Agincourt

[Sticky Blue]

Mrs Chirac!
Quality posts on this thread... take Monday off Frank, dig out some more and you can spend your 'day off' posting I'm sure your boss will understand!

[harry hackedoff]

Mate of mine in UK is Mr Longbow. He has made many, as the archers at Agj or Crecy made them. They looked for certain sized Yew trees. Yew isn`t unique, but it is consistant in the following two areas. The brown heartwood is very good in tension and the white outerwood is good in compresion. The main part of the bow is made from whitewood and as the bow is drawn, this bends under compression. The front part of the bow is heartwood, and as the bow is drawn, this stretches in tension. A good archer can "see" the finished bow within a Yew trunk. Once, we were walking through a certain cemetary at night, when he spotted a ... but I digress.
Bows are measured( now-a-days) in terms of their "drawer-weight" This is the force exerted on the string to bring the bow to it`s maximum power. The greater the drawer weight, the further the bow will shoot, generally. Typical drawer weight would be 180-200 lbs. i.e. the force needed to bring the bow to it`s optimum deflection would be 180 pounds. This is not an insignificant amount. Several times on this Forum, I`ve mentioned 20 rounds per minute as the max number of well-aimed shots a rifleman can get off per minute. I`ve stated that was the same for archers at Agincourt. Thanks to my friend, I`ve actually tried this. Twenty arrows per minute, I found quite easy for one minute. After three minutes it was a different story, and after five minutes I couldn`t manage more than twelve per minute, by which time I was not really aiming. We`re talking 180-200 pounds, arms almost fully extended, 20 times a minute, for as long as it takes.The guys at Agincourt could fire the max rate till the arrows ran out. They also fired a variety of arrows, some designed to penetrate armour, or punch deep inside a horse, some designed to take out the unprotected commoners( that`ll be me, then ) One name I do remember was the Odze Bodkin, which could nail a rider in full armour to his horse and nail them both to the ground, nice
The bows would be rubbed with any animal fat available to keep them supple and waterproof, although Yew is pretty waterproof anyway. The strings gave them problems when wet as they used to extend. The guys got round this by having several coiled strings under their hats to keep the rain off, thereby ensuring that a dry string was always ready. This is one version of where the saying"Keep it under your hat" came from. Bows were never strung unless they were about to be fired, btw.
Although this period interests me, I`m more interested in the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth century and particularly Naval History of that period. Fortuneately, we have two guys who were there, to help with any queries we may have, step forward Bosun`s Mate JR( Where`s me bag, where`s me cat ), and Cabin Boy, 2nd Class, Owdun, late of His Majesty`s Ship Victory. Ooo Arrr,
"Now then, me hearties, who wants to kiss the gunner`s daughter?"

[Sticky Blue]

Harry, part of the reason that it is still law for an Englishman to practice the Long Bow on a Sunday is to make sure thet he keeps his strength and technique up. 20 arrows per minute is no mean feat but imagine being on the other end of the arrows! A rain of arrows flying towards you and what protection did the common folk have? Skin!

[Sisyphus]

We`re talking 180-200 pounds, arms almost fully extended, 20 times a minute, for as long as it takes.The guys at Agincourt could fire the max rate till the arrows ran out.

I heard that because of this the bowmen [mainly from Cheshir?] were actually physically deformed, their pulling shoulders being so much more muscled than the non-pulling shoulder.

(Of course, Artist, now resident in leafy Cheshire, has the same problem. Lifting Hyde's Black to one's mouth being every bit as strenuous as shooting a longbow )

[harry hackedoff]

Been thinking about this all day. 180-200lbs didn`t sound right (pre-senile dementia ) so I scouted a few web sites. 130 lbs was about the norm, with the average archer hitting 15 per min. As said, I was able to shoot 20 per min but not for long and nowhere near the 400 yds max range of the weapon. You can buy one, if you fancy taking on the French at the Battle of Windmill Hill, Rocky, it`ll cost upwards of 100 of your English quids

Clock this, click weapon of mass destruction, read the bit with Robert Hardy, penetration in oak is very impressive
http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/history ... hrewsbury/

By the way, Rocky, I heard they had over-developed right arms because of certain"auto-erotic" habits, still widespread in Cheshire, today

[JR]

Hell Harry,you got a way with words? are you sure you emigrated and not deported?.Aye JR

Just think if you had been with the 'First Fleet' Sydney could have been called Harry??

[harry hackedoff]

Aye, mucker, take a tot mate Larrrf?
First Australian was the daughter of a Bootneck, perhaps you knew him Jim
Aye, Sid Hackedoff

[Tab]

Frank I think you find that it was a very small cannon rather than a shoulder fired weapon.

[Frank S.]

Was it maybe an arquebuse (also called harquebuse), predating the musket?

[anglo-saxon]

Firepower certainly has played a large role in conflict over the centuries. Quite appart from the skill of the English bowmen (which, by the way were actually learned from the Welsh and improved upon) during Crecy, Agincourt, et al, it is of note that the French used cross-bows, not bows. Hence they did not have the range or penetration at range of the English.

The yew was said to have been favoured for making the longbow, although Spanish yew was considered better overall as a bow-making wood. For a very long time, the skill of the English longbowman was considerd so indispensible to the military that men of service age were required to practice with their bows for a certain amount of time each week. It became something of a tradition for folk to attend church on Sundays after whcih they would practice their shooting. Hence, many a shooting range (or "butts", from the Old French "but" menaing "goal) sprang up adjacent to churches. In my home town of Reading in Berkshire, there is a flint Norman church in the town centre (St. Mary's), across the road from which is a shopping centre which is still called St. Mary's Butt's to this day.

As an asside, yew trees, which in pagan mythology held mystical powers, were planted at the entrances and exist of church yards. An amalgum of the Christian and pagan, just as Christmas is today.

A-S

[Tab]

The reason that the musket to over from the bow was due to fact you teach some one to use a musket in a day, but it took many years to train a good bowman.

[Kat =^..^=]

The French were also offered a monetary reward for the 'bow' fingers of the English Archers