Fletching on medieval arrows?

[Matt.C. Rutledge]

I realise this is a difficult question to answer but is there any idea on what type of fletching was used on Medieval arrows?

[Alina]

The English warbow society have made an arrow based on Mary Rose finds. I'm not sure if the organic materials from the fletching have survived, but they give details on how they fletch the ones used in their competition here:

http://www.englishwarbowsociety.com/tud ... ow_EN.html

[Jonathan Waller]

Matt can you be more specific? Are you asking about type of feather. Attacbment. Fletching shape? Its a pretty broad subject...
Jw

[Matt.C. Rutledge]

Matt can you be more specific? Are you asking about type of feather. Attacbment. Fletching shape? Its a pretty broad subject...
Jw

Well I guess than I'm asking two different questions here. I was wondering in what way the feathers were attached and what the shape of the fletchings were?

[Alina]

From what I can gather it seems like the fletchings were attached with silken thread, and possibly verdigris in order to both glue them into place and protect them from being eaten by critters of various kinds. Being organic, feather fletchings are quickly consumed if not kept in proper storage, or if not treated.

The shape, from what I've read, seems to point to a squared-off back section. The link I posted earlier has more details.

[Jonathan Waller]

Isinglass to glue the fletchings to secure and then bound with silk top and bottom for regular shooting arrows. General shooting arrows generally have parabolic fletchings. Swan and Peacock favoured.
War arrows seem to have been bound down the length of the fletching and to be straight cut.

There is evidence for verdigris, perhaps as a moth proofer, for decoration and perhaps for the aid in bonding. Evidence of beeswax/tallow mix used to cover the binding between the fletching to reduce drag and to protect the binding from damage and insect attack.
Best

[Alina]

Interesting that you mention peacock, as I was just reading Ascham today and he speaks unfavorably of peacock, and yet peacock keeps showing up in other literary sources, Chaucer being most prominent in my head at the moment. Do you have any sources for the use of peacock feathers, and/or any proponents for their use? Also, which feather would they use? Presumably the wing feathers, I suppose as peacock rectrices are devoid of barbules to bind them together.

[John H]

This is a huge subject as I spans throughout the world. Aside from the ‘preferred’ feathers that made it into books, you can basically understand that any feather is going to make it onto an arrow. Tail feathers seemed to be preferred by a few different cultures and goose, swan, eagle all would be ‘preferred’ depending on if you were in Europe, the Steppes, Japan, etc. This is the first I read about a Peacock, but it makes sense for a flight arrow, not so much for a heavy shafted arrow.

Consider an army of 1000 archers shooting at a clip of 5 seconds an arrow (moderate speed.) that’s 12 arrows a min or 12,000 arrows a min. To sustain a 5 min flight you need 60,000 arrows, if you consider 1.5 feathers per arrow, that’s 90,000 good feathers to fletch that one flight. Personally I would hope they used goose, there are far too many of those things krapping all over the parks around here.

An interesting question to me is what would the Mongols use when they have moved all the way to eastern Europe and the birds are different and the binding agents they are use to using on the feathers are different. Naturally they find a local fletcher, but I'd wonder how many were arrow snobs and insisted on their 'home fletched' arrows.

[Jonathan Waller]

Michel Noir prefers swan. Peacock is mentioned in patent rolls and in various inventories that I have seen.

Dad has fletched arrows with peacock and they perform no worse than others. They have big enough wing feathers to make larger arrows for shooting larger swallow tail hunting heads etc. The mentions in rolls suggest hunting arrows rather than flight arrows.

Goose tends to make a relatively weak fletching, by modern standards when compared to turkey. However a weak fletching may not a bad thing in a war arrow intended to be used only once. Going through the sources there are calls for goose wing feathers to be gathered and the totals suggest that millions would have been gathered. We have to remember that geese were a common domesticated bird and were kept for meat and eggs. They were raised and culled generally twice a year, massive flocks were driven into London. Don't forget that until goose became the trendy Yule novelty in the 19th century goose was the standard food on Christmas day and still is in our house

Certainly goose would be the most commonly available. Peacock would be of course rarer and it colour makes it stand out.

[Alina]

Michel Noir prefers swan. Peacock is mentioned in patent rolls and in various inventories that I have seen.

Dad has fletched arrows with peacock and they perform no worse than others. They have big enough wing feathers to make larger arrows for shooting larger swallow tail hunting heads etc. The mentions in rolls suggest hunting arrows rather than flight arrows.

Goose tends to make a relatively weak fletching, by modern standards when compared to turkey. However a weak fletching may not a bad thing in a war arrow intended to be used only once. Going through the sources there are calls for goose wing feathers to be gathered and the totals suggest that millions would have been gathered. We have to remember that geese were a common domesticated bird and were kept for meat and eggs. They were raised and culled generally twice a year, massive flocks were driven into London. Don't forget that until goose became the trendy Yule novelty in the 19th century goose was the standard food on Christmas day and still is in our house

Certainly goose would be the most commonly available. Peacock would be of course rarer and it colour makes it stand out.

