Levels of Pirate Cannonballs — Transcript

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1. 0:00If your ship got hit by a cannonball,
2. 0:02you'd actually be one of the lucky ones.
3. 0:03In the 1700s, the navy's round shot
4. 0:06would smash through a pirate ship's wall
5. 0:08and turn it into a storm of splinters
6. 0:10that tore through half the crew. The
7. 0:11pirates couldn't afford proper ammo, so
8. 0:13they fired back with langrage, which is
9. 0:15a fancy word for literal garbage. But
10. 0:18the navy had a nastier idea called
11. 0:20hotshot. They shoveled cannonballs into
12. 0:22a furnace until they glowed red, carried
13. 0:24them over with giant tongs, [music] and
14. 0:26dropped them in behind a soaking wet
15. 0:27plug so the gunpowder wouldn't go off
16. 0:29early. The [music] ball buried itself
17. 0:31deep in the pirate ship's hull, and a
18. 0:32few minutes later, the whole ship lit up
19. 0:35from the inside like a giant lantern.
20. 0:37Not to be outdone, the pirates fired
21. 0:39back with the carcass, a hollow
22. 0:40cannonball [music] packed with burning
23. 0:42tar and punched full of holes so it spat
24. 0:45fire the whole way over and turned the
25. 0:46entire navy ship into a torch.
26. 0:48Eventually, ships advanced from wood to
27. 0:50iron, and the fireballs just bounced
28. 0:52off. So, America built the Rodman gun, a
29. 0:55cannon that fired a single ball weighing
30. 0:57over a thousand pounds made to punch in
31. 1:00an iron warship big enough to sink it in
32. 1:02one shot.