I missed it the other night but tonight, from 8-10pm, they’re rerunning the Mythbusters Pirate Special (episode #71). They examined all kinds of myths associated with pirates. Here’s a video clip from the episode.
The first myth was that cannonballs were more dangerous from the splintering wood they caused than from the balls themselves. They did a sample with just a 2-inch ball bearing and an air cannon, and they tried with pine, white oak, and red oak, at a decent velocity, although a bit less than the 1200 ft/sec that cannonballs typically flew at. All three woods left a rather lethal spray of splinters. White oak was most lethal. Then they reproduced it at full size for 6-pound cannonballs at 300mph. They ended up needing to use a modified air cannon rather than gunpowder. It was HUGE! 
Since no real pirate ships were available, Adam had to build it himself after researching the dimensions of the wood, etc. The final cannon shot at about 500 ft/sec and they used four 150-pound pigs, since the bodies act similarly to human bodies in many ways. A plain cannonball went through ALL FOUR of the pigs! Then they tested it on the mockup ship, dangling the pigs behind it. The ball went all the way through and created lots of splinters, but none that flew and penetrated the pigs’ skins at all. It only would have been dangerous if you were right next to the hole. Since their muzzle velocity was only about half the speed of regular cannons, they weren’t totally convinced. The last option was to try to find a genuine cannon that would fire faster and closer to speed of pirate cannons. They found an actual piece of civil war field artillery that’s a real live cannon, with the same ball size, etc. The freshly ordered shot that were ordered for that specific gun were TOO BIG! Weird! So they got an angle grinder to take 1/8 inch off the ball. That gun, with 1.5 pounds of black powder, had a muzzle velocity of 1430 ft/sec. Once they tried that in the same scenario, it had tons more power and threw plenty of splinters, but the splinters didn’t have enough mass and velocity and didn’t really stick in the pigs. MYTH BUSTED!
The second myth was that pirates wore an eye patch not because of injury, but to keep that eye night vision ready. It’s said that they would switch the patch from one eye to the other when going from light into dark, keeping night vision cells (rods) sensitive since they’re not exposed to bright light. The science bears it out. The cones are what allow you to see details in normal light. Their test showed that it took over 20 minutes for the cones to adjust to be able to see details in the lowest levels of light. But the eye that had been covered with a patch was able to see those same details almost right away! They ran a test to verify, constructing a really cool obstacle course for the guys to run through in the dark, including life-size pop-up pictures of people that they had to either stab or not (don’t stab the wench, but DO stab the scurvy dogs), stacked cannonballs to avoid knocking over, a treasure chest to open with a key, and then they had to raise the Jolly Roger that was in the chest. Both guys took about 6 minutes to run through the course and get the flag raised. The course was rearranged and they did it again with fantastic results! Both guys did the whole course in less than two minutes and with 100% accuracy. Then they ran it through once more, with the course exactly the same but with a light-exposed eye and they took just as long as the first time. MYTH PLAUSIBLE!
Does rum work for cleaning all kinds of stains? They compared rum, “ye olde 17th-century soap,” a secret recipe (urine reduces to ammonia), and modern laundry detergent and how they cleaned stains of blood, sweat, and pitch (tar). The first problem was that the sweat that Adam worked so hard to generate just didn’t leave a stain. So he substituted oranges, assuming that pirates would have kept them on board to avoid scurvy. The conclusions were that the best for blood was the stale urine and the best for the tar was the modern detergent. The old soap didn’t do that well and the RUM WAS THE WORST cleaner. Definitely better for drinking than for washing!! MYTH BUSTED!
The final myth was whether pirates could be up in the rigging and stick a knife or sword in a sail, sliding down to the deck, using the sail to slow down enough to allow the pirate to land lightly on the deck and begin fighting. They found out that sails had “reef bands” that are three times the thickness (3 pennies thick), with 2-4 of them per sail, going across horizontally. So that was a concern. They took three differen period-style weapons, clamped them in and pulled the sailcloth past with a deadweight to remove the human factor. They found that the sharper blade cut faster (big surprise) and that it was possible for a human to hold a knife/sword and not have it ripped out of their hand or anything. The full weight on a two-reef-band sail with a sharp knife was too fast, hitting the ground way too fast. A duller knife hit a reef band and came out, causing the dummy to plummet to the ground even faster. So they tried a live person trial in a gym that had huge nets to catch people who fell. Without any knife (freefall) ended at 25 mph, which would break both legs. Trying the knife, when he hit the reef band, it kicked the blade up and therefore out of the sail, creating a freefall for that. If it were sharper, to cut the reef bands, it wouldn’t slow the person enough to land safely. A real-life situation would only be different in that there would probably be two reef bands instead of just one. Oh, and a hard wooden deck to break your legs. MYTH BUSTED!
So there you go! What a blast! (I LOVE this show!)
[tags]mythbusters, pirates, cannons, rum[/tags]
The Good Life, by David Lanz
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