Pirates: On Stranger(er) Tides

[Lumenskir]

The Greeks figured this out a long time ago, Smarty. It doesn't matter how many cannon, bullets, or arrows the other guy can get in you at that range, fire is an automatic death sentence for an enemy ship. The sails go up, the rigging go up, the tar sealing the planks goes up, and god help you if it gets to the gunpowder armory and booze stocks.

No, pretty sure he realizes this, hence why he's baffled at why you'd put that same destructive power in a place where it can easily backfire on you. Like, literally. Even your own drawing has the fire at the rear end.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

"Greek fire" wasn't even usedby the Greeks but by the Byzantines. And they tend to have handheld tubes so they could move it around to the best place to use it.
Ohand it was also a pretty pathetic weapon, it didn't really work except in perfect weather conditions and the enemy coming real close to you but somehow not killing you. Once the Muslims worked out how it work (ie after the first few time) it did fuck all. These problems are amplified massively by placing it on the front of the ship.

Just put a massive ram on front of your ship. Saves fuel, is more effective.

[Magus]

Blackbeard appears to be a wizard (or his sword is magic, anyway), he can control his ship and others by just using his will, controls zombies, even has a scene with a voodoo doll it probably isn't that big of a deal to control the flames his ship shoots out to prevent it from burning him. Or it is magic fire. Or else the Queen Anne's Revenge has special fireproofing...stuff. Which is also magical somehow.

As for exactly how it works, it fires two big flames out of two tubes near the waterline on the front bow of the ship. That's pretty much all that is explained about it, so I'd jot this up as not being "realistic", just cool. He even straight up sails straight forward while firing it and it still maintains a steady stream of fire in the forward direction with no backwash, so...wizardry.

[synkr0nized]

There were a lot of things wrong with this film. This review is pretty fair in my opinion. The author, like me, seems to have enjoyed the few Barbosa/Jack moments we got and some of the action but similarly felt the movie never really knew what it wanted to be or do.

A friend of mine posted to FB during the movie, "Well I think a good word for that is souless." I was hesitant to be that harsh at first, but I think that's a little fair, as well, given the performances we saw and the focus on a fairly bland Jack.


However it was easy to enjoy it more than the third movie, but I am not sure if that's a road worth going down in this thread.

[Fifthfiend]

I feel like the people who make these movies never understood at all why the first one was so good, which is amazing because it's not really difficult to understand at all.

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Shyria Dracnoir

The Greeks figured this out a long time ago, Smarty. It doesn't matter how many cannon, bullets, or arrows the other guy can get in you at that range, fire is an automatic death sentence for an enemy ship. The sails go up, the rigging go up, the tar sealing the planks goes up, and god help you if it gets to the gunpowder armory and booze stocks.

That dude with the fire cannon looks so smug.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

There's a reason why Greek Fire was such a feared weapon and kinda revered (for lack of a better word) in history's weaponry tech, for the very above reason. They could arc the burning liquid a fair distance with a clever bellows system. Also burned on the surface of the water..which incidentally made it that much more dangerous since it floated, spread, and burned for a pretty good length of time.

Even used a little hand held thingy kinda like a caulking gun..but with liquid burning death. Hell, the Chinese did this too. They also had bamboo tube flamethrowers, which they used to devastating effect. The longshort: flamethrowers have been around for a longass time, both on land and sea.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

It was not aparticularly feared weapon at all. It only stayed around in culture because everyone is like "That is soo cool". While it would mess your shit up it was fairly easy to avoid and again it only worked when the weather played ball.
Muslims didn't really give a shit, they were too busy kicking the shit out of the byzantines pretty much all over the park.

[Archbio]

Originally Posted by Magus

They need another "normal" character in the film for us to root for and play the straight man to Sparrow's zaniness

See, I haven't seen this film yet, but I can't imagine sharing that impression. I mean, as afar as lamenting Will Turner's loss goes; to me he was just the perfect placeholder character, and not something I'd want to see more of.

As long as the characters aren't all zany in the same way, of course.

---

Originally Posted by SMBP

Muslims didn't really give a shit, they were too busy kicking the shit out of the byzantines pretty much all over the park.

Wikipedia has an Effectiveness and Countermeasures section:

Although the destructiveness of Greek fire is indisputable, it should not be seen as some sort of "wonder weapon", nor did it make the Byzantine navy invincible. It was not, in the words of naval historian John Pryor, a "ship-killer" comparable to the naval ram, which by then had fallen out of use. While Greek fire remained a potent weapon, its limitations were significant when compared to more traditional forms of artillery: in its siphon-deployed version, it had a limited range, and it could be used safely only in a calm sea and with favourable wind conditions. The enemy Muslim navies eventually adapted themselves to it, by staying out of its effective range and devising methods of protection such as felt or hides soaked in vinegar.

Certainly doesn't sound like "the Muslims didn't give a shit" and had an immediate response that neutralized the weapon's effectiveness to the point where it was inconsequential.

And Wikipedia also notes that "it provided a technological advantage, and was responsible for many key Byzantine military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from two Arab sieges, thus securing the Empire's survival." Which seems to be quoting from this article. I mean it's a bit of a vaguely sourced claim, but it seems as though the general idea is that they used it because it kind of worked for a while. Imagine that.

The timely appearance of Greek Fire undoubtedly contributed to Byzantine naval victories, which saved the City from capture in the sieges begun in 674 and 717, and from the threat of a similar siege in 941.

This statement, in an article written partly by this guy (who is apparently a specialist on Byzantium and wrote Warfare, state and society in the Byzantine world, 565-1204 (London 1999),) mentions the import of Greek Fire as a factor almost as a given before the article apparently moves on to questions about specifics of the weapon itself.

It seems a far cry from "it was also a pretty pathetic weapon," so it's probably not the academic consensus on that or anything, if there's one.

Edit: But yes, putting a flamethrower to the front of a wooden ship is probably a problem that can only solved through the application of infernal magicks such as Ian McShane's.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm going to be nice and just give you clue-an article written in 1977 before a good deal of arab primary sources were published/made available is pretty much worthless on this topic as is an article dealing with mostly European accounts which were pretty much all made up and hearsay. According to those accounts Muslim armies were populated by wizards and I'm reasonably sure that is not the case.