We return to the real history behind Black Sails with an examination of ship-to-ship battles.
The on-screen battles have been thrilling, but rarely accurate.
Real ship actions were often boring.
Yes, but interspaced with moments of pure terror.
First, a little background.
Cannons on ships had only been in use for a little over a hundred years.
Before that, there had been some effort with catapults and bows-and-arrows.
But the main method had been ship-to-ship ramming.
This was only practical with galleys (ships propelled by banks of rowers).
Only a galley could control its speed and direction with enough precision to target and attack another ship.
But galleys had their own drawbacks.
Rowers also grew tired.
Wind-powered ships could travel faster over an extended period of time.
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Wind-powered ships also had the deck space and manpower to host cannons.
None of this came easily.
Then there was the issue of aiming.
InBlack Sails, cannons tend to hit what they aim at.
In real life, it was somewhat different.
A more experienced crew would have better luck.
Partially because of the difficulty of aiming, the established way of fighting ship to ship was very formal.
Ships large enough to take part in this maneuver were called, appropriately, ships of the line.
They were big1000 tons or moreand carried perhaps a hundred guns and as many as a thousand crew memebers.
When two navies met at sea, they first formed their lines of battle.
Once the lines were formed, the two columns sailed toward each other in opposite directions.
As each ship came into firing range with the ship on the opposite side, it began to fire.
The ships, made of oak, were designed to withstand a barrage like this and rarely sank.
But the men in the ship would be torn to pieces.
Not only was iron flying through the air, but also splinters of wood knocked loose by the shot.
Such splinters could no doubt pierce flesh down to the bone.
Chunks of rigging fell, breaking the men below.
The noise was incredible.
It was not uncommon for men deafened by the noise of battle to take days to recover their hearing.
Eyewitnesses wrote of men mashed into liquid by a single shot.
Limbs were crushed to pulp.
The screams of the injured and dying rivaled the noise of the cannons.
Blood covered the deck in such quantities that it sloshed ankle-deep.
The smoke from the burning powder obscured everything, sometimes even the sun.
During this chaos, men were expected to stick to their posts and do their jobs.
Time and again, the gun crews swabbed, loaded, primed, aimed and fired their guns.
Sometimes a gun would overturn, crushing its crew beneath it.
Sometimes guns would explode due to improper loading or interior flaws or corrosion.
In the long, slow-moving parade of ships, this hell might go on for hours.
Once again, this might take days.
Interestingly enough, battles that went this way really didnt accomplish much.
Many pirates had been in such battles.
In those days, navies did not even bring their sailors home.
Rather, they dumped them at the most convenient port.
Often this port was in the Caribbean.