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How or why did the English become a bow culture?

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ChrisD:
Rod

Thank you for your reply to my query. I notice, however, that you've studiously avoided answering my question which was really to do with the specific statement concerning 'not drawing conclusions about draw eight based on the MR nock sizes'.

I understand that you may not have much truck with Pips opinions - its a free world after all and this is a contentious issue. While I agree that more work needs to be done on the capabilities of hemp and linen strings of appropriate type (ie suitable for many bow lengths therefore single loop at most), I really can't see any problem with the idea that the nock sizes would provide an upper limit on the potential draw weights of the bows - whatever you think that upper limit might be. One of my doubts is based on a knowledge of the history of mountaineering and the tendency of hemp ropes to snap under shock loading.  I'd be very interested to hear of other experiences with natural strings as a result before I'd be converted to the 120-150lb camp.

With regards to what you say about the benefits of technique over strength - I agree completely. In fact, I'd point out that I believe that 150lb is well within the compass of healthy people. A 'physiological man' weighs 154lb and most can train to do a one arm pull up. In fact one of the 1920's mountaineers was famous for doing one arm pull ups with a man on his back!! Its all a matter of training and technique.

I do think that talk of 240yd marks ought to be taken in context. Many of the ancient butts are a lot smaller than that and I've recently taken the trouble to visit the one in Widdecombe on the Moor in Devon and you'd have trouble fitting two tennis courts on it!

Chris

Rod:
Chris,
I think that such an opinion based upon nock size has no great validity in the context of historical use and some of the penetration tests by Mark which clearly show the penetrative benfit against plate of bows in the 150lb plus range.
Further, since the literary record of Chinese war bows gives us median figures for infantry bows of 120lb to 150lb Ithink it likely that all serious war bow cultures shooting heavy shafts against developed protective gear are likely to arrive in the same  ballpark as regards draw weight.

Given that whenever possible the strongest men were recruited into affinites I do not see that in the heyday of the long bow that our archers would have been any weaker than the Chinese of the Bronze Age.

As regards linen strings, I donot think that we can necessarily make a direct coomparison with the linen thread available to us today, and bearing in mind the affect of a dryer climate on the strength of linen thread, we are not in a position to compare our strings directly with those in use in the mediaebval.

As to butts, I think it more than likely that you are mistaking the lateral spacing between two adjacent mounds for the shooting distance between butts shooting up and down.
This is a mistake that I have observed being made at Silk Willoughby by a modern archer.
Rod.

ChrisD:
Rod
I appreciate the work Mark Stretton has done but its a kind of circular argument to say that this is what you need to punch a hole in so and so armour therefore this is what they had. The fact that 150lb bows would be needed against certain kinds of armour(using modern strings BTW) coupled with decline in use of the bow could just as easily be taken as an argument that they weren't in use - particularly given the recorded instances of armour successfully resisting arrow attack as mentioned in Richard Wadges book, particularly in later times in the 'bow period'.
I'm not at all convinced of comparisons with Chinese and Turkish infantry bows. They were composite weapons, the strings as far as I'm aware were horse sinew- it was a different kind of animal. The English warbow was selected for simplicity, mass producibility and lack of need of glues. It seems, again from Richard Wadges exhaustive searches that a ratio of 2 or 3 strings per bow was common and that therefore, the strings were working close enough to their limit to need frequent replacing. I can't imagine that a medieval archer would want an arrow loosely nocked any more than I would and therefore I happen to agree with Pip that whatever the weight was, the maximum tolerance of the string material at the nock size, together with whatever you might be able to do to make it more durable, produced a natural ceiling. I'd really prefer all the effort currently going into ever increasing bow weights to go into a study of strings, and then we'd have the answer or at least a better idea of the ballpark.

A quick thing on the butts. The one I mentioned is single ended, was in use in 1466(and probably before that too) and according to local info was ringed with the stones which are still in-situ.It is roughly teardrop shaped and measures 90 paces long and 40 wide at its widest with a mound in the 'centre' of the bulge in the teardrop, 80 paces from the narrow end. Whichever way you look at it, its small - and I guess its at the smaller end of the spectrum. The reason I mention it is that from a cursory read about butts on a website on the english warbow forum, theres a pretty big range in size of butts with marks at 240yds being as uncommon as the smaller ones such as the one I visited. I do plan to look out for more as I travel around Britain.

Chris

Rod:
Chris,
The fact that other ar bow cultures used different types of bow has very little bearing on the nub of the matter which is that if the task is to project a hevy projectile with penetrating force so as to defeat defensive armour, then if it has beenshown that the higher end draw weights are more effective at this task, then I'm quite happy to accept that these weights would have been in use where the level of defensive arms required it.
That the defensive arms were in some cases quite capable of resisting penetration with varying degrees of success should come as no surprise, why would defensive arms be developed if they could not ameliorate the situation.

To often in such arguments we have the opposing camps holding unsupportably entrenched views.
Such as, in extremis " all longbow shafts can penetrate any armour" and the obverse "all armour of any quality can resist warbow shaft".
Both of these positions are of course patent nonsense. Any sensible reading of the history can only lead to the conclusion that in this particular arms race there was ongoing development in both areas.

Too often tests are made which are flawed by not looking either at the defensive systems as just that, complete systems, or on the other hand at correct application of point profiles and hardness.

We have seen unhardened type 7's dropped onto plate supported by a hard surface, for example.
Virtually no work has been done on the role of padded garments as an integral part of the defensive system, and now to raise the hare of suggesting that no-one might have used draw weights in excess of 120lb is patently absurd.

I daresay that in the early days a heavy hunting bow or a war bow of 100lb might have been perfectly adequate against a byrnie.
In the 13th C a thick aketon over a hauberk could be very effective as a defense against a point that was insufficiently sharp, whereas in the 15th C a heavy bodkin with a limited point which might fail against an aketon would be capable of punching a hole in plate, given an apprpriate angle of strike and a ductility and thickness that could be defeated by such a point.

What most folks seem to ignore is that the primary task of plate was not to completely prevent penetration, but rather to increase the probability of deflection.

There has been far too much sloppy thinking and poorly carried through "research" on this topic.
To suggest that whole armies might be defensively armed so as to render archery ineffective flies in the face of recorded history just as does the assertion that archery could render everyone ineffective.

Your report of the butts in Devon is interesting, sounds more like a location more for social activity than for serious military practice. There are illustrations showing such small ranges, but more often of a later period and for civilian use of crossbows.
It certainly does not appear to be a range that might be used when laws were in place prescribing minimum distances for the practice of shooting in the bowe.

Rod.

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