Could You Survive in the Lord Nelson’s Royal Navy?

200 years ago, the British Royal Navy was the most technologically advanced and highly efficient force in the history of naval warfare, but what was it like to live and work aboard these ships? He wanted to know how the ship sailed and what the weapons were. the notes of the history of Lord Nelson and the other admirals who commanded that force, but of the ships and the men, the true hero of the Napoleonic and revolutionary wars against France. The wars that would see Britain crowned Master of the Seas. The ships depended on the wind but also on humans.

Powerful ships needed men, many men in the Navy in peacetime in the 1780s there were around 14,000 sailors in the Navy, but by the time of Trafalgar, after years of intense war, there were 110,000 men Now, where will those men from places like this come from? fishing villages, ports, coastal towns, gangs of naval sailors roamed these streets, there were some volunteers, but infamously many men of Nelson's Navy were given no choice, they were physically dragged from the streets aboard a boat to begin a career in the Navy, the pressure was on. I like the army case. British law allowed the Navy to recruit by force.

That's how important the Navy was considered. The national project. Ally. The law stated that they were only supposed to impress men aged between 80 and 55 who were used to being at sea that they were actually seafarers, but in practice such was the need for extra hands on board that people without no experiences

could

be collected in this network; They were called land men and they were taken from the sea and forced to learn to drive. but there were real volunteers, there are descriptions of young men excited and confident with the idea of ​​going on adventures and escaping the rural monotony or urban poverty of George and England, but there is no doubt that a huge number of men They were forced to put to sea with little or no warning by the press gang system and this caused terrible trauma to their families and communities.

In a foreign corner on the River Medway lies the historic Chatham Dockyard during Nelson's era. It was the beating heart of the Royal Navy on land, so once you volunteered or were impressed, you were immersed in the vast and colorful world of the Georgian Navy, a ship might take you straight to join a ship at sea or you

could

be taken through one of these huge naval dockyards like this one here in Chatham and this is where you would have had an idea of ​​the scale of the organization that you had now been thrown into here, it has giant warehouses, you have rope making buildings you have sailing lofts you have big piles of wood everywhere to make ships Oak hearts you have our ships you would have seen ships built along the coast here more ships are being completed in Sea mode or have been brought out of suspension in preparation for a major war, this is where you would realize that the Navy was much more than just ships and fighting battles, it was a monumental industrial exercise, a gigantic expenditure of public money, This enormous infrastructure, all aimed at waging war at sea, this document has been used by the Navy since the mid-16th century, at the time of Nelson's Navy, it was at the forefront of shipbuilding and industrial technology.

Vanguard. At its peak, over 10,000 people lived and worked here, it was an entire city geared towards manufacturing and Maintaining ships because of their importance to Britain meant that it was a source of great interest from the most powerful people in society and The King was no exception when King George III visited this Dot card in the late 18th century for a

royal

visit to Marvel in this court. world famous shipyard, he loved looking at the ships being built, the warehouses, the great Pals of Timber being prepared, but apparently the climax of the visit was this building here and you will be surprised to know that it is where they make the rope, so like I'm exploring the Roper and you come across big piles of wonderful ropes like this, maybe this is intended for who knows, maybe even HMS Victory or something, but this really shows what's going on here because there's a part unraveled at the end, so this is The thread here you could call it a thread, but no one would do that in this environment, but can I string something like this and everything is wound up to create a thread?

All these young people are making a thread and then look, you can see. The thread is also wound up here to make a rope, a big thick rope, but the best thing about this cable is that the rope is then wound up here to make a powerful cable, an ultra rope, something in which, for example, The anchor is placed at the end. and throw it over the side, the rotary here in Chatham is 1,100 feet long, but to get a real idea of ​​your lens you have to go down two feet and put it on two wheels the length of the rotary, if the length is mandatory for the anchor of the ships. cables, they had to have so much anchor cable on board to be able to drop the anchor to a certain depth and be sure it would hold and that's why this building is so enormously long.

The longest building in Europe which we know could very well have been the longest building in the world at that time even by bicycle it takes a couple of minutes to get from one end to the other it is gigantic but then we will talk about the 18th century here we will talk about a time where there were There are no large municipal buildings or shopping centers or giant factories like this, they did not exist anywhere else. This is the Royal Navy, pioneering a new way of producing the industrial process. For me, this place is almost among anything else.

