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Tuesday, 10 August 2010 05:49 |
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I am not a fan of history - my apologies to those of you who may be. To me it reeks of musty books and dull lectures by boring college professors. But history becomes a vivid experience when you stand where it occurred and get a glimpse into the reality, the hardships, the problems faced, and the solutions derived. It makes me gasp to hear of the way things were done long ago - the innovations discovered. If you ever get a chance to visit Williamsburg, VA, you should go. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is history, come to life. In modern warfare we can put a shell or a rocket onto the deck of an enemy ship over the horizon. In the 1700’s the cannoneers of the land-based forts had no such accuracy in returning fire to attacking ships. There was simply no accuracy in aerial assault from a distance. So, you might ask, how did the Colonists successfully return fire on distant naval vessels that were pummeling their forts from afar? They devised the most innovative, unlikely, inventive solution I have ever heard tell of. They heated the cannonballs to red-hot before loading them into the muzzle of the cannon, and aimed low across the water toward the intended target. The superheated cannonball would skip across the water on pillows of steam, like a flat rock on still water, and then embed itself in the timbers of the wooden hulled ships, igniting and burning them to the waterline. Such cannon attacks were called ‘Hot Shots’ - a term we use to this day, though few know its origin.
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