
In the naval battles of the time of the Battle of Trafalgar the work of the sailors on the decks of ships artillery was the hardest. Men were required to have a very high rate of fire during the many hours that lasted confrontation, which the gunners ran out to the limit of their endurance. Each loading and unloading of artillery needed to 14 men per gun, controlled by a gunner of preference. In a 74-gun ship it came to concentrate on the main deck up to 200 men under the command of an officer who toured the sites of the cannon with a gun in his belt and saber with which orders remarked. These were given to shouting, getting stronger, because in combat the crack of gunfire left almost deaf to the sea. The deck officer's weapons were also meant to intimidate those who abandoned his post, since the late eighteenth century it was common for the gunners were recruited by force, without them having no training or marine or military. Many ran terrified to take refuge in the cellar to start fire. The only ones allowed to out of the deck were called "powder monkeys" general adolescent mind, almost children, running to the powder magazine cartridge to supply the parts.
men struggling in a small space in which the highest they could not stay upright without his head collided with the beams. In addition, after a few volleys, the temperature around the guns rose an average of 10 degrees. The gunners worked with the naked torso in order to minimize infections if the skin is punctured them from shrapnel or splinters, and they were introduced in the flesh, pieces of fabric. The fear of injuries caused by wood chips was greater than the damage that could cause the metal, since the shooting on the hull with round bullets pierced or entered as a carrier and took the sailors who were on their way, but the shots that crashed against the wood cast a shower of splinters that pierced like arrows and, although they killed, and detracted from the amenity filled nursing injuries, sometimes serious.
If fired from the windward side, the atmosphere was unbearable, as the smoke entered the interior of the roof creating a stifling atmosphere. After half an hour of fighting, the gunners in charge of pulling the palanquin had the palms of skinned hands, and many were injured in the feet and legs from the movement of the carriages could not always control. The situation worsened when the cover was hit by enemy fire, then the survivors had to throw overboard the bodies of the dead and the officer had to rearrange the envelopes with fewer men per piece, thereby increasing the hard work and losing effectiveness.
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