Northern HMS Victory. This place emphasizes the escalating modernity the industrial ambition of what the Navy was doing in the 18th century behind all of Nelson's glorious victories and the portraits of him saying on the quarterdeck this is the reality of why Britannia ruled the waves because Britain for decades has invested an imaginable amount of money in creating dock facilities and creating industrial facilities to build the most modern and technologically Superior Navy in the history of mankind, by that time, the new voluntary recruit There is no doubting the scale of the enterprise of which he was now a small part, but one thing you will not have seen on this site is no quarters in the accommodation because when you joined Nelson's Navy you joined the ship, so very little time passed.

The new recruiter has passed through this shipyard and joined a ship at sea abroad. This is Phoenix, a 20th century ship outfitted similarly to a Nelson Navy ship. She is 112 feet long and 22 feet tall, which is the width of her for everyone. You, landsman, are about the same size as the ship Captain Cook took on his voyage of exploration, this will be our new home for recruits. Now Phoenix is ​​an impressive site, but compared to Nelson's ships of the line, she is a baby, not that she is any competition, but HMS Victory is over 227 feet long and 52 feet wide and where Phoenix is ​​the Home to 10 sailors, the Victory could carry a complement of 850.

Hi Joe, how are you doing? Hello in Phoenix, thank you very much for accommodating me so when she arrived. Our new recruit recruits came on board and pressed the volunteer men. What would be the first thing that would happen? You have to find out if they could sail. I guess so, just the general assessment of his ability, but also his mental state, what's coming. at stake when you're on the high seas, so what are you looking for in new recruits? Which one of them has some experience? I guess just the momentum and the ability to pull the rope at the end of the day, um for a deckhand to be able to pull a rope is a rope to go up the mast at any given time uh is the most important quality of any person in the sea ​​so you're the first step saying you would rate people as useless land sailors ordinary semen so a little bit of experience able semen yeah yeah absolutely um and how would you judge it so I'm like now I sell but Not that I'm obviously not familiar with your ship at all, although what were you?

What would you ask me to solve? If I'm okay first it's just your simple handling of the lines um and how you do things in a ballet so um so we can do a test on this downhill here um so I take the line uh and I I would just like to see how you handle that , okay, that line is actually okay, so if I gave you this and told you to do it right, then it was okay, I'll get it done, so I'll do that first, yeah, okay, figure eight around the safety pin , Alright. A little nervous now.

I want to be wrong, but the thing is, I don't know what this rope is attached to, that's the problem, yeah, so you're in the hallway downstairs for Senior Senior Master Senior Master right, um, so just um, I don't. you're, it doesn't work, that's good, so the first thing I noticed was that um, you've clearly been on a boat before, okay, um, we can say that you have. The first thing I also noticed about your coil was that, um, your eights were counterclockwise, I think oh uh, instead of clockwise, so that would be one of the things that would detect fine, but easy enough to correct, um, and then your coil is not too bad and also has a bit of an edge, but generally most cores are the same length and were also wound and taped on clockwise, so yes, that's a good sign.

I feel like I'm heading for an ordinary super rod. Mabel Seaman, although probably yes, just to hone some of the skills, once our recruit had been qualified, they would quickly learn that their purpose was to keep the ship moving, man the lines, man the sails, everything was done to serve the boat and being on the job training you're expected to be familiar with everything and fast you're attacking you need to be able to do everything right, you know, if someone gets injured, someone gets sick, everyone has to have the skills to learn how to drive. Absolutely yes, even if it's a case where we had Greener team members, you have to pick them up, they don't know what they're doing and you have to talk to them about it and it's pretty miserable for them because it's windy and it's very weather.

It's cold and you've stood on a piece of rope and it's not pleasant, but you have to expose them to it and learn the tricks that our recruit would have to learn. The rhythms of life aboard one of her British Majesty's ships. It started quite early at 5am, came the piercing scream of bosons and whistling. These tough characters move through the ship telling everyone it was time to put their hands up. Ahoy, then they came with their knives and screamed or went down, that's the word. and if you are still in your hammock, they will cut the rope here and send you to the deck.

