thin-enough iron plate with sufficient penetration to do its unpleasant work. But, there's still no denying that armour plate went a long way toward safeguarding its wearer against arrows.

The problem was that plate armour was very expensive; very few knights or men at arms could afford to be decked out head to toe in same. Then there's the problem of armouring your trusty steed. Most combatants wore a combination of mail, soft padding, and maybe some plate.

Capt. William

once William MacArthur in the SCA

[Matty Bottles]

For my tuppence, I'll have to weigh in with Hawkyns. It's true that a broadhead arrow, most effective against flesh, can't penetrate plate armor effectively. But the long, narrow arrowheads that were designed to pierce armor certainly could. It isn't as thick as a lot of people think; most pre-firearm plate armor rarely weighed more than sixty-five pounds for the entire get-up. And when one considers the force with which those armor piercing arrows were delivered...

[Hawkyns]

OK, we're straying a bit from Pyracy, but I'm always up for a good military history debate.

First, here's a contemporary account from the French side

http://www.deremilitari.org/RESOURCES/SOUR...S/agincourt.htm

Here's the math

http://www.stortford-archers.org.uk/medieval.htm

Here's a modern perspective on the battle

http://www.primitivearcher.com/articles/en...isharchery.html

and a report on some experiments

http://www.longbow42.giointernet.co.uk/page6.htm

One of the things I think people tend to forget is that period armour was not the same as modern repro fighting armour. The original stuff was wrought iron, and was not of uniform thickness. Sure, the helms and breastplates were probably thick enough to deflect a bodkin point, but the arms, tassets and legs were not. And I don't know about you but a clothyard shaft transfixing my thigh will sure as hell make me lose interest in the fight!

Ultimately, while the arrows may not have killed everyone outright, they certainly disabled them until the infantry could wade in and finish the job. Yes, you are correct that not all would have top of the line plate armour, but looking at the butcher's bill on the French side, it is fairly obvious that many of the nobility had the resources to provide the best available. The fact that they are on that bill says that it didn't particularly help them.

Hawkyns

(who has also fought his share of Pennsics in hard suits)

[capnwilliam]

Thank ye fer the sites, Hawkyns, I'll have to check them out.

I believe that we are taking essentially the same position. I strongly agree with you that plate armour did not render its wearer "arrow proof". However, I contend that it went a long way toward making him "arrow resistant".

There's a great video named ARCHERY: ITS HISTORY AND FORMS, one segment of which shows an experiment where arrows were fired into plate made of wrought iron, which would approximate medieval plate.

The arrows punched through very well when they hit at a 90 degree angle. But when they hit at an oblique angle, they literally exploded.

I suspect that in practice, plate stopped many arrows; but in a real arrow storm, the ones they didn't stop really started to take their toll.

Capt. William

[John Maddox Roberts]

It's been my impression that, at Crecy, when the French got their unpleasant introduction to the longbow, armor was still principally mail. Mail is rather easily penetrated by a bodkin point. But, more importantly, the great storms of arrows killed almost all the French horses. It's only in movies that men ride into arrows or bullets and the riders topple off the horses while the horses trot off unscathed. A horse presents ten times the target a man does. Imagine hundreds of horses going down with every volley of arrows. Probably more knights died of broken necks and suffocation than arrow wounds.

At Poities the French tried to avoid this by attacking dismounted, but heavily armored knights don't make very effective infantry.

By Agincourt plate armor was the norm, but the horses were still vulnerable. Those elaborate horse armors you see in museums were never common. A knight could go broke just paying for his own harness, forget the horse.

[hitman]

I must admit I have enjoyed the argument but as a quick detour back to trafalger and pirating would anyone have a comment on Mahon's work as it relates to pirates (commerce raiders in his terms) and or trafalger.

I find hisargument that as a millitary weapon commerce raiding was only truly effective if one had a main fleet to back it up quite persausive but then as you can see from my avatar I have a connection to a certian example he used.

[Longarm]

I don't know if a main fleet was truly needed to back up commerce raiders ie privateers and pirates. You have only to look at this countries naval beginings to see that without a large navy privateers took a heavy toll on British shipping especally during the war of 1812. Before the defeat of the spanish armada the English relied heavyly on commerce raides like Drake and Hawkins to improve their economies at the expense of the Spanish.

The old saying that an army travels on it's stomache should also include that it travels on it's wallet as well. Look at what is going on with our own troops in the mideast and then listen to congress fight and argue about how much this is going to cost us to see just how important commerce and money can be in warfare. Anything you can do to play havoc with an enemies commerce and trade was and still is an effective methode of warfare.

[hitman]

A valid point Longarm but I belive you're missing something here. Lets take the golden age of piracy as an example. One of the primary threats made to the Spanish was indeed the threat of piracy as it was almost completly reliant on its colonies for its wealth so every effort must be made to protect it, yet the combined fleets of the English and Dutch provided them with another need much closer to home. If their main fleet was lost then the defence of the galleons was a mute point. Now this reguired the presence of a standing fleet capable of engagment with the British and Dutch fleets thus limiting (as ships be expensive mate) the number of vessels to protect the treasure galleons. This lessening of protection gave the celebrated pirates of old the breathing space they needed to ultimatly carry out their adventures. As oppossed to this we have (ok ok I say it alot but check the avatar) the ultimate failure of the confederate commerce raider. With no real ocean going fleet to divide the north's intrest the raiders were left with damn little room to manuver. Even the mighty Alabama was forced to hunt in the less densely patrolled waters of the Indian ocean. Although she was indeed successful there as she was almost everywhere she fought its effect on the union was very limited. I think although a great force multiplyer piracy was not that effective when there was no force to multiply. Agian I could be 180 out here but thats my two pence (as oppossed to my post under the legacy of pirates thats about two dollars worth)

quick edit Notice how fast the U-Boat menace disappeared after the entry of Americas overwhelming numbers in WWII.