Could You Survive in the Lord Nelson’s Royal Navy?

In the early 19th Century, Britain’s Royal Navy was the most technologically advanced and supremely efficient force in the history of naval warfare.

But what was it like to live and work on board these ships? What did the men eat? How did the ships sail? What were the weapons they used?

In this documentary, Dan Snow explores what life would have been like for those whose served in the Nelson’s Navy.

Sign up to History Hit TV now and get 14 days free: http://access.historyhit.com/checkout

And remember, as YouTube subscribers, you can sign up to History Hit TV today with code YOUTUBE and enjoy 50% off your first 3 months!

For more history content, subscribe to our History Hit newsletters: https://www.historyhit.com/sign-up-to…

#historyhit #royalnavy #dansnow

00:00 Introduction
00:56 Press Gangs
03:13 Chatham Historic Dockyard
05:52 Chatham Ropery
09:16 Royal Navy Recruitment
12:30 Jobs Aboard Ship
15:40 Food in the Royal Navy
20:29 Crime and Punishment
22:21 Fighting and Battles
25:27 Firing Sea Service Pistol
26:24 Royal Navy Cutlass
28:12 Climbing the Rigging
33:36 Downtime
34:52 Cannon Firing
43:10 Life and Death in Nelson’s Navy

200 years ago Britain’s royal Navy was the most technologically advanced and supremely efficient force in the history of Naval Warfare but what was it like to live and work on board these ships wanted to domain eat had the ship sail and what were the weapons whoa this is the story notes of Lord Nelson and the other Admirals that commanded that Force but of the ships and the men the true hero of Napoleonic and revolutionary Wars against France Wars that would see Britain crowned Master of the Seas [Music] ships relied on the wind but also on human muscle power ships needed men lots of men in the peacetime Navy the 1780s are around 14 000 Sailors in the Navy but by the time of Trafalgar after years of intense Warfare there were 110 000 men now where are those men gonna come from from places like this fishing villages ports coastal cities gangs of Naval seamen roamed these streets there weren’t some volunteers but infamously a lot of men in Nelson’s Navy were given no choice at all they were dragged physically pubs from the streets on board ship to begin a career in the Navy they were press ganged [Music] I like the case of the army British law allowed the Navy to forcibly recruit that’s how important the Navy was seen the national project Ally the law stated that they were supposed to only impress men between 80 and 55 who were used to being at Sea who were actually seafarers but in practice such was the need for extra hands on board that people with no experience at all could be gathered up in this net they were called landsmen and they were taken out the sea and forced to learn the ropes but but there were actual volunteers there are descriptions of of young men excited and Trust by the idea of going to seeing having adventures and escaping that I’ve rural drudgery or or Urban Poverty of George and England but there’s no doubt at all that a huge number of men were forced to go to sea with little or no notice by the Press gang system and it caused terrible trauma for them their families and their communities foreign [Music] tucks away on the river Medway is the historic dockyard at Chatham during the era of Nelson this was a beating heart of the royal Navy on land so once you’ve volunteered or been impressed you were thrust into the colorful extraordinary vast world of the Georgian Navy you might be taken directly by a ship to join a ship out at sea or you might be brought through one of these huge Naval dockyards like this one here at Chatham and this is where you would have had a sense of the scale of the organization that you had now been thrown into here you have giant storage houses you have a rope making buildings you have sail Lofts you have great piles of Timber everywhere to make the ships hearts of Oak have our ships you’d have seen ships being built along the Waterfront here further ships out at Sea mode being completed or or brought out of mothballing in preparation for a great War this is where you would realize that the Navy was about so much more than just ships and fighting battles it was a Monumental industrial exercise a gigantic expenditure of public money this huge infrastructure all directed towards making War at sea this document’s been used by the Navy since the middle of the 16th century by the time of Nelson’s Navy it was right at the Forefront of Naval shipbuilding and cutting-edge Industrial technology at its height over 10 000 people lived and worked here it was an entire city geared towards making and maintaining ships its importance to Britain meant it was a source of keen interest from the most powerful people in society and the King was no exception when King George III visited this Dot card in the late 18th century for a a royal visit to Marvel at this cutting-edge