You are expected to stow your hammock, take it up to the deck, and place it on the net that surrounded the ship's railings. and then it was time to give the boat a good cleaning every day. The ship's routine began with a thorough cleaning. Alongside Godliness in Nelson's Royal Navy, in fact, Napoleon found himself a Royal Navy prisoner in 1815 facing the Battle of Waterloo and commented, like many foreign visitors, how the British ships were immaculate, so all the The crew would have gone to work scrubbing, cleaning, cleaning the decks every morning, so there was a lot of stuff on those decks that the tar and shingles would have come off.

On the platform the animals that were kept on board for fresh produce would have left their droppings all over the ship and of course there were hundreds of men living on board so it needed a good wash and that was one of the ways in which the Royal Navy kept the example. of disease in these highly populated communities, so we've washed the dates, then they use these sacred stones, basically pieces of sandstone, sand the platform, take a top layer and clean it and then they get their brushes, all their swabs made from old. rope washed down the side looking very clean that's pressure cover now Mommy saying oh, after a hard morning of cleaning, our recruit would have earned a spot for breakfast.

Contrary to myth, Nelson's Navy Sailors Act formed quite well, the Navy took care of their semen they had to have the strength and morale to sail and fight these huge ships, especially given the diet in the slums of Georgia at that time. The sailors would have been very excited to eat meat four days a week, on Saturdays they had these two pounds of salt meat now this seems a little more appetizing than it would have seemed in the early 19th century, now the meat would have been packed in barrels perhaps for years covered in salt to preserve it and be so hard that it was almost said to be like a piece of wood that you could varnish even what a delightwould you eat that along with carbohydrates famous ships biscuits these hard effects in special naval facilities around Britain on the second day could be packed into barrels and transported great distances before they simply fell apart Still, there are some legendary stories about how hard and disgusting that these ships cooked for the men, the ordinary sailors and Abel, the officers had their own cooks, their own supplies, very good, thank you for selling the ship.

She would take a big vacuum, dump in some meat, dump in old cookie pieces, and create these kinds of stews. There was a patch of slush rising to the surface that could be removed and done with. what I wanted was a profit from the work, you could sell them to rope manufacturers, for example, to make them more resistant to wind and weather. The cook benefited from what was known as the slush fund, so this is on high days and holidays, but three days. per week it was not meat for you, but oats, about half a liter, half a liter of peas and then an equally scattered amount of cheese, butter and sugar.

A modern nutritionist says that the naval diet of the Georgian Navy provided sailors with about 5,000 calories. one day that's what you would doExpect young men to do a lot of heavy lifting and all of that, of course, has to be washed down with some beer. Now again, the myth here is that the Navy drank nothing but Grog rum mixed with water and a little lemon juice, but fact. beer was the basic drink, it wasn't that kind of strong beer we get today, it's thought to be a little weaker small beer, but now they had a gallon a day, which wasn't as crazy as it sounds because our Beer was probably better for you than most drinking water, which might have been drawn from the Thames or somewhere like that.

The brewing process meant that many of the microbes, i.e. nasty diseases, were killed, so beer stored in barrels could sustain the crew. Healthier than drinking water, of course, when the beer ran out was when you had to turn to the local drink. If your chip was served in the Mediterranean, you could have arak or wine, which needed a lot of water, if you were in the Caribbean. We are near the sugar plantations and that meant rum, the famous Grog, which contained about four parts water to one part rum, lemon juice was added to keep scurvy away and also a little brown sugar.

Unsurprisingly, it should be said that the sailors were the world's leading experts in smuggling. His own drinking supplies aboard ship the captains would supplement this basic diet whenever they could. They knew that a well-fed crew would probably be a happy and efficient crew. Nelson's Essence is full of tales of him trying to find decent food, drinks, water for his men to keep. their health in good shape and that means that the captains, although they experimented in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly with regard to scurvy and diseases that they did not fully know about, caused by vitamin C deficiency that led to total weakening and death. against scurvy was very popular sauerkraut remained full of vitamin C for a long time a slightly more popular superfood lemon replaced by limes later in the 19th century, but a very reliable way to keep scurvy at bay the geometry stated in when it comes to food and drink Sailors should be given the best of everything and I think it would be quite an exaggeration to say that this was the best that George and Britain could offer, but certainly in comparison to their peers on land or elsewhere industries.

