"the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will aprise me-the report arrives too late, it lags behind the missle. That is a good gun." (ch.3 pg. 30)
I understood the story but this part tripped me up a little. What does Farquar mean when he uses the word "grape"? I was thinking it was a certain method of attacking. I was also thinking it could be a part of the gun that could do harm. What made me think of these ideas was because they were well, obviously trying to kill him. Also because there are guns involved.
That is an excellent question, Misha! I have a bad habit of just assigning meanings to phrases I don't know instead of taking the time to actually look them up. This phrase was no exception, so thanks for bringing it up. :)
ReplyDeleteAfter looking around on google, I believe that "a charge of grape" or a grape shot is a type of ammunition. It looks like a grape shot was a little bag with many smaller cannonballs inside, the result looked similar to a cluster of grapes. When a cannon fired a charge of grape, the balls would spread out and hit in many different areas. I am not sure what happened to the bag though. Maybe it disintegrated?
Good job both of you! Do you think it is possible to escape bullets or grapeshot if you are underwater?
ReplyDeleteWell, Since bullets at that time were individually aimed, I think I would much prefer to be dodging them. Although neither situation seems terribly promising for the escapee. Grape shot would send a large number of small cannon balls spread through out a largish area (Kinda like playing battle ship and you get 10 guesses at once).
ReplyDeleteLike I said, the chances of escaping this, even underwater, do not seem overly realistic. Dodging bullets under water... I am not sure. I will have to try it and let you know. ;)
Yeah, I am no gun expert or anything but I do know that once a bullet enters the water it slows down 8x faster than it originally was going in the first place, which is approximately 2,000 feet per second. That is a fantastic question because I was wondering myself what "grape" meant
ReplyDeleteSorry, 4-8 times slower than its original velocity and speed :)
DeleteAn interesting note about this excerpt. He mentioned that the sound would be too late. The only way the sound would reach him after he missile did is if it was traveling faster than the speed of sound, and at a certain distance. This seems a bit odd, considering they didn't describe the bridge as being very large.
ReplyDelete