Although we sometimes view
pirates as thick brutish thugs roving the seas for the
opportunistic prize of a treasure ship. The truth is that pirates
were intelligent and gifted individuals who placed a great deal
into the planning, execution and ultimately the plundering of
their prizes.
Pirate
crews were often made up of sailors from multiple countries, many
of which were often navy men who found little choices for work
when their respective countries settled their disputes leading
into extended periods of peace. As a result pirate crews drew upon
the distinct battle tactics set by the various countries. Taking
the best of what each had to offer and implementing it into a
concise and effective battle plan.
As with
all well laid battle plans and strategies, the first step was
always to collect intelligence. One of the more common places were
taverns and public houses. Often potential targets would
congregate in these places and unwittingly speak of their comings
and goings and cargo being hauled.
Another
method of intelligence gathering came from captured crews. When
unwilling to give up any information that the captors sought
willingly. Pirates were well versed in loosening of tongues.
Once
intelligence was gathered it was the implementing of a decisive
battle plan that brought gold to the pirate’s pockets. Yes often
intimidation was enough to draw surrender from their target. But
when the target decided to fight the pirate crew relied on their
battle plan and the courage of the crew to seize their prize.
The
following are basic tactics and rules that pirates as well as
warring nations used in times of battle.
Sailing
Tactics
Naval tactics in the Age of
Sail were primarily determined by the sailing and fighting
qualities of the sailing warships of the time. Three factors, in
particular, constrained what a sailing admiral could order his
fleet to do.
- The first constraint was that, like all sailing vessels, sailing
warships cannot sail directly into the wind. Most could sail
not much closer than 70 degrees off the wind. This limited the
maneuverability of a fleet during battles at close quarters.
- The second constraint was that the ships of the time carried their
guns in two large batteries, one on each broadside, with only
a few mounted to fire directly ahead or astern. The sailing
warship was immensely powerful on its sides, but very weak on
its bow and stern. The sides of the ship were built with
strong timbers, but the stern, in particular, was fragile with
a flimsy structure round the large windows of the officers’
cabins. The bows and, particularly, the sterns of the ship
were vulnerable to raking fire. Raking another ship by firing
the length of a ship from either the bow or stern caused
tremendous damage, because a single shot would fly down the
length of the decks, while the ship being raked could not
return fire with her broadsides.
- The third constraint was the difficulty of communicating at sea.
Written communication was almost impossible in a moving fleet,
while hailing was extremely difficult above the noise of wind
and weather. So admirals were forced to rely on a pre-arranged
set of signal flags hoisted aboard the admiral's flagship. In
the smoke of battle, these were often hard or impossible to
see.
The
15th century saw the development of the man-of-war, a truly
ocean-going warship, carrying square-rigged sails that permitted
tacking into the wind, and heavily armed with cannon. The adoption
of heavy guns necessitated their being mounted lower down than on
top of the fore and after castles as previously where
anti-personnel weapons had been positioned through the later
Middle Ages, due to the possibility of capsize. This meant that
what had earlier been the hold of a ship that could be used either
as a merchant ship or warship was now full with cannon and
ammunition. Hence ships became specialised as warships, which
would lead to a standing fleet instead of one based on placing
temporary contracts. The man-of-war eventually rendered the galley
obsolete except for operations close to shore in calm weather.
With the development of the sailing man-of-war, and the beginning
of the great sailing fleets capable of keeping the sea for long
periods together, came the need for a new adaptation of old
principles of naval tactics.
A
ship which depended on the wind for its motive power could not
hope to ram. A sailing vessel could not ram unless she were
running before a good breeze. In a light wind her charge would be
ineffective, and it could not be made at all from leeward. It
could still board, and the Spanish did for long make it their main
object to run their bow over an enemy’s sides, and invade his
deck. In order to carry out this kind of attack they would
naturally try to get to windward and then bear down before the
wind in line abreast ship upon ship. But an opponent to leeward
could always baffle this attack by edging away, and in the
meantime fire with his broadside to cripple his opponent’s
spars.
An
important organisational innovation was made by Sir Francis Drake.