Nelson's Navy sailors are quite well looked after overseas. After all, sailing in Nelson's Navy was Britain's main military instrument, and after breakfast some sailors received a sharp reminder that at 11 a.m. the ship's crew was fed, the ship was clean and the works had been exhausted, but by this time the ship was often called in to witness the punishment. Now punishment in the Royal Navy is a thing of legend and some ship captains were particularly brutal, others worked and did not allow, for example, whipping their ships, but there are a variety of punishments and start, for example. stop her ration of beer, her ration of grog, but there were also little balls of rope that the bosons would administer generously, but whippings were the most serious punishment than a capture that the ship could administer on its own authority, which meant that the ship's crew would meet here.

They tied a man to a fence, the Marines lined up an officer in dress uniform read aloud the articles of war, the rules by which the Navy governed its ships, and a man could receive 12 more lashes than he was supposed to. go through a court-martial process and obtain permission from an admiral for other captains to assemble, the system was certainly brutal by our current standards and at the time there was a powerful reform movement within Britain and indeed began a Kind of Hit and Run indiscriminately. Gauntlet, which is when basically the entire crew was reinforcing the entire crew for something like robbing.

Both were banned at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Also, there is a big difference within the fleet with how severely captains chose to hit their crews, some captains were famous floggers, others. They refused to whip their men, so the mythology of a Navy in which reluctant sailors were governed by the Terror of the Whiplash is not entirely accurate, while keeping the ship sailing was an important daily task for our recruit, It would also need to be noted that this was a combat ship and when necessary it would be thrown into the chaos of battle to ensure it had a fighting chance.

Practice with weapons would be the order of the day. Keith Wallace is coming on board and can show me around. the type of weapons that our recruit would have faced we have the Sea Service flintlock pistol, which is in use from the mid 18th century up to this point and also until the end of the 19th century, wow, and then this is our Barrel of 12 inches, later in the 1790s they started making a nine inch barrel because they are realizing that in the tight squeeze of people, you need that shorter barrel because otherwise it's a little bit more cumbersome, but you have a A combination of 12 and 9 inches is used in battles like Trafalgar, traditionally the practice is that when you board you take out your pistol and shoot as you board, but that's been up for debate because there's a guy who actually suggested .

It's best to draw your Cutlass first once you're at closer range, when it can be more accurate than drawing and with your off hand you actually shoot and have a better chance of hitting your target rather than trying to do so. while you're boarding and the principle behind me is exactly the same as the muskets, isn't it with the longer barrel? So how do you shoot it? Basically, at this point you already have cartridges, so you're going to bite off the top. from your paper cartridge, you're putting the gunpowder in here, so the gunpowder actually goes into a little pan there, which is what packs it in and then you close the frisma, but when that gunpowder explodes, it creates a kind of explosion that sends a flame into the barrel that ignites the main charge exactly yeah you've got your powder your ball here and then of course you're ramming it it might be a little stiff there we go so we can run down packing it all up because it's a little bit smaller ball, but that effective wadding that you get from the cartridge is going to keep it in, hold the water in well, so you'll be half full and then you can refill it and the flint creates a spark.

There's that and that ignites the gunpowder effectively, yeah, that's what's happening here, so it's pretty slow to reload. How many shots can you make every minute or every five minutes? I mean, I think the idea is basically this. It's a single shot weapon in this case, so presumably you've preloaded it just before boarding and then have it ready to fire, but this is where the idea of ​​having these types of blasting guns that you have comes in. I have one, but you know, particularly if we think about the golden age of wine, we see that we have this idea of ​​abrasive guns and that's because you actually have this as a single shot weapon, but then it does.

It becomes useful as a weapon for striking or also for blocking and deflecting attacks, but to get a real idea of ​​what it would be like to fight with one of these guns, I will try to shoot one myself so that when the enemy ship arrives. I don't want to explode next to him, half wait for them to get closer and then wow, that's incredible, it's very strong and you can smell that extraordinary smell of gunpowder. I'm wrong, I smelled the gunpowder, but the battlefield would have. It stinks like that barrel of pistols and muskets, it's a big kick and might seem like a primitive weapon to us today, but it was very capable of sending a bullet straight into someone and causing a lot of damage, but that's not the only one.

