"Heated Shot At Sea" Topic

There is a debate going on over on the Warhammer Historical – Trafalgar group regarding the use of heated shot at sea. It has been suggested that the use of heated shot at sea was incredibly rare, so much so that the inclusion of a rule that allowed its use would be inappropriate. It has also been suggested that this feature exists in other published rule-sets.

Is anyone here aware of a set of rules other than "Trafalgar" that does allow ships to fire heated shot?M

Heated shot is not very efficient in a warship environment. My research indicates usage to be fairly rare.

Some thoughts as to why:

First off the ship would be required to carry off-size shot so that when the shot is expanded from heat, it will fit into the cannon.

Also, the shot has to be heated in a furnace then carefully handled to deliver it to the gun. This is not very practical on a ship which is at sea.

Shore batteries on the other hand were known for firing heated shot, as it added to their threat. They often had large furnaces below the batteries, and even lift systems to move the shot from the furnace to the guns.

My game thus ignores use of heated shot from ships, but includes it for large caliber shore batteries.

I can't speak as to other systems, but I suspect they would avoid heated shot ship to ship as well.

--Brian Carnes
Designer, Sailpower
Sailpowergame.com

Trafalgar is the first rule set that I have seen that allows heated shot to be fired from a ship.

Hot shot was incredibly tricky to handle, posing as much as risk (or more) to the firing ship as the target. Its use would have been very rare, perhaps only in instances in which a fleet was fighting while at anchor, similar to the French at The Nile -- though IIRC they did not use hot shot. Robert Fulton's USS Demologos Steam Battery was designed to fire hot shot, but it never saw action in the War of 1812. Then the introduction of explosive Shells changed the game for good. At the Battle of Navarino in 1827 the combined Franco-Anglo-Russian fleet obliterated the Ottoman Navy with shell fire. 22 Allied ships faced 78 Ottoman ships (only counting Sloops, Frigates and Battleships), and wiped them out in a few hours. Allied casualties were ~500, Ottoman casualties ~6,000, and lost all but a few ships.

Given that the guns had a lot of windage, I'm not sure they needed off-size shot for hot shot.

Considering that the ships and crew went way out of the way to eliminate any sort of flame or spark that might touch off stray powder, the last thing they wanted was a super-heated furnace blowing hot embers out the stack, and mortal men carrying red hot shot around the ship. One oops, and who picks it up?

Assuming that the shot could actually make it to the gun without the carrier getting killed, slipping, tripping etc, and assuming it could actually get loaded and fired, odds are it would miss or pass through the rigging or sails before it could light anything anyway.

Its not like they could fire a whole broadside of hot shot anyway. The furnace would be a finite, small size, and with the time it took to heat a ball to effective temperature, they'd probably only get a few rounds (not whole broadsides of hot shot) off in the course of a normal battle. Few of those would actually hit home… I doubt the effort would be worth it.

Not recommended, since a small accident while using it could set your own vessel on fire.

Let's assume your ship's gunnery crew are not the average, clumsy dolts their enemies make them out to be. Still, with solid enemy shot whizzing about, and through the hull, having a raging fire on board to heat up the shot might not be a good idea, lest it be hit by an errant enemy ball and tipped over, or hit directly, causing a large spray of super-heated ashes and coals inside a wooden boat, or on its deck. You can see where this is going.

Another tactic I have seen on the History Channel is a large spike designed to be fired from a cannon. The spike is wrapped in cord at its center, to make a large ball, and it has hooks dangling off of it, to the rear. When the string is covered in pitch, and set on fire, it would make an impressive flaming weapon which could be launched against an enemy's sails, or deck. Probably a bit less dangerous than super-heated shot, at least for the firing vessel.

I imagine these rounds would be rather rare.

wiki has this note:

link

Heated shot – Shore forts sometimes heated iron shot red-hot in a special furnace before loading it (with water-soaked wads to prevent it from setting off the powder charge prematurely.) The hot shot lodging in a ship's dry timbers would set the ship afire. Because of the danger of fire aboard, heated shot were seldom used aboard ships.

Also check this article which talks about the difficulty of handling hot shot and the equipment used

clis.com/friends/HotShot.htm

--Brian Carnes
Designer, Sailpower
sailpowergame.com

If there is one thing a ship's captain and crew were terrified of, it is fire aboard a wooden ship that is covered with tar and paint, with loose gunpowder laying all over the place. I have never heard of it even tested aboard ship.

Some thoughts regarding "Old Ironsides" and the issue in general:

link

link

link

Allen

That sadly neglected TMP resource, the Rules Directory, reminds us that "Heart of Oak" had provisions for heated shot in its advanced rules:

TMP link

I can't leave the 'puter, as my partner is snaking a nasty oversize load through Tulsa, and I have to watch the route, or I'd go check my copy to see if it allows for heated shot on vessels, or only on shore batteries.

