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great sailing ship at hyperscale...

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  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Australia
great sailing ship at hyperscale...
Posted by womble on Friday, August 12, 2005 5:41 PM
in the latest whats new, but what was its purpose? Attacking other ships or just bombarding shore positions? Looks like it has two rather large looking mortars as armament but I know that ships of that time also had an 'anti-ship' cannon (for want of a better description!) that looked similar.
  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: Seattle, WA
Posted by Surface_Line on Friday, August 12, 2005 8:33 PM
That vessel is called a "Bomb" or "Bomb vessel". Its purpose in life is bombarding shore establishments. It would have just a few regular long guns suitable for ship-to-ship combat.

Those mortars were not suitable for aiming at any kind of a moving target. To be effective, the Bomb needed to be anchored very firmly so the gunners could make sure the only variables involved were from their aim and their precise cut of length of the fuze.

This one pictured, from 1797, was from the twilight of popularity of this type of vessel. They were going out of vogue by then.

Nice looking model, though, isn't it?

Rick
  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, August 13, 2005 7:35 AM
An interesting fact about Royal Navy bomb vessels is that the RN crew did not fire the mortars. They were fired by Royal Army Artillerymen who were carried on a tender that accompanied the bomb vessel. The crew sailed the ship and defended it with whatever naval cannons it carried.

Al Blevins
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