Many sailing ships of the day had a shot furnace on board - the USS Constitution did. It could heat cannonballs, but the real deal was red-hot shot. The idea was that the shot would lodge in the wood of the ship and catch fire. And if it didn't catch fire, it would at least smolder enough to require crew members to attend to it, taking valuable hands away from the fighting effort.
The cannon teams had to work fast, as you might imagine. A powder charge was loaded behind a wet wad, then the shot was poured in. The cannon had to be fired fairly quickly, lest the shot burn through the wad and ignite the powder. Same deal for a cannonball.
Back in the late 80's, when we were privileged to be moored astern of the USS Constitution, I chatted with a few of the crew and we talked about that. They said that even with red-hot shot, it was pretty difficult to set a sailing ship ablaze, unless some particularly vulnerable spot was hit. The timbers tended to be massive enough to withstand fire and crews were pretty well accomplished at firefighting (for obvious reasons). But a burning cannonball or a bunch of smoking shot rolling around underfoot would certainly make things lively - and could always find that "lucky" spot, like a powder charge or a ladderwell down to something more flammable.
I know that whenever I thought that serving on an aluminum ship was hazardous, I'd look across the pier to the wooden minesweepers and figure that life was good.
The cannon teams had to work fast, as you might imagine. A powder charge was loaded behind a wet wad, then the shot was poured in. The cannon had to be fired fairly quickly, lest the shot burn through the wad and ignite the powder. Same deal for a cannonball.
Back in the late 80's, when we were privileged to be moored astern of the USS Constitution, I chatted with a few of the crew and we talked about that. They said that even with red-hot shot, it was pretty difficult to set a sailing ship ablaze, unless some particularly vulnerable spot was hit. The timbers tended to be massive enough to withstand fire and crews were pretty well accomplished at firefighting (for obvious reasons). But a burning cannonball or a bunch of smoking shot rolling around underfoot would certainly make things lively - and could always find that "lucky" spot, like a powder charge or a ladderwell down to something more flammable.
I know that whenever I thought that serving on an aluminum ship was hazardous, I'd look across the pier to the wooden minesweepers and figure that life was good.
