Were these used for naval warfare? If so it may have to do with sailors not wearing heavy armor, the penetration of which is the main advantage of muskets. High winds or moisture on deck may also reduce the reliability of matchlock weapons. Naval boarding parties fought with swords and axes long after such weapons were obsolete in land warfare.
If like many here argue that the Longbow was considered an outdated weapon by the 16th century then why did the Mary Rose sink with 250 of them?
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Who says the Mary Rose archers were the norm? They weren't in the 14th century, when the archaeological finds of war arrows were too narrow to survive the forces involved in a release from a bow of Mary Rose weight. They point to bows that most people could draw with little training, and
Arrows were not regularly penetrating 16th century armor [see the battle of Flodden, or Pinkie]; guns were. Not to put too fine a point on it, bullets killed people more deader. Regarding range, soldiers who had actual experience fighting with both weapons (Humphrey Barwick, Roger Williams, Robert Barett, etc) all knew the gun was more effective at range than bows. Barwick had trained from youth as an archer, and still found he shot better with an arquebus than a bow. In battle, Blaize de Montluc considered the bow an arm of little reach; leading a company of gunners, he enjoyed being able to rout English archers with a single volley followed by a charge with drawn swords.
Quick question: how accurate was an English longbow, and was it more accurate than target crossbows?
No, the longbow died out because people switched to guns, because the guns were better. Large numbers of archers were still available, and the statutes to practice archery remained on the books, but firepower was simply better at killing people.
Years. Untrained men with arquebuses were considered more a danger than a help, 'fitter to furnish a funeral than fight a field'.
Think of it this way. Many, if not most early modern soldiers served for life. Bows are cheap. If they were so much more effective, why not have soldiers use their ample garrison time to learn archery? If the bow was half as effective as weea-bows think it was, even a single elite unit of archers would have been able to overwhelm the enemy at a critical moment in the battle. No one bothered, though, because it doesn't matter how long you trained or good you are with a bow, you're better off putting that time towards learning to use your musket, learning formation drill etc.
Are you saying it took years to master the arquebus? There are modern day black power enthusiasts who pick up the skill in a matter of months. Many of the current longbow enthusiasts (we're talking draw weights above 80 lbs) have taken years to master it and often have the physiques to match that.
Regardless this goes back to my original post, if there were truly no advantages to the Longbow, why then were there so many of them on a Tudor naval ship in 1545 well after the development and spread of the matchlock?
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Yeah. Shooting for a hobby and being fit for battle are completely different things, and the more complex the task (i.e. operating a matchlock), the greater the difference.
The reason they had bows on the Mary Rose is because gunners are expensive and they already had a large stock of longbowmen to draw on. Gunners relied on the state to train and equip them, while archers bore those costs themselves; enforcing the mandatory practice statutes [which, by the by, postdate the great longbow victories at Fallkirk, Crecy, and Poitiers] was actually a source of revenue for the English state. Practically the same day the Mary Rose sank, one Blaize de Montluc fought a company of English archers with his arquebusiers and easily defeated them, as they carried 'arms of little reach', needing to come close to shoot their bows, which would 'otherwise do no execution.'
So they had a large stock of men capable of loosing 100-180+ lbs draw weight bows? No man off the street (or peasant village) is going to be able to loose those without years of training and conditioning of their bodies, especially in an era where adequate nutrition was a luxury.
I can see how the guns themselves would be expensive but I still dispute it'd be easier to find those who can do what I described as opposed to those who can fire an arquebus.
You still haven't provided backing to your claim it took years to adequately use an arquebus.
I can't say this looks simple but I can't say it would take a person of average intelligence years to learn either
Also I don't dispute the musket is a superior weapon to the longbow there were reasons it did supplant the longbow, it's just that one of those reasons would be that it was easier to equip and train more novice soldiers.
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Having a program of mandatory training produced a good number of especially strong archers. They maintained this program because it didn't cost them anything to do it, not because the archers it produced were particularly good missile troops. Such a program was not necessary to produce useful archers, though, as the greatest longbow victories predate it.
First, you're using different goalposts. You're comparing the time it takes to completely master the bow with the time it takes to become somewhat proficient with a gun. The proper equivalent of 'being able to reload an arquebus' is drawing a 80 lb bow or thereabouts, which is only somewhat less deadly than a 160 lb bow, since A: the relationship between draw weight and energy is not linear, an 80lb bow producing 60% the output o a 160 lb bow, and B: the killing power of a bow comes from the cutting action of the head, not the energy transmitted.
In terms of mastering the manual of arms, though, try doing it while people are shooting back at you. When you stop losing time, that'll be when you've mastered it. See you in 2+ years.
The only way a gun requires less training than a bow is in the sense that more accuracy and power than you can attain with a bow is built into the weapon itself, but that's not really a tradeoff like you imply, and makes the gun a simply better missile weapon.
I'm going to offer another, rather more boring explanation: a miserly/anal/corrupt quartermaster/outfitter.
