It happened often enough that sailors worried about it constantly.
On a wooden sailing ship, the mast was usually the tallest object for miles around, so it was a natural lightning target. The consequences varied enormously:
The lucky cases
Sometimes the lightning simply traveled down the wet mast, rigging, and damp hull into the sea. There might be a deafening crack, splintered wood, frightened crew, and perhaps some damaged rigging, but the ship survived.
More serious damage
A strike could:
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Split or shatter a mast from top to bottom.
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Blow large chunks out of spars and yards.
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Melt metal fittings.
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Kill or injure sailors who happened to be touching rigging.
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Damage compasses, making navigation difficult.
The sudden heating of moisture inside the wood could act almost like a tiny explosion, showering splinters across the deck.
Fire — the great fear
Fire was what captains dreaded most.
A wooden vessel was full of:
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Dry timber
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Tar
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Pitch
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Hemp rope
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Canvas sails
A lightning-caused fire at sea could be catastrophic. Even if extinguished, the ship might lose masts or essential rigging and become crippled.
Powder magazines
Warships had another nightmare: gunpowder.
The magazines were usually deep in the ship and carefully protected, so direct explosions were uncommon, but a lightning strike that somehow ignited powder could destroy the vessel. Naval architects took extensive precautions against this.
The solution: lightning rods
In the late 18th century, after the work of Benjamin Franklin, lightning conductors began appearing on ships. Copper chains or metal conductors were run from the mast toward the sea, giving lightning an easier path than through the wood itself.
The British Royal Navy gradually adopted them despite some resistance from traditional sailors and officers. Once properly installed, they dramatically reduced mast damage and fires.
A vivid example
Before lightning conductors became common, reports describe masts being split "from truck to heel"—essentially from the very top of the mast all the way down to its base. Some ships lost entire topmasts in a single strike and had to rig jury masts just to limp home.
The irony is that the sea itself is an excellent sink for the electrical charge. The problem wasn't where the lightning wanted to end up—it wanted the ocean all along. The problem was that a tall wooden ship happened to be standing in the way.
That's an interesting observation, because lightning strikes at sea were common enough in reality, yet they are surprisingly rare in fiction.
Part of the reason is narrative usefulness. A novelist wants a storm to do something dramatic: drive the ship onto rocks, separate characters, sink the vessel, or test courage. Lightning striking the mast is spectacular, but in most real cases it either did little or damaged the ship in ways that were technical rather than plot-changing. A snapped mast creates logistical problems; a hurricane creates a story.
There are exceptions. Sea adventure novels occasionally mention lightning striking spars or masts, especially in the works of writers like Frederick Marryat or Patrick O'Brian, where nautical details matter. But even there, it's usually an incident rather than the centerpiece of a scene.
Movies have another problem: lightning on screen is hard to make believable. Audiences expect a direct strike to produce a huge explosion, while a historically accurate result—a blinding flash, a crack like cannon fire, some splintering aloft, and sailors scrambling to inspect damage—can seem anticlimactic compared with a giant wave or a shipwreck.
There is also a subtle storytelling issue. Before Franklin's lightning rod, a lightning strike could feel almost random, an "act of God." Writers generally prefer dangers that characters can confront or outwit. A mutiny, a naval battle, or a storm gives people decisions to make. Lightning mostly gives them bad luck.
Yet if you had been standing on the deck of an eighteenth-century frigate during a thunderstorm, a lightning strike would likely have been one of the most terrifying things you could experience: a blinding white flash at masthead height, an instantaneous cannon-like detonation, showers of splinters, perhaps men knocked senseless, and the crew immediately searching for fire. It probably made a stronger impression on real sailors than it has on readers ever since.
That is one of those stories that sounds suspiciously specific, but there is actually some historical truth behind it.
In medieval and early modern Europe, church bells were often rung during thunderstorms. There was a widespread belief that consecrated bells could disperse storms, ward off demons, or protect crops from hail. So when a storm approached, someone might climb into the bell tower and ring the bells precisely when it was becoming most dangerous.
Unfortunately, bell towers were usually among the tallest structures in a town, and before lightning rods existed they were frequent lightning targets. A bell ringer handling a large metal bell and its fittings inside a tall tower was in a hazardous place.
Historians have documented numerous cases of bell ringers being injured or killed by lightning. The problem became serious enough that after Benjamin Franklin popularized lightning rods in the 18th century, there was controversy in some places about installing them on churches. Some clergy viewed lightning rods as interfering with divine providence, while others welcomed them because church towers were being struck so often.
One oft-cited statistic claims that in parts of 18th-century France, dozens of bell ringers were killed over a relatively short period. The exact numbers vary depending on the source, and historians debate some of the figures. The popular claim that bell ringers were the leading cause of lightning fatalities in the Middle Ages is almost certainly an exaggeration, partly because reliable lightning-death records from the Middle Ages barely exist.
What is probably true is the narrower claim: bell ringers were among the occupational groups at highest risk from lightning before lightning rods became common. They were repeatedly putting themselves in tall towers during thunderstorms for a purpose that, unfortunately, increased their exposure.
It's a neat historical irony. The bell-ringing was intended to protect the community from the storm, yet it often placed the bell ringer in one of the most dangerous spots in town.
I know exactly what you mean.
Movies almost always use a sort of elongated BOOOOM-rumble that sounds impressive but not particularly alarming. A close lightning strike in real life is something else entirely. The nearest one I've experienced wasn't even a direct strike to my location, and the sound was less like thunder than like a gigantic instantaneous explosion.
People who haven't been close to one often imagine thunder as a noise. Very close thunder is almost a physical event. You feel it in your chest, sometimes in your teeth. There's no dramatic delay between flash and sound because the strike is practically on top of you. The crack arrives with such violence that your nervous system reacts before you've consciously processed what happened.
Part of the difficulty for filmmakers is that an accurate close strike would probably seem exaggerated. Audiences might think, "No, thunder doesn't sound like a cannon going off in the room." Yet eyewitnesses routinely describe nearby strikes using words like explosion, artillery, rifle shot, or bomb.
On a wooden sailing ship the effect would have been even more startling. The mast acts like a resonator. Imagine a blinding flash at the masthead, an instantaneous detonation overhead, the entire ship vibrating, splinters raining down, and perhaps the smell of scorched wood and sulfur-like ozone. Then, after the shock, everyone starts looking frantically for fire.
There is a reason that before lightning rods many sailors regarded lightning as one of the most terrifying hazards at sea, even though storms and shipwrecks killed far more people. A storm gave warning. A lightning strike could transform a normal moment into chaos in less than a tenth of a second.
One thing I've noticed from talking to people who have been very close to strikes is that they often remember the sound decades later. They may forget where they parked the car that day, but not the sound. It seems to imprint itself rather deeply.
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