Prior to his leadership, a warship was typically run by a
committee of the sailing master, navigator, master-gunner and
captain of marines presided over by an aristocrat. Drake saw no
purpose in having a member of the aristocracy without specialist
knowledge and established the principle that the captain of the
ship would be in sole command, based upon his skill and experience
rather than social position. This transformation was never quite
made in the Spanish Navy where the "gentlemen" continued
to obstruct operations throughout the Age of Sail. The
Revolutionary French Navy made an opposite mistake in promoting
seamen without sufficient experience or training- which worked
well in the Army, but not at sea. The Royal Navy by contrast was
well served by many distinguished commanders of middle-class
origin, such as Horatio Nelson (son of a parson), Jervis (son of a
solicitor) or Collingwood (son of a butcher) as well as by
aristocrats who proved themselves at sea such as Thomas Cochrane
and even, though too rarely, working-class, such as John Benbow.
Line
of Battle
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The
evolution of broadside cannon during the first half of the
17th century soon led to the conclusion that the fleet had
to fight in a single line to make the maximum use of its
firepower without one ship getting in the way of another.
The line of battle is traditionally attributed to the
navy of the Commonwealth of England and especially to
General at Sea Robert Blake who wrote the Sailing and
Fighting Instructions of 1653. The first |
documented deliberate use seems to be somewhat earlier
in the Action of
18 September 1639 by Dutch
Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp against the Spanish. The tactic
was used by both sides in the Anglo-Dutch Wars, and was codified
in written 'fighting instructions'. These formed the basis of the
whole tactical system of the 17th and 18th centuries in naval
warfare.
One consequence of the line
of battle was that a ship had to be strong enough to stand in it.
In the old type of mêlée battle a small ship could seek out an
opponent of her own size, or combine with others to attack a
larger one. As the line of battle was adopted, navies began to
distinguish between vessels that were fit to form parts of the
line in action, and the smaller ships that were not. By the time
the line of battle was firmly established as the standard tactical
formation during the 1660s, merchant ships and lightly armed
warships became less able to sustain their place in a pitched
battle. In the line of battle, each ship had to stand and fight
the opposing ship in the enemy line, however powerful she might
be. The purpose-built ships powerful enough to stand in the line
of battle came to be known as a ship of the line.
Importance
of the Weather Gage
| Holding the weather, or windward, gage conferred
several important tactical advantages. The admiral holding
the weather gage held the tactical initiative, able to
accept battle by bearing down on his opponent or to refuse
it, by remaining upwind. The fleet with the lee gage could
avoid battle by withdrawing to leeward, but could not force
action. Even retreating downwind could be difficult once two
fleets were at close quarters because the ships risked being
raked as they turned downwind. A second disadvantage of the
leeward gage was that in anything more than a light wind, a
sailing ship that is sailing close hauled (or beating) will
heel to |
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leeward under the pressure of the wind on its
sails. The ships of a fleet on
the leeward gage heel away
from their opponents, exposing part of their bottoms to shot. If a
ship is penetrated in an area of the hull that is normally under
water, she is then in danger of taking on water or even sinking
when on the other tack. This is known as "hulled between wind
and water". Finally, smoke from the gunfire of the ships to
windward would blow down on the fleet on the leeward gage. So it
was common for battles to involve days of manoeuvring as one
admiral strove to take the weather gage from his opponent in order
to force him to action, as at the battles of Ushant (1778), St
Lucia Channel (1780) and the First of June (1794).
Only in heavy weather could
the windward gage become a disadvantage, because the lower gun
ports on the leeward side of a ship would be awash, preventing her
from opening her lower-deck ports to use the guns – or risking
being swamped if she did. So, in strong winds, a ship attacking
from windward would not be able to bring her heavy lower-deck guns
into action, while the enemy ship to leeward would have no such
problem as the guns on her windward side would be raised by the
heel. For this reason, Admiral Rodney ordered his ships to attack
the Spanish from leeward in the stormy weather at the Cape St.
Vincent in 1780.
Development
of tactics in the French Navy
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In the French Navy, sailing tactics were
developed by the treatises of the French tacticians Paul
Hoste, Bigot de Morogues and Bourde de Villehuet, which
developed the traditional code of practice and were all
translated into other languages. During the 18th Century,
French governments |
developed the strategic doctrine of focusing on
the mission, rather than fighting for command of the sea. The
French government was often reluctant to take tactical risks to
achieve its strategic objectives. The navy was hampered by the
timidity of its orders. French fleets and squadrons typically
sought to avoid battle rather than risk a contest with a British
force, as De Ternay did in June 1780 on meeting a smaller British
squadron under Cornwallis off Bermuda. This strategy had important
tactical ramifications. French ships tended to fire at the rigging
of their opponents to disable them
and allow the French ships to escape and continue with their
mission. French ships typically fired their broadsides on the
upward roll of the ship, disabling their opponents but doing
little damage to the enemy ships or their crews. This was
compounded by the French tendency to fight from the leeward gage,
causing the guns to point high as the ships heeled with the wind.