Perhaps the armoury had a large stock of longbows and kept on issuing them out of sheer bloody-mindedness - not caring whether they were desired or not. May be that the Admiralty still had a regulation demanding their stocking, despite the fact people telling the m'lords it wasn't desired anymore. It may also be that at the time the holder of the 'commission' to supply the Fleet went to a guy who could source longbows cheap [as at this time it was an office you made money from].
Another boring possible explanation; the production of English muskets was low and there wasn't enough in reserve to go around. Therefore, the Army got the muskets, while the Navy were [mainly] kitted out with bows on the premise they were less likely to actually use them. In this case, view it as a variant of 'raiding the reserves' like when WW2 found nations pulling out WW1-era tanks and Boer War-era firearms out of mothballs.
Perhaps the armoury had a large stock of longbows and kept on issuing them out of sheer bloody-mindedness - not caring whether they were desired or not. May be that the Admiralty still had a regulation demanding their stocking, despite the fact people telling the m'lords it wasn't desired anymore. It may also be that at the time the holder of the 'commission' to supply the Fleet went to a guy who could source longbows cheap [as at this time it was an office you made money from].
Another boring possible explanation; the production of English muskets was low and there wasn't enough in reserve to go around. Therefore, the Army got the muskets, while the Navy were [mainly] kitted out with bows on the premise they were less likely to actually use them. In this case, view it as a variant of 'raiding the reserves' like when WW2 found nations pulling out WW1-era tanks and Boer War-era firearms out of mothballs.
Longbows had been in use until the mid 17th Century and saw action during the English Civil War.
I believe you are correct:
1. Wet conditions greatly reduce effectiveness of blackpowder weapons
2. Sailors other than officers do not wear armor.
3. Naval warfare was primarily boarding and fighting with swords, axes and piles. You want high volume of fire to suppress other side’s crew which archery would provide.
And
4. A ship is a set of floating inflammables.
One has to bear in mind that the longbow maintained its preeminence within English armies for a much longer time than in continental Europe. When Henry VIII invaded France in 1544 only seven percent of his troops were armed with muskets, as opposed to the French where a third of the army was equipped with firearms. The reason for this was the fact that bows were relatively cheap, effective (it had been of decisive importance at Flodden, for example) and were consciously associated with the great English victories at Agincourt, Crecy and Poitiers. This latter factor was exemplified by Henry’s veneration of the longbow and the passing of legislation during his reign which discouraged the use of crossbows and gunpowder weapons.
Still, longbow fetishism did not prevent the Tudor monarchs from gradually accustomising their armies to continental trends. By the end of the 16th century, the proportion of troops armed with firearms began to increase, but as @Byzantion wrote, the longbow would be used well into the English Civil War.
Still, longbow fetishism did not prevent the Tudor monarchs from gradually accustomising their armies to continental trends. By the end of the 16th century, the proportion of troops armed with firearms began to increase, but as @Byzantion wrote, the longbow would be used well into the English Civil War.
Or, to sum it up in two lines: the longbow had been successful. This meant when it was judged on 'past performance', the longbow's current/future utility was over-estimated, and therefore was retained longer than it should have been.
The Elizabethan legislation forbidding Catholics from owning weapons didn't cover longbows, although it did cover muskets and harquebuses. Apparently the government considered disgruntled gunners to be a threat, but not disgruntled longbowmen.
Also, NB that the consensus of 18th-century historiography is that generals of the period generally tried to avoid risky battles due to the difficulty of replacing casualties. By the 18th century, of course, the musket had long since replaced the bow, so if it was really so easy to train people in musketry, soldiers should have been extremely easy to replace. But, apparently, they weren't.
I mean, I think it was used by improvised militia on one or two occasions. It wasn't a widespread weapon, and none of the professional soldiers used it. (Which is another point against the "guns were easier to use than longbows" argument.)
That's not just down to the length of time it takes to learn to "use a musket" (however that compares to a bow), though, especially if the threshold for "able to use a musket" doesn't require you to be able to reload quickly.
That seems to have been one of the bigger obstacles to quick gun training in my reading.
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Just some guesses here why the Mary Rose had so many long bows. Like already said, very damp conditions on and below deck. Gun powder had to be kept extremely dry. What about damp or wet bow strings? Dunno about that. Did they find any cross bows? Did they find any fire arrows? Big wide rigging and sail cutting broad heads? Match lock manufacturing expense vs. long bows? Interesting subject.
The English used bows, not because they were killing machines, but because it's what they had. Fighting i.e. France, which was far larger and wealthier, they would always be outnumbered, but bows could equip a much larger segment of society than could the arms of the knight, thus bringing about some kind of balance. As a missile weapon, the bow synergized well with defensive tactics, forcing the enemy to advance and thus giving time for the terrain to disrupt their formation. The bow's ability to gall horses neutralized one of the best ways to counter the disordering effects of terrain on advancing formations. They also forced armored men to advance with visors down, resulting in their breath becoming stale and leading to fatigue that made them easier to kill with weapons besides the bow. Ultimately, though, the bow falls victim to the zeroth law of pre-gunpowder missile weapons: man has the muscle power to carry defensive arms that missiles propelled by human muscle power cannot penetrate.
Yet Mary Rose had 24 heavy cannon, and 67 smaller, more antipersonnel mounted guns.