Who would win a fight between a ship and a swordfish?
When I first started reading this 1921 article I thought that they were stretching the connection a little. A hole in a ship and an unseen attacker doesn’t mean that a swordfish was the culprit.
I mean, it could just as easily been aliens (or sharks with frickin’ laser beams) or something…
I was slightly appeased when they said that the beak was still in the hole when the source of the leak was discovered, and that it protruded some inches into the cabin of one of the crew. Ok, so no armed sharks.
The beak had managed to get through a copper sheet and three inches of solid teak hull. I expect that the swordfish was none too happy about the collision!
In the article they also cite the example of the steamer Cashmere, which in November 1874 sprung a leak. When the leak was investigated it was found that a swordfish beak had managed to penetrate through 10 inches of planking, and was still in the hole. Ouch again!
Even if each of these holes were really caused by swordfish beak, I find it extremely unlikely that a swordfish would actually go out of its way attack a large wooden hulled ship with the intent suggested in this article.
The only way I can believe a swordfish bill went any way towards penetrating the hull of a ship is to think of a fish out for a swim, not realizing that the path it had chosen would soon intersect with that of a ship speeding straight towards it.
I know that whales can be struck by ships and do tremendous damage. I suspect that a fish with a very pointy front end could do quite a lot of damage too, although the swordfish would not exactly come out alive at the other end of this encounter!
If swordfish colliding with ships were a known occurrence (four in this article) that makes me wonder how many swordfish there were in the ocean back then. I know that there were many more ships travelling the high seas in those times, but the ocean is a very big place!