How to sabotage a carriage

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MAS

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So I want to have someone sabotage a horse-drawn traveling carriage in such a way that the carriage will crash en route and hopefully kill the passengers. I need a type if sabotage that could be accomplished quietly and secretly while the coachmen/grooms are asleep in the same outbuilding where the carriage is stored. But I need the sabotage to be obvious enough to be noticed by the coachman when he inspects the carriage before leaving. My thought is to saw partway through the rear axle, next to the inside of the wheel hub so as to be difficult to notice. Would this work? Is there a better way?
 

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So I want to have someone sabotage a horse-drawn traveling carriage in such a way that the carriage will crash en route and hopefully kill the passengers. I need a type if sabotage that could be accomplished quietly and secretly while the coachmen/grooms are asleep in the same outbuilding where the carriage is stored. But I need the sabotage to be obvious enough to be noticed by the coachman when he inspects the carriage before leaving. My thought is to saw partway through the rear axle, next to the inside of the wheel hub so as to be difficult to notice. Would this work? Is there a better way?
I'm not picturing how a broken axle would be a sure way for a saboteur to cause fatalities (except under very particular circumstances). Can a wheel coming off lead to an accident with fatalities/injuries? Sure. But odds are high for the passengers to walk away with light or no injuries. Injury chances would increase if the break caused the horses to bolt, but there's no guarantee of that (and still no certainty of fatality).

Here are a couple of links that might be useful:

Carriage Accidents and Remedies

List of Horse and Buggy Accidents

All the best,
Riv
 

Belle_91

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I'm not sure how to cause a carriage accident, but I do know that Mary Todd Lincoln was in one. Historians now believed it was intended for her husband and was an assassination attempt. Apparently, Mary did too, but at the time, no one chose to listen to her. She didn't die, but the injuries were extensive and she came close to passing away. I believe she suffered a bad concussion.
 

MAS

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I'm not picturing how a broken axle would be a sure way for a saboteur to cause fatalities (except under very particular circumstances). Can a wheel coming off lead to an accident with fatalities/injuries? Sure. But odds are high for the passengers to walk away with light or no injuries. Injury chances would increase if the break caused the horses to bolt, but there's no guarantee of that (and still no certainty of fatality).



Here are a couple of links that might be useful:

Carriage Accidents and Remedies

List of Horse and Buggy Accidents

All the best,
Riv

Thanks Riv, those links look really interesting.
 

frimble3

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A lot would depend on where the accident takes place - a wide, level road? Likely that the carriage, with a broken axle, will just drop down on the wheel-less side.
On a narrow, twisty road, with, say, a cliff on one side, likelier to have a dangerous accident when the carriage drops.
Going too fast for conditions, on a narrow twisty road? Now you're talking!
Rain, making the road slippery or muddy? Bonus points.

Add in a nervous or inexperienced horse, startled by the loud noise and the sudden shift in weight?
Or, some of the harness also being cut, so that either the driver can't control the horses (reins or bridle) or the horses aren't securely attached to the carriage (girths, breast strap or collar) and they don't really have any effect on events.
And don't forget to damage the brakes.
 

MAS

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I'm not sure how to cause a carriage accident, but I do know that Mary Todd Lincoln was in one. Historians now believed it was intended for her husband and was an assassination attempt. Apparently, Mary did too, but at the time, no one chose to listen to her. She didn't die, but the injuries were extensive and she came close to passing away. I believe she suffered a bad concussion.

Thanks Belle. I hadn't heard of that incident, but I've found a few reports of it online and it does give me a few ideas. One report said that the coachman's seat had been tampered with. Most carriage fatalities seem to result from horses out of control, and disabling the coachman's box seems like a good way to do that.
 

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A lot would depend on where the accident takes place - a wide, level road? Likely that the carriage, with a broken axle, will just drop down on the wheel-less side.
On a narrow, twisty road, with, say, a cliff on one side, likelier to have a dangerous accident when the carriage drops.
Going too fast for conditions, on a narrow twisty road? Now you're talking!
Rain, making the road slippery or muddy? Bonus points.

Add in a nervous or inexperienced horse, startled by the loud noise and the sudden shift in weight?
Or, some of the harness also being cut, so that either the driver can't control the horses (reins or bridle) or the horses aren't securely attached to the carriage (girths, breast strap or collar) and they don't really have any effect on events.
And don't forget to damage the brakes.

I especially like your thought about cutting the harness!
 

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Especially if you want something to happen at a distance from harnessing-up time - cut partly through the inside of the breast strap or harness (depending on the style/weight of the harness) so it looks normal on cursory inspection. (You want a lax/lazy coachman who leaves the harnessing to others and doesn't check carefully).
It would be okay going along on the flat, but once they hit the first steep hill, the pressure will be on the weak part, and it'll give.
You could do the same by cutting the traces (the straps that connect the harness on the horse to the carriage) but I suspect that would be easier to spot.

What kind of a carriage is this, how many horses are pulling, and what style of harness are they using?
 
