Grapeshot

[Jim McDougall]

Pretty sure that guy is wearing a M1840 Medical officers sword, these were by Ames (Chicopee, Mass.) and I take it pretty rare.
Curious about the guy second to the last, right. Think he was pulling the 'Napoleon' thing with his hand in his coat.

[kahnjar1]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

Pretty sure that guy is wearing a M1840 Medical officers sword, these were by Ames (Chicopee, Mass.) and I take it pretty rare.
Curious about the guy second to the last, right. Think he was pulling the 'Napoleon' thing with his hand in his coat.

.....just dealing with an itch

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

... Curious about the guy second to the last, right. Think he was pulling the 'Napoleon' thing with his hand in his coat.

A prestigious "Napolifashion" in the period, Jim

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[fernando]

Was it 'over' heating due to intense discharges or 'over' loading of gunpowder ?


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[kronckew]

I suspect, (from the video I posted above), that it was a casting flaw. Cooling a casting from the outside in makes the inside softer and changes the crystalline structure. Failure can occur early in it's life, or later after wear. Cannons were apparently NOT proof fired with a large charge.

The iron clad ship: Note the thickness of the gun-port covers. I've been on the HMS Warrior here, the UK's first iron hulled ironclad (after, they built a few for the Southern States navy) - equally thick shutters but the ironclad hull was a lot thicker. constructed from 4 ½ inch thick wrought iron plates bolted to 18" inches of teak, then mounted on the 1 inch thick plating of the hull itself, behind which were the frames and timber lining. In all this represented a total thickness of some 2 feet.

[fernando]

Aren't they ugly, when you think of the charm of "normal" sailing ships ?

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[kronckew]

One of their main problems were that cannon balls of the period bounced off the durn things, so they went back to old school, really old school an put a ram on the bow, much like a Greek/Roman trireme. If you can't shoot a hole in it, crank up the boilers and ram it. That bottom pretty one was built by the UK for the Confederate navy, but it arrived after the war was over.

The beak of a roman era trireme was called a rostrum. The Roman Forum had a speaking area where rostrums from defeated enemy warships were mounted as trophies. You would literally stand on the rostrum to speak to the crowds at the Forum, hence our use of the term to mean a speakers platform.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by kronckew

... The beak of a roman era trireme was called a rostrum. The Roman Forum had a speaking area where rostrums from defeated enemy warships were mounted as trophies. You would literally stand on the rostrum to speak to the crowds at the Forum, hence our use of the term to mean a speakers platform.

Ephemeral, if i may; Romans borrowed the term used for the beak (snout) of an animal and we, Post Romans, later brought it back, this time for the face (rosto) of a human .
For the ships ram we here use 'esporão' (large espora=spur) also from latin 'sporõne'.
... just for perusal, of course .

[Philip]

Originally Posted by kronckew

The Roman Forum had a speaking area where rostrums from defeated enemy warships were mounted as trophies. You would literally stand on the rostrum to speak to the crowds at the Forum, hence our use of the term to mean a speakers platform.

You can still see the Rostra (named using the plural form of the neuter noun, since it was once adorned with several trophy beaks taken at Actium) today in the ruins of the Forum Romanum. History records that it wasn't only the beaks of ships that were displayed there. Recall the grisly fate of Roman statesman Cicero, who was assassinated in 43 BC on order of the Second Triumvirate -- his severed head and hands were displayed on the Rostra by Mark Antony, who was the target of Cicero's letters and speeches.