They didn't have any weapons, so we have a variety of different sabers that we can use as well, so we've organized them here. I think when most people think of a Cutlass, they will think of your classic pirate sword, yes this. It is a slightly earlier sword of the Dutch East Indies type and has a carapace guard. You can see this big curve in the blade. I will note that there is also a fairly sharp point, but this is the classic type of curved blade essentially like a hanger or a short saber that people will think of when they think of Cutlass, this is a little early, but it may still be There are some of these guys hanging around or between the opposite classes, your standard problem this time will be the 1804 Navy Cutlass as you see it has a straight blade it has this figure of eight a little more Workman so yes it is much more a tool that really does the job again it's great for cutting it's also great for pushing although it's quite heavy it weighs about a kilogram most of that weight is towards the hand so it doesn't feel too cumbersome it feels like you can maneuver it quite well when You're in these tight presses and we get the feeling that often there are in these types of pastures where there's not a lot of room to change this order, a lot of cuts look like they've been down on the head or, of course, if you're pushing , if you are, if you are like this.

Get up close as well, so yes, there's the artillery gem that goes on these ships, but there's also the hand-to-hand combat, there's also the hand-to-hand fighting and I don't think it's talked about enough in terms of once. you're tackling, you already have tools like this and everything you have on hand many times. I guess you would give up when your ship was hit but you are terrified but you think about the Battle of the Capes and Vincent Nelson captured the ships across borders that did happen yes there are many cases of people showing off their colors before they get bored .

We know that people were boarding and being boarded and we know that these skirmishes took place and they were brutal and bloody, even more important than the training was keeping the ship moving in the right direction, this is where the ship was headed from. Yes, we've taken you to the observation deck here and to the helm, that is. where most crews spend a great deal of time keeping watch and staying on track. Probably one of the most important parts of the job, if not the most important, so you are guided by the compass, yes, yes. Compass Pinnacle and I I mean, navigation would have been quite a challenge in those days, wouldn't it?

Yes, yes and no. I think, you know, it would have been a challenge in the climate that they were in, but the people that were on these boats. they were incredibly well trained and this was all they did the captain would take a course that he would expect the crew to follow within five or ten degrees of that um if I've been preferred it depends on the type of weather we're in if you're sailing into the wind and then as you first do this boat you like Nelson Xavier you still sleep here on the stone so you're ready to burst out on deck and be where the action is absolutely yes and it's just as important now as It was, you know, hundreds of years ago, um, the crew, it's even the accommodation, uh, later on, uh, and both me and the captain, uh, we slept, uh, back later, um, we're seconds away to be on the hill, so, yes, so soon. as we normally hear it, if something goes wrong you can hear it, you hear the blocks hit the deck, you will hear people running and before people scream, you are usually dressed in boots on the deck, what is going on with the officers What comes out of the cover?

The office accommodation, I guess, and also from the stone you get a very good idea of ​​everything, you can absolutely see what's going on, yeah, and it's the most stable part of the boat as well when you're in a bit. of a bit of sea State um yes, it's a lot it's a good place tohave a good idea of ​​what's happening um keep a good heading though for the crews uh tremendously important uh like if the 20 30 degrees are out and they're constantly Meandering around the course, you can add, you know, 10, 20, 30 miles to your journey, but sailing involves much more than simply keeping one hand on the wheel.

Wheel sales themselves need constant attention, and often that means getting the rigging right. Well, we're going up. the main fighting top already feels quite high, it's a bit when you can really feel the wind in the rig, but imagine coming here on the boat just pitching and in the big waves it must be quite intense, is that so, absolutely ? Alright, look, particularly in a moderate sea state, you have to take breaks while you're climbing because you're hanging over the sea, wait and then a few balls, yeah, right, I'm stepping, so now we have to get out to this. bar to navigate okay, okay, this is a little complicated I said I was taking a step, yeah, that's it, that's the ticket, here we go, it's wildly awkward, but that's the job, unfortunately, right, and we found more people than we have in the shipyards. the tighter the jumps and the less leg room you will have, okay, so why do we have to go out on these patios?

