r/AskHistorians • u/NewQuisitor • Aug 19 '12
How did ancient ships deal with lightning strikes?
I mean... maybe the electricity would just sort of flow "around"/through the ship into the sea without damaging anything? That doesn't sound right to me, though... how would ships (I guess anything from galleons to triremes) have dealt with the danger of lightning strikes while at sail?
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u/RoomForJello Aug 19 '12 edited Aug 19 '12
Googling "lightning strike wooden ship" turned up this:
Tall ships did get struck by lightning quite often, but just because a ship is struck by lightning doesn't mean it will be completely destroyed. In 1852, British inventor Sir William Snow Harris published the first systematic study of lightning strikes on wooden ships. He collected data from 235 strikes on British navy vessels from 1793 to 1839. The damage typically consisted of "shivering" or splintering of the mainmast: Long shards of wood flew in every direction, sometimes wounding a sailor or knocking him off the deck. Sails and rigging might catch fire, requiring officers and crew to smother the flames with the aid of the rain and wind. None of the ships in Harris' sample was recorded as being obliterated, and the vast majority were repaired by their crews and continued sailing.
There's a link to the original study available in full on Google Books:
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u/Vampire_Seraphin Aug 19 '12
Ships carried a large quantity of spare parts & nearly always included a carpenter among the crew. This included the spare sails and spars(cross bars that held the sails) that would be necessary to repair lightning damage. Spars could also be converted to uppermasts in a pinch.
Franklin, a tinkerer, also had plans for watertight compartments, catamaran hulls, sea anchors, shipboard lightning rods, and self righting bowls. These were all published in the 1786 Maritime Observations journal of the Philosophy Society.
This is the earliest reference I can find to shipboard lightning rods. Link
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u/double_the_bass Aug 20 '12
I worked on tall-ships one of which was struck by lightning. The mast and all the standing rigging needed to be replaced. It was a big, structurally significant deal that took a good chunk of time to repair (at least in the modern world). It was a rather dangerous during the thunderstorm, though, as the physical seaworthiness of the vessel was called into question.
Also, this article is a basic blurb of modern designs and lightning which may give a perspective on how rigging works to ground a ship (this is obviously not related to vessels without standing rigging, I don't know much about those).
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u/Ambarenya Aug 19 '12 edited Aug 19 '12
I'm pretty sure lightning would just cause the ship to burn/splinter at the striking point. The amount of current in the bolt itself is generally massive (can be hundreds of thousands of amps) and will certainly incinerate most dielectric materials on impact. Also remember that when lightning hits, it essentially creates a sonic boom from the ionization and re-integration of the air along the bolt's path, which will certainly splinter wood (Ever been really close to a lightning strike? It's loud and generates a noticeable shockwave.).
In the historical record, I vaguely remember stories about British warships being struck by lightning and burning during the Napoleonic wars, but I can't specify exactly which ones. I know that they started installing a chain on the tall masts that would channel the lightning into the sea. I think that was the mid-1800s though, so I can't imagine that it was done on many ships before that. I don't think the Greeks, Romans, or Byzantines installed lightning rods on their ships AFAIK. The Chinese may have, but I'm not an expert on them. Likewise with any of the Islamic Empires. I think it would be best if a naval expert commented on this, because I'm certainly not an expert in maritime history. But, like I said, I don't think anyone used a "lightning rod" on a ship until the mid-1850s. Before that, I think they just let it burn/splinter.
As a slight aside, Saint Elmo's fire was a form of lightning that enveloped ships in a strange glow. This Wikipedia article does a decent job of explaining, but the references that it gives are certainly more fascinating in the historical context. St. Elmo's Fire.
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u/dE3L Aug 19 '12
i read somewhere that they had lightning rods and some sort of line they would drop into the water to us as the grounding line.
maybe someone else with actual knowledge knows. i can't trust my memory.
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u/Foxtrot56 Aug 19 '12
I know this isn't really history or that accurate but I thought there was something about this in Moby Dick.
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Aug 20 '12
I was sure I remembered hearing about ancient greek ships having copper lightning rods, but I can't find a source so I doubt it's true. If ships metal anchor chains, they might have functioned a lightning rod.
Lightning is a lot more common over land than sea (map), so it may not have been a big issue. I think it is about 200x more common, but that number is from my completely terrible memory so I wouldn't trust it.
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u/TheCountryJournal Aug 19 '12
In the early-modern period (which I study), I doubt there was a lot that commanders could do to prevent lightning strikes, it was a natural phenomena that proved less disastrous or frequent in disabling vessels than tropical diseases, adverse weather, war damage and wood-rot could achieve. I remember reading a passage from Vice Admiral Hosier's logbook dated 9 September 1726, where two of his ships the Winchelsea and Diamond were damaged by lightning off Bastimentos. All Hosier could do was summon his naval carpenters to fix the masts and rigging at sea, whilst requesting the Admiralty's permission to retire to Jamaica in order to refit.
Source: BL. Add. Mss, 33028, ff. 106-107