Fireship: the Terror Weapon of the Age of Sail

Hell Afloat: The History of the Fireship

The fireship was the guided missile of the sailing era. Packed with incendiary (and sometimes explosive) material, it was aimed at its highly inflammable wooden target by volunteers who bailed out into a boat at the last moment. It often missed, but the panic it invariably caused among crews who generally could not swim and had no method of safely abandoning ship did the job for it – the most famous example being the attack off Gravelines in …