[Raman A]

I was reading Roger Crowley's Empires of the Sea, and this passage surprised me:

"...in the Malta Channel, the Order's great flagship, the Saint Mary, was blasted by a lightning bolt. Nine men fell dead; a crackle of electricity flashed down the grand master's sword, reducing it to a twisted scrap, but he stepped away from the scorched deck unharmed."

Is it really possible for lightning to send enough current through a sword to produce that effect? Although Crowley provides a bibliography, only direct quotations are cited so I can't find the source for this. That's what I get for reading narrative history I guess. Can anyone help me out here with primary sources describing this event?

[Lancelot Chan]

Yes, I think so.

One of my expelled students cut a 220v power line accidentally and it melted its edge, twisted and burnt.

Talk about a lightning strike.... you get the idea.

[Dean F. Marino]

ummmm - no. Bad Physics.

The SWORD may be steel - but it can not absorb the energy of a lightning strike. That which is GROUNDED will. This is why lightning rods are not just placed on homes - they are equipped with SERIOUS ground wires....

But let's look at your story....

"...in the Malta Channel, the Order's great flagship, the Saint Mary, was blasted by a lightning bolt. Nine men fell dead; a crackle of electricity flashed down the grand master's sword, reducing it to a twisted scrap, but he stepped away from the scorched deck unharmed."

The DECK was scorched? hmmm - that energy made it to the deck, didn't it? How did it get there? And was the wooden deck of a ship "grounded", while suspended in salt water? I suspect a lucky captain . He may have been one of those that had the entire energy of a lightning bolt hit his sword, then chose to seek "earth" over the surface of his salt soaked clothing - not straight thru his body.

[David Hohl]

Anecdote aside, I think the question is whether the lightning could do that to a sword - i.e. if you were to fly a sword up into a storm, on a kite, etc. what it would do to the blade. So assuming the blade is in the conductive path, what kind of resistor is it?

[Dean F. Marino]

[Tom Kinder]

I was a chief electrician for the U.S. Coast Guard for more than 20 years. first of all a lightning bolt is basically a gigantic arc. arcs can and do destroy metal on their paths kinda like you had a welder turned up too high but a lot stronger. yes, the ampacity of a sword sized bit of steel would be huge but you only get to use all that if the connection is a solid metal to metal one. a lightning bolt is arcing through huge amounts of open air and generating massive amounts of heat because of it. were the sword connected to a solid earth ground with a sufficiently sized conductor it could route a lightning bolt to earth with minimal or maybe even no damage (lots of variables here) but being held in a hand on a deck of a ship which is already a floating ground I would think a lightning bolt is very likely to destroy a sword. I have seen the effects of lightning strikes on light houses and ship masts and it can do lots of damage or none at all depending on a lot of things.

[Dan P]

[Jeroen T]

Here´s the anwser.....

When i was about 10 years old a had a sword, well it was a wallhanger but it was some kind of steel and not stainless.
I always wanted an Excaliber like sword and one day i looked outside and saw a thunderstorm was coming.

I picked up the sword and went outside to an openfield in a very large park nearby.
As i was getting closer to the centre of the field some static electricity touched the blade and in a reaction i held it behind my back. I felt the electricity go through my stomach and getting stronger.

I through the sword away and the connection was broken. i picked it up again, stuck it in the ground and stood back around 12ft.
A couple of seconds later a small lightiningbolt made contact with the blade and then a large bolt started burning the whole blade to the ground ending whit a huge BANG.
The sword was burned to a crisp and completely rolled up like you roll up a whip only much tighter.

http://www.westernwhips.com/australian-whips.html

At this point i wish i kept the result but i through it in the water for some reason.

Now don´t think i was a complete 10 year old idiot, i knew the if the lightning struck the sword it would be destroyed.
But i thought what if`maybe` just maybe there was some kind of thing we don´t know of could turn this sword into something magic......

This is a true story, no BS here i swear.

[Tod Glenn]

Tom is dead on. I've been involved in amateur radio for about 40 years and I have seen quite a few antennas struck by lightening. I had 25 foot tall vertical antenna that was basically a hollow aluminum pole grounded with a piece of 10 gauge wide survive 2 direct hits. I've also seen a 50 foot steel tower turned into a corkscrew. Lightening is pretty unpredictable. There are plenty of people walking around after being struck by lightening. Others have been killed stone dead. Objects are hit and sometimes unscathed and other times destroyed.

[Jeffrey Faulk]

I'm not an expert, but I believe it has something to do with the amount of charge that's generated in the atmosphere to create the lightning bolt. Electricity doesn't need a whole lot of power to make a spectacular arc; Nikola Tesla and similar guys would do fancy shows with lightning bolts and such flashing around them, but as long as they stayed grounded it did nothing to them. Now, if there's a LOT more current going on, well, all that energy has to go somewhere...

[Shahril Dzulkifli]

I myself have never heard of events such as a bolt of lightning striking a sword in a person's hand. That kind of event, however, has become a subject to many films (in this case, magic swords).

[Iagoba Ferreira]

I know an account of a napoleonic officer and his horse being killed by a lightning, but it's so scarce in details that it doesn't say if he was riding it...or holding his sword.