world-beating dockyard he loved looking at the ships being built store houses the great Pals of Timber that were prepared but apparently the climax of the visit was this building here and you may be surprised to learn it’s where they make the Rope so as I’m exploring the Roper you come across great piles of wonderful rope like this perhaps this is destined for who knows maybe even HMS Victory or something but this really shows what’s going on here because there’s a bit of an untangled bit at the end so this is the the yarn here you might call it string but no one would ever do that in this setting but can I String like stuff and that is all wound together to create a strand all these young they’re making a strand and then look you can see the Strand is also wound around here to make a rope a big chunky rope but the great thing about this cable is that the Rope is then wound together up here to make a mighty cable an ultra rope something you for example put the anchor on the end of and Chuck it over the side [Music] the rotary here at Chatham is 1 100 feet long but to get a real sense of its lens you need to get off two feet and on to two wheels the length of the Rotary if the length mandated for ships anchor cables they had to have this much anchor cable on board so they can drop the anchor in a certain depth and being be sure it would uh hold and that is why this building is so enormously long longest building in Europe we we know may well have been the longest building in the world at the time even by bike it takes a couple of minutes get from one end to the other it is a gigantic but then we’ll talk about the 18th century here we’ll talk about a time where there were no huge municipal buildings no shopping centers or gigantic factories like this they didn’t exist anywhere else this is the Royal Navy pioneering a new way of producing of of the industrial process for me this place almost among anything else Northern HMS Victory this place emphasizes the scale the modernity the industrial ambition of what the Navy was doing in the 18th century behind all Nelson’s glorious victories and portraits of him saying on the quarter deck this is the reality of why Britannia ruled the waves because Britain over decades has invested an imaginable amount of money in creating the dock facilities and creating the industrial facilities to build the most modern and technologically Superior Navy in human history for that point the new recruit weather volunteer or pressed man would never have seen anything like this in civilian life it would have left him in no doubt of the scale of the undertaking that he was now a small part of but one thing you will not have seen on this site is any barracks in the accommodation because when you joined Nelson’s Navy you joined the ship so with very little time elapsing our new recruiter been through this dockyard and out to join a ship at sea foreign this is Phoenix a 20th century ship fitted out in a similar way to a ship in Nelson’s Navy she measures 112 foot long and 22 foot in the bead that’s her width to all you landsman that’s about the same size as the ship that Captain Cook took on his voyage of exploration this will be our Recruit new home Now Phoenix is an impressive site but in comparison to Nelson’s ships of the line she’s a baby not that it’s a competition but HMS Victory measures in over 227 feet long and 52 in the beam and where Phoenix is home to 10 sailors Victory could take a complement of 850. hi Joe how’s it going hi there in Phoenix thank you very much for having me pleasure so when then came our new draft of recruits came board and pressed men volunteers what would be the first thing that happened you have to work out if they could sail I guess right yeah just the the general assessment of uh about their ability but also their mental state um which comes into play when you’re when you’re offshore so what are you looking for um in in new recruits which one of them have got some experience I guess just the drive and an ability to pull rope at the end of the day um for a deckhand being able to pull a rope is a rope get up the mast at any given hour uh is the most important quality in anyone at Sea so so you’re the first step saying you’d be rating people useless landsman ordinary semen so a bit of experience able semen yeah yeah absolutely um and how would you judge so I’m like I I now sell but I’m not that I’m obviously not familiar with your ship at all though what was you what would you ask me to work out whether I’m a well first is just your simple handling of of lines um and how do you make things off on a ballet then um so we could have a test on on this downhill here um so I take take the line off huh and I’d just like to see how you handle that okay that line really all right so if I gave you this and I told you to make it off okay so I was okay I make it off so I’ll do that first yeah okay figure of eight around the belay pin that’s it okay A little