British and Dutch ships, by contrast, tended to use the opposite
tactic of firing on the downward roll into the enemy hulls,
causing a storm of flying splinters that killed and maimed the
enemy gun crews. This difference in tactics goes some way to
explaining the difference in casualty figures between British and
French crews, with French fleets tending to suffer not only more
casualties but also a higher proportion of killed than wounded.
Tactical
stagnation in the mid-18th century
| When therefore the conflict came to be between
the British and the French in the 18th century, battles
between equal or approximately equal forces were for long
inconclusive. The French, who had fewer ships than the
British throughout the century, were anxious to fight at the
least possible cost, lest their fleet should be worn out by
severe action, leaving Britain with an unreachable numerical
superiority. Therefore, they |
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they preferred to engage to
leeward, a position which left them free to retreat before the
wind. They allowed the British fleet to get to windward, and, when
it was parallel with them and bore up before the wind to attack,
they moved onwards. The attacking fleet had then to advance, not
directly before the wind with its ships moving along lines
perpendicular to the line attacked, but in slanting or curving
lines. The assailants would be thrown into "a bow and quarter
line" – with the bow of the second level with the after
part of the first and so on from end to end. In the case of a
number of ships of various powers of sailing, it was a difficult
formation to maintain.
The result was often that
the ships of the attacking line which were steering to attack the
enemy’s centre came into action first and were liable to be
crippled in the rigging. If the same formation was to be
maintained, the others were now limited to the speed of the
injured vessels, and the enemy to leeward slipped away. At all
times a fleet advancing from windward was liable to injury in
spars, even if the leeward fleet did not deliberately aim at them.
The leeward ships would be leaning away from the wind, and their
shot would always have a tendency to fly high. So long as the
assailant remained to windward, the ships to leeward could always
slip off.
The wars of the 18th century
produced a series of tactically indecisive naval battles between
evenly matched fleets in line ahead, such as Malaga (1704), Rügen
Island (1715), Toulon (1744), Minorca (1756), Negapatam (1758),
Cuddalore (1758), Pondicherry (1759), Ushant (1778), Dogger Bank
(1781), the Chesapeake (1781), Hogland (1788) and Öland (1789).
Although a few of these battles had important strategic
consequences, like the Chesapeake which the British needed to win,
all were tactically indecisive. Many admirals began to
believe that a contest between two equally matched fleets could
not produce a decisive result. The tactically decisive actions of
the 18th century were all chase actions, where one fleet was
clearly superior to the other, such as the two battles of
Finisterre (1747), Lagos (1759), Quiberon Bay (1759) and Cape St.
Vincent (1780).
British naval innovation was retarded by an unseemly
dispute between two Admirals in the aftermath of the Battle of
Toulon. The British fleet under Admiral Thomas Mathews had been
unable to draw level with the French fleet, and Mathews ordered an
attack anyway, intending all the British ships to attack the
French rear. He had no signals by which he could communicate his
intentions, and the rear squadron under Vice Admiral Richard
Lestock, his rival and second-in-command, obtusely remained at the
prescribed intervals in line ahead, far to the rear of the action.
A subsequent series of courts martial, in which political
influence was brought to bear by Lestock's friends in Parliament,
punished Mathews and those captains who had supported him in the
battle, and vindicated Lestock. In several future actions,
Admirals who were tempted to deviate from the Admiralty's fighting
instructions were reminded of Mathews's fate.