Then you go out to the yards to put them away and leave this outside or repair the sale depending on how bad it is. um, you can see right next to your arm here um, on your right arm, you have a um, a gasket around the candle here, oh yeah, yeah, and that's to keep the candle in place, uh, when you don't We're using it, okay? a big storm when the wind starts blowing, you'll come up here, gather all the dirt and store it in this yard, that's right, yeah, okay, we can control the sail, when we're trying to wave it with two other lines. which are the tracks and buns, we lift them off the deck to depower the sail and then use the halyard to lower them down.

Lower this yard and then from there the rest is going up the mast and stowing it on hand so you really have what you're doing up here and I mean, it would be easy, I mean the boat. You'd be going through a big angle if, uh, if the ship was actually moving over a big sea, wouldn't you? That only gets worse the higher you go from the deck, it's barely noticeable up here you realize and then the guns it's not a pleasant experience at all really and those ships that had even higher skins in the past absolutely yes, we are small in comparison oh my god, crazy or should we keep climbing certainly yes, well me from the top of the Mast the view is impressive one of the most remarkable things I have ever done is climb the rigging of a tall ship and think that you are following in the footsteps of those young people the best men who are in charge of saving This trip is climbing not only in the port like me, but in the middle of storms, battles, cannon balls that fly past your ears and your work up here is essential.

Well, this was the engine room of those ships, the sails propelled the ship through the water and without them. the cells were set up correctly the entire ship's crew has been terrible Danger after a tiring day cleaning training and working the sails it would finally be time to rest at 8 pm it was time to calm down a guard was sent below they set up their hammocks each one It had about 14 inches of space, but it's actually 28 inches because half the crew was always on deck and to get rid of their hammocks, the lanterns were turned off and the lights are supposed to be off to get four hours of sleep, but for some the hammock would have to wait around half the crew had to be on deck at any time, it was a relentless four hours on four hours rest and the crew here had to manually navigate there to keep an eye out for the dangers of navigation or the enemy ships that still had to steer and do everything. the things that kept this complex craft moving through the water safely, if they detected something they didn't like or the weather changed dramatically the crew below deck would wake up and everyone would be at their stations, which they didn't. a night of uninterrupted sleep in Nelson's Navy, but hopefully every sailor would get at least some sleep and be ready to be woken at 5am for another day.

The main purpose of Nelson's ships was to fight battle. Sooner or later, these crews would experience the thrill and horror of war at sea, but usually these ships were not prepared to fight, that depends on setting sail, so as soon as an enemy fleet reached the size of their enemy ship, the call was issued to clear the ship for action and that meant these gun ports were raised and the guns. were depleted, it meant that the internal partitions were removed, so the entire ship was just a huge floating artillery platform. Furniture, anything that got in the way, maybe animals, even livestock.

Karen bug, we loaded them into small boats and towed them behind the ship while the captain was here. This corset, the ship of him approved four and a half for action. I would have known that this ship had really transformed from a mode of transportation to a weapon of war and the most powerful weapon in Nelson's Navy is the cannon, unfortunately we cannot find a cannon on board the ship, so I have come to a shooting range in Dorset where we can with me, artillery expert Nick Hall, so obviously it is a naval gun, this one here yes, it is a price of 12 pounds of which there were a large number at the Battle of Trafalgar 12 pounds seems enormous It's not even one of the largest weapons in what it is, it's a top deck gun so it's a piece of gum yes, but it's a very good compromise if you like between the weight of the weapon, the weight of the drill and the impact on the target, so you know it's still quite powerful, but it doesn't have the massive form of say the 32 pounders on the main deck at the time of the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 English gun manufacturing was of a very high standard, cast iron or bronze, some of the earlier weapons were bronze, they didn't really have much tensile strength, but clever design and excellent craftsmanship skills could ensure that a weapon could be obtained that was very unlikely to explode.

I've looked through a lot of records and I can't find many records of these English guns exploding and an explosive gun in a crowded gun deck, unimaginable gristle, yes, yes, yes, many, many people. would be killed and mutilated, let's load one, can you teach me everything about that process, yes, Alex, and that, let's bring you here, let's go with a weapon like this, in battle I would have a very large team because you have people who bring the ammunition from course and something for Speed ​​um, you know, but you might be passing me by, for example, whereas for something like this you don't need that many people, okay, so, then, deworming it, that's deworming and so on. was.