coil nervous now I want to get this wrong but the thing is I don’t know what any of this rope is attached to that’s the problem yeah so you’re on the down hall there for the top Master main top Master right um so just just um you’re not it’s not a working one that’s good so first thing I noticed was that um you’ve clearly been on a ship before okay um we can tell that you’ve done your coil first thing I noticed as well was that um your uh your figure eights were anti-clockwise I believe oh uh instead of clockwise so that would be one of the things that I’d spot right but easy enough to correct um and then your coil is not too bad as well a bit of a lead there but generally most of your cores are the same length and were coil down and record clockwise as well so yeah so it’s a good sign I feel like I’m heading for ordinary super rod Mabel Seaman though probably yeah just to sharpen up a few of the skills [Music] once our recruit had been rated they would quickly learn that their entire purpose was to keep their ship moving handling the lines managing the sails everything was done to serve the ship and it would be on the job training they would be expected to get to grips with everything and fast you’re attacking you need to be able to do everything okay um you know if someone’s injured someone becomes ill everyone needs to have the skills so to learn the ropes absolutely yeah so even if it’s a case of when we had Greener crew members you have to get them up they don’t know what they’re doing and you have to talk them through it and it’s pretty miserable for them because it’s windy and it’s cold and you’ve stood on one bit of rope and it’s not pleasant but you’ve got to expose them to it [Music] as well as learning the ropes our recruit would have to learn The rhythms of Life on board one of his Britannic Majesty’s ships life started pretty early [Music] at 5am came the piercing scream of the bosons and whistles these tough characters move through the ship telling everyone that it was time to get up all hands up Ahoy then they what came along with their knives and shouted out or down that’s the word and if you’re still in your hammock they’d Cut the Rope here and send you crashing to the deck you’re expected to Stow your hammock take it up to the deck and place it in The netting that surrounded the rails of the ship and then it was time to give the ship a good clean [Music] every single day the ship’s routine started with a thorough clean liness was Next to Godliness in the Royal Navy of Nelson slime in fact Napoleon found himself a prisoner of the royal Navy in 1815 off the Battle of Waterloo and he commented as did many many foreign visitors on how British ships were spotless so the entire crew would have set to work scrubbing brushing swabbing the decks every single morning so there’s a lot on those decks the pitch and tile would have come off the rig the animals that were kept aboard for fresh produce would have had their droppings all over the ship and of course there were hundreds of men living aboard so he needed a good scrub and that was one of the ways in which the Royal Navy kept instance of disease in these tightly packed communities down so we’ve washed the dates down then they use these holy Stones basically bits of sandstone sand the deck down take a top layer and muck off it and then you get your brushes all your swabs made of old rope wash that over the side looking very clean that’s pressure deck now Mommy saying ah after a hard morning of swabbing our recruit would have earned themselves a spot of breakfast [Music] I contrary to the myth Sailors in Nelson’s Navy act shaped pretty well the Navy looked after its semen they had to they had to have the strength and the morale to sail and fight these enormous ships particularly given the diet in the Georgian slums at the time Sailors would have been very excited to have meat four days a week on Saturdays they had this two pounds of salt beef now this looks slightly more appetizing than it would have looked back in the early 19th century now the beef would have been packed into casks perhaps for years on end covered in salt to preserve it and be so hard it was almost said to be like a piece of wood that you could varnish still what a treat you’d eat that alongside the carbohydrates famous ships biscuits these effects hard in special Naval facilities around Britain day two could be packed in casks and transported over huge distances before they just fell apart even so there are some legendary stories about just how hard and disgusting these got the ships cook cooked for the the men the ordinary and Abel seamen the officers had their own Cooks their own supplies they very well thank you back there selling the ship he’d take a great big vac he’d pour in some meat he’d pour in Old bits of biscuit and he’d create these kind of stews there was a wedge of slush that Rose the surface that you could skim off and do with it what he will it