Technical
innovations in the late 18th Century
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By the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars
in 1793, a series of technical innovations first introduced
during the American War of Independence had combined to give
the British fleet a distinct superiority over the ships of
the French and Spanish navies. These innovations were:
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- 1) The carronade. The carronade was a short-barrelled gun which
threw a heavy ball developed by the Carron Company, a Scottish
ironworks, in 1778. Because of irregularities in the size of
cannon balls and the difficulty of boring out gun barrels
there was usually a considerable gap between the ball and the
bore - often as much as a quarter of an inch - with a
consequent loss of efficiency. This gap was known as the
"windage". The manufacturing practices introduced by
the Carron Company reduced the windage considerably, enabling
the ball to be fired with less powder and hence a smaller and
lighter gun. The carronade was half the weight of an
equivalent long gun, but could throw a heavy ball over a
limited distance. The light weight of the carronade meant that
the guns could be added to the forecastle and quarterdeck of
frigates and ships of the line, increasing firepower without
affecting the ship’s sailing qualities. Its high velocity at
close range gave the carronade exceptional penetrating power.
It became known as the “Smasher” and gave ships armed with
carronades a great advantage at short range.
- 2) The flintlock. Flintlock firing mechanisms for cannon were
suggested by Captain Sir Charles Douglas and introduced during
the American War of Independence in place of the traditional
matches. Flintlocks enabled a higher rate of fire and greater
accuracy as the gun captain could choose the exact moment of
firing. Prior to this the Royal Navy introduced the use of
goose quills filled with powder during the Seven Years War
giving an almost instantaneous burn time compared with earlier
methods of detonation.
- 3) A wider field of fire. By the simple expedient of attaching the
gun ropes at a greater distance from the gunports, the British
gunnery innovator Captain Sir Charles Douglas increased the
range through which each cannon could be traversed, increasing
the ship’s field of fire. The new system was first tested at
the Battle of the Saintes in 1782, where the Duke, Formidable
and Arrogant, and perhaps other British ships, had
adopted Douglas’s new system
- 4)Copper sheathing. After many trials, copper was found
to be a practicable means of protecting the hulls of ships
from marine growth and fouling. Copper sheathing delayed the
growth of weeds on the hull, improving the sailing performance
of ships that had been long out of dock. This had significant
strategic as well as tactical implications. Up to 1780, the
British, who kept their ships at sea for longer periods had
almost always found that the clean French ships were faster
and could therefore avoid battle if they wished. The
introduction of copper sheathing meant that ships that had
spent months on blockade were not necessarily at an immediate
speed disadvantage to enemy ships coming freshly out of port.
Boarding
| Boarding is
used in wartime as a way to seize a vessel without
destroying it, or to remove its cargo (people or goods)
before it is destroyed. It can also be used to aid in the
collection of naval intelligence, as soldiers boarding a
sinking, crippled, or surrendered vessel could possibly
recover enemy plans, cipher codebooks or machines. For a
boarding to be successful, it must occur without the
knowledge of the crew of the defending ship, or the ship's
defenses must be suppressed.
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Boarding is one of the
oldest methods of securing an opposing ship, as the first cases
were depicted when the Sea Peoples and Egyptians fought. For
cultures that lack effective shipboard artillery, boarding is the
main technique of ship-to-ship combat. However, in the modern era,
boarding is still used, particularly when stealth is desired.
In all eras, boarding
requires that the ship boarded be stable enough to withstand the
impact of enemy personnel leaping or climbing onto the deck and a
subsequent sustained fight. The target ship must also have enough
deck space for boarders to be able to stand and fight effectively.
Thus, Native American war canoes or New Zealand longboats were not
suitable boarding targets, and wars between sides equipped with
such vessels have generally not seen boarding actions, or any
other decisive form of ship-to-ship combat. Instead, such vessels
were often used for the rapid transportation of troops and
supplies, and decisive engagements were normally fought by landing
forces.
Boarding
in the Age of Sail
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The
development in the early 16th century of shipboard gunports
and gun carriages, and the consequent adoption of broadside
tactics, gradually ended the primacy of boarding in naval
warfare.
The decline in
boarding occurred faster in Northern and Western Europe than
in the Mediterranean. While England and France quickly
designed ships with heavy broadsides, the
Mediterranean's |
lighter
winds encouraged the Spaniards, Italians and Turks to retain the
rowed galley, which was difficult to equip with heavy broadsides
because the weight and size of the artillery interfered with the
oar banks. As late as 1571, the Mediterranean Battle of Lepanto,
while influenced by artillery, was still principally a battle
determined by boarding, with soldiers aboard the ships on both
sides outnumbering the sailors by over two to one.
