Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "Naval Tactics in the Age of Sail (1650-1815)" video.

  1. I suspect Nelson was referring to fighting at close quarters, rather than laying off and firing broadsides. Nelson generally seems to have avoided parallel broadsides and preferred to cross the T.
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  2. Not necessarily. A crew could backwind the square sails on the foremast to bring the bow around, as is done by sailing crews in light weather today. There were also other manoeuvres like boxhauling and making a sternboard. In modern yachts there is a manoeuvre for getting out of trouble, known as a granny tack or chicken gybe (it’s the same thing). That’s when the boat is pointed up to windward and tacked instead of allowing the boom to swing across the cockpit. It’s not normally used but I suspect it has its equivalent in the 18th century.
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  3.  @jeremypnet  Are you sure? The battle plan I have literally shows two columns crossing the T.
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  4.  @jeremypnet  Sounds like two sides of the same coin to me…
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  5.  @jeremypnet  I get how it works but that's always going to be the case. The difference here was that ,because they attempted to split the fleet, the two columns were crossing the French/Spanish bows, which were generally less vulnerable than their stern galleries. So yeah, I get your point. The British were generally better sailors, if only because they spent more time at sea. A lot more, in fact. Ships like Victory were actually more trouble than they were worth in a lot of ways: too much windage. poor ratio of sail area to tonnage, slow, unmanoeuvrable and not good in a poor sea. Third raters - around 75-80 guns were a lot more use. So, in fact, I'm really not surprised that Nelson was under fire for so long before he could return fire. I'm also surmising that this was the reason behind the popularity of bow carronades...
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  6.  @jamesmaddison4546  I know how it works. Dude.
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  7.  @smith9157  Really? Why do you say that?
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  8. Far more ships were sunk or captured by good seamanship than good gunnery.
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  9.  @markdurre2667  Tacking is done into the wind and gybeing is done ahead of the wind.
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