was a perk of the job you could sell them to rope makers for example to make them more resistant to wind and weather the cook benefited from what was known as the slush fund so this is on high days and holidays but three days a week it was no meat for you instead it was oatmeal about half a pint half a pint of peas and then equally dispersed amount of cheese butter and sugar it’s said by modern nutritionist that the naval diet of the Georgian Navy gave seafarers about 5 000 calories a day which is what you’d expect for young men doing a huge amount of heavy lifting and all of that of course has to be washed down with something beer now again the myth here is the Navy drank nothing but Grog rum mixed with water and a bit of lemon juice but in fact beer was the staple drink it wasn’t that kind of full strength beer we get nowadays it’s thought to be a little bit weaker small beer but they had a gallon a day now that wasn’t quite as insane as it sounds because our beer was probably better for you than most drinking water which could it could have been pulled out of the Thames or somewhere like that the Brewing process meant that many of the microbes I mean the nasty diseases were killed off and so beer stored in casks might keep the crew healthier than drinking water of course when the beer ran out that’s when you had to turn to the local Tipple if your chip was serving in Mediterranean you might take arak or wine which needed a lot of watering down if you were in the Caribbean well you’re near the sugar plantations and that meant rum the famous Grog that was about four parts water to one part rum lemon juice added to keep scurvy away and a bit of brown sugar as well it should be said predictably that Sailors were World leading experts in smuggling their own supplies of booze aboard ship the captains would supplement this basic diet wherever they could they knew that a well-fed crew was likely to be a happy and effective crew Nelson’s Essence are full of accounts of him trying to find decent food drinks water for his men keep their health in good shape and that meant captains though experimented in the 18th century 19th particularly when it came to scurvy and disease they didn’t quite realized caused by deficiency of vitamin C that led to complete debilitation and death one way of dealing with scurvy was very popular sauerkraut kept a long time full of vitamin C a superfood a little more popular the lemon replaced by limes later in the 19th century but a very reliable way of keeping scurvy at Bay geometry declared when it came to food and drink the sailors should be given the best of everything and I think it would be quite a stretch to claim this was the best that George and Britain could offer but certainly compared to their peers on land or in other Industries Sailors of Nelson’s Navy pretty well looked after foreign [Music] sailing in Nelson’s Navy after all this was Britain’s primary military instrument and after breakfast some Sailors would get a keen reminder of that by 11 o’clock in the morning the ship’s company was fed the ship was clean and jobs run away but at that time the ship was often called to witness punishment now punishment in the Royal Navy is the thing of Legend and some ships captains were particularly brutal others worked and didn’t allow for example flogging on their ships but there are a range of punishments and starting it for example stopping your beer ration your Grog ration but there was also starting just little balls of rope which bosons would administer liberally but flogging was the most serious punishment that a capture the ship could administer on his own authority that meant that the ship’s company would gather here a man would be tied to a grating the Marines would line up an officer in full dress uniform would read out the articles of war the rules by which at the Navy governed its ships and a man might be given 12 lashes any more than that he was supposed to go through a court martial process and get permission for from an admiral other captains assembled the system was certainly Brutal by our standards today and at the time there was a powerful reform movement within Britain and in fact starting so kind of indiscriminate Hitting and Running The Gauntlet which is when you were beefing up basically by the whole crew for something like stealing they were both outlawed by the end of the Napoleonic Wars also there’s a huge difference within the fleet how severe captains chose to beat their Crews some captains were famous floggers others refused to flog their men so the mythology of a Navy that which unwilling Sailors were governed by their Terror of the Lash isn’t entirely accurate whilst keeping the ship sailing was an important day-to-day task for our recruit you would also need to keep in mind this was a fighting vessel and he would when needed be thrown into the chaos of battle to ensure he had a Fighting Chance weapons practice would be the order of