Comparison of bow limb width and thickness for the first 48 Mary Rose bows in the Weapons of Warre catalogue. Data from Clive Bartlett et. al. 2011.
Comparison of width of the bow at the grip. Consist of 21 prehistoric bows, 17 Danish bows, 4 Irish bows, and 113 Mary Rose bows. Data from Clive Bartlett et. al. 2011, J.G.D. Clarke 1963, Xenia Pauli Jensen 2009, Halpin 1998.
87 examine the widths and thicknesses of
these bows in greater detail to see how these important design elements
developed over time. Graph 10 shows a comparison of Mary Rose limb widths and thicknesses. For the sake of keeping the graph relatively readable, only the first 49 bows from the Mary Rose data have been included. There was noticeable variation in the size of the limb cross-sections of the
Mary Rose bows. For the vast majority of the bows, the difference between the width and thickness was less than ten
millimetres, and somewhere around five millimetres appears to have been fairly standard. What this graph shows is that, while the ratio of 1:1.1 was standard for
Mary Rose grips, the difference increased noticeably on the limbs.231
The overall data show that the
Mary Rose bows were the largest bows. The following series of box-plot graphs (11-14)
show a comparison of the widths and thicknesses of the bows’ grips and limbs. Where grips were not obvious, the largest part of the bow was treated as the grip for
measurement purposes, since bows are usually thickest at their grips. The Danish limb data consists of only three measurements since most of the data was interpreted as referring to the bows’ grip sections. The Mary Rose bows had their limb measurements taken at 500 mm from the grip, which was approximately midway between the grip and nock. The graphs show that a large variation existed in each of the data sets. As with the length data, there was a core of very similar bows in the Mary Rose data – as shown by the relatively small size of the box – but the full range of the data was quite broad. Each section outside of the central box is longer than the box is. The prehistoric bows are the most complicated of the data sets to consider, due to the presence of the wide limbed
231 Clive Bartlett, Chris Boyton, Steve Jackson, Adam Jackson, Douglas McElvogue, Alexzandra Hildred
and Keith Watson, “The Longbow Assemblage”, pp. 2:596-9.
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 Milli m etres
12: Bow Width on Limbs
Comparison of bow limb width, consists of 15 prehistoric bows, 3 Danish bows, 4 Irish bows, and 114 Mary Rose bows. Data from Clive Bartlett et. al. 2011, J.G.D. Clarke 1963, Xenia Pauli Jensen 2009, Halpin 1998.
88 bows with very thick grip sections. The grip sections could have been very thick since they did not have to bend when the bow is drawn, which was why the prehistoric bows had the bow with the thickest grip across all of the data sets. These bows also had very wide, thin limbs.
Thickness was probably the most important design element given that it was most closely related to power. When it comes to grip thickness the bows were more similar to one another. The Mary Rose bows seem to have had much thicker limbs than other bows. Some of this can be explained by the fact that the limb data for other bows was quite limited. For example, the Irish bow limb thickness did not include the Balinderry Bow. While the Waterford bows were significantly shorter than the Mary Rose bows, the difference in thickness at grip was often less than 5 mm. While this difference is
significant, it must also be remembered that the Waterford bows have suffered substantial decay, especially to their cross-section, meaning the difference between them and the
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Prehistoric Danish Irish Mary Rose
Milli
m
etres
13: Bow Thickness at Grip
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Milli m etres
14: Bow Thickness on
Limbs
Comparison of thickness of bows at their grip. Consists of 16 prehistoric bows, 17 Danish bows, 4 Irish bows, and 114 Mary Rose bows. Data from Clive Bartlett et. al. 2011, J.G.D. Clarke 1963, Xenia Pauli Jensen 2009, Halpin 1998.
Camparison of thickness of bows on their limbs. Consists of 12 prehistoric bows, 3 Danish bows, 4 Irish bows, and 114 Mary Rose bows. Data from Clive Bartlett et. al. 2011, J.G.D. Clarke 1963, Xenia Pauli Jensen 2009, Halpin 1998.
89
Mary Rose bows was actually much smaller. These measurements were complicated by the fact that it is often not clear where on the limb they were taken. Only the
measurements of the Mary Rose bows include information on where on the bow the measurements were taken.While the Waterford bows were almost certainly still smaller than the Mary Rose bows, and as a result less powerful, the difference between the two was much less significant than their lengths would have suggested. When only length is considered, the Mary Rose bows clearly stood well above the rest of the longbows, especially those from Waterford, but when considering other design elements the results were more complicated. When width and thickness were considered, especially in the grip section, the difference did not seem quite so great between the Mary Rose bows and those from earlier centuries. When length was considered on its own, the prehistoric or Danish bows seem to have been the closest to the Mary Rose bows. However, when thickness is considered, the differences become much smaller and the Waterford bows are shown to be more similar to the bows from the Mary Rose than their lengths would suggest. This is particularly true when one remembers that the Waterford bows have suffered significant decay and were originally thicker than they are now.232