I’m pretty sure everyone saw old cannons that used big round balls, but how effective were they? pretty sure the pirate ones were pretty effective at making holes in enemy ships. The early ones seem like they would hit the dirt and the dirt would shrapnel over the soldiers. Am I missing something or would these cannons offer a single shot kill or what?
In: Technology
Basic cannon balls were mainly good at punching good sized holes in things
If they hit the side of a ship they would splinter the hull and send sharp pieces of wood flying at high speed into the crew. They could also hit loaded cannons which could cause misfires or fires on board, both of which are very bad for a wooden ship full of gun powder.
Ships also used Chain Shot(literally chains) for ripping through enemy sails and potentially taking entire masts down. They had grape shot too which was really nasty buckshot which would chew through the enemy crew but only at close range.
Field artillery(cannons used by the army) had a variety of shot. There was round shot like the navy boys use which would punch big holes, but there was a variety of other rounds they could use.
There was canister shot, basically a big shotgun shell for the cannon which would decimate infantry at short range. There were explosive shells which would detonate after a fixed time, percussion shells which would detonate on impact, shrapnel shells which would detonate at a fixed time but spew shrapnel down on enemy infantry, and quicklime and carcass shot which spewed fire down below them.
Round shot is nice and simple to show in movies, but Admirals and Generals had a variety of rounds available to do their deeds with.
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