Har! Har! The BS never ends.

I like your idea with the water ballons, Stilly. My dachshund simply hates water balloons. He would be gone in a flash. As for Mr Shatner, he'd probably smile and make some quip about the humidity being even higher than normal...

Amos, my lad, you have again f*cked up. I have told you and told you and TOLD you time and again on this forum...the expression is "codswallop", NOT "codwallop".

CODSWALLOP! With an "s" after "cod".

Don't make me have to tell you this again. If you are going to blather on in that fashion, then at least get the words right.

Mario -

A question: Who IS "THE Captain"?

I was not initially questioning the effectiveness of the broadside, only the direction from wich it came, relative to "The Shatner".

Still, upon further consideration I have to say this...a single broadside cannot normally sink a wooden ship, unless it's a very small ship being fired on by a much larger one. "The Shatner" is not small. It's galleon-sized. A "schooner" is not large.

A single broadside from a large vessel can, in some cases, severely disable a wooden ship, specially if it brings down one or more masts, but it cannot sink it...unless it should happen to cause a secondary explosion of the ammunition magazines. (Such things have happened.) Wooden ships did not tend to sink easily, but generally required an enormous number of hits to batter them before they ever sank. Indeed, they seldom sank, but were usually simply battered into surrender over a period of perhaps 20 minutes...to as long as several hours of hard combat. Sometimes they sank later, due to the cumulative effect of leaks that overwhelmed the repair efforts.

Now, schooners...schooners are smallish vessels, built mainly for speed. They carry few guns, and the guns they carry are quite small. They don't carry ship-killing guns, in effect, they carry man-killing guns. No schooner would ever have the means to fire a 20-gun broadside or the means to deliver a broadside that could cripple a large vessel in the manner described in Amos' post.

Therefore his post is codswallop.

Here's a list of some smaller ships from the War of 1812. Note the schooners, and their guns...

135 - "Raven," U.S. transport schooner, one gun.


136 - "Asp," U.S. armed schooner, one gun.


137 - "Ontario," U.S. armed schooner, two guns.


138 - "Scourge," U.S. armed schooner, nine guns.


139 - "Fair American," U.S. armed schooner, two guns.


140 - "Conquest," U.S. armed schooner, two guns.


141 - "Julia," U.S. armed schooner, two guns.


142 - "Governor Tompkins," U.S. armed schooner, six guns.


143 - "Pert," U.S. armed schooner, one gun.


144 - "Hamilton," U.S. armed schooner, ten guns.


145 - "Growler," U.S. armed schooner, two guns.


146 - "Lady of the Lake," U.S. armed despatch schooner, one gun.


147 - "Oneida," U.S. brig-of-war, sixteen guns.


148 - "Madison," U.S. sloop-of-war, 24 guns.


149 - "Lark," U.S. transport schooner, one gun.


150 - "Fly," U.S. transport schooner, one gun.


The most well armed schooner in the list (the "Scourge") mounts 9 guns. That would be 4 guns a side, and a bow chaser, I should think. That makes for a 4-gun broadside.

For a 20 gun broadside of killing force such as Amos describes, I think you would have to have had a frigate. That's the "heavy cruiser" of its day, just one step below a ship of the line. A really well-armed frigate can mount long 18-pounders, and it can definitely cripple another ship with a single close range volley that hits in the right places...but it's doubtful that it would sink it outright.

And remember....a ship that is broad in the beam can absorb a hell of a lot of hits and still stay afloat. Need I say more? ;-)