Today we’ll be talking about another aspect of pirate combat: ranged weapons! Before I
get into that I would like to say thank you to Flintlock for writing the amazing music
in my intro. He has a channel on Youtube where he plays his mandolin and if you enjoy mandolin
music I definitely recommend checking it out. The link for his channel is in the description
below.
We’ve already went over swords, knives, axes, and daggers; weapons that were designed
for up close and personal combat. Along with cannons, pirates were also armed with pistols,
muskets, and the blunderbuss for fighting from a distance. Pistols were commonly carried
and often a pirate would carry multiple pistols at the same time. It was also common for pirates
to tie two pistols together with a silk ribbon and hang them over their necks. In film it’s
often shown that a pirate would use their pistol and toss it aside, but this is not
the case. These weapons were certainly not disposable and, once fired, they were secured
in the pirates belt or allowed to hang from ribbon around the neck. If the pirate had
the opportunity to reload he would do so, preferring the ranged attacks instead of fighting
with a sword. The pistol could also be reversed and used as a club once fired.
I want to take a moment and explain how the flintlock mechanism, the most widely used
in the age, worked. The weapon was loaded by first pulling the hammer back. Most flintlocks
had a safety feature where the hammer would stop in a middle position and that was referred
to as “half-cocked”. If you rushed to shoot and left the hammer at this position
the weapon wouldn’t fire and this is where the phrase “going off half-cocked” comes
from. Next the user pours a charge of black powder into the barrel, followed by a piece
of cloth called a wad, and then by a lead ball. This is all tamped down with a ramrod,
which is usually stored under the barrel. After this the weapon needs to be primed.
To prime the gun the pirate lifted up a mechanism called a frizzen which covered a section called
the pan. The bottom of the pan had a hole that led into the barrel where the main charge
of powder was located. A small amount of powder was poured in the pan and the frizzen was
closed down. Finally the hammer was pulled all the way back and the gun was ready for
action.
The musket was employed like a sniper rifle is today. The best marksmen would be positioned
high above the decks on a platform on the mast called the fighting top. From their positions
they would pick off targets of value like a helmsman, officers, or any armed resistance
clearing the way for the boarding party. Muskets had barrels roughly 3 feet long and were accurate
enough to hit a 20x20 inch square from 300 feet away with a maximum range of roughly
3,600 feet. They were smooth barreled which meant the balls left the barrel without a
spin, and consequently, the balls would often meander off target.
Muskets were loaded the same way flintlock pistols were and an experienced sailor could
expect to get off between 3 and 5 shots per minute. They would also have preloaded multiple
muskets and brought them into the fighting top so the sharpshooter could fire and reach
for another musket and so on before needing to reload. Larger crews may have also have
had 1 or 2 boys with the shooter so he could fire while they reloaded the other guns. On
deck they were rarely employed due to their large size and heavier weight. The blunderbuss
was more of a hand cannon than a rifle and operated similar to a shotgun. They ranged
in size from 14 to 30 inches and the barrels were flared at the end like a funnel. It was
thought that this shape would help spread the shot, but in reality it did little to
help. It did however, make the blunderbuss an interesting looking weapon. They had short
stocks and were designed to be fired from the hip or from between the forearm and the
side of the body to help with the recoil. Most blunderbusses did not even have sights
on them as they were designed for very close ranges. They fired small pellets and had a
bore of 1 and a half to 2 inches. Blunderbusses were used as one shot weapons and were primarily
used while boarding, before discarding them and drawing a sword. Grenadoes, stink
pots, and powder flasks were employed during boarding as well. Grenadoes were hollow spheres
made from iron, glass, and wood. They were about the size of a softball with a hole so
a fuse could be inserted. The grenado was filled with gunpowder, a piece of cork or
wood was stuffed into the hole to keep the powder from spilling out, and a piece of slow
match was inserted throw the center. Sometimes pirates would add bits of iron, nails, or
pellets because often the grenado would crack along a casting line and only split into two
fragments. This way the weapon would explode with more damage. On other occasions scraps
of iron, glass, or nails would be stuck on the outside using tar or wrapped in cloth
for the same reason. Powder flasks were clay pots filled with either flammable liquids
like turpentine or whale oil, or powder and glass and iron scraps. Flammable liquids were
not used often as a fire on a ship could potentially sink it, or worse, spread to the other ship.
Stink pots were pots or bags filled with rotting animals or substances like sulfur or ammonia
which would irritate the lungs, throat, and eyes. They would be thrown below deck or into
cabins and were designed to force people out. Think of stink pots as the
flash-bang grenades of the day; they weren’t meant to kill people and were likely used
if the pirates wanted somebody captured alive.
The last weapon that I’ll talk about today is one of the strongest weapons that a pirate
would have had: terror. There were many rumors about pirates, some true, some not, and the
sight of a Jolly Roger and a bunch of heavily armed pirates would have struck fear into
any sailor. Pirates were well known in their day and seeing the flag of Blackbeard or Bartholomew
Roberts would have been enough to almost always guarantee a crews surrender. Blackbeard went
to great lengths to cultivate his image; he stuck slow match under his hat and in his
beard, so he appeared to be a demon straight from hell. Sailors in the golden age of piracy
were very superstitious, and some would have believed Blackbeard actually WAS from Hell.
The sailors also would have heard about how pirates ruthlessly kill and torture crews
that put up a fight, but more importantly, would have heard that, more often than not,
pirates were quite hospitable to a crew that handed over the loot with no problems.
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