the day I’m being joined on board by Keith Wallace who can show me the kind of weapons our recruit would have got to grips with we’ve got Sea Service flintlock pistol Hood which is in use from mid 18th century right up to this point and through later into the 19th century as well wow and then so this is our 12-inch Barrel there’s later on uh 1790s they start to make a nine inch barrel because they’re realizing that in the tight press of people that you need that shorter shorter Barrel because it’s just a bit more cumbersome otherwise but you’ve got a mix of the 12 and the nine inch being used at battles like Trafalgar traditionally the practices that you as you’re boarding you draw your pistol and your fire as you’re boarding but that’s sort of been in debate because there’s a chap who suggested actually it’s better to draw your Cutlass first once you’re at a closer range when it can be more accurate then you draw and with your left hand you actually fire and you’ve got a better chance of of hitting your target rather than trying to do it while you’re boarding and the principle behind me is exactly the same as muskets isn’t it with the longer Barrel so how does it fire so basically by this point you’ve got cartridges so you’re going to bite on the top of your paper cartridge you’re entering the powder into here so gunpowder goes in fact a little pan there that’s it packing that down and then you close the frism but so when that powder explodes it creates a kind of explosion it sends a flame into the barrel that ignites the main charge exactly yes you’ve got your powder your ball in here and then of course you’re ramming that down it might be a bit stiff there we go so then we can run that down packing that all down because it’s a slightly undersized Ball but that wadding effectively that you get from the cartridge is going to keep that in it’s going to keep that water okay lovely so then you’re at half and then you can bring that back to full and the Flint creates a spark on there is that and that ignites the powder in there effectively yeah so that’s what’s Happening Here so it’s quite slow to reload what how many shots can you get off every what every minute or every five minutes I mean I think that the idea is basically this is a single shot weapon in this instance so you’ve you’ve preloaded presumably just before you’re boarding then you’ve got it ready to fire but then this is where the idea of having this sort of abrasive Pistols that you’ve got one but then you know particularly if we think back to the sort of the golden age of wine we see we’ve got this idea of abrasive pistols and that is because you’ve got this really as a single shot weapon but then it does become useful either as a clubbing weapon or blocking and deflecting attacks as well but to get a real sense of what it would be like to fight with one of these pistols I’m gonna have a go at firing one myself so as the enemy ship comes alongside it don’t want to go off half wait for them to get nice and close and then whoa that is incredible that’s really loud and you get that extraordinary smell of gunpowder I’m mistake I’ll smell the gunpowder but the battlefield would have reeks of that from the cannon from the pistols and muskets it’s quite a kick as well it might look like A Primitive weapon to us today but this was very capable of sending a bullet straight in someone and causing a lot of damage but that’s not the only weapon they had no not at all so we’ve got a range of different cutlasses that we can use as well and so we’ve arranged here I think when most people think of a Cutlass they’ll think of your classic pirate sword yeah this is a slightly earlier sword Dutch East India type and it’s got a shell guard you can see this big curve to the blade I’m gonna watch that’s quite a sharp point on that one as well but this is the classic kind of curved blade essentially like a hanger or a short saber that people will think of when they think for Cutlass this is a little bit earlier but there might have still been a few of these types knocking around or among the opposite classes your standard issue this time is going to be the 1804 Navy Cutlass as you see it has a straight blade it’s got this figure of eight a bit more Workman like this yes it’s much more of a tool that really does do the job again it’s great for cutting it’s great for thrusting as well although it’s quite weighty it weighs about a kilogram most of that weight is towards the hand so it doesn’t feel too too cumbersome it feels like you can maneuver it around quite well when you’re in these these tight presses and we get a sense that they often are in these these type grasses where there’s not a huge amount of room to to swing this order around a lot of cuts seem to have been either down at the head or of course if you’re thrusting if you’re if you’re that close in as well so yeah there’s the there’s the artillery Jewel that goes on these ships but there’s