The
defeat of Spain's Great Armada in 1588 struck the death knell for
major fleets geared toward boarding. The Spanish galleons were
intended primarily for boarding combat, their garrisons of
boarding soldiers far outnumbering the English and their decks
provided with high castles for suppressive fire. But the Armada
proved unable to close with the English vessels, partly because
the Spanish castles rendered their ships more sluggish, while
Drake and Hawkins stood off and bombarded the Spanish from long
range, tearing up their rigging and decimating their crews with
the superior firepower of their broadsides. This enabled the
outnumbered English fleet to avoid being boarded and prevent a
Spanish landing.
While
boarding would never again be the dominant tactic in Western naval
warfare, it was not abandoned. Boarding was still used as the coup
de grace against a crippled ship, enabling the victimized vessel
to be recovered and used by the boarders' side rather than being
sunk. Important information such as enemy plans, ciphers or
rutters might also be recovered. Large quantities of soldiers were
consigned to transports rather than "pestering" the
decks of warships, but smaller units of specialized marines were
kept aboard to aid in boarding (as well as to enforce naval
discipline). Sailors themselves were now expected to play the
major role in boarding combat.
Boarding
was of particular importance in the 17th and 18th centuries' guerre
du course, or commerce raiding, as well as to privateers and
pirates. Because naval crews were paid prize money for bringing
back enemy merchant shipping and cargoes intact, it was preferable
to capture such ships rather than sink them, which ultimately
required boarding, with or without a preliminary artillery duel.
Privateers and pirates found boarding even more necessary, as both
depended entirely on capturing merchant vessels for their
livelihood, under the wageless system of "no purchase, no
pay".
There
were two chief techniques of boarding in the Age of Sail. One was
to bring the two ships close enough to actually step from or leap
from one's own gunwale to the enemy's deck. Grappling hooks and
lines assisted in keeping the vessels side by side. The second
option was to place a boarding party onto a dory, gig, or another
type of small boat, row it alongside the target, and then climb
aboard by using grappling hooks or the steps built into some
ship's sides. The cinematic method of throwing a grappling line
into the enemy's rigging or yards and then swinging aboard does
not appear to have any historical support, as this could hardly
have been practical, and brought a soldier within range of a large
group of hostile combatants extremely quickly. In addition, it
would be hard for large numbers sufficient to overwhelm the other
ship's defenses to be brought onto the deck in this fashion.
Boarding
in the Age of Sail was more difficult and dangerous than in
previous eras of open-decked sailing vessels. Defenders could seek
cover in "closed quarters" in the ship's roundhouse or
foredeck, shooting through small loopholes at the exposed
boarders. The defenders could also place grenades on their
gunwales or dangle them from their yards, detonating them by fuses
of quick match that led back through the loopholes into the closed
quarters. If not in closed quarters, defenders sometimes resorted
to the boarding pike, trying to kill or wound boarders while
keeping them at a distance, and of course might use any of the
weapons that the boarders themselves used.
Boarding
weapons in the Age of Sail consisted of grenades, muskets,
pistols, cutlasses, numerous other blades, and the short-barreled
shotguns called blunderbusses. Until the 19th century introduction
of the percussion cap, sailors preferred to use flintlocks
whenever possible, as the lighted match of a matchlock was
extremely dangerous to use on board a ship. Spanish and Portuguese
sailors, especially officers, were known to use the rapier
throughout the 17th and even into the 18th century, but the
close-quarter nature of boarding combat rendered these lengthy
swords very ineffective. An important weapon often overlooked by
historians was the boarding axe, useful for attacking the enemy,
but also essential for chopping down doors and bulkheads to break
into closed quarters where the defenders of a ship could barricade
themselves.
The
continued success throughout the 18th century of boarding tactics
in a secondary role is best exemplified by John Paul Jones'
assault against the HMS Serapis from the sinking USS Bonhomme
Richard in 1779, the only known case in the Age of Sail where
a ship's captain captured an enemy ship while losing his own. The
HMS Shannon in turn broke the United States' run of
successful frigate battles during the War of 1812 by boarding and
capturing the USS Chesapeake in 1813.
The
"cutting out expedition," a boarding attack by small
boats, preferably at night and against an unsuspecting and
anchored target, became popular throughout the later 18th century
and during the Napoleonic wars. This heralded the emphasis on
stealth and surprise that would come to dominate future boarding
tactics.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org
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