In the paper The injuries of four centuries of naval warfare, the author describes how flying wood splinters caused by cannon balls striking a ship's hull were a major cause of injury to ship's crews.
Splinters Hutchinson, writing at the
end of the Napoleonic wars, draws a distinction between the localized wounds from
grape shot and musket balls inflicted by confronting armies and the extensive injuries
caused by a direct hit from the round shot
of a ship's cannon or by 'ragged fragments
of timber violently rent from the planks or
sides of the ship'. He adds, 'wounds inflicted
by splinters of wood are always more extensive, accompanied with frightful contusions
and lacerations of the soft parts', and Wiseman had pointed out that even if the splinter had insufficient velocity to cause a wound
'it sometimes bruiseth the skin to the flesh
so forcibly as to extinguish the naturall heat
and make it black', producing an eschar
which would separate to leave an indolent
ulcer, possibly of 'Meleney' type, and finally
an ugly scar.
This effect has also been confirmed in modern experiments such as the Vasa cannon tests in which sharp wooden splinters can be seen flying out of the exit hole of a cannon ball that has penetrated the wooden ship armour.
My question is, did fighting ships from the Age of Sail ever use any effective anti-spall armour in order to protect their crews? For example, thick canvas nailed to the interior walls of a gun deck might be an effective way to capture splinters before they could be a danger to the crew.