also the um the melee there’s the hand-to-hand fighting as well absolutely and I don’t think it’s gets spoken about enough in terms of once you’re boarding you’re already down to tools like this and whatever’s to hand as well a lot of times I I guess you’d surrender when your ship was battered bar terrified but you think about the Battle of capes and Vincent Nelson captured ships through borders that did happen it did happen yeah there are lots of instances of people striking their their colors before it gets to to being bored we do know that um people were boarding and being boarded and we do know that these skirmishes took place and they were they were brutal and they were bloody as well even more important than the training was keeping the ship moving in the right direction right this is where the ship steered from is it yes we’ve brought you up to the peep deck here and the helm which is where the majority of the crews spend a great deal of Time on watch and keeping a good course uh probably one of the well the most if not the most important part of the job so you’re steering by the compass yeah yeah Compass Pinnacle and I mean navigation would have been a huge challenge in those days wouldn’t it yeah yes and no I think um you know it it would have it would have been a challenge in the weather that they were in um but the individuals that were on these ships were incredibly well trained and this was all they did the captain would make a course I’d expect crew to follow within five or ten degrees of that um if I’ve been the preferred it depends what kind of weather we’re in if we’re sailing to the to the wind and then you as first make this ship you like Nelson Xavier you still sleep right here in the stone so you’re ready to burst on deck and be where the action is absolutely yeah and it’s it’s just as important now as it was you know hundreds of years ago um the crew it’s even the accommodation uh further forward uh and both myself and the skipper uh sleep uh back after um we’re seconds away from being on the hill myself so um yeah as soon as usually we hear it if if something goes wrong you can hear it you hear blocks hit the deck you’ll hear people running and before people shout you usually you’re dressed boots on on Deck what’s going on like the officers coming out of the office’s accommodation I guess and then also from the stone you’ve got a really good sense of the entire you can see what’s going on absolutely yeah and it’s uh the the most uh stable part of the vessel as well when you’re in a bit of a bit of a sea State um yeah it’s it’s a much it’s a good place to get a good feel for what’s going on um keeping a good course though for the crews uh tremendously important uh as if the 20 30 degrees off and they’re constantly snaking through the course you can add you know 10 20 30 miles onto your course but there’s much more to sailing than just keeping a hand on the Wheel sales themselves need constant attention and it often means climbing the rigging right well we’re upping down the main fighting top it feels pretty high already it’s a bit when you can really feel the wind in the rigging but imagine coming up here on the ship is just pitching and in the big waves it must be pretty intense is it yeah absolutely um when we all right see particularly in a moderate sea State you have to take breaks while you’re climbing because you’re hanging over the sea hang on and then a few knackers yeah right I’m stepping on so now we have to go out on this bar to make sail right that’s it okay this is a tricky bit I said I was stepping yeah that’s it that’s the ticket there we go it’s tremendously uncomfortable but um that’s the that’s the job unfortunately right and we find the more people we have on the yards the tighter that skips and the less leg room you have okay so now why do we have to come out in these yards um so you come out on the yards uh to Stow them to stay this out or repair the sale depending on how bad it is um you can see just next to your arm here um to your right arm you’ve got a um a gasket around the sail here oh yeah yeah and that’s that’s to keep the sail in place uh when we’re not using it okay so in a big storm when the wind starts blowing you’ll come up here gather all the soil up and store it on this yard on that’s right yeah okay um we can control the sail um when we’re trying to stir it with with two other lines which is the clues and the the Buns we pull those up from deck that depowers the sail and then we use the halyard down to bring this yard right the way down and then from there the rest is you have to come up the Mast and stow it by hand so you’ve really got what you’re doing up here and I mean it would be easy I mean the ship would be you’d be going through quite an angle if the uh if the ship was really moving over a big sea wouldn’t you absolutely and that only gets worse the higher up you go um from deck it’s barely noticeable up here you notice and