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What looks like a strange pile of bones around a stone ball is double-headed hammer shot, also called bar shot, from the wreck of the warship Hazardous Prize, which sank in 1706. A culverin round shot thrown in for scale. The round shot ist made of stone the bar shot of iron. To destroy, kill or damage the rigging, masts, hull as well superstructures and enemy crews.
Bar shots
This ammunition shown here was typical during the Age of Sails, especially from the 17th to the 19th century.
The bar shot was mostly a shot of two hemispheres, connected with a bar. This type of ammunition was used to damage the mast, sails or rigging. Immediately behind this is an extended bar shot. This was like a bar shot, except that it expanded during firing and could inflict even more damage. Below this is a bar shot consisting of two whole balls. This is also shown by the two single balls where only the bar is missing. However, this munition had the disadvantage that if it was fired from too far away, it no longer hit properly. Therefore, it was used more at short range.
Photo is from the St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum
Bar shot fired from the Spanish Santisima Trinidad into HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar killing eight of her crew, 1805 (c) NMM
The shot in fact killed eight Marines in a row, the remainder then being spread out to avoid a repetition, and was retrieved by their lieutenant, Lewis Rotely. As the inscription on the stand indicates, he presented it to a friend whose son gave it to Queen Victoria in 1872.
Bar Shots recovered from Queen Anne’s Revenge, early 18th century (c) QAR Conservation Laboratory
Bar shot with whole (cannon ball-shaped; top ), half (hemi-spherical; middle), and hammer (cylindrical; bottom) heads are connected by a solid wrought iron bar, square in cross-section. An expanding bar shot (bottom) consists of two linked bars with hammer heads on either end, which would be loaded collapsed into a cannon, but spread out to almost three feet when fired.
They were used at close range to slash through the rigging and sails of an enemy ship. The weight on either end of the bar would cause the whole thing to partially rotate after it was fired out of a cannon, inflicting maximum damage on sails and rigging.
An Iron bar shot, 1775, American Revolutionary War
Their effect was similar to chain shot. When fired this weapon makes a spinning rotation, shot being used at short range to cut through the sails, shrouds, and any other rigging of an enemy target ship or to kill any sailor in its path.
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