Interesting little event from Plutarch's Nine Greek Lives

In 357, B.C the Athenian General Nicias was trying to evacuate his army from Siracusa, in Sicily. It had been a humiliating defeat. As they were retreating in their triremes---" They were fighting against light vessels which bore down upon them from several directions at once, while their own ships were heavy and huddled together. The Athenians were also bombarded by stones ( from Sicilian slingers), which did equal damage at whatever they struck, while they could only reply with javelins and arrows, whose flight was upset by the tossing of the ships, so that they did not all hit their tatget with the point."
 One advantage of slings, they don't need points to do damage.

Cool!  Slinging on water in 357 BC!

I think the effect of wind would also be smaller to slingstones than to arrows and javelin.

To quote one of my professors "it all depends" I quit slinging last weekend after about four casts just due to the wind. Problem wasn't so much the projectile it was more the effect the winds had on the sling itself during the "windup' and just before release. I only had two rocks go in the correct direction :(
Now this was slinging directly into the wind. ( Only safe direction I had)
yes it is a small sample size but better some data than none. I can see the effects of wind on javelins but arrows due to areodynamics and power behind them might be able to slice against a headwind. and Slingstones might do better against a crosswind than an arrow but more results are needed before i stick a fork in that particular plate :)

Marc Adkins


Tint wrote on Jan 30^th, 2007 at 10:00pm:

Cool!  Slinging on water in 357 BC! I think the effect of wind would also be smaller to slingstones than to arrows and javelin.