then the guns it’s not a pleasant experience at all really and those ships who had even taller masks back in the day absolutely yeah we’re small in comparison oh my goodness crazy or should we keep going up certainly yeah well me right from the top of the Mast the view is breathtaking [Music] it’s one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever done is climb the rigging of a tall ship and to think that you’re following in the footsteps of those young men the top men who are in charge of saving this trip it’s climbing up not just in Harbor like me but in the middle of storms battles cannonballs flying past their ears and their job up here is essential well this was the engine room of those ships the sails propelled the ship through the water and without these cells being set properly the whole ship’s company have been terrible Danger [Music] after an exhausting day cleaning training and working the sails it would finally be the time for rest [Music] at 8 pm it was time to pipe down one watch was sent below they rigged up their hammocks each had about 14 inches of space but actually that’s 28 inches because one half of the crew was always up on deck and it rid their hammocks lanterns went off and it’s supposed to be lights out for a four hour sleep but for some the hammock would have to wait around half the crew had to be on deck at any one time it was relentless four hours on four hours off and the crew up here had to manually sails there to keep a watch out for navigational hazards or enemy ships yet to steer and do all the things that kept this complex vessel moving through the water safely if they did spot something they didn’t like or the weather changed dramatically the crew below decks would be woken up and it’d be all hands to their stations he didn’t get an unbroken night’s sleep in Nelson’s Navy but with luck all the sailors would get at least some shut eye ready to be awoken at 5am for another day [Music] [Music] the primary purpose of Nelson’s ships was to wage battle sooner or later these Crews would experience the thrill and the horror of war at sea but usually these ships were not set up to fight that’s up to sail so as soon as an enemy fleet was size their enemy ship the call went out clear the ship for action and that meant these gun ports were lifted the Cannons were run out it meant the internal partitions were taken away so the entire ship was just one huge floating artillery platform Furniture anything getting in the way perhaps animals even livestock Karen bug we load into small boats and towed behind the ship as the captain stood here on this corset his ship cleared four and a half for Action he would have known that this vessel had been transformed really from a mode of Transport into a weapon of War and the most powerful weapon in Nelson’s Navy is the cannon sadly we can’t find a cannon on board the ship so I’ve come to a firing range in Dorset where we can with me is artillery expert Nick Hall right so this is obviously a naval gun this one here yes it’s a it’s a 12 pounder price of of which there were a large number at the at the at the Battle of Trafalgar 12 pounds it looks enormous it’s not even one of the bigger guns on what is it’s an upper deck gun so the it’s a baby gum yes yes but it’s it’s a very good compromise if you like between the weight of the gun the the heaviness of the drill and the hit on the target so you know it’s still quite powerful but it’s not got the the the the massive way to say the 32 Pounders on the main deck by the time of of the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 English gun making was at a very high level cast iron or bronze some of the earlier guns were bronze is not actually got all that much tensile strength but clever design and very great craft skills could ensure that you could get a gun that was very unlikely to burst I’ve gone through a lot of records and I can’t find much record of these English guns bursting and a bursting gun on a crowded gun deck unimaginable cartilage yeah yeah yeah a lot of a lot of people would be killed and maimed let’s load one you can teach me all about that process yes Alex and that let’s get you in here come on a gun like this in battle would have a very large crew because you’ve got people bringing up the ammunition of course and and some for Speed um you know but you might be passing me the shot for example whereas for something like this you don’t need so many people all right so uh so so worming it out there that is worming and it was it was realized in the Navy that you had to worm every round and that’s just to get in the junk out of the barrel yeah because they were using a a cloth cartridge and most of it burned but the base of the cartridge tended to stick against the breech face and then so we just haven’t we’ve we’ve swabbed it so any any bits of Sparks any awkward uh yes I mean remnants the the sponging is vital once you’ve started firing because of