I imagine this amazing article must be very well known here, but I found it absolutely fascinating:
link
One extract, on rate of fire:
'The often-quoted example of the regularity of practice is that of Collingwood when in command of Dreadnought in 1804-05, ‘the crew of which had been so constantly practised in the exercise of the great guns, under his daily superintendence, that few ships' companies could equal them in rapidity and precision of firing. He was accustomed to tell them, that if they could fire three well-directed broadsides in five minutes, no vessel could resist them; and, from constant practise, they were enabled to do so in three minutes and a half.''
The article argues that there were two main tactical approaches:
1. Open fire from longer range, hoping to immobilise the enemy ship to the point where one could manoeuvre into a raking position and finish it off;
2. Get in close, and pummel it in such a way as to *drive the crew from the guns*. This 'shock and awe' approach was quicker but costlier to the assailant.
One of the more shocking revelations in the artcle is the sheer length of time that one ship was battering another. See this long extract:
'The basic object of this ‘shock and awe' approach was to drive the enemy from their guns: ‘They cut us up a great deal until we got our broadsides to bear on a Spanish ship [Monarca] in breaking the line, when we gave her such a murdering broadside that she did not return a gun for some minutes, and a very few afterwards', wrote Lieutenant Clement of Tonnant. Likewise Midshipman Badcock, of Neptune's engagement with Santisima Trinidad: ‘…we kept up such a brisk fire that the Spanish could not keep at their guns'. Once that was achieved, the gunners turned their attention to doing sufficient in-board destruction to prevent their opponents from returning to their guns. Lieutenant Bevan in describing the classic duel between Brunswick and Vengeur at the Glorious First of June in 1794 wrote that All her masts went soon after, but from the weight of shot thrown into her, viz. 3 rounds shot of 32 lb, i.e. 96 lb of ball from each gun, driving home our coins at one time, watching their rising, to fire beneath the water line, next withdrawing the coins to elevate the muzzles and rip up her decks, this alternate mode of firing for two hours and a half lashed alongside, we rather think it may probably happen her masts were cut by our shot from within board. The silence of their fire for the last two hours, shews the people were employed at their pumps, but all their efforts could not prevent their ships from sinking. Aiming between wind and water, the French correspondent of Le Moniteur conceded, ‘force their enemy to take away a number of men from the management of the guns for the service of the pumps, and nothing is so fatiguing and dispiriting as this. When a fear of sinking is induced, men are not much disposed to contend for victory'.'
The 2.5-hour slugging match between Brunswick and Vengeur (at the Glorious First of June, 1794), in which the Vengeur did not actually respond for the last two hours, seems quite shocking. Presuambly not all the uninjured French crewmen were handling the pumps? The rest were, I imagine, lying about stunned by the hell unfolding around them. Ghastly…
paints a Napoleonic caricature.