Allen

Heart of Oak does not permit heated shot aboard ships, stating that, "It can only be used by fortifications and land batteries, as it was extremely dangerous to light a furnace aboard a wooden ship. (A particularly sadistic referee might want to recreate the French experiments with red-hot shot aboard their fleet, all of which resulted in their own ships going down in flames)." Page 18
BWW

Heart of Oak only puts heated shot on shore batteries. The problem with the furnace, even if you didn't set fire to the ship is the intense heat would cause warpage and shakes (cracking) in the timbers as the furnace was heated then cooled off when needed. Eventually you'ld split the ship apart. Plus you need a lot of wood for that fire and space is at a premium. It would be totally impractical. Fulton's design just used the excess heat off of the boiler. so he had the wood fuel anyway (also note the ship's range was very limited). also if you heated the shot a little too long, it would pancake (a little bit) and wouldn't fit the barrel. The whole process was very problematic even on shore & tended to blow up artillery or at the best severly shorten its lifespan.
Sven

Thanks, that's what I thought I remembered. It's been a while.

Allen

I have 14 different 'sail' rule sets. I've looked through
all of them. NONE have 'hot shot' rules for shipboard
use. Where a rule set discusses shore batteries, most
mention 'heated/hot' shot.

Re: Windage making smaller shot unnecessary – I don't
recall where or when I read it (it was long ago) but I
do recall reading of an incident where a French battery's
shot became so hot the rounds were distorted and would no
longer fit the guns being used.

I thought at the time that sounded very improbable, but
there it was.

Very very unlikely to be used. Part of clearing for action was to put out all fires. You certainly wouldn't want a furnace capable of heating shot to glowing hot to be hit by a roundshot and doing all the enemies work for them.

The 'stoves' I've seen at forts from that period are huge. Trying to place on on a ship, even a SOL and having to make sure that it was well vented (smoke out and air in), sat on a fire proof surface (bricks) and that no ashes or clinkers being exhausted did not land on one's ship (sails, ropes, deck, cannon charges, fuses, etc.) would be mind boggling.

Add to the challenge that the furnace would have to be located below decks and waterline for protection (one can only imagine what might be the result of an enemy shot that slammed into one).

All the equipment I've seen would take hours of firing up the furnace and heating the shot (tons of wood), plus all the handling equipment I've seen is that two (2) men have to carry the heated shot, so there would have to be some wide steps (smile).

What a silly set of rules that allows such.

Dan

I read somewhere that the French tried this as an experiment in the mid-1800's and…

BOSUN, GET THE FIRE EXTINQUISHER!

I remember hearing a story of an experiment (current time) with heated shot. The experimentors heated a cannon ball to red hot status. Then they put the ball on a plank and in a matter of seconds the wood caught on fire. They then put the ball in water to cool it off for a few minutes and then placed the ball onto another plank. 20 minutes later the plank caught on fire. There was so much heat still retained in the ball to do this. So you can see why ships who received heated shot from shore batteries were fearful of the damn things! Especially if the ball lodged in a bulwark.

In the Victorian Navy an idea was supposedly tried out for putting molten iron in a hollow cast iron shot. I believe a number of British ships were actually fitted with such a furnace.

Allen,
You are very welcome. I didn't want you to enrich the Commerical Vehicle Enforcement division of the local PD.
BWW

hiya

I have a memory of ships using hot shot v a city to set it afire, maybe in the AWI.

db

To add to bcarnes list:
As far as the British would be concerned it seems it would slow the rate of fire for one, and much more important, possibly set an all-valuable prize on fire!

I cannot think of any actions I know of that used heated shot ship-to-ship…it seems to have been done though:

link

The Royal Navy apparently forbid the use of heated shot.

Its a little out of period, but CSS Virigina used heated shot against USS Congress.

"In the Victorian Navy an idea was supposedly tried out for putting molten iron in a hollow cast iron shot. I believe a number of British ships were actually fitted with such a furnace."

Not sure why, when Shells would do a much better job of shredding and setting afire a wooden ship…

At the 2nd Battle of Lake Champlain in 1814 the British frigate Confiance had a furnace for heated shot that caused a lot of fear in the American squadron. I can't state with certainty that it was used, but given the desperate nature of the fight, if you you've got it, why not use it?

One of the Hornblower books has the good Captain learning how to use heated shot while commanding a shore battery. He had to learn from scratch in a hurry, and you can see between the lines the fun that Forrester had doing the research.
I wish I could remember which one…

You needed wet wads to keep the shot from igniting the charge prematurely.
You had to make sure the ball was not too hot, or the ball would not fit in the barrell.
You could not let it in the barrell too long, or #1 above would not be enough…
You also needed highly competent gunners. Duh.

Great view points. It was fun reading everyone's insights on the heated shot rule allowed in Trafalgar.
I agree with all that was said.

"One of the Hornblower books has the good Captain…"

"Lieutenant Hornblower"

There was the Errol Flynn movie where they fired hot coals. Captain Blood, IIRC.

I can imagine carrying red hot shot on a pitching ship would have been troublesome

Tankisti, shells weren't used at Navarino, Paixhans had invented the shellgun by then, but they weren't developed until the early 1840's. Sinope is where these guns were first used, not Navarino.