exactly as you say for remnants of moldering gunpowder and gunpowder is a it’s a very dirty explosive come on Powder monkey yeah that’s right and the the youngest one at Trafalgar was only 10 10 years old because because the gunpowder has to be stored far away from where the action is deep in the pals of the ship below the water line he’ll be pricking it now so that’s piercing the cartridge so opening up the gunpowder bag yeah yeah to make sure that the the ignition takes place reliably now priming it with a bit of gunpowder on top yeah which should go down the vent there’s now a kind of gunpowder bridge between this little Mound here down into the cans through that hole to the big gunpowder charge below yeah sing a single spark is enough crikey what I need you to do is stand roughly about here holding the lint stop you want the match to be vertical like that give it a bit of a blow yep flow on your coals lovely and then just drop that straight into the pattern as soon as it takes let them in stock up out of the way all right get your air protection everyone fire she bears firing whoa [Music] you can feel that it’s the sound but the shock wave really hits you as well and look at the grass in front wow the of wolf that was intense and imagine that an enclosed gun deck as well with with the beams low over your head it would be that would be um Amplified wouldn’t it it really would I really would that was exciting enough but for the next shot we’re gonna fire a full-sized Cannonball and we have a Target not a ship but planks of thick Oak which we’ve set up about 70 meters away [Music] it’s a very authentic range as you as you’re suggesting I mean the British Fleet held their far have a car firing three two one get fire oh slowed down you can see the Cannonball emerging from the smoke did it hit the target oh yeah right above the right hand top side of the X look at that I can see the trees Beyond it all right go and take a look at the damage can we this is gonna be great that’s very nice and that’s a decent pick chunk of Oak though isn’t it yeah yeah goodness yes irreparable hole like a bang a bang a plug into I suppose oh look look at whoa look at this splintering yeah wow there you are so that’s that’s the perfect uh textbook example you’re you’re not trying to think a ship I mean it it’s very difficult sink a Timber warship yeah so so you’re firing um above the water line to damage the crew I mean that would kill some easy wouldn’t it it’s razor sharp it’s sizing through the air almost supersonic speed yeah it’s terrible yeah and that stood by the furthest Splinter oh wow so that’s how far that’s the range that the splinters flew which is 30 meters 20 20 meters 30 meters and you’re talking about crowded gun deck yeah hundreds of people in there simultaneously and they they you’re right about the sithing if you look at slow motion um I think we’ll find that they are rotating the slow motion cameras show just how many Lethal splinters there are dozens of dozens of splinters all over here spread over a really big area there are a few places in the world I would like to be less than a gun deck at Trafalgar of people falling at Point Blank Range isn’t it amazing that that men did it yeah and yet enemy cannon fire wasn’t even the worst danger the sailors faced The Men Who Went to sea and Nelson’s Navy never returned they’ve died on active service but the vast majority of those were not killed in battle fifty percent of the casualties during the Great Wars against France and Spain 200 years ago were through disease another 30 percent down to accidents only less than 10 percent ended up killed in battle some of them were scooped overboard others like this gentleman here would be wrapped up at the end of the back and orbit a sail cloth or a hammock stitched up like this there you go last Stitch through the nose by tradition to make sure this was not just a reluctant deserter someone who was actually dead then a prayer was read out and the corpse be tossed in to Davey Jones’s Locker [Music] [Music] life on these ships was no picnic but I’m not sure it was the brutal servitude that it’s sometimes made out to be the men fought superbly they sailed these ships with such professionalism and they in doing so won a series of stunning victories against the forces of Napoleon Nelson and some other glamorous Admiral sometimes get the credit but I believe the credit should go to The Men Who sailed these ships and not just them but the people of the dockyards who made them and refitted them and even the bureaucrats into the unglamorous yet essential work of investing of making sure these ships and men had the food and supplies that they needed to win all together that entire package made Britain’s Navy the most potent force in the history of Maritime Warfare thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don’t miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel History hit dot TV you’re gonna love it