What sources are you using? I've been lately reading pipe rolls, but I'm not familiar with patent rolls. What inventories are available from the period?

[admin]

to cause 40,000 wing feathers of geese
to be taken and purveyed with all speed for new making arrows

From: Close Rolls, Henry V - July 1421

Goose wing feathers were apparently the standard for military arrows in Henry V's time, though as mentioned above this may have been mostly because they were so easily harvested. Nobody could have obtained 40,000 wing feathers from peacocks alone!

In terms of the shape, most manuscript illustrations and paintings show pretty long fletchings (there is some debate about why they are so long). This famous altarpiece shows what appear to be English-style warbows and long-fletched arrows:

[Jonathan Waller]

I'm not at home so don't have my ref to hand or pictures.
Re the length of fletching. Generally the higher and longer the fletching the more stablity it will provide in flight for a bigger arrow head. Though you have more drag with a bigger fletching. Hence flight arrows have very short and fletchings but a low profile point.
What normally happens for say hunting is you have a balance bqetween a short and reasoanably high fletching. However goose. Certainly young goose produces a soft feather that wont stand high to give stability. To make up for that you keep it longer.
Best

[admin]

I have a personal theory on the long fletchings.
We know that long fletchings generally reduce performance, in terms of velocity and therefore range and penetration. If you want range, speed or better penetration at range then you use the smallest effective fletchings you can. However, what big fletchings do (perhaps?) is get the arrow moving in a straight line as quickly as possible when it leaves the bow. For those who aren't aware, arrows do not leave a bow travelling in a straight line (except on modern bows with a cut-out handle section), they have to go around the bow and therefore leave the bow travelling at a slight angle and the fletchings then straighten the arrow in flight due to drag.
Why might medieval longbowmen want to increase the drag of their arrows? My theory is that it is all to do with shooting people at close range - for maximum penetration it is VERY important that the arrow strikes the target at 90 degrees. Any other angle leads to a lot of deflection and against any kind of armour or padding this will hugely reduce penetration. If you want to shoot people in armour at close range then you want your arrows to fly as straight as possible as quickly as possible after leaving the bow. Hence big fletchings.
As regular readers here probably know, I have a pet theory that one of the important elements behind the success of English archery in the 14th-15th centuries was point-blank shooting.

[Alina]

I think the historical sources that I've read back up your pet theory, Matt.

[Jonathan Waller]

That makes sense and the stability of the fetching sits with that.
It also seems that the fletching length is fairly consistent on the MR, Westminster arrow and in comparative measurements from the period illustration

[Motley]

...
As regular readers here probably know, I have a pet theory that one of the important elements behind the success of English archery in the 14th-15th centuries was point-blank shooting.

Matt, I may have forgotten if you have actually done this in which case I apologize for time wasting but have you been through medieval art like you have for other topics and looked to see how they are showing arrows being used there? Off the top of my head I think I recall that most pictures would support your theory.

[Jonathan Waller]

Certainly most pictoral evidence shows long fletchings and archers shooting basically flat unless it is a siege or similar. Of course onwe can argue that due to spacing ankd perhaps period conventions long distankce is not shown.
However when taken into consideration with practical aspects, like those matt mentions, one can see the evidenwpkce in support of that supposition.

[admin]

As Jonathan said.

The thing is that space/distance in medieval art is not really a reliable thing to measure. Everything is drawn the wrong size and cramped onto the size of a page. What I find more compelling is the documentary evidence, where there are various mentions of English archers pouring arrows into the flanks of the enemy at what sounds like close range, probably whilst the front line of that same enemy are engaged in hand to hand fighting with English men at arms.

If we look at a 14thC English illumination (Holkham Bible, c.1330), consider how the artist has placed the archers in the midst of the combat, not standing on the edges of the page separated from the melee:

[Jonathan Waller]

Just saw this and thought to post it here showing the parabolic fletching on shooting "arrows" also interesting to note the inserts in the cock feather.

[Herbert]

As to the very long fletching:
Modern archers match their arrows to their bows. This increases performance.
One of the most important benchmarks is the "spine" - the flexibility of the arrow.
An arrow with the right spine will fly straight without feathers. So you put small fletching on it and you have an arrow with maximum speed and reach which is very stable.

Now back to medieavel times: Hundreds of thousands of arrows are made and distributed throughout the army. Everyone has a different bow. The spine will almost never be the correct one. So you put on a large fletching. With such a fletching the spine is irrelevant as the fletching does the work of stabilizing the arrow.
Probably the same with standard made arrows sold from fletchers.

So: big fletching - forget about the spine.

Just my thoughts.

Herbert