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Cannonball Damage

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The Myth

THIS MYTH WAS FEATURED IN...
Pirate MythsEpisode Title: Special 11: Pirate Special

Original air date:1/17/2007
Myth Title: ----


Myth Description: ---- MythBusters Adam and Jamie attempt to figure out whether more pirates die from a cannon ball or the splinters that is caused from the cannon ball going through the ship.


MythBusters on the bust: ---- Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman


Hypothesis: ----


Procedure/Experimental Design: ---- Take pigs, dress them up as pirates, hang them up, shoot them with a cannon ball, then put them up behind a pine ship wall and shoot clean through the wall and see what the damage difference is.


Results: ---- The cannon ball as thought does more damage than the splinters they cause.


Conclusion: ---- The splinters, though there are plenty of them, do not have enough force to potentially kill the pirates.


Busted or Not Busted: ---- Busted

Fan Feedback

Highlights of the bust:

  • Watching Adam and Jamie shoot pigs with a cannon.




Best quotes by the MythBusters:






Your Scientific Method

Did the MythBusters get it right? How would you have busted this myth differently? Share your experiment design for how you would prove/disprove this myth:

  • The test has one critical flaw - the "ship" side was too thin.
  • To produce splinters with energy high enough to injure, the target must be strong enough to substantially slow the cannonball -
  • the splinters only get as much energy as the cannonball loses.


  • there is another flaw that needs to be pointed out. the "ship" side that was tested was dry wood. a true pirate ship would have been waterlogged and that effects the wood. wet wood is way more flexible which would effect many of the variables in this myth


  • A real pirate ship would not have been made out of pine, its too soft of a wood. A denser wood needs to be used native to Europe.


  • Part of the problem with the procedure for this myth is that the "pirate ship" was sufficiently light that the cannonballs lost a lot of energy moving the wall rather than breaking through it. This resulted in less energetic splinters. To improve the result, the "pirate ship" needs to be more rigidly mounted to simulate the 100+ tons that an actual pirate ship would weigh. Then the energy will be put into breaking through the side and the resultant splinters will be more energetic, I expect.
  • In this case, you'd probably be best looking at the British Navy (THE seapower in europe between approx. 1600 and 1945) for major flaws with this experiment:
  1. Sample Hull was way too thin - HMS Victory, a famous Napoleonic era first rateship of the line has a hull 2 feet of solid oak at the waterline.
  2. Naval ordinance is far larger than period field artillery, mainly because you don't have to drag it long distance - even a small sloop would field far larger guns - try a 24, 42 or even a 64 pounder. Accordingly, the type of gun used was inappropriate - the British Navy developed the shorter "carronade" type of cannon in the 18th century specifically to increase splinter damage by throwing larger cannonballs a shorter distance.
  3. A basic misunderstanding of the use of the term "splinter." A layman wouldn't use the term splinter fora 3 foot stake weighing 60 pounds, but that's the sort of splinter we're talking about...
  4. It's not specifically death you particularly want to cause in combat, but incapacitation so the crew cannot fight - If you're intent on murdering the crew, you can do that at your leisure after capturing the vessel
  5. Wood used on ships would have been dried for years before construction, and would have had the additional age of the ship itself. Modern lumber is basically green, and much less inclined fly apart when struck. Wood used should be a minimum of 10 years old to be representative.


Added by Inkfinger 4/01/08:
Did the MythBusters get it right? NO! They were dead wrong on this one. A little bit of research into British Naval history would have shown that:
  1. Ships were generally constructed of up to 4 feet of more brittle hardwood planks such as oak, ash or maple which are much more prone to splintering than the soft hemlock used by Mythbusters.
  2. As an above writer mentions, the low-muzzle-velocity carronade was developed for the Royal Navy specifically to deliver all the cannonball's energy to the wood, maximizing splintering.
  3. The two layers of heavy planking on a ship of the line placed the inner surface of the wood under tremendous compressive forces. This is partly due to the curvature of the ship and partly to the swelling of the outermost layer.
  4. Admiralty records show that many more men were injured by splinters, subsequently dying of infection, then were directly injured by cannonball. Sailors were as likely to be killed by their own guns exploding or crushing them as they were to be hit by a cannonball. (Grape shot was the anti-personnel load of choice.)
See Also

Related myths: ----

Related resources and reference pages: ----




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