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MAS

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It's a traveling coach with 4 horses. I'll have a very careful coachman who will discover the sabotage on the morning that they are getting ready to leave, but I want something that most coachmen might overlook. But yes, the aim would be for something to happen at a distance from home.
 
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frimble3

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300px-Harness_%28PSF%29.png

See the long, straight straps marked 'Trace or Tug'? If those (one on either side) are cut the horse is no longer connected to the carriage in any meaningful way: those are the straps that use the horse's forward motion to pull the thing.
And, the reins - if they're cut, the coachman will have no direct control of the horses. He can still try voice commands, "Whoa!" etc., but that would depend on how well the horses are trained, whether they are accustomed to his voice, and whether they are in a mood to obey - running, panicking horses less likely; slow moving, tired horses probably willing to stop. Same with directions, if the horses are trained to 'Gee' and 'Haw' for turns, they may obey, but if they're not used to voice commands ...

And, if the coachman is likely to notice cut-marks on the leather, harness is sewn together, and the the metal pieces are sewn in. Have the saboteur cut the stitches where the reins attach to the bridle, at the bit. Or, where the traces join to the carriage.
Black thread on black leather, a man would have to be uncommonly careful to spot that, unless he was expecting trouble.
 

frimble3

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It's a traveling coach with 4 horses. I'll have a very careful coachman who will discover the sabotage on the morning that they are getting ready to leave, but I want something that most coachmen might overlook. But yes, the aim would be for something to happen at a distance from home.
You might need to be more specific, as to where and when this is happening. You want to know what the carriage looks like, what the local harness looks like, (there are lots of variations) and what the horses are like. (Big sturdy draft horses, for muscle, elegant looking horses for style.) Then you can figure out what the harness is like, and what the weak spots are.

Or, if this is a fantasy, at least find an image of a carriage with harness horses that looks like what you want.
 
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angeliz2k

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It seems to me that that any attempt to sabotage a carriage would be iffy. While carriage accidents could certainly be deadly, it would be really hard to ensure a deadly accident, I think. You might be able to cause damage to the carriage, but chances are that your victim will just be stuck by the wayside for a few hours or get a bump. Because carriages don't go as fast as cars and are pulled by living animals, it's harder to have sudden, catastrophic failure due to one point of mechanical error. Not impossible, of course, but harder to make happen on purpose.

Speed is going to be a factor. Maybe someone accidentally-on-purpose spooks the horses to get them running, and someone else accidentally-on-purpose gets in the way so they come to a sudden stop? That might cause an accident.

Is there any way to sabotage the route? Maybe a bridge goes out, or there's a rock fall from a great height? A concealed hole in the road that might cause the horses to stumble?

I'm trying to think of the details, but I know William Seward was in a bad carriage accident in April 1865, and was so badly injured that he was in bed, half-dead, when the same group of assassins who killed Lincoln tried to kill, too. The assassin sent to kill Seward nearly beat his son to death and injured his daughter, but was thwarted in his attempt to kill Seward by the apparatus wiring Seward's mouth shut. Maybe you can find some more details on the accident itself if you google it.

ETA: It was a splint applied to Seward's broken jaw that saved his life, not an apparatus wiring his jaw shut.
 
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Charke

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Don't sabotage the carriage. Sabotage the horses. (Looks around for animal activists.) If the horse is in pain, it will tend to run more, exactly how spurs work. It's not a guarantee of anything but it feels more realistic than cutting the wheel so it crashes and explodes. This will rob the driver of control. I mean, ideally you want a cliff. Heck, leaving a trap, drugs or something that drop on the horses when the carriage gets close to the cliff would make sense. Since death isn't certain, several layers of plans become more realistic. Maybe there are spikes set up to go through the cab if it crashes. This is a hard one, and the reason people didn't do this.

It's like cutting a brake line. Most people step on their brakes a few times getting out of the driveway and there is a high chance they would notice something was wrong way ahead of time.


Perhaps if there is a steep slope, you could rig the horses and rig the breaks and just make everything fail at once?

- Mark Charke
 

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Someone used a burr in a horse-blanket to cause a horse to buck its rider in a fantasy novel - it scratched the horse, but wasn't painful until the rider got on his back. (Rider has a broken leg, and the heir to the heir to the throne was then in charge - and able to engineer a trap for the heir to the throne - luckily it didn't come off.)

I agree with the others - damaging the horses' tack is probably a good way to do it. If you couple that with another piece of damage that could potentially make the horses bolting even worse for those inside the carriage, that might help ensure the fatality of the accident - e.g. loosening door-hinges in hopes they'll get thrown from the carriage, damaging wheel or axels. Could be that one piece of damage leads the coachman into making an even more thorough check than usual. In addition, if there is a conveniently awkward bit of road where the saboteur could also lay in wait to ensure the accident was fatal (by spooking the horses to ensure the carriage was at speed when their connection broke, for example) that might also help. And could lead to a bit of fun/exposition - "Hours, I waited, for that damn carriage, and it didn't come." It's always fun when the villains inconvenience themselves by trying to be too clever.
 

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This is a thread from November.
 
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