In the Navy I realized that you had to use worms in every bullet and that was just to get the crap out of the barrel, yes, because they were using a cloth cartridge and most of it burned off, but the base of the cartridge tended to stick against the face of the breech and Then we just haven't cleaned it so any bits of spark are uncomfortable, uh, yeah, I mean the remains. The sponge is vital once you've started shooting, exactly as you say for moldy powder residue. and gunpowder is a very dirty explosive, come on, gunpowder monkey, yes, it's true, and the youngest in Trafalgar was only 10 10 years old because gunpowder must be stored away from where the action takes place deep in the friends of the sail below the water line you'll be poking it now so that's poking the cartridge so open the powder bag yeah yeah to make sure the ignition happens reliably now prime it with a little gunpowder on top, yes, that should go down. the vent now there's a sort of gunpowder bridge between this little mound here to the cans through that hole to the big charge of gunpowder below yes, sing, a single spark is enough, what I need you to do is stop abruptly over here holding the lint stopper. you want the match to be vertical like this, give it a little tap, yeah, flow over your coals, and then just drop it right into the pattern as soon as it needs to, let them store, get them out of the way, okay, take your breath. protection everyone fire she supports shooting whoa you can feel it's the sound but the shockwave really hits you too and look at the grass in front wow the wolf that was intense and imagine that a closed gun platform too with the beams low over your head would be that would be um Amplified wouldn't it?

I really would. That was quite exciting, but for the next shot we are going to fire a full size cannonball and we have a target, not a ship, but thick oak planks that we have placed about 70 meters away, it is a very authentic range, as you suggest, I mean the British fleet kept their distance, they have a car firing three, two, one, fire, oh, slower, you can see the The cannonball emerging from the smoke hit the target. Oh yeah, just above the top right side of the X. Look, I can see the trees. Beyond that, okay, go and take a look at the damage.

Can? This is gonna be great. Very nice and that's a decent piece of oak, isn't it? Yes, yes, my God, yes, an irreparable hole like a knock, a knock, a plug in I guess oh, look, look, look, look at this chip, yeah, wow, there you are, so that's the perfect one. uh, textbook example, you're not trying to think of a ship, I mean, it's very difficult to sink a wooden warship, yeah, so you're shooting above the waterline to harm the crew, I want I mean, that would kill some easy ones. It's very sharp, it moves through the air at almost supersonic speed, yes it's terrible, yes, and that was next to the furthest Splinter, oh wow, that's how far the range the splinters flew to, which is 30 meters 20 20 meters 30 meters and you talking about a crowded gun deck, yes, hundreds of people there simultaneously and them, you are right about the sithing, if you look in slow motion, I think we will find that they are turning the cameras in slow motion, they show how many lethal splinters there are.

There are dozens upon dozens of splinters everywhere spread over a really large area. There are some places in the world. I'd like to be less than a Trafalgar gun deck of people falling at Point Blank Range. Isn't it surprising that those men? I did, yes, and yet enemy cannon fire was not even the worst danger the sailors faced. The men who went to sea and Nelson's Navy never returned, they died on active service, but the vast majority of them did not die in battle, fifty percent of the casualties during the Great Wars against France and Spain 200 years ago were due to illness, another 30 percent were due to accidents, only less than 10 percent ended up dead in battle some of them were thrown overboard others like this gentleman here would be wrapped at the end of his back and orbit a sailcloth or a hammock sewn like this, there goes the last one.

The nose was sewn up according to tradition to ensure that this was not simply a reluctant deserter, someone who was actually dead, then a prayer was read and the body was handed over. Added to Davey Jones' box, life on these ships was by no means easy, but I'm not sure it was the brutal servitude that is sometimes portrayed as the men fought magnificently, sailed these ships with such professionalism, and in doing so won. a series. of impressive victories against the forces of Napoleon Nelson and some other glamorous admiral sometimes get the credit, but I think the credit should go to the men who sailed these ships and not only to them but to the people in the shipyards who made them, they refitted them and even the bureaucrats in the unglamorous but essential work of investing to make sure these ships and men had the food and supplies they needed to win together.

That complete package made the British Navy the most powerful force in the history of maritime warfare. Thanks for watching this video. on the History Hit YouTube channel, you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great upcoming movies, or if you're a real history fan, check out our History Channel History hit dot TV special. I'm going to love it