Comments by "Alex" (@Alex-cw3rz) on "Frigate Duels of the War of 1812 - HMS Shannon vs USS Chesapeake" video.

Captain Philip Broke introduced many really interesting and useful innovation. He had tangent sights fitted to his cannon, which was very unusal at the time. He had the elevating 'quoins' (wedge-shaped pieces of wood placed under the breech) of his long guns grooved to mark various degrees of elevation so that his guns could be reliably levelled to fire. As the decks of contemporary ships curved upwards towards the stern and bows, he cut down the wheels on the "up-slope" side of each cannon's carriage in order that all guns were level with the horizon. He also introduced a system where bearings were incised into the deck next to each gun; fire could then be directed to any bearing independent of the ability of any particular gun crew to see the target. Fire from the whole battery could also be focused on any part of an enemy ship. Broke drilled his crew to an extremely high standard of naval gunnery; he regularly had them fire at targets, such as floating barrels. Often these drills would be made into competitions to see which gun crew could hit the target first and how fast they could do so. He even had his gun crews fire at targets 'blindfold' to good effect; they were only given the bearing to lay their gun on without being allowed to sight the gun on the target themselves. This constituted a very early example of 'director firing'. He also used a 9lbr cannons at the bow as a giant sniper rifle to specifically take out the helm. In the end this meant that Shannon hit Chessapeake with 4x more cannon shot and 1.2x more with grapeshot than Chessapeake hit Shannon with and that was in an extremely short battle showing the huge advantage his training had given. It is such a shame he was injured because he could have been so much more influential.
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 @Tindometari I'm not sure what you are referring to as I don't know much about him?
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42:27 it wasn't just tactics it was training and innovations introduced by Broke that's why they hit more. I'm confused why you didn't mention the tangent sights or the way he cut the wheels on the upslope so the guns lay horizontal or the elevation markings on the quoins. Let alone the use of bearings on the flaw to allow a concentration of fire or the early form of director fire control. Is there a reason you decided to leave that out, is it coming in a seperate video?
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@Tindometari ah thanks didn't know that
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I think one of the most interesting things about this fight is that it tests the theory of how stronger the live and white oak actually made the 6 frigates, because during the battle only 1 shot bounced off the hull and that was HMS Shannon's hull the shot bounced off of. Chesapeake had bascially as thick a hull as her sisters, yet there was no problem at all penetrating the hull same with Endymions 24lbers at long range blasting up President. This could indicate that it was some wartime propaganda, a journalist going a bit too far or possibly Guerriere had dodgy powder.
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@richardanderson2742 judging by the fact that one of Shannon's surviving sister ships HMS Trincomalee is made out of teak due to wood shortage. I don't imagine it was the best stuff. We see from the captured ships bother Ceasapeake and President that they had a lot of defective and rotten wood, which would indict the US navy was also having an issue with getting enough good quality white and live oak.
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@josephbateman7742 Constitution was not the heavyweight of her class that was USS President, then USS United States then Constitution. The wood for Constitution and the others was collected from the same place and was no different. I would take the they would send back any wood with a defect back with a grain of salt, seen as both Chessapeake and President when studied at British yards had a surprising amount of defective wood same with rotten wood. So there was definitely a quality control issue.
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@josephbateman7742 I would point out if you look at the pieces taken by Spanish, French and British they are used for a specific purpose which was for very long curved areas that the less separate pieces of wood needed the better i.e. the bowsprit of Victory. They never used it as a armour as the advantage they saw was how it grew it too shapes advantageous for rigidity but not for taking a cannon ball.
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@DSToNe19